”I take my pen in hand to record for all Posterity the Horrible Events of this Night, the thirty-first Day of the tenth Month, the Day they call All Hallow’s Eve…” Henry stopped, put his tired head in his hands, and rocked gently from side to side. He took a look at the few words he had put down and almost balled up the paper to use as fire starter, but stopped himself at the last minute. Quill pens he could make for himself, and he had feathers a-plenty gathered from when the fox had gotten at the fowl, but paper and ink were dear and should not be wasted in a frivolous fit of pique just because he felt his poor words were not adequate for the situation.

He sighed, dipped his pen afresh and continued. “Last month, when the ravening Beast burst from the Forest and rent the flesh of my own dear Constance, I was terrified first for her life and then when she rallied and began to improve, that she might have contracted the Rabies, that dread Disease that drives men mad with Thirst though they cannot drink. I had no Clew that she would contract something far worse. Indeed, either instant Death, Death of a gangrenous Fever, or even the Rabies would have been preferable to this. This insufferable possession by a demonic Beast – the Loup-Garou. Yes, when the Moon rose this night, she turned and ran at me, and then burst through the door of our humble abode, tearing her clothing from her Body as she tried to tear away her own skin, writhing in terrible Pain as skin and bone shifted and teeth and hair grew. I watched, frozen in horror, as she finished her Change and turned to me, a fearsome light glowing maniacally in her Eyes. I knew her not, and slammed the door to our cabin in terror as she – or it – lunged at me. I could hear the thuds the Beast’s body made as it tried to reach me, to rend my body as hers very nearly had been on that Day one short Month ago.”

Henry stopped again, gazing into the distance as he remembered the events of the day. His hand was shaking slightly as he took up his pen and continued his narrative. He paused, breathed deeply and then began again with a steadier hand.

“It was not long before I could hear the Beast crashing through the underbrush near the cabin, moving farther and farther from my Home. I turned to the cradle by the fire where our infant Patience lay sleeping, still wrapped in her swaddling bands, innocent of her Mother’s terrible Transformation. For the first time, I truly regretted my decision to uproot my small Family and bring them to this New World where there would be no Family to fall back on when Help was needed. The Hunger has been bad since the Crops failed, and I was worried, too, when our goat and pig were taken by wild Animals, and when our nearest Neighbors all died last week of some foul Flux I was starting to doubt my Wisdom. Starvation or Disease seemed unavoidable. But I reasoned, at least we still had one another, and could take our few Possessions and leave, possibly finding a new place to settle before we expired from Hunger. But now, with Constance taken by the Beast of the Night and small Patience with no Mother to nurture or nurse her, I realize that I am lost. Even if I am not taken by the Beast tonight, there will be more Nights and yet more when the Beast will lurk about our small cabin -whenever the Moon shines full and bright in the Sky.”

The ink became slightly smudged as Henry’s head dropped down, dozing off briefly. He started awake again as the baby stirred and fussed. Carefully, he changed her and patted her and fed her a bit of the last of the family’s gruel that warmed by the fire. “Ah, child, I know that this is no substitute for thine own mother, but it is the best that I, thy father, can do.”

Eventually the baby settled down and fell back asleep again, and Henry took up his pen again. “The Dawn will break soon, and I must take the Babe and try to make it to a place of safety for the both of us. If things go well, I will find a wet-nurse for the Child and then – then, I will return to do battle with the Beast that has consumed the gentle, loving Constance of my Memories.” A loud thump sounded at the door and Henry jumped, his pen leaving a streak across the paper. Cautiously, he made his way to the door and looked through the peep-hole he had drilled there. Dawn had broken, and it was light out now, the morning sun shining on the snow. The blood-stained snow. He flinched back and then looked once more. As he put his eye to the hole, another eye met his. He started back in terror, and then realized that the eye was the same color as that of his beloved Constance. He carefully looked again, and there was Constance standing there in the snow, the rags of her dress pulled about her, her hair wild and tangled and her face smudged with dirt and God alone only knew what else. But the light of reason was in her eyes, and she looked tired and harmless. As if she knew her mother was nearby, little Patience began to howl with hunger. Constance looked at his eye peering our at her and said plaintively, “Henry, it’s cold out here.”

Steeling himself, Henry opened the door. Constance stepped through, grabbing the leg of a deer as she did and dragging it in with her. “I did a little hunting last night, Henry. I brought home some meat – we’ll not starve now. Wouldst thou like to go and butcher this while I clean up and tend to the baby?”

-She Wolf (c)2007

Cosmo generally slept in a little bit in the mornings, and I liked to use this dragon-free time to indulge myself with dyeing wool and spinning yarn. The activity centered me and focused me for the day, and I always looked forward to my hour or so first thing in the morning.

This morning was no exception. I had planned to dye some wool a nice, bright red for some socks for Jon, who was a Boston Red Socks baseball fan. This dye was not kid-friendly, so I couldn’t use it when Cosmo was around wanting to help. I hummed as I pulled out my dye-pot and smiled as I prepped my wool in a vinegar solution. And then Murgatroyd came into the room.

“What are you doing?” were the first words he said. Not “Good morning,” or even “I’m hungry,” which was usually what Cosmo said when he first woke up. Murgatroyd wanted to know what I was doing, why I was doing it, and if he could do it, too.So I explained. And since it was Murgatroyd, who had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and no experience in our world, I started at the beginning, with idea of fibers.

I had met very few dragons who much experience with fibers. Granted, if I were covered in a bunch of tough and beautifully colored scales, I might choose not to clothe myself either. Textiles were something that other species wore and used, and that was all that most dragons knew about them. More dragons were learning as they traded in other dimensions, but cloth was still a rarity in the dragon world. As a result, most of my draconic visitors had been fascinated by my fiber interests, and Murgatroyd was no exception.

Murgatroyd and I explored the idea of fiber, of fiber plants and fiber animals. Then we focused on sheep since I was dyeing wool. We talked about dyeing, spinning, weaving and knitting, all in the space of about half an hour. Then, since I had some wool ready to dye and Murgatroyd was curious, I pulled out some kid-friendly dye, a powered soft drink mix with really bright colors, and asked him if he’d like to dye some wool for me to spin and knit into a scarf for him, just like Cosmo had.

He was instantly hooked. It took him ten minutes to decide which color to use – I had red, pink, green and blue available and you’d have thought that this was a life or death decision. Finally he chose green – “like my scales now,” he said, and we set to work.

He was fascinated with the entire process, and when the green color was finally all absorbed by the white wool, he was charmed. “We made the white wool green,” he said over and over. “And you didn’t use any magic at all!”

We hung the wool up in the mud room to dry just as Cosmo got up. Cosmo was philosophical about missing the wool-dyeing session and just wanted his breakfast. Then I sent the pair off to investigate the computer that Felix had set up for them while I cleaned up the kitchen.

A little while later, I found Murgatroyd deeply involved in a computer encyclopedia article about sheep while Cosmo soared around the big front room, playing chicken with the chandelier.

“Hit the chandelier once and you’re meat, Cosmo!” I called to him.

He swooped down and landed at my side as I tried to get Murgatroyd’s attention. “Hey, how about a walk in the woods?” I coaxed. “It’s not too bad out there today. At least it’s not snowing sideways.” I finally pried Murgatroyd away from the computer and out into the woods with the idea that he could see lots and lots of new flora and fauna outside and then he could look them up later in the day. He was cramming in facts about our world as fast as he could.

The walk went well. Since Murgatroyd couldn’t fly, Cosmo elected not to as well, which was a relief for me. He was far easier to keep track of when he was safely on the ground. I took a pad and pen with me, and Murgatroyd had me list grey squirrels, pine trees, snow, cardinals, cottontail rabbits, crocuses, sparrows and about fifty more things for him to look up later. All in all it was a successful walk, and when we got back it was lunch time.

Cosmo was ready. “Can we have UN-roasted beef? Please?” he begged. This was a favorite treat of his. I bought packages of stew meat, already cubed, and set them out uncooked in a bowl. I gave Cosmo a skewer, and he would stab the meat, roast it with his own flames, and then eat it. It kept him happily occupied for quite a while and got him fed at the same time.

I pulled him aside. “Cosmo, I don’t think that would be polite. Remember, Murgatroyd can’t…”

But Murgatroyd was listening, and he interrupted. “I don’t mind, really I don’t. As long as Cosmo doesn’t mind roasting my meat, too.” He looked a little bit sad, but seemed quite sincere.

By the time I had them settled, they had come up with a compromise – and a game. Murgatroyd would toss up a piece of meat, Cosmo would sear it in mid-air, and then they would take turns catching it in their mouths. Missed catches, bits that were burned or undercooked, and bad tosses by Murgatroyd had them laughing with delight and I decided that it was worth it, even if they weren’t exactly learning good table manners. At least they were cooperating with each other, and even having fun.

After that they went to play in Cosmo’s playroom. When I looked in a little bit later, I found Murgatroyd determinedly trying to teach Cosmo his ABC’S in both dragon and English at the same time. Cosmo looked a little bit confused but was trying valiantly to keep up with the lesson.

“Cosmo, why don’t you take a turn  on the computer. I put an alphabet game on there for you,” I said. Cosmo looked relieved and ran off to see what the game was like. I sat down with Murgatroyd. “Go just a little slower, okay? He’ll catch on. He just isn’t as quick as you are.” Murgatroyd nodded, and then requested that I help him find some books about this world to read. I left him happily perusing a set of nature guides.

Later that afternoon, I  had finally sat down with my knitting for a while when I realized that I hadn’t seen Isadore the cat all afternoon. Usually he was right there when I sat down, ready to curl up in my lap for a nice nap. Sometimes he hid when we had someone new around, but he had met Murgatroyd the day before and seemed to like him. Murgatroyd, in turn, had been fascinated by the soft, furry cat. Perhaps Isadore had decided enough was enough and had hidden himself away for some peace and quiet. Sure enough, a little bit later I heard the familiar sound of Isadore hacking up a hair ball. I sighed and made a mental note to go looking for it when I got back up.

A short time later, my peace was shattered by the sounds of a dragonly altercation. I ran towards the playroom, where the noise originated,  and stepped squarely on the hairball with my sock-clad feet. Of course, it squished unpleasantly, and I automatically stopped to look at the bottom of my now wet-and-icky sock. Then I froze in shock.  The hairball was purple. Isadore wasn’t.

“MURGATROYD!!!!” My shout was loud and angry enough to stop the fight cold. First Cosmo and then Murgatroyd peeked around the corner of the playroom door at me as I stood there seething.

“WHAT’S THIS?” I roared.

“I have no idea,” replied Murgatroyd, who had never seen a hairball before.

“A hairball,” answered a puzzled Cosmo, who didn’t understand why I was asking what a hairball was. They were common occurrences in our house.

“Yes, but what’s wrong with this hairball?” I hissed.

Murgatroyd and Cosmo just stared at me.

“What color is our cat?” I asked.

“He’s grey and brown and stripey…” answered Cosmo, who sounded like he thought I might be losing my mind.

“But not purple.” I stated this very firmly.

Murgatroyd looked a little bit worried.

“No….” said Cosmo.

“Please come and look at this hairball,” I commanded.

The two young dragons came over and looked.

“It’s purple,” said Cosmo.

“Yes. And do you know why that would be?” I asked, looking directly at Murgatroyd.

Cosmo looked at Murgatroyd too, as the latter shifted uncomfortably.

“Because you like purple and I wanted to see what he would look like if I dyed him?” Murgatroyd squeaked. “But I knew he couldn’t breathe if I put him in the dye pot like we did the wool, so I used magic. I thought since he has nice, soft fiber all over him, it would be interesting to change his color, just like we did with the wool this morning,” he continued.

“And what did Isadore think about this?” I asked him.

“He hissed and ran away, which I really don’t understand. The information I read about him this morning said that cats don’t perceive color as you and I do. He shouldn’t have noticed the change. I know it didn’t hurt,” Murgatroyd the scientist was puzzled. Then he added thoughtfully, “Perhaps it was because I made his coat longer and thicker and faster-growing too, so that it would be easier for you to harvest and spin, since he’s not very large.”

Great. So now I had a cat who was desperately trying to groom his newly longer, thicker, and fast-growing fur off so that he could feel like himself again. He would be hacking up hairballs from here to eternity if we didn’t get this settled quickly.

I sighed. “In the first place, Murgatroyd, cats know. I don’t know how, but they KNOW when something changes with their fur, even without the longer and faster growing part. In the second place, I thought there was a damper on your magic?”

“Oh, well, there is. I really can’t do much at all – the cat was about as large a thing as I can affect now. Even that was some work. But don’t you like it?” he added wistfully. “Since you like to change the colors of your fibers and like to spin soft ones, I thought this would be really nice for you. You can get some really nice fiber from Isadore now.” He sounded like he wanted to cry.

I sat down in the hall, put my arms around him, and we had a talk. We talked about how it was better to ask permission before he changed something that belonged to someone else, how living creatures needed to be off-limits for his scientific and magical experiments, and how I liked the  fact that he tried to do something nice, even if it did backfire.

Then we went off in search of Isadore, who was hiding in shame, so that a penitent Murgatroyd could change him back to normal.

Later that evening, Felix came to see how things were going. I met him at the Door.

“Oh good. I’m glad you’re here. I need your help,” I said.

“If it was an emergency, you should have summoned me,” Felix said nervously.

“No, not an emergency, but Isadore needs some help.” I explained what happened.

“But if Murgatroyd took off the spells, Isadore should be all right now,” Felix said in a worried tone.

“Well, he couldn’t exactly get the ones for the longer, faster-growing fur off. And he had a little trouble with the one that made Isadore purple. We decided he should quit while he was ahead, before he made the spells permanent or something.”

As we walked down the hall, I added, “Mind the hairballs. I’ve been cleaning them up as soon I’ve found them, but all Isadore has done all day is groom and hack up hairballs. This different fur is really disagreeing with him.”

“So I see,” said Felix as he stepped square in the middle of one. He lifted his foot to look at it. “Green?” Murgatroyd turned Isadore green this time?”

“Not exactly,” I said and pointed to another hairball a short distance away. This one was yellow. “When he tried to take off the color changing spell, all he did was shorten its duration and take away the part that kept the color stable.” I paused for effect. “Now Isadore changes color  about every ten minutes. He has been every shade in the rainbow and a few that surprised even me.”

Felix sighed. “I guess we’d better find the cat and fix him before he has a nervous breakdown,” he said.

I smiled brightly and replied, “That would be nice.”

We went to look for Isadore.

-She Wolf © 2009

I told Cosmo about his cousin’s impending visit and he proceeded to bounce around the house for the rest of the day. Cosmo remembered his cousin vaguely and was really excited about the visit. At least the bouncing was a change from the sulking and boredom. Cosmo brought out all of this things to see what I thought Murgatroyd would like best to play with and asked me to help him tidy up his playroom.

Then he insisted that the bedroom next to his be readied for Murgatroyd, which meant that the regular human bed in there had to be moved out so that a dragon-bed – with flame-proof coverings – could be put in. Jon and Rob got the call for that one. Then, being the good friends that they are, they took Cosmo out for an extended romp in the snow so that I could have some peace and quiet. All they got in return was dinner, but that seemed to satisfy them. Rob left and Jon stayed to spend the evening with me and a very tired but still wound up Cosmo.

“Are you sure about this?” Jon asked me after we finally got Cosmo settled for the night. “I met Master Murgatroyd when I was working with your employer and our friend Thomas last fall, and he’s, well…..he’s a bit different.”

“Different? Different how? I deal with Cosmo’s curiosity and bounciness and impulsiveness daily. How could Murgatroyd be worse? I mean, aside from the magic, which Felix says he’s put a damper on.”

Jon sighed. “This is true. Well, maybe it’ll all work out. At least he’ll occupy Cosmo.”

Felix brought Murgatroyd the following afternoon. Cosmo haunted the Door all morning, waiting for them to come, and had to be dragged away for lunch. When the Door bell finally rang, Cosmo swooped from one end of the big hall to the other in excitement and then got underneath my feet as I tried to unlock the Door.

I dragged him back with me as I stepped out of the way so that Felix and his charge could come in.

Murgatroyd wasn’t much larger than Cosmo, but there the resemblance ended. It was easy to see the trouble his experiments with magic had caused. His particular melding of red and green dragon traits was awkward at best. At worst, it would cause him problems in the dragon world in the future.

As I smiled and leaned forward to say hello and welcome Murgatroyd to our home, he turned to Felix and said rather imperiously in Dragon, “The interdiminsional Doorway is very interesting. I would like to study it more closely.”

I was startled, but I saved Felix the trouble of replying and responded to Murgatroyd in Dragon, “The Door is the property of the wizard Thomas, who has employed me to act as the Door’s guardian. Any requests will need to be directed to him.”

Murgatroyd turned around and stared at me. “I did not realize you spoke Dragon – or any language for that matter. Although with that accent, you could hardly be considered to be speaking it. Lesser species should not attempt things that are beyond them. You will relay my request to your employer NOW, so that I can begin my studies.”

While I stood there with my mouth hanging open and Cosmo was frozen in shock, Felix cleared his throat. “This is your guardian, Murgatroyd. Humans are not lesser species – they are our equals in every way. You will be polite, and you will NOT be studying the Door or any other magical device for the foreseeable future. Please remember what got you into your current dilemma. And drop the attitude, NOW.”

Murgatroyd dropped his head and muttered, “Sry,” in Dragon.

“I beg your pardon? I couldn’t hear you,” said Felix. “And you can speak English. Be polite and use it.”

Murgatroyd looked up at me, “I’m sorry, and I thought you were one of the great apes. That is why I was surprised you could talk. I’ve studied them but never actually seen one.” he said in passable English.

Felix turned Murgatroyd around and looked him in the eyes. “You will behave here at all times. You will set a good example for your cousin Cosmo, and you will be a thoughtful guest. I know you know how to behave; we’ve gone over it enough times in the past few days. See that you remember. And remember what happens if you don’t.”

The silence was palpable. Finally Murgatroyd nodded and Felix released him. “I don’t want to go to Mt. Elmot’s. I’ll be good.”

Felix sighed and turned to Cosmo. “Cosmo, would you please show your cousin around?”

Cosmo was still a bit stunned at Murgatroyd’s behavior, but he nodded reluctantly and said quietly, “Come on, Murgatroyd. I’ll show you where your room is.”

When the two of them were off, I crossed my arms and stared at Felix. “What was that about? The whole thing, I mean. The behavior, the attitude, the Mt. Elmot’s thing. Tell me now, or you can take Murgatroyd right back with you.”

Felix had the good grace to look ashamed. He slumped and the gestured towards the front room. “Come on then. I DO owe you an explanation. Several of them, in fact.”

When we were settled in front of the fire place (I started the fire since, as a blue dragon, Felix couldn’t), Felix began with no prompting. “Murgatroyd has always been quite precocious, very bright. His parents, though well intentioned, have not been very wise in raising him, and have encouraged him to barge ahead and do whatever he liked in pursuit of knowledge. Manners, too,  have never been at the top of their list for him, which is very unfortunate, as you can see. Really, they are the root of the entire problem that we are having now with him.” Felix shook his head.

“They have let him learn anything and everything he wished, and let him feel that this was all that mattered. They have not encouraged friends for him, nor have they encouraged normal play and games – there is nothing in his world except learning. And there, he is denied nothing. When he started to develop his magical abilities, they were ecstatic and immediately began to look for someone to teach him. Of course, no one would, although several wizards and dragons offered to put a damper on his burgeoning abilities until he was old enough to use them wisely.”

Felix stopped now and stared into the fire. “His parents wouldn’t let anyone do this to their precious little one, of course. They accepted the fact that no one would teach him, and they  now swear that they have no idea how he’s been learning. I’ve got my work cut out for me, finding the source of  his rather inadequate lessoning.”

“Why you, Felix? How did you get roped into this? I mean, I know you are more than passable at magic, but you’re a researcher. You study other cultures. You aren’t a draconic policeman. Or are you?”

“No, I’m simply an old friend of both the little fellow’s parents. As you can imagine, they are both heavily involved in intellectual fields, and we have know each other for years. They know that I have connections that they don’t  - you, for instance, and Thomas. And I like to think that they realize that I have a heavy streak of practicality which they both seem to be lacking.”

“All right, that seems reasonable. Now what’s this Mt. Elmot’s thing?”

“It’s a very, very strict dragon school. The young dragons there tend to be a bit out of control, or a bit hard to control, and there are all sorts of restrictions and dampers in place. Really, it’s rather like what a military boarding school for borderline delinquents would be here. And if Murgatroyd went there, he’d easily be  the youngest dragon in the place. He doesn’t want that, and really, neither does anyone else. I want him here, learning to play like any young dragon should, and learning to get along with others, like Cosmo.” He looked over at me.

I nodded. I could see that this would be a last resort.

Then I asked bluntly, ” How am I supposed to control him. I don’t have magic.”

“I think that he’ll be all right with you. The first was an honest, if rude, mistake on his part. He has studied this world somewhat, but has never met anyone from here. Most of his books have been rather lacking in the visual graphics, so he really thought that you were one of the great apes. The incident was regrettable, but understandable if you consider this.”

I didn’t like it, but I nodded.

Felix continued, “I’ll leave an emergency contact spell for me. You can trigger it just by reading it, even without magic. You know the sort of spell. You’ve used them before. If you use it, I’ll come right away, no matter what. And,” he patted a bag he had brought with him, “I have a surprise for both of our young dragons, and you as well. It may keep them occupied for a while.”

“What is it?” I asked, my eyes narrowing with suspicion.

Felix dug into the bag and dug out a hugely oversized computer keyboard. “It’s a dragon sized computer set-up. This keyboard will easily accommodate their claws. It will hook up to the big TV moniter out here. And I have programs, too, both with games and with information about this world. Next time, Murgatroyd won’t mistake you for a great ape.” Felix beamed.

“But no Internet.” I said. “I can’t even begin to imagine the trouble they could get into on the Internet.”

Felix winced. “Neither can I. Never fear, that was never part of the plan. That would be the last thing I’d want at this point in time.”

Felix bustled off to set up the computer, and I went to check on the young dragons.

They were in Cosmo’s playroom, and Cosmo was zooming through the air around a series of obstacles set down the middle of his very large, dragon-sized playroom – a favorite game of his. “Now we can play chase with the obstacle course!” he was shouting gleefully as I came into the room.

Murgatroyd looked on sourly. “No we can’t. I don’t have wings.” He turned away, acting annoyed, but I could see that he was dejected. No matter how difficult he was, he was still a child, and I felt sorry for him.

“Cosmo, come here,” I called. Cosmo came right away, having realized his mistake.

“I’m sorry, Murgatroyd. I forgot,” he said without prompting. He was a soft-hearted, observant little fellow. Maybe Murgatroyd could learn something from him. “Let’s play something else, okay?”

Murgatroyd shrugged. I spoke up, “I have a suggestion. Murgatroyd, you read English, don’t you?”

He nodded slowly.

“Well, Cosmo hasn’t learned to read yet, and he loves stories. There are all sorts of books in this closet here (the closet was fireproof, so Cosmo wouldn’t accidently incinerate his books) and if you read some to him, he’d like it and you’d learn some more about our culture.”

Murgatroyd perked up at this, although he did comment, “He can’t read yet? I could read three languages by the time I was his age!”  and soon was working his way through a large stack of Cosmo’s favorite picture books with Cosmo sitting delightedly beside him.

Hurdle number one, done. I went to see about dinner.

-She Wolf © 2009

The winter was really dragging on and Cosmo was getting cabin fever. So was I, for that matter. No matter how much I love winter and the excuse to curl up with a book or my knitting or spinning, by spring, I’m ready for spring. I wanted to head out into the woods around our house, with Cosmo in tow, and enjoy the great outdoors – at least as much as I could with Cosmo scaring off all the local wildlife. Not that Cosmo would scare them off on purpose. It’s just that a young dragon racketing around, flying into the trees, and smelling of fire tends to send the wild critters running for cover. We mostly admired the flora on our walks, rather than the fauna.

Anyway, Cosmo and I were both ready to get out and about but we were still getting one cold snap after another, along with snow that tended to melt into mud with a day or two. In short, it was nasty out, so we stayed in.

Cosmo argued that he could simply fly over the snow and mud. It was a good point, but I reminded him that I couldn’t and he wasn’t going out there without me. He whined and begged me to ask Felix, our friend the blue dragon and Cosmo’s sometimes tutor,  to come for another visit – Felix could fly with him, so he wouldn’t be out alone. I pointed out that Felix had other things to attend to than staying here to amuse Cosmo. Besides, a fully grown dragon flying around would tend to attract unwanted attention from the local people, none of whom had any idea that they had real, live dragons – from another dimension, yet – living in their midst.

“Felix said he’d be back in a few weeks, Cosmo,” I told the little dragon for what seemed like the forty-third time that cold, snowy day. “Anyway, he’s not going to fly around with you. He almost got caught last fall, and that would just be awkward.”

Cosmo hung bat-like, upside down, from the door frame of one of our extra-large dragon sized doors, his back claws digging deeply into the wood. “But I’m bo-ored,” he whined again. “I want someone to play with me-ee.”

It didn’t matter that he was a dragon-child. Children all whine in the same annoying, irritating tone. And Cosmo’s whine was getting on my last nerve. I rummaged around in my head for some sort of idea to keep him amused.

“Do you want to use that Kool-aid to dye some more wool for me to spin?” I asked brightly. “You liked when we did that before. I’ve got some green, and then I can spin it and knit you that green scarf you wanted.”

At Cosmo’s sullen silence, I continued. ” Bake cookies? Make play-dough? Read books? Finger paint? Play dress-up?” The last was usually very popular. Cosmo loved to drape himself with all sorts of costumes and then zoom through the air in the cavernous front room of the huge old house we occupied. But today, all of my suggestions met with the same sulky expression.

“Fine then. You can help me clean your room,” I snapped in every parent’s last response to a bored and grumpy child. “If you’re that bored, you can just help me clean.” I turned by back on him.

Before I even finished the sentence,  Cosmo had let go of the door frame and was skittering down the hall to his playroom. At least he was out of my hair for a while. I returned to my chores with a sigh.

A short while later, I heard the Door bell ring. The Door isn’t just a door, it’s a portal between worlds. Since some of the beings that want to come through it are less than nice, my boss, the wizard who created the Door in the first place, had set an alarm in place to warn us when someone wanted in through the Door. If what was on the other side wasn’t friendly, it didn’t get to come in.

I checked the alarm system and saw that it was Felix on the other side of the Door. I unlocked the several locks (put in place after Cosmo had let some rather unpleasant characters in at Christmas because they looked like Santa’s elves) and greeted him with a huge hug. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” I said, pulling him into the house. “Cosmo is bored silly and driving me nuts. Maybe you can come up with something new for him to do!”

“In fact, that is precisely why I came,” said Felix. “Well, not precisely. I have a little problem myself, but I think that you helping me solve my problem will help me solve your problem…” he trailed off, looking at me hopefully.

Somehow I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that simple. “Come on, let’s go and get a snack and talk about this,” I sighed and gestured towards my apartment at the back of the house.

“Excellent! Do you have any of those pumpkin-seed cookies?” Felix followed me back to my rather small kitchen.

Felix barely fit the place, but I moved the table out of the way and we soon sat companionably on either side of the breakfast bar with a huge plate full of pumpkin seed cookies for him and peanut butter cookies for me and an enormous pot of tea for both of us. The amenities taken care of, I got down to business.

“So what is this problem you need me to help solve?” I asked. “And how is it going to help with Cosmo?”

Felix shifted uncomfortably. He looked at his dragon-sized mug of tea and reached for another cookie.

“Ah-ah.” I said, pulling the plate to me. “First you talk. Then you get more cookies. Maybe.” It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that this was probably not going to be to my benefit, as much as Felix claimed it would be.

He sighed, and the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees – being a blue dragon, he breathed an icy-cold blast rather than a fiery one. That he was doing it inadvertently told me how nervous he was.

“Hey, I like my tea warm, and I’m not ready for the air-conditioning to be on yet. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s blowing snow outside today,” I grumbled.

“Sorry. Um, yes. Well,” Felix hedged. “Right. I would like to ask you if you’d be willing to have a visitor for a few weeks. It’s another young dragon, a cousin of Cosmo’s actually.” He finished in a rush and looked up at me brightly.

“I’ve had dragon-child visitors before, and it’s never been a big deal,” I said warily. “What’s the catch this time? There has to be a catch, or you wouldn’t be so nervous about it. Is he some sort of juvenile delinquent?”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. He just needs a bit of supervision, that’s all,” Felix replied, too cheerfully.

“Right. You’re asking me to ride herd on the dragon version of Dennis the Menace. No thanks. Cosmo bored is bad enough. I don’t need what you’re offering.” I said bluntly.

“Murgatroyd is simply precocious,” said Felix.

“So is Cosmo. You told me he’s talking and using his fine-motor skills long before most dragons do. That’s never been a problem of any sort. In fact, it’s made it a lot easier for me to foster him.”

“Yes, well, that’s one thing. This is another. Murgatroyd came into his magical abilities early. That’s a whole other sort of problem,” Felix sighed. “Let me explain.” He shifted again, trying to get comfortable in the small space of my kitchen. “Murgatroyd’s family called me a few months ago. It seems that he began to do some magic, oh, about a year ago. Most dragons won’t mature into that ability until they are well into adulthood. And there’s a reason most dragons don’t get their magical abilities until adulthood. Or rather, that the only dragons that survive are the ones who don’t get their magical abilities until they are adults, and Murgatroyd is only a few years older than Cosmo. We’re not just talking about getting an ability early, we’re talking about the equivalent of a small child who suddenly is able to build a nuclear reactor.”

“Oh my.”

“Yes. Those abilities shouldn’t develop until the dragon in question has the judgment to go with them. Even then, sometimes that isn’t enough. You’ve seen the results of that already, with the red dragon who made himself huge to take over his world and any others he could find. Imagine what it’s like in the hands of a rather curious, impatient child who doesn’t understand safety and limits.” Felix sighed and put his head in his front claws.

“So where do I come in?”

“I want you to let Murgatroyd come visit for a while.”

“And that will solve the problem how, exactly?” I was very, very skeptical.

“Someone near his home seems to be helping him, supplying him with spell books and lessons of a sort. We don’t know who it is, or why they would do this, but we need to get him out of there for a while so we can investigate this and put a stop to it before he does himself any more damage.”

“Does himself any more damage? What happened? Is he badly hurt?” I was more concerned about him now than I was about what he might do here.

“He’s not injured, but he does have a little problem.” Felix snorted a small laugh. “He wanted to see what it would be like to be a green dragon, so he tried to turn himself into one. Now, as you know, green dragons evolved in a forest environment. They are, in addition to having the obvious attribute of being green, without wings and rather long and sinuous in shape so as to fit between the trees more easily. They breathe poison gas instead of fire – something very useful if you live in combustible places like forests. It will still take down prey but not ignite the entire area.

“Murgatroyd managed to get some of that right. He turned most of himself, with the exception of his belly, green and then he made his wings disappear. He even managed to take away his fire to the point that he can only breathe smoke. But that was a far as he went. When he realized that it wasn’t going well, he tried to reverse the spell but instead managed to make it permanent. So now he is a red-dragon shaped green dragon child with a red belly and no wings who breathes smoke rather than fire. And needless to say, he is very, very unhappy about it all.”

I was torn between laughing and feeling sorry for the little fellow. What a hard lesson to learn! “So is he stuck like that forever then, since he made it permanent?” I finally asked.

“I am currently researching ways to counteract first the permanence spell and then the other spells. The biggest challenge is that since he is inexperienced, the spells were done in a non-traditional manner. To use your terms, they are jury-rigged. And unsnarling them is proving to be a major pain in my long, scaly tail,” Felix finished dryly.

“So you want Murgatroyd here, away from further temptation and potential danger to himself while you try to find out how he’s learning the magic and reverse what he’s done so far.”

“In a word, yes.”

“How do I know he won’t do something here that he shouldn’t?” I asked. “I don’t want anything to happen to Cosmo. And is he likely to be a bad influence on Cosmo?”

“First, I have personally put a spell on Murgatroyd to limit the amount of magic he can work, so he shouldn’t be able to do anything more magical that a few parlor tricks. Second, I hope Cosmo and you will be a good influence on him.”

I didn’t like the sound of the last, and I said so.

“But he’ll be a companion for Cosmo, and really, he isn’t a bad-hearted little fellow. He just hasn’t grown the judgment to accompany his powers yet. His mischief shouldn’t be any worse that Cosmo’s – like that of any small child. And he needs to be someplace safe for a while.”

Felix really knew how to play me, and he knew it. He was sitting there with a pleading look on his big blue face. Only the puffs of icy air coming out of his nostrils betrayed his nerves.

I sat there, thinking.

“If he is really a problem, you have only to call me and I will take him somewhere else immediately,” Felix said.

I decided, nodding. “All right, I’ll do it. But this had better not turn out badly,” I warned Felix.

“Oh, it won’t!” Felix bubbled happily.

I just hoped these wouldn’t be famous last words.

-She Wolf ©2009

This is different from my usual work.

A streak of neon green from the sign of the bar across the street flashed briefly and repeatedly in the puddles of the alley. Then night was dark; the rain of earlier in the evening had ended, leaving the sky clear of any light-reflecting clouds and the chill air heavy with damp. The stink of rotten garbage from the cans lining the alley walls pervaded the area, and the puddles themselves were swirled with the rainbows of oil slicks. Cigarette butts, bottle caps and the smashed remains of the bottles themselves littered the length of the alley.

Nate pushed himself back against the brick wall and shivered in his thin jacket. Even though he was cold, he was fairly dry, having spent the rainstorm in a store perusing items that he couldn’t afford to buy just so that he could be warm and out of the elements for a while. He winced slightly as his belly pinched. It was doing that more and more lately; he thought perhaps the lining of his stomach finally had holes eaten in it. You could only abuse things for so long before they wore out.

A sound behind the nearest set of trash cans startled him and Nate jumped, turning quickly to see who or what might be there, but there was nothing. He relaxed again; it must be a rat or one of the scrawny cats that hunted them through the night. He twitched and rolled his head around, loosening the neck muscles. He hoped Charlie would hurry; he was getting really edgy.

He didn’t know how he ended up in this stinking, rancid, cold hell. Nate didn’t know if the Hell they preached about in the homeless shelters was real, but this Hell he lived in certainly was. He remembered being a kid, warm and safe, eating soup and sandwiches at the kitchen table. He remembered curling up in a warm bed at night, feeling loved and safe. He remembered teachers and gold stars on his homework and riding his bike across crunchy autumn leaves and Christmas trees and baseball games – but somewhere it had all gone wrong and now he was riding a nameless horse towards an inevitable anonymous and ignominious death, chasing something that didn’t even really exist. Soon – and he knew it would probably be sooner rather than later – he’d just be just another dead addict on a slab, waiting to be buried in a potter’s field grave. He didn’t think anyone would even bother to identify his body; no one who had ever cared knew where he was anymore.

He had tried to quit, especially at first, but that hadn’t gone well. The pull of the drugs was more than he wanted to fight. He had tried again, later, and again, when love and friends and family still mattered, and people he had once cared for had begged him to quit. He found that he loved the drugs more, and now he didn’t even think about quitting, for that matter, didn’t even think about anything except the next fix, the next high.

Nate drew a deep shuddering breath and watched the misty cloud it formed as he exhaled.

A stray dog came wandering down the alley; Nate knew the dog and it came wagging over to him for a scratch and maybe a treat. Nate gave it the scratch, but he didn’t have anything for a treat. All of his money went to his needs, and these days, food wasn’t usually one of them.

The night wore on and a breeze came up, sweeping the garbage stink out of the alley and replacing it with the smell of cooking meat from a restaurant upwind. Nate sniffed it,  and for a moment thought about following his nose to the food, but he needed to meet Charlie instead. He didn’t have enough money for both.

Charlie was late tonight and Nate was moving past edgy into frantic. He heard a scraping behind him and whipped around He spotted a figure the right size for Charlie coming down the alley. Nate backed up into a doorway and waited.

“Sorry I’m late, man. Had a problem and needed to ditch it before I came,” Charlie’s rough voice hissed at him. He put out a hand, and Nate slapped the tattered bills into it. Charlie’s other hand pushed a small package into Nate’s other hand and then Charlie was sauntering out of the alley onto the sidewalk and he was gone.

Trouble? Nate hoped that there wasn’t a cop tailing Charlie tonight. He didn’t want to get grabbed and taken to the station before he had his fix. Withdrawal in a cell wasn’t something he enjoyed.

Nate slipped out of the doorway and turned to go deeper into the alley but before he had taken more than two steps, he felt someone behind him. He didn’t even stop to think. He whirled, pulling out the  knife he kept ready to defend himself as he did, and thrust. He wasn’t losing this fix.

As he felt the knife meet resistance and then plunge into soft belly flesh, he looked into the face of the person who had come up behind him. The face was twisted in shock and pain – and it wasn’t a face Nate had expected. It was an old man, a bum who was often found in the company of the stray dog who had wandered through earlier. The old man was no addict out to steal Nate’s fix. He was homeless and mentally ill and harmless, and was probably looking for the dog. As Nate gasped with horror and pulled back the knife too late, he felt the gush of warm blood on his hand in quantities that said the old man was dead, even if he was still standing. Then old man slumped against Nate and fell to the alley surface, his hand landing in the puddle that still flashed green with the neon sign.

Nate’s heart was pounding and his mouth was dry and his stomach felt like it was going to jump right up his esophagus and out of his mouth. Heaving, he staggered away from the old man and leaned against the wall, retching and trying to bring up the bile that was all his stomach held.

He heard pounding footsteps and a cry. That was right, Nate thought, the old man usually traveled with a younger fellow, a veteran who had never left the war in his mind and tried to drink the memories away…Nate found himself grabbed and whipped around  and slammed against the rough brick of the wall with the dirty, bearded face of the man in his. “You bastard,”  hissed the man, his breath a foul stew of unbrushed teeth and cheap 80 proof, “you lousy, junkie bastard!” And then the man’s hand darted in and out in a gesture much like the one Nate had used a few minutes ago. The man swung away and left at a run, leaving Nate propped against the wall and the old man lifeless nearby.

Nate could feel pain, but against the pain of his addiction, it wasn’t really there. He felt the warmth of the blood soaking his front and running down his legs, despite the hand he held pressed against his belly. The blood flowed over his fingers, mixing with the old man’s blood already drying there. Nate slid down the wall. His heart was thundering, racing in an effort to get blood to his brain – the blood that was dripping to the asphalt in a rhythm with his pumping heart. He made a strangled noise deep in his throat, but mostly what came out was a rush of air.

The pain was worse now, and as he folded over on his side, curled in a fetal position not unlike the way he had curled in his safe, warm bed as a child, it occurred to him that it strange that he should die this way. He had thought he would just nod off and never wake up, or seize his life away in convulsions, dying from an overdose. Taking another life and then forfeiting his own in the same way was something that had never occurred to him.

And then, as blackness finally closed around him, he thought that perhaps now he might finally be healed, that for him there was nothing else besides death that would be able to make him whole again. What he hadn’t taken from himself with the drugs, he had taken from himself with one impulsive stab of a knife into an innocent man.

A choked laugh was his last sound, and then Nate was still, his hand lying in the same oil-slicked puddle as his victim’s, the green neon sign still flashing away over both of them.

-She Wolf ©2009

As I sat there gawping, a grappling hook winged down from the ship above me and hooked under one of my dory’s seats. Another one came down and hooked under a seat at the other end of the boat. Then, with my boat held fast, the ship above me sent down a rope ladder. I just stared at it. “I can jump overboard and swim for shore,” I thought, but I knew that in these seas, I’d probably drown even before I froze to death in the icy waters. Either way, death was inevitable.

When I didn’t climb the ladder immediately, the hooks on either end of my little vessel were jerked up and down, making it even more unstable than the rough waters  had made it. Clearly, the message was that either I could safely climb aboard or I could take my chances with being dumped into the sea when my dory was hauled aboard. I sucked in a deep breath, made sure my knife was in my pocket and my spare was in my boot, and climbed the slippery, half-rotten rope ladder. My boat was hauled up underneath me.

As I climbed over the railing, I took a good look around me. There was a crew aboard the rotting vessel, sure enough. And they all looked like drowned men – fish belly pale and cold, with straggling hair and tangled beards. Their clothing was made up of rags and tatters. They didn’t smell of rot as the ship did, and I was grateful for small blessings. One man, a big fellow with only two teeth showing in his ugly grin, grabbed me by my arm and dragged me away from the railing and towards the center of the ship without saying a word. My boots slipped and skidded on the slimy deck as I fought against his grasp, but I could not free myself. I found myself being dragged below decks and then into a cabin.

The crewman pushed me into a chair beside a table and then left. I could hear the door being bolted behind him. I could see that the cabin was stuffed with  myriad of items of all sorts – it was a regular treasure house, if you don’t mind your treasures being water-rotted and covered with barnacles.

Before I could even get up the nerve to leave my seat and look around, the door slammed opened again. The man who entered could be no one less than the captain, to judge from his dress.

“So this is what the crew dragged in, is it? A lobsterman. Out in a growing storm to check traps that have been empty for days. Surely this is a desperate man, and perhaps he even knows that he’s a dead one.” The man broke into a creaking laugh. “Don’t you know better than to put out to sea when there’s a storm brewing and the ghost ship has been seen? Or are you just suicidal?”

I worked to get enough spit in my mouth to answer him. Finally I croaked, “Desperate. You said it the first time. I’m a desperate man.”

“Well, you’re aboard the ghost ship now, Laddie-buck, and make no mistake, it must mean that you’re a dead man and cursed to sail with the rest of us cursed fools, mustn’t it?” He leered at me and walked around to the other side of the table, where he dropped into a chair. I could hear the wind rising outside and knew, with a sinking heart, that there was no way I could make it to shore safely now, even if I weren’t captive aboard this nightmare ship. As if to emphasize this, the ship pitched and rolled with the waves and wind. “What were you thinking? Even if the storm didn’t scare you ashore, wasn’t the thought of the ghost ship enough to keep you safe home?” He glared at me with dead eyes.

“I didn’t believe. I thought it was all superstitious nonsense and rot.” I was babbling. Part of me was saying that telling the captain of the ghost ship I though he was rot wasn’t such a good idea, but it seemed my tongue and my brain weren’t connected anymore.

“Well, now you know better, don’t you!?” He wheezed out another laugh. “I’ll leave you to cool your heels here for a bit. I’m needed on deck.” He made sure to bolt the door behind him again.

As the ship rolled in the heavy waves, I explored the cabin, hoping for a way out. Just as I had noted when I first saw the room, it was full of treasures of all sorts. There was furniture from the finest European cabinet makers, carved and once gilded. There were figurines from the Orient, and rotting bits of silk. I found a spice chest with no spice left in it, but it was heavily carved and a work of art in itself. Finally, lying abandoned on a desk bolted to the wall, I found the ship’s log.

I picked the book up and took it back to my chair to read it. Much of it was unreadable, the ink having run and the pages stuck together from its immersion. But the last few pages were still legible, the ink having been switched to a permanent sort.

“There’s a storm brewing,” read the first readable entry. “Don’t know if we will be able to weather it. We need to find a safe harbor.”

The next one read, “A fishing boat has signaled us. The captain indicated that he knows of a safe harbor…we will follow his sail.”

Then came another entry. The handwriting was staggering, as if the writer were having trouble holding on to the pen. “We have been tricked, and led astray. The fishing boat was a cover for wreckers, who led us onto a sandbar. We are exposed to the full fury of the storm – the ship will not last much longer. I fear that all is lost, and ask the Good Lord to take me, His humble servant, and my loyal crew, good men all, safely into his bosom. And I pray that the villains who have done this to us will rue this day.”

I pause a moment in my reading. But the log continued, so surely he must have survived?

But the next entry was in a different handwriting. “Have taken over the ship. For a wonder, she lasted the storm although the captain and crew did not. She is a prize indeed, and stuffed with goods for us to sell. I believe I’ll keep her. She’ll need a few repairs, but it will be nice to have such a fine ship as a base of operations.”

Then, later: “Taking on water. I don’t know where the leak is and if we can get it patched in time. To add to the trouble, another storm is coming. I don’t think we can make it to shore in time to save the ship and ourselves. Just desserts, I suppose. Fate seems to have dealt us an irony – we have killed by the sea will ourselves be killed by it.”

That was the last entry in the log. From the look of the ship, she had indeed gone down, with all hands – those pirates from the wrecker’s crew – aboard.

I put the book back and paused, thinking. The captain had called them cursed. They were a wrecker’s crew, sailing a stolen ship and had gone to the bottom in yet another storm. I was suddenly certain that I would not be left to perish aboard this ship to join these evil men who were certainly continuing their dreadful ways in their afterlife.

I raced around the cabin again and settled on a porthole, finally deciding to take my chances in the stormy sea. Better to perish cleanly that way than to lead a corrupted life after death.

I snatched my knife from my pocket and began prying at the swollen wood. It wasn’t budging, so I grabbed a chair and began to batter at the glass with it. It shattered on the first blow, but even then it was too small to allow me through. The wind and rain blew in with a vengeance, though.

As I continued to swing at the wooden frame, hoping to bash a larger hole, the door to the cabin flew open again. The captain stood there, bellowing, “What do you think you’re doing, you fool!”

I was across the room in one leap, pinning the captain against the wall. “You’re nothing but a bunch of wreckers and pirates  ! I’ll not spend eternity joining your crew! I’ll take my chances in the storm before I’ll join you in this hell, pirating and wrecking and plundering and killing!” I pushed my arm against the captain’s neck. His dead white eyes, cloudy and dim stared back at me. Then, with a strength that was no longer human, the strength of a man beyond injury, the captain of the ghost ship threw me across the room. I landed in the chair I had been sitting in earlier. It collapsed beneath me and I lay sprawled amidst the splintered wood. My nose was pouring blood where his arm had hit it and I could feel that several of my ribs were injured.

“Hell. You call this ship hell. Well, you’re not wrong there!” he spat. “It’s a hell sure enough, and I’d be glad to be shut of it myself. But the only plundering we do these days is on the bottom of the sea among vessels long since sent to the depths.” He took a small bag out of his jacket and flung it across the room at me. It landed square in my groin with a jingle and despite the pain in my ribs I curled up convulsively. “Take a look. There’s not a coin in there newer than a century old. Keep it. Riches mean nothing to a dead man.”

He stalked forward and grabbed me by my collar. His face inches from mine, he roared, “Hell. Hell is a ship we can’t be quit of, a rest we are cursed to never find. Hell is sinking to the bottom of the sea and then being hauled up again and told that we can’t find rest until was save enough lives to make up for the ones we took when we were wreckers. Hell is going from fishing village to fishing village and trying to scare the slack-witted fishermen into staying ashore when there’s danger at sea. Hell is taking their bloody lobsters and clams and fish to make them think they’re too jinxed be able to fish anymore so they’ll stay ashore. Hell is never knowing if we’ll EVER be able to do enough to make up for what we did wrong in life! You want Hell, Laddie-buck, I’ll give you hell!” He threw me back down again and turned to leave the cabin.

I don’t know where the strength came from, but I leapt to my feet and raced to the door, pushing past the dead man and rushing up towards the deck. As I came out into the full force of the wind, I heard a shout. Then something hit me on the back of the head, and there was blackness.

When I came too, I could still hear and feel the wind and rain. The surface under me was rocking wildly, and there was a grating noise coming from underneath me. Something was pinching my ear. Hard. I batted at it and it pinched my finger hard enough to send me sitting bolt upright into the storm, yelling.

I found myself sitting up in my little dory, which was scraping against the sand of the harbor beach. My head hurt, my nose hurt, my ribs hurt and my groin hurt. My ear and finger didn’t feel too great, either. Still, I was alive and home and my dory – my livelihood – was intact.

My slowly awakening brain realized that I needed to get to shelter before I was swept back out to sea. I jumped out of the dory into knee-deep water and hauled her ashore and then as far up the beach as I could. Finally I looped her rope around a ring in the breakwater and turned to go ashore.

A movement in the boat caught my eye. Oh yes – the lobster. Well, he’d flavor my soup a bit. But when I reached into the boat I was in for a surprise. The small lobster was still there, but so were two huge, fat fellows. They were chasing each other around the bottom of the boat, snapping their claws at each other. Where they had come from, I had no idea.

I grabbed the small lobster and flung him back into the surf. “Grow up and you might make a good meal some day!” I called after him. Then I gathered up the two big lobsters and bound their claws with the twine I kept in my pocket for that purpose. They fought like champions; no wonder my ear and finger had been pinched so thoroughly.

Sticking one into each pocket of my coat, I fought the wind and headed for the butcher’s shop with a wiggling lobster tail sticking out of each pocket.

Inside the butcher’s shop, I found quite a few of my fellow villagers, including Mary Barnham from the dry-goods store. Everyone marveled that I was back alive; they had given me up for dead several hours ago. I told my tale as the butcher took my lobsters and handed me back a meaty beef bone and a handful of coins.

“It’s the truth, so help me, it is. The ghost ship is just trying to warn people to stay off the water for a while. It doesn’t cause the problems. It’s not a jinx. I’ve been there and heard their story and  I’ve the broken nose and cracked ribs to prove it. And the lobsters. Where else can the lobsters have come from?” My neighbors still looked askance at me. I thought again. “The grappling hooks left marks in my boat. I’ll show them to you.”

Mary put her hand on my arm gently. “Will, we’ll look after the storm. All that matters now is that you’re back safe.”

“Aye,” said one of the old men around the stove. “‘Tis quite a tale you tell, of being aboard the ghost ship and coming back to tell of it!” The old men snickered a bit.

I sagged, all my energy gone. I picked up my bone, now wrapped in brown paper for the trip home and into my stew pot, and swept my change into my hand. I reached into my trousers pocket to take out my coin purse to put them away, when my hand encountered something strange.

Slowly, I drew it out and put it on the counter in front of me. It was a bag, and it jingled when I put it down. I carefully opened the drawstring and spilled the contents out on the worn wood of the counter.

A small river of gold and glitters poured out. There were strange coins like none I had ever seen before, and bright red, green and blue stones. One of the old men from the stove leaned over and picked up a coin.

“As I live and breath,” he whispered, “it’s a piece of eight. And these others, some are old French coins…” he flipped it over. “This is well over a century old. Where did you get this, Will?”

“This must be the bag the captain threw at me. I thought I left it on the floor of the cabin. They must have put it in my pocket…”

Mary was touching the stones gently with a forefinger, “It’s a ruby, Will, and an emerald and a sapphire. You have a small fortune  in gems here.” She looked up at me. ” Your tale must be true. Will, I, I don’t know what to say.”

The old men clustering around me looked at me with a new respect.

Then one of them said, “So the ghost ship isn’t causing our troubles, or at least not permanently. But what about the bad things that have been happening on land?”

I shook my head, doubting Will Thomas back again. “Sometimes bad luck is just that. Bad luck.” I swept everything back into the little bag and started to leave.

Then an old codger half-hidden in the corner opened his eyes and said, “Don’t be too sure of that, me laddie. I heard the ghost-coach out on the Harbor Road the other night. They say it only appears to make trouble!” A malicious smile crossed his creased face.

Later on, after Mary Barnham patched me up a bit and bound my sore ribs, I fought the wind and rain and made my way home. And on the way, I could have sworn that over the howl of the wind, I could hear hoofbeats and jingling harness – and the rumble of coach wheels passing me on the Harbor Road.

-She Wolf ©2009

Folks in the village were talking about it all the time lately. One old codger claimed to have seen the ghost ship in the harbor, just a few nights ago, with its tattered, blackened sails fluttering in the winter wind and St. Elmo’s fire hanging from what was left of her rigging. Folks said that whenever the ghost ship sailed into the harbor, it meant something bad was going to happen, and happen soon. Ever since then, they tried to turn every little tragedy and ordinary mishap into part of the ghost ship’s curse. “Just you wait,” they’d say. “This is just the beginning. It’s going to get much, much worse.”

When the Mary Barnham who ran the dry-goods store told me that one winter morning after relating the latest bit of bad news – someone’s herd of goats had busted out of the pen and got into the grain store and eaten themselves sick – I finally had enough of it. “Balderdash,” I stated. “Poppycock. This is nothing but a load of superstitious nonsense, and we both know it, Mary Barnham. All this going on about ghost ships and curses. It’s just plain foolery. That, and some old man drinking too much of his own brew and seeing things.” I’d have used stronger words than balderdash and poppycock, but my ma had had very set ideas about what was proper language and what wasn’t, and her lessons along that line had stuck. I couldn’t say anything stronger than shucks and darn without the seat of my pants starting to burn with the memory of her lessons.

I set my face in a stubborn scowl and dared her to contradict me.

Instead, she sniffed. “Fine. You just go ahead and think whatever you want, Will Thomas. But you just wait and see. Those of us who know it’s true, well, we’ll be prepared. And you won’t.” She nodded at the measure of dried beans in my hand. “And that’s the last thing you’re going to be able to buy on account here until you’ve paid up what you already owe. And the butcher, he told me the same thing about you this morning. So your luck’s already turning bad. Best watch out.” She turned, marked the price of the beans in the ledger, and bustled off, ignoring me.

I sighed and took my beans home to soak overnight. The news about my accounts wasn’t good, but I still had a bit of salt pork left to cook the beans with tomorrow. That, and an onion from my root cellar and some molasses would make a meal. I could eat on the beans for several days, and by then my luck might have turned around and I’d have lobsters in my traps again and luck in the oyster beds.

The next day there was new talk – and still they managed to link it to the ghost ship. The old folks with weather-wise joints said a big blow was coming. A nor’easter – a storm that would put the hurricanes of summer to shame, they said, and it was all because of the ghost ship. I held my tongue. Nor’easters came and went each winter, regardless of ghost ships. I just went about my business, checking my empty lobster traps and re-baiting them, because something was sure eating what I put in there to lure in the lobsters. And whatever it was wasn’t getting caught in the traps. I was really hoping for a few lobsters to sell at the market, so I could pay off my accounts with the butcher and the dry-goods store and get some food that wasn’t fish or winter root vegetables to round out my diet a little bit.

But still there was nothing in my traps. I couldn’t find any clams or oysters to gather, either.

I checked with the dry-goods store and the butcher, but neither one was relenting. “It’s not just you, Will,” they both said. “We’ve done the same thing to anyone with outstanding balances on their accounts. No one’s catching much of anything these days, and we need some cash ourselves to pay our bills.” I couldn’t fault them for that, but my belly sure wasn’t happy to hear it.

The next morning the blow hadn’t hit yet, and I decided to go out early to check my traps one last time before the storm began. Maybe there’d be a lobster there this time, and I could get enough money for a beef bone to stick in a stew – something to cook on the back of my stove throughout the storm. The sky was just starting to turn light as I got to the harbor and my boat, and the light was red. That was a bad weather sign, sure enough. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” I repeated to myself as I jumped into my dory and untied it from the wharf. Every child learned that little ditty as soon as they could talk, and as near as I could figure, it was true.

I pulled on my heavy wool mittens, felted by salt water and hard work into a dense fabric of wool that would keep my hands warm even in the winter’s icy waters. The oars were old friends in my hands as I pulled out into the waters of the harbor.

There were a few other boats leaving the wharf when I did, but most of them remained silent and still. Their owners were too scared of the coming blow – that coupled with the sighting of the ghost ship – to leave the safety of their homes today. They’d go along the shore and look for clams and oysters, and do other things closer to home. Only a few of us were desperate enough to take to the water today.

The wind was already whipping up a bit, and the sky was hung with a heavy layer of dark clouds. The reddish light was eerie, sure enough. But eerie-looking didn’t fill my coin purse or larder, and I rowed purposefully for the buoy marking the first of my traps.

Once more, each of them was empty, even of the bait I had put in them. I bit my tongue on some words that my ma would have tanned me for, sure enough. There was one trap left. I hadn’t intended to check it, because it was farther out in the harbor than the others, all the way around a little headland, and the wind was picking up, but now I didn’t have a choice. I turned the boat and rowed around the headland for the last trap.

This one did have something in it. It was an undersized, runty little lobster that wouldn’t even make a child’s meal. I almost threw it back to grow up some more, but stopped. I had to eat something other than potatoes during the storm, and at least I could make a lobster bisque with that and the milk from my goat. It would have more flavor that nothing.

Sighing, I put the lobster away and re-baited the trap, then turned my boat towards shore. The light was dim as though the sun couldn’t find its way through the heavy layer of clouds, and the wind was stronger and cold as an icicle. I rowed as hard as I could, knowing I probably had little time left before the full fury of the  storm hit. I had just rounded the headland when I rowed into something with a solid “THUNK.”

Slowly, I shipped my oars and turned to see what I could possibly have run into out here in the harbor on a day when only the desperate had boats out.

I saw a weathered, slimy green wall of boards going up and up. My eyes followed it and suddenly there was no spit left in my mouth at all. It was as dry as if I had stuffed it with cotton wool, and try as I might, I couldn’t even swallow. For what I saw was a ship, looking like it had just risen out of the depths of the sea, covered with sea weed and kelp and glowing with St. Elmo’s fire. It was the ghost ship.

To Be Continued…

-She Wolf (c)2009

This story appears on another one of my blogs under a different title- upon reflection, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the title, but the links were in place already, so I left it that way in that blog.

I shut the screen door quietly behind me; letting it bang shut like the children did would wake everyone up and that was the last thing I wanted. The morning was still early, the sun not quite up yet. Then cricket song of the night had not yet given way to the buzz of cicadas that would fill the hot daylight hours. The dewy grass was cool on my bare feet as I walked down the front yard to the dock where the fishing boat was tied.

When I stepped onto the dock, I paused a moment to enjoy the glassy-still water. The tide was high and almost ready to turn. There was no breeze to stir the surface into waves, and nothing moved in the water. I would be rowing this morning, then – I couldn’t bear to break this peaceful silence with the buzz of the outboard motor.

My family was under the impression that I was going fishing, and that I was a mighty poor fisherman since I never seemed to bring anything back. It was true that I slipped away in the early morning when the fish were biting and sought out the quiet spots that fishermen liked to find, but I wasn’t fishing. The truth lay in the waterproof bag that I set in a safe place in the boat before I cast off from the dock.

I put the oars in the oarlocks and set off with the tide, which was now starting to ebb. It would be easier to row with it and then use the motor to come back against it, later on in the morning when the motor’s noise wouldn’t be so raw and harsh. That was fine; one of my favorite spots was only about ten minutes down river.

I enjoyed the exercise of rowing – stretching my body and feeling the boat slip through the water in response. Even though the early morning was relatively cool, I quickly worked up a sweat, and by the time I reached the entrance to the creek I was ready to take a break. But the sun was starting to rise now, the sky was colored a pale rose around the edges, and I needed to hurry if I were to get where I was going in time.

I rowed into the creek. It was narrow after the width of the river, but still a good fifteen feet across. I knew the water was still deep, too, especially with the high tide. The tidal rivers here near the ocean were slow and silty but wide and deep and filled with life. Some of that life was what drew me out in the early part of the day.

I rowed up the creek, rounding several bends before I found the spot I was looking for. There was a buckeye bush just in the crook of the next bend, and a bed of water lilies on the far side of it. There were no other people here today, which meant I was in luck. I tied the boat to the bush and waited there, bobbing in the middle of the long skinny lily pads locally known as snake tongues.

The moment I was waiting for wasn’t long in coming. As the sun finally pushed over the horizon, the water around me began to stir. As I watched, something began to creep out of the water onto the lily pads. They were small, and looked a lot like dragonflies, red and green and blue, at first glance. But these were no dragonfly nymphs coming out of the water to dry themselves in the new day.

I watched with delight as the first of the little creatures finished drying off from its swim from its creek side burrow and took flight, buzzing around my head. Another one took off from its lily pad and then landed on the handle of my oar. I dropped my head to look at the little creature up close. It was bright blue, only about three inches long. And it was a perfect little dragon. A mosquito drifted too close and with a quick snap, the tiny dragon trapped it in its jaws and ate it.

Another little dragon, its wings now dry, circled my head once and then landed in my hair. I sat there in the midst of a swirl of dragons no bigger than my thumb as they ate the mosquitoes and gnats that were trying to make breakfast out of me.

Once sated, they spent a few minutes investigating me and the journal that I had taken from my little waterproof bag. I made quick sketches of the tiny beasts as they lit here and there on and around me. One tried to attack my pencil and another tried to eat the marks I was making on the paper. Finally, as the day grew bright, they buzzed off into the heavily wooded swamp by the creek. Once out of immediate view, they looked like the insects they mimicked, the dragonflies. Only these were far more dragon than fly.

My dose of magic for the day over with, I stowed my journal away once more. I would need a new one soon – this one was getting full the of wonder that I had found. I rowed back out of the creek and then cranked the motor on the boat to go home. I would get there just as everyone else was beginning to wake up and I would take their ribbing about what a rotten fisherman I was with a smile. What I was catching was far, far better than fish.

- She Wolf (c)2009

I put down my knitting and looked up just in time to see Cosmo glide into the room with a set of paper antlers on his head and a blob of red clay attached to his scaly red snout.

“Look at me! I’m Rudolf!” he squealed as he crash-landed on the floor beside me.

We had been talking about Christmas quite a bit. Last year we had been gone for the pre-Christmas season, captives of a power-hungry red dragon group on Cosmo’s home world. We had come home just in time for a huge Christmas party on Christmas Eve, but Cosmo had missed all the build-up to the big day. But then, his English had been almost non-existent then, too, so stories about Santa Claus and reindeer and so forth would have gone right by him. This year though, he had all of the joyous enthusiasm and excitement about the day of any small human child. He was just bigger, scalier, and had wings and fire on board. An excited Cosmo was a sight to behold.

“Do you think I could help Santa with his sleigh, huh?” Cosmo bounced around me in circles, knocking my yarn under the sofa with his tail.

“Now Cosmo, you know that Santa only comes after you’re asleep. Besides, I think having a dragon flying with them might scare the reindeer, don’t you?”

“But I promise I wouldn’t eat them! Really, I wouldn’t!”

“The reindeer have been doing their jobs for a long time. I don’t think they’ll need any help.” I thought fast. I needed something to distract him or he’d keep on about flying  with the reindeer all morning. “Popcorn balls! Let’s make some red and green popcorn balls, Cosmo! Then we can wrap them up and give them to people when they come to visit!” Cosmo’s clawed hands were deft enough to make popcorn balls and he loved to help me cook. He didn’t even answer – he just ran to the kitchen of my little apartment and started rummaging in the cupboards for ingredients.

The popcorn balls – and gluing together and putting up miles of paper chains in the huge front room of the main hall of the mansion, and mixing cookie dough, and looking at the trees in the woods at the back of the lawn to see if one would be a good Christmas tree, and…well, you get the picture – took up the rest of the day. By evening, I was exhausted and Cosmo was still going on and on and on. I finally sent him to his playroom for a while after three Christmas stories and a promise that we’d watch Christmas movies later and then collapsed on my sofa with Isadore the cat.

I heard a knock on my kitchen door and an few minutes later, my friend Jon came in with snow still clinging to his hat and coat.

“Snow. Well, that’ll just fan the flames some more. Literally. Cosmo was so excited today that he burned up a whole strip of paper chains trying to get the paste to dry faster so he could hang them. He tried to pop the popcorn with his flames, and then he tried to cook the cookie dough by himself, too. By the way,  I need a new fire extinguisher. That dragon is so excited about Christmas…”

Jon was doubled over, laughing. “Well, you know his parents want him raised as much like a human child as a dragon so he’ll be a good liaison when he grows up, so…”

“He’s just like an over-excited four year-old. It’s amazing. And exhausting. You didn’t happen to bring anything like beer with you, did you? Or something to put in eggnog?”

“Better than that. I brought a baby sitter. You and I are going out.”  Florence, my former neighbor, poked her head around the corner and smiled at me.

“You are more welcome than Santa right now, Florence.” I turned to Jon. “I’ll get my coat.” Cosmo heard the voices and bounced back out, delighted with the company. He offered everyone slightly singed red and green popcorn balls.

We left Florence and Cosmo ensconced on the sofa with a pile of Christmas books – all of the ones I had plus a bunch that Florence had brought with her.

The evening out with Jon was just what I needed. Adult company and conversation restored me and I came home ready to face whatever the morrow would bring – fire, flood or overexcited dragon. Florence, on the other hand, looked ready for bed. Her silver hair was frazzled, she was clutching convulsively at her crochet project, and she had a small burn on the skirt of her dress.

She waved off  our expressions of concern and apologies. “I know Cosmo, and I knew full well what I was getting into. Don’t worry. I always wear old clothes when I watch Cosmo. He just wanted to melt his name in the snow with his flames. He’s gotten very good with the C and the O’s,” she added proudly. Well, that explained the puddle of icy slush outside the back door, anyway. It should be a real skating rink by morning. On the other hand, ice sliding was always fun for Cosmo and would wear him our nicely.

As she accompanied Jon out, Florence paused and dug around in her big bag. “Hold on – here’s a book that Cosmo really enjoyed. I must have read it to him five times tonight. Why don’t you hang on to it? It’s all about Santa’s elves.” I thanked her, put the book on the kitchen table and went to bed.

The next morning, Cosmo was a bit distracted. I figured he was thinking about which tree we would cut when Jon and Rob came over later. Some of our dragon friends were due to arrive later in the day as well, which might have been on his mind. We read the elf book another three or four times and I took him outside to slide on the ice by the back door, but I could see that his heart wasn’t really in it.

“What’s up, buddy?” I asked. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Can I go play now?” Cosmo asked. “I have a, a Christmas project I need to work on.”

That explained it. He had a Christmas surprise in the works. “Sure, Cosmo. Let me know if you need help. And no using your flames if there’s not a grownup around to put out the fire!” I reminded him as he kited off at top speed for his mostly flame-resistant playroom.

Throughout the morning I heard various noises coming from Cosmo’s playroom accompanied by the sorts of swear words that Cosmo was allowed to use – things like darn and shucks. I almost went to see what was going on, but restrained myself. If Cosmo wanted my help, he’d ask for it. At lunch he turned up looking frustrated and poked at his food. He trudged off after lunch, still looking irritated. I shook my head and finished the cleanup. If he was going to be occupied I could finish the socks I was knitting Jon for Christmas. One ear open for Cosmo, I sat contentedly with my wool in my hands.

Half an hour later, I could hear him talking happily and chuckling. Good, I thought. He’s had some sort of success.

Cosmo was happily occupied until the guys came to cut the tree in the late afternoon. He was careful to close the door to his playroom when he came out to help, though. Jon, Rob and I hid our smiles.

We found the huge tree we wanted for the big front hall quickly and then got another, smaller one for my apartment. Dragging the trees home through the snowy twilight was a moment from a Christmas card – if you like the fantasy kind of card with lovely red dragons in them; I know I do. The trees were quickly set up – the big one only fell over twice while it was being secured in its stand, once with the help of Cosmo who was playing at being the angel on top of the tree. Then we retired to my apartment to have dinner and wait for our dragon guests to arrive for our tree-trimming party. When the Door announced the arrival of our visitors, Cosmo tore off to greet them.

“Wait up, you! You know you aren’t allowed to open the Door by yourself!” I called after him.

He was pouting when I caught up to him by the door. “But I know how to use the security stuff,” he grumbled. “See, when it’s green, it’s a safe world. And if you look through here,” he bounced up using his wings for lift and looked through the peep-hole, ” you can sort of see who’s there.” The peep-hole was new, and the image was sent magically from the other side of the Door. But it wasn’t very clear and certainly wasn’t infallible and I told Cosmo so.

“So don’t think you’re allowed to open the door even if you think it’s safe. Period.” I glared at the small red dragon as I opened the door for our friends. Cosmo’s grumpiness evaporated as our guests came in and the tree trimming started.

The next morning, my alarm didn’t go off. Since I really didn’t have any plans, I wasn’t too upset about this, but I did remember setting it the night before. But then the stove didn’t want to turn on when I went to fix breakfast and the jelly had spilled all over the inside of the fridge. Of course it had been on the top shelf and had dripped all the way down each shelf before puddling in a sticky mess at the bottom. I was trying to clean it up with a dishrag when Cosmo came slamming into the kitchen, ramming the refrigerator door into my back as he came in.

“Hey! Calm down. Breakfast is late. My alarm didn’t go off, and the stove isn’t working for some reason. If you’re that hungry, get some cold cereal,” I told him, rubbing my back. He continued to grumble, and seemed to be looking for something. “The cereal’s in the cupboard. You know where we keep it. Come on, Cosmo. Stop acting like this.”

He got some cereal while I finished getting the mess out of the fridge. The jelly had congealed literally overnight and I was soon contemplating atomic cleansers. By the time I was done, Cosmo was gone, leaving a mess of cereal on the table. At least he’d put the rest of his stuff in the sink. I stared at the stove, wondering what to do. When you live with a dragon and a magic inter-dimensional Door you can’t exactly call your average repair service. I poked at the knobs one last time and to my surprise, the thing came on. Now that was strange, I thought, but the intricacies of appliances are not my strong suit. I was just glad it was working again.

Cosmo was busy and very distracted all morning. He refused my offers to read to him, or make cookies, or do any of the other Christmassy things I could think of. His cardboard antlers remained abandoned in the middle of my sofa, and I could hear him roaming all over the house all morning.

After I finished my morning chores, I sat down to knit on those socks again. To my dismay, the yarn was tangled mess, overflowing my basket and winding around the furniture legs. I glared at my cat, Isadore, who was curled on top of the bookcase. “Isadore, what got into you?” I asked. He gave me an affronted look and jumped down, stalking out of the room with his tail in the air.

I shook my head and untangled the yarn. Then I rummaged around trying to find the knitting needle that was missing from the socks. It turned out to be wedged in the seat of my chair – I found it when it stuck into my hand. Grumbling and sucking on my bleeding hand, I went to find a band-aid.

When I came back into the room, Cosmo was peering under the sofa. “What are you looking for, Cosmo?” I asked.

“I just lost something, that’s all,” he muttered.

“It seems to be going around,” I told him. It had taken me forever to find the box of band-aids that I clearly remembered putting back on the shelf in the bathroom day before yesterday. I reached over to the sofa and grabbed his cardboard antlers. “Here are your antlers, anyway. Why don’t you go and play Rudolf again?” I suggested, putting the antlers on his scaly red head.

He nodded reluctantly and left the room slowly, looking around him the entire time.

He was up to something, but I had no idea what.

All day long I lost things, things didn’t work, and I found messes where there shouldn’t be any. Cosmo and the cat were both in my bad books by the time my employer, Thomas, showed up in the evening. He was here for the Christmas holidays, and I was delighted to see him. Not only was he my employer and a friend, he was a powerful magic wielder. And Cosmo adored him. He could help keep the little stinker out of trouble for a few days. Maybe he could even figure out what Cosmo was up to.

Thomas had a lot of luggage with him, and I could see brightly wrapped packages peeking from a bag. He smiled and placed them under the tree. Thomas’ gifts from all sorts of worlds were always a huge hit with everyone. “Now, where’s Cosmo?” he asked. “He asked me for some help with his shopping…” Cosmo edged around the corner of the door and then soared over to Thomas, knocking him over and landing on top of him. I happily left the two of them and returned to the baking that Thomas’ arrival had interrupted. As an afterthought, I grabbed Isadore the cat and dumped him in the room with them, shutting the door firmly between myself and the lot of them.

That night, after Cosmo was in bed, I complained about the day to Thomas. “It was one long fiasco, all day long. I think I used half a box of band-aids and most of a bottle of cleaning stuff! It was just strange.” The CD player, which was sending out Christmas carols, emphasized this by suddenly stopping and then skipping four songs down the list before stopping again and taking up where it had left off before. I put my hands over my face. Thomas looked a little bit puzzled and very thoughtful.

The next morning, my alarm went off an hour early, and when Thomas came down for breakfast, he was shivering and looked quite put out. “Is the hot water heater on the fritz? Or did you use it all up in a marathon shower this morning?” he complained.

“No to both. Why?” I asked although the answer was apparent. “Besides, you know the guest part of the house has its own water heater. It was working yesterday, I know that. It came on too hot when I tried to wash up in one of the guest bathrooms and scalded my hands.” I went back to scrambling eggs.

“I know. I’ll look at it later.” He sighed and sat down with some coffee. ” Where’s the little guy this morning?”

“Not up yet, I guess. He’ll be down as soon as he smells the eggs, though.” But he wasn’t. When Thomas and I went to see why he wasn’t up yet, we found him huddled in his bed looking frightened. 

“Ghosts! There were ghosts in my room all night!” he said, looking around him nervously.

“Cosmo, that was Halloween. This is Christmas,” I said.

Thomas just looked thoughtful again.

We took Cosmo down to breakfast and while he was eating, Thomas said, “Cosmo, I think you and I need to have a little talk.” Cosmo looked very scared at this, and began eating very, very slowly. When he finally finished, he fidgeted nervously in his chair. Thomas opened his mouth to start but before he could say anything there was a tremendous crash from the front hall. We all ran to see what could possibly have happened.

When we reached the front hall, we could see that half of the glass ornaments from the big tree were shattered on the floor at its base. The lights all over the tree were flashing on and off wildly, and the stereo began blaring Christmas carols at top volume.

Thomas looked at the spectacle, nodded, and said, “I think I know what the problem is. You have gremlins.”

“Gremlins?” I repeated.

“Yes, the traditional sort that get into machinery to make it malfunction and make messes everywhere. They are native to several of the dimensions the Door accesses. They aren’t really dangerous, but they are possibly one of the most annoying species to populate the known worlds.” Thomas grimaced. “And getting rid of them is a pain, too.” His gaze traveled to Cosmo, who burst into howls.

“I thought they were elves. They said they were. They said they were Santa’s elves and they would help me make Christmas for everyone! And then they disappeared and then stuff started going wrong and my playroom’s wrecked and you’re mad, and I thought they were elves, really I did! They looked like the pictures in my book and everything!”

“Cosmo,” I began firmly but quietly, “did you open the Door?”

Hiding his face, he nodded.  “I was trying to make Christmas stuff  like Santa and the elves and I heard the Door. The security stuff said it was a safe world, and I looked and saw the elves, I mean gremlins. So I opened the Door to talk to them. They said they’d help me, really they did.”

Thomas sighed. “I thought as much. I’ll need to put a lock on the Door so that Cosmo can’t open it should he forget the rules again. In the meantime, I’ll make some gremlin traps and we’ll see if we can’t catch the little buggers before they do any more damage.”

The rest of the day was occupied with catching the gremlins and putting them in a containment area Thomas created. They did look surprisingly like the illustrations of Santa’s elves in Cosmo’s book, and I could see how a little dragon could be fooled. We didn’t say anything more to Cosmo about it; he looked as though he had learned his lesson. He was a sad little dragon.

Cosmo couldn’t remember how many gremlins he had let in, but by the end of the day we  weren’t catching any more of them and the containment room was pretty full. Thomas said he’d take them back to their home world after Christmas. In the meantime, we just needed to keep them fed and out of our hair. Cosmo was strangely silent and resisted all of our efforts to cheer him up.

Then next day was Christmas Eve, when we had our big party for everyone we knew from all sorts of strange places. The Door bonged all day with guests arriving while the local guests arrived  through my kitchen door; everyone came laden with bright packages. The party was wonderful and at midnight, while everyone was still having a grand time, the Door bonged once more. Thomas smiled and said, “That must be my special guest. Cosmo, come with me.” He led the way to the Door.

Moments later, I heard a loud, draconic squeal and Cosmo came charging back into the front hall. In his wake were Thomas and a large, bearded man with a red suit and a huge bag. “Santa, it’s Santa, he came, he came, even though I was bad and let in the gremlins, he came, he came…..” Cosmo didn’t even pause for breath.

As Santa began distributing the packages in his bag, an antlered Cosmo acting as his delivery dragon-reindeer, a noise from the tree attracted our attention. Sitting on the top branch of the big Christmas tree was one last gremlin, but even he was in the Christmas spirit – the lights on the tree lit up in a sequence that spelled out, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

-She Wolf ©2008

As a child, I loved the Wizard of Oz books, by L. Frank Baum. The clockwork man Tik-Tok, who is a character in the later books, always fascinated me. So I wondered what would happen if the idea of clockwork interested someone else, someone with a few more skills and some mad-scientist capabilties….

Bits and pieces of clockwork. They were scattered everywhere. Every time Josiah Banks could, he visited junk shops, antique shops, flea markets – anywhere he might find an old, wind-up style alarm clock or watch. He had tried the newer ones, but too often nowadays the gears inside were made of plastic. “And I need metal gears, metal ones!” he would say as he rummaged through a box of miscellaneous junk at a yard sale or auction.

Each clock or watch was taken home and carefully disassembled, and the gears, large and small, were sorted according to size in piles that were all over his workroom, which doubled as a living room. But that was all right, because no one ever came to visit him anymore, not since the time he got upset with his favorite aunt and uncle for accidently mixing up two piles of gears.

Now he was invited other places and happily went visiting, because Josiah was sociable, just very intense about his clockwork.

“Josiah,” his friend Andy would say, as he carefully placed a glass of  soda between two piles of tiny gears on the coffee table -Andy was the only one left who would come and see Josiah as his house , “Josiah, what are you going to do with all these gears?”

“Build something, of course,” Josiah replied seriously.

“But you’ve been collecting the dratted things for years! You must have enough to build something by now?”

“Maybe. I’ll know when I have enough,” Josiah said, shrugging. He wasn’t about to admit to Andy that he had actually built something already. That part of his work room, the assembling part, was in his basement where no one else ever went. He was careful to keep the blinds pulled and the door shut, so no one could see what he was doing down there. He passed a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies that his Aunt Agnes had sent him to Andy, and that was the end of the subject.

When Andy left later on that day,  Josiah looked around the room at the piles of clockwork, really noticing for the first time what it must look like to an outsider. The piles were all over the room, falling over untidily, dusty and, in some cases, rusty, covering almost every flat surface. There were thousands of the things. “Almost. I’m almost ready,” he thought. “I just need that one big set…”

That weekend, he found what he was looking for. A massive grandfather clock, whose once-elegant case had been ruined in a flood, was waiting for him at an auction with other flood-damaged goods. Josiah gasped when he saw it, and counted the money he had with him three times over to see how high he could bid on it. In the end, it went home with him, along with a few smaller alarm clocks for good measure.

He worked far into the night, carefully taking the clock apart and examining the gears and mainspring. They were in perfect condition, and he carefully placed them on his living room sofa in a place of honor.

The next day, he arranged to take a week off work. He took care of all his bills, the shopping, the laundry, and anything that could distract him, took the phone off the hook, canceled dinner with Aunt Agnes and Uncle Ben, and told Andy that he wouldn’t be available for a while. Then he locked the door, rubbed his hands together, and descended to his basement.

His pet rat, Clicker, came scurrying up to him as he turned on the light. He picked up Clicker absently  and put him on his shoulder, staring around the room as he did. Everything down here was in place and seemed to be holding its breath in anticipation. Josiah went over to where the pieces of sheet metal he had cut and shaped and welded were ready and waiting for him. He gave a great, wobbling sigh, and  reached for the first piece. He had been waiting for this moment for so long…

The week was busy. Josiah ran up and down the stairs, retrieving gears of various sizes and spent long hours with a magnifying lens strapped over his eyes. Clicker scuttled over the bench keeping him company as the days wore into nights and back into days again. Several times, Josiah woke up to find that he had fallen asleep at his workbench and had several sizes of gear imprinted on his cheek.

By the end of the week, he was working at a feverish pace, no longer stopping even to eat. The piles of gears upstairs were disappearing and the newest, biggest gears had long since been fitted into place. The shaped pieces of metal had been welded together and finally, Josiah was almost done. As he held the last piece of clockwork in his hands, he looked at it with tears in his eyes. Then he smiled and carefully put the piece in place.

The next day, Andy came knocking at the front door. The week was up and he was determined to know what Josiah had been up too all this time. When Josiah didn’t answer, he peered in the front windows. To his surprise, the living room was clean. No, it was beyond clean. It was immaculate. Startled, he returned to the door and knocked louder. Just as he was ready to give up, he heard a noise from inside like the slamming of a door and then the lock on the front door clicked open.

Josiah opened the door and stood there, looking at Andy. He was gaunt, and there were huge circles under his eyes, but he looked happy – happier than Andy had seen him look in ages, in fact. He grinned hugely when he saw Andy, and said, “Come in! I was just about to call you! I’m done! It’s finished. After all these years, it’s done!” He stepped aside and motioned Josiah into the spotless front room.

“What’s done? And where are all the gears…Oh, wait a minute, you mean you finally used those things and made something?” Andy stood staring around the room, looking to see if whatever Josiah had made was up here.

“Yes I did! I’ve worked all week, and it’s finally done!” Josiah crowed.

“Great! When can I see it? Is it up here?” Andy asked, pushing into the room. The movement of something scuttling under the sofa caught his eye. “What was that? A rat!?” he exclaimed as he realized what he had seen.

“Oh, that’s just Clicker. He’s my pet. I usually keep him downstairs, but now, well, I really don’t need to.” Josiah knelt on the floor and pulled Clicker out from under the sofa.

Andy got a good look at Clicker and his mouth fell open. “Josiah, is this what you made? A clockwork rat? He’s amazing!” He reached for the rat, who was indeed made of clockwork.

Josiah handed Clicker over to Andy and smiled hugely. Clicker was amazing, he had no doubt of that. “Do you like him?”

Andy examined the clockwork rat. “Josiah, this is more than amazing. I mean, I can see that this is made of clockwork and you wind him up, but he is acting like a real rat. Just the mechanics of him are astounding – he has joints that act like real ones – but, Josiah, he’s acting like a real pet rat!”

“I know. He came out pretty well. But he was just my first project. I made him quite a while ago.” Josiah was still grinning like mad. “I’ve done a lot more since then.”

“You mean that you have even bigger and better stuff than  this?” Andy looked back up at his friend.

“Yep, sure do! And I’ll show you in just a few minutes – I was waiting for you to be here for the grand unveiling!” Josiah said with pride.

“What else have you made?” asked Andy, handing the rat back to Josiah.

“Oh, I made clockwork dog, and a few others small animals, but I ended up taking them apart again so that I could re-use the gears and the brain material.”

“Brain material?” Andy got a funny look on his face.

Josiah laughed, saying, “Not real brains, Andy. Just some stuff in a bag that I found with a set of gears one time at an auction. You know I’ve always loved clockwork, ever since I was a little kid, and I’ve haunted auctions for the stuff for years. A couple of years ago, I bid on a big lot of loose gears, some plans, and what they called miscellaneous junk, in a box. When I got it home I found that the miscellaneous junk and plans included a bag of sand-like stuff and some notes.”

“Go on,” Andy encouraged when Josiah paused.

“Well, the notes were by someone who had been trying to make a clock work man. The intact plans were for a rat and a dog and a cat – there was one page of stuff about a man, but it was pretty torn up. The person who wrote the notes created this, this, brain-stuff, like sand – I guess must be silicone or something – I really don’t know how it works. I just know that it does. That’s what’s inside Clicker.”

“So you decided to make a clockwork man.”

“Yes, and he’s done. Since the plans weren’t complete, I had to figure out part of him myself. And I used up all the brain-sand on him, so I can’t make another one like him. But Andy, he’s going to be amazing! Come on down and we’ll wind him up!” said Josiah.

Andy was examining Clicker again as they descended into the basement. “How are you going to get him to do things?” he asked. He looked around at the big open room which he had never seen before. It was pretty empty. There was a few bit of clockwork here and there on a very tidy workbench along one wall.. A few more tools were on the metal shelves attached to the opposite wall. Like the upstairs, the room was immaculate.

“Well, I suppose he’ll have to learn. Clicker here was a bit wild at first, really afraid of me…but he tamed down pretty quickly.” Josiah walked over to a sheet draped something roughly man-sized in the middle of the room. He whisked it off, and there stood his clockwork man.

“Wow. Just wow!” said Andy, his eyes sparkling. “This is really neat, Josiah.” And the man was. He had a round head and body, and articulated joints. Josiah had even put a pleasant expression on the man’s welded face. A large key stuck out of the middle of the man’s back.

“So what took you so long to make him?” Andy asked as Josiah prepared to wind the man up for the first time.

“I needed to find a certain type of clock for parts and I had a hard time finding it. Last weekend, I got it.”  Josiah finished winding the man and then paused with his finger on a switch. He cleared his throat importantly. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” he proclaimed theatrically, “I GIVE TO YOU THE ONE AND ONLY, THE FIRST, THE AMAZING, CLOCKWORK MAN!!!”

And he flipped the switch.

There was a whirring, and a little clicking sound as the gears began to move inside. The man’s arms moved, and he turned his head back and forth.  Then his legs moved, and he moved forward and backwards. His head turned towards Josiah and Andy.

And then all hell broke loose.

The clockwork man ran from Josiah and Andy, clearly terrified. He rammed into the workbench,  scattering the leftover gears everywhere. Then he charged towards the stairs. He got up to the fourth stair before the weight of his metal body broke through the treads and sent him back down again. Undeterred, the clockwork man tried again to get away. This time he managed to crash into the post holding up the rest of the stairs and the entire staircase collapsed.

Josiah and Andy had stared in shock as the clockwork man began his frantic attempt at escape. By the time he broke the bottom steps, they had fled to the far side of the room, and as the whole staircase came down, they climbed to the top of the metal shelving units and crouched there, watching in shock as the man destroyed the rest of the workbench, running into it and trying to climb on top of it.

Josiah whispered to Andy, “These are anchored to the wall with big bolts. I think we’ll be safe here.”

Andy looked back at him, his eyes huge with fear. “A little wild, you said. Maybe take a while to tame down? My God, man, this thing is dangerous! You said that plans you found, they were torn up? How badly torn up were they?”

Josiah swallowed then blanched. “I didn’t think about it before, but they were pretty torn up. And there were some stains…I thought someone had spilled cocoa on them…”

” Old, torn up plans with bloodstains on them for something no one ever heard of before. Brains-in-a-bag. Not such a good idea, maybe?” Andy sniped.

“Yeah, maybe. I didn’t really think. I just wanted to make him – it was like a dream come true for me.” He shuddered. “Now it’s a nightmare.” He looked around the room. “I wonder if we could reach the window from the edge of this shelf without falling.” He eyed the distance speculatively.

Andy looked at it and shook his head. “I don’t think so. And I’d hate to think what would happen if we fell and he ran into us. We’ll just have stay up here until he winds down. At least we had a chance to get away.”

They watched as Clicker scuttled across the floor and the man tried to get away from Clicker, ramming into the shelf next to them. It held tight to the wall, but they could still feel the impact. Tools flew everywhere.

“Uh, yeah, about that. The reason it took me so long to be able to make him?” Josiah swallowed again, and closed his eyes.

“Go on…”

“Well, I was waiting for  a special sort of clock, with a special sort of winding mechanism. The one I found this past weekend.” He paused again.

“And?”

Another crash sounded below them, and the shelving unit shook again.

“Well, it was  called a Seven Day Wonder, the sort of clock you only wind once a week.”

-She Wolf ©2008