Queen of the Cats 11. How to Plan a Market Day Party

As she walked the final distance down the forest path, Nix considered whistling a merry tune so she would look normal and perhaps even merry about the market day to come. No one whistled anymore though. She settled on quiet and calm humming of an old melody remembered from a childhood with Alice, knowing it was probably some hippy dirge about overcoming something or loving everyone.

It was important to look nice and normal, because there were likely spotters in the trees. Whoever had killed the Day men and their farm help and then rounded up a shamble of corpses would likely put down a single settler who looked like they were about to spoil the big surprise. These party planners wanted everyone in one place so that with one festive day of blood spatter and arterial spray, they would own this valley and whoever they left alive or kidnapped.

If you wanted to entirely depopulate a region while causing little damage to usable resources, this was the plan to use. Market day events were important to exchange goods, but also information, plans for spring planting so that crops would not be duplicated, requests for those going out on scavenging missions, ordering clothing to be made, seeing the doctor, visiting the dentist and sometimes finding the closest thing to true love left in this rural corner of mountains. Unless you were on your death bed, market day was to be attended. If you were on your death bed, it was still an option and the doctor would at least be there.

Market day was actually three days and would see nearly all the settlers of the region arriving and setting up their wagons, tents and stalls for trading goods. This first day and night would just be the arrival of the planners, most able and closest resident settlers. They would undertake extra work, helping older settlers and farmers set up their wares as they arrived the following day. Also, the early arrivals would dig a massive fire pit with high banked sides, drag in the dead logs that had been pulled from the woods weeks ago, then chop and stack the wood. Lastly, the posts and barbed wire hung with tiny bells would be set fully around the encampment and wagons in case the fire or the noise brought any stray corpse shuffling in their direction.

All humans and animals would be bedded down in the barn each night of the market, because it was still the safer option. A cot and pillow inside with three shifts of a watch set sure beat sleeping in your wagon and wondering if the bells on the fence would wake you if there was trouble. This site was a great location for Autumn Faire as the temperatures could drop a bit and the barn helped retain some heat. The great hay loft above would be filled with the night long giggles of the younger children, bedded down in straw and in about the safest place they could be. The giggles were nice to hear.

As she reached the wide open stretch of ground around the barn and began leading Cow across the two acres of cleared land, Nix paused to look at the vista of the property as if she was savoring the view. She let the darkest part of her mind unfurl, a black lotus on still water. If she was going to murder everyone she knew using the shambling dead, how and when would she best accomplish the deed. She considered the lessons of every hunter, trapper, builder, thief and the most horrific things she had seen in her life.

Tomorrow would be the larger setup, installation of more fence and then the opening social at dusk. A bonfire, roasting meat, dancing, attempts at music, over-sugared children, story-swapping, gazes meeting, plans made, alcohol consumed, drunken settlers and a rollicking good time had by all. But still, not quite yet. Everyone would be excited, happy, up late talking and have trouble getting to sleep after months apart.

The following day would be full with trade, games, food, races, day-drinking and then the harvest bonfire. A huge stack of wood (and event trash) that would burn to the heavens. No one, except the youngest children and dimmest teenagers would still be entirely sober. Everyone would be tired, at least buzzed, sore from sleeping in the barn, and forcing themselves to stay awake longer than they intended, trying to make this good time last.

That, Nix imagined, was precisely when the party would turn ugly as the bitey herds of corpses were maneuvered through the dark. She imagined from the group she had seen that they could be gathered up with the wire like a lasso and would follow along behind any living person, hoping for a taste. At the market day site, some bells would be silenced, fences cut, tied packs of dead brought inside the perimeter and then released into the crowd. In the half-light of the bonfire flicker, they wouldn't be seen, except as tripping drunks, until it was far too late. Chaos. Blood. Screaming. Death. Fire.

Nix figured on at least three to four groups of the dead, brought in from different directions for appropriate redundancy. Maybe a set left on the perimeter for anyone who ran. That kind of herd would need eight to ten people, minimum, to direct the dead. Nix figured that size gang would place at least two men or women on the inside as new settlers. They would probably come in to introduce themselves as new hands hired on at the Day farm. They would arrive on horseback and probably be charming, maybe even attractive. Everyone trusts a bright smile and firm handshake. Nix imagined they would explain that the family had the flu, and that they had brought the wagon of produce for trade.

During the opening evening social, they would probably pick a far and dark corner of the barn for a "good cuddle", produce some noises that no one would disturb, and work loose a few boards from the ancient barn. A final herd of the dead could be set loose inside the barn where everyone would run for shelter. All of the dead would follow from the broad carriage doors to the makeshift opening where the corpses would keep filing in.

Shut the doors. Light the barn.  Old wood and hay on fire. Now, the gang would own a region and all of the trade goods from the market day. They would probably kidnap some more young women. Nix shook off the terrible daydream and wished she couldn't imagine things so awful, but this was so close to her own past.

Well, that shit wasn't happening on Nix's watch. She'd seen hundreds of  humans go down that way once before and she was not going to watch it again. With a bright, feigned smile she waved at the boys chopping the wood and digging the fire pit and she, Cow, Garibaldi and the wagon headed for the "safety" of the market day enclosure. She kept her eye out for good sniper perches in the hillsides, strange flashes of light and how she was going to explain this to the council without them flailing in fear, grabbing up their families and running for the hills. It was far too late for that.

12. Party Planners

Queen of the Cats, 10. Sampson

10. Sampson

A flash through the forest. Monochrome, brown on brown through autumn brush and over deep leaf litter, damp and rich with the smell of the endless cycle of decay, enrich, rebirth.

Eyes flashing in the half light. legs churning on silent paws. Feet that barely touch the ground. Up the steep hills. Pause, mark the path again. Across the water on old tree and rocks. No stopping. No rest. Rub against the oak. Smell a dead one. Redirect. Race the falling sun. Chase the rising moon. Dapple light, pale through bare trees.

Exhaustion creeping in from every limb, the tired ache of every joint run ragged. Hunger. Thirst. His belly clenching, throat raw, foot pads that seems to be splitting with pain. A wild leap across a ravine, just catching the far side and scrambling to the top. The mossy rock. A tree that smells like Garibaldi. Pride land. Just a little more. Familiar ground for his stumbling, automatic feet. There, the tall house.
Up the beam, through the fireplace, into the kitchen where he crashed bodily into the call bells, ringing every one in a discordant clang that meant one thing. Danger- come now to help and know.

Sampson stopped running and collapsed beside a water dish. He picked his head up a few scant inches and rested it on the side of the bowl, beginning to lap furiously at the cold, clear water, stopping only to let air gasp into his heaving chest. Nocta walked up to him and canted her head to one side. When Sampson seemed about to stand she stepped on his rear foot and he yowled in sudden agony, his eyes going wide as he looked at Nocta as if betrayed.

The ancient queen bent her head to his paw, and with her delicate teeth she extracted a long thorn and dropped it on the floor where Sampson could see it. He heaved a sigh and pillowed his head against the bowl again as he realized she was going back for more and some of the other old queens were coming toward him to help. Sudden memories of being a kitten, held down and cleaned by countless raspy tongues made him twitch.

When they finished, most of the Pride had arrived and Sampson just stared at the pile of forest bits that the old queens had pulled off or out of him. He had felt none of it while he ran. He felt every bit of it now. After a few tries, Sampson heaved himself up to sitting, surveying the cats around him. His eyes blinked slowly.

The conversation that followed can not be spoken of, for the language of the Pride is arcane, a mystery that is not for humans to know unless, like Nix, they are of the Pride. A head rubbed against some symbols drawn low on the wall were involved and then the matter seemed settled. As one, the Pride turned and scattered, each to its own chores. There was work to do and it must be done quickly and done correctly the first time.

Sampson stood and stretched, then began to take a step toward... nothing. He was laying on the floor again and Nocta stood above him with her paw raised, daring him to try it. He growled low. Nocta looked unimpressed and groomed her paw. He began to rise again and this time the blow came from behind. The queens stood around him, one having just finished nosing a bowl of food to the space in front of Sampson's face. He growled. Nocta growled right back. Sampson's stomach growled. He stopped fighting and ate his fill.

When he finished, they brought him more water and this time he did not fight them. He drank quietly. Looking Nocta in the eye, he slowly attempted to rise. This time the cuff came at the side of his head and he slowly laid back down on the floor. Sampson drew in his legs, wrapped his tail and tucked his nose into a compact ball of cat. Nocta climbed atop him and curled into the same shape and began to purr contentedly. Sampson's eyes flashed for a moment and then the feeling of being warm, and full and watered and not running washed over him. The other old queens curled up around him, their bodies warming his aches, their old feet kneading his exhausted body and their purring waking the purr within Sampson.

Within a moment, he slept.

The old queens looked to each other and wondered how many others of the kittens they had nursed and raised and taught would need such care after this night. They watched the cats running about their chores, remembering each as the tumbling kitten that they had loved.

The old queens let no one wake Sampson just yet. It would be at least an hour yet before the leaving would begin and their darling but monstrous big tabby son of the whole Pride would rest until then. They each loved him as a kitten of their own body and thus, were always doubly hard on him. Cats, as humans, do have some things in common

11. How to Plan a Market Day Party

Queen of the Cats 9.5: Run

After just a few moments Nix got her head together and a thought occurred to her that brought her to a sharp halt. She dropped to one knee and exhaled a sharp hiss. Once on the ground she pulled off her shoe as if a rock had fouled her step and she rubbed at her foot, allowing Sampson and Garibaldi time to come to her hissed call. Their training worked and she slipped them some bits of dried chicken from her pocket. They wove around her legs, letting her scratch at them as they waited for instructions.

There were benefits of years working alone with a group of animals and people always underestimated the intellect of domesticated animals. Those facts combined to create a powerful secret weapon- you could train animals beyond the limits of what most humans imagined. A good horse would return home when told to do so. A herd of cattle or goats could be directed to a certain pasture with a few commands or the guidance of a dog. People thought cats were indolent and lazy, mostly because they had never bothered to understand them and how they, in kind, understood the world. In truth, cats were sharp at all ends and crafty in the middle. They could learn remarkable things when they saw a benefit from the knowledge.

"You are the very best boys" Nix crooned to them both, lavishing them with affection and likely boring any scouts watching this arrival trail. Both Garibaldi and Sampson sat, their attention riveted on the leader of their Pride. Nix said Garibaldi's name and his eyes snapped to her face, she pointed him to the wagon, signaling him to remain with her. They both slow blinked their eyes and the red cat hopped onto the wagon and stretched lavishly.

Clearing a bit of ground to bare dirt she drew two simple images. The first was a straight line with a circle on top, the most basic pictogram of a tree that could be drawn. The second was two curving lines that sketched out a claw. Sampson watched her draw each image. Pointing at the tree, Nix scratched the picture away with all of her fingers, using both hands. She repeated the gesture after pointing to the claw. Sampson stepped closer to the tree image and ran his right paw through it, claws out, multiple times and did the same thing with the scratched image of the claw and turned his solemn eyes up to hers.

Master, mother, friend, queen, protector, teacher, healer- Nix had been his world since she saved his tiny life. She offered the cat her fist and he rammed it with his massive head. Sampson, she hoped beyond hoping, understood the message that she had taken years teaching in case of a moment just like this. She grabbed both sides of his giant face, kissed the topped of his tabby head and whispered "Sampson, run and run back. Bring them. I love you."

She finished fixing her shoe and stood, taking hold of Cow and continuing her ridiculous wagon train down the path with Garibaldi laying atop her tarp covered goods, sprawled and rolling like a boneless sloth. As Nix looked back she watched Sampson finish taking a nice, steaming pee atop where the pictograms had been, kicking dirt over the top and heading off into the woods.

Their walking path had taken most of ten hours at the speed of a cow and wagon. They had used the paths that worked for moving goods, not the shortcuts. That cat would not take the long way. Sampson was smart. Not smart for a cat, but probably smarter than some people Nix had met. He was fast, and in a forest, he blended into the browns and seemed to disappear, just a motion at the corner of an eye.

When she found him, he was all of three weeks old and fit in her pocket. His survival had hinged upon being the biggest in a litter, yet not making a sound when his barn was found by the dead. Nix couldn't save his mom, but she saved him and since then, she had been his world. Now, she hoped, Sampson was going to be able to save her and everyone else she knew who was still alive.

Run, buddy. Run like the damned wind.

10. Sampson

Queen of the Cats 9: To Market Day

9. To Market Day

Eight hours of walking with a furry cow, a well oiled trailer wagon and two stalking, woods-trained cats was a remarkably silent affair. Their path was surprisingly even, and the new leaf springs on the trailer were making just the right difference. Every few hours, Nix would pull the tiny caravan over in tidy, well used clearings for water and snacks. She only had to re-dead three corpses on this leg of the journey, and luckily she did not recognize any of them for locals.

Like the other well settled members of this community of mountains and valleys, Nix did her part to keep thoroughfares and known rest and camp sites clear, ready and stocked. The roads used now had no asphalt or even ruts. Mapped roads were how strangers traveled and ruts just showed them the way to homesteads. Careful hard-packed soil, slabs of rock, and leafy forest floors with narrow paths free of underbrush were now the way to travel across the old roads. Leaving no trail of settler passages was one of the most important parts of safety in this dead world. When roads were found they were followed. No matter if by bandits or corpses, that always ended in a bad day.

When a good site was found for a resting place or a night camp and after it was checked several times for previously unseen dangers, it would be marked by planting a few shrubs just outside the area. This was an idea that Nix had created and cultivated, even bringing seedling plants to market days so that settlers would mark their sites in the same way. Over a few years, the practice had taken hold and stuck. Now, you could roam the mountains and hollows and receive warnings of dangers ahead, requests to not approach closer to a homestead, invitations of welcome, and safe camps if you were caught out in the weather. It was useful and complex enough that those passing through likely would not catch on.

With a quick brush to flatten the leaves in the clearing, Nix and her strange party continued on. She planned her trip for a day of long travel, an overnight near the old farm, a short walk in the morning for market day and then the repeat on the way home. Sampson and Garibaldi patrolled the path, weaving in and out of view.

It was funny how things had changed. In a world of walking corpses, so many things had become more frightening than the dead. Somehow, it turned out that the living ended up to be the real problem, because they possessed guile and hidden motivations. Zombies just wanted to eat your face and then the rest of you in rapid succession. At least Nix understood that singular drive and knew how to deal with it. On the commune, she had learned so many things, but she hadn't had enough lessons in selfishness and terror. Of those topics, she was merely a student.

After another hour and a half of travel, Garibaldi trotted back into the path, proudly carrying a recently detached but fairly putrid hand. That was concerning. Nix had nearly reached her night shelter, which meant she was less than 45 minutes easy walk to the market day barn site. This whole area should already have been cleared for a week. Tying Cow off to a small tree, Nix followed Garibaldi who was anxiously pacing for her to follow him quickly. Something was very wrong.

Nix quietly slipped in behind the red cat and followed without concern that he would mislead her. When the one-eyed cat slowed his pace and began to slink forward, she slipped to her hands and knees and followed him to the edge of a rise. There Nix found Sampson crouched low, tail twitching with obvious upset and as she crept to the edge and peered over, she knew why. The gully below them was a shallow creek bed that ran fast in the spring and only meandered as the year turned old.

Shuffling in the churned mud where clear water usually ran, corpses. Hemmed in with post and wire fencing, some fifty or more of the dead listlessly paced and bumped into each other and the high sides of the dry creek bed wall. Among them, Nix saw some fresh dead and with a squint and imagined face repair, she identified them as the male members of the Day family. The family was large, well liked, trusting and worked a productive farm a valley south.

Nix shuffled back from the edge, got back to her feet and ran quiet as small forest creature. She untethered Cow and continued her party on toward the barn. Knowing there might be scouts watching, she had to keep it together and act like she was just trying to get to the barn before dark rather than camp on her own.

Here was her lesson in horror and humanity. As they moved quickly and efficiently, but without obvious panic, Nix suddenly knew several things to be absolutely true.
1. The Day family and the market site had been compromised.
2. The women of the Day family were, quite possibly and likely unfortunately, still alive.
3. One pack of zombies placed to swarm into Autumn Faire tomorrow probably meant more packs.
4. A lot of people she knew and even liked were going to die
5. Nix was sure AF not going to let that happen without a big damned fight.
6.The booze on board the wagon was going to make a lot of Molotov cocktails.


Continue- 9.5: Run

Queen of the Cats 8. The Things We Learn

8. The Things We Learn

The commune life had not taught Nix how to be a free-thinker as much as it gave her mind space to roam and come at problems from different and unusual directions. Ed and Alice practiced a loveing and benign neglect that allowed their daughter to come and and go. Thus, on any day, Nix could be anywhere on the self-sufficient compound.

Even as a child, she had a quiet way about her and seemed to be able to read the attitudes of adults, knowing which ones would put up with children, when they were in bad moods, and when they just seemed a bit lonely. Asking an adult if you could watch them at their trade was an art. First, you had to observe and study them so you could determine which angle of approach would be best to gain their approval.

If they were gruff but affable, wait for them to take a break, walk up and shake their hand with determination, look them right in the eye and ask if you could observe their work because you wanted to know more about it. Most of the durable goods tradesman and craftsman were of this ilk. Blacksmith, carpenters, fence builders, construction and brewers nearly all had this way about them. Nix felt it had something to do with hard work, fresh air, and having the need to pass their craft on and teach another generation. A few hand delivered glasses of ice cold lemonade, some wet and cool cloths dipped in mint water, the occasional hand pie of a snack and face that looked to be yearning for their teaching and she was in.

Over the years, Nix befriended them all. She learned their tools, their processes, and even the sucky parts of their work and helped take care of each without complaint. In her small notebook, Nix recorded the names of the families of her various masters. If she learned a birthday or something their child liked, she would take time to produce a small gift for her master to take home. With each tradesperson she earned her way up the ladder from adorable pet, to helper, to moderately skilled apprentice and, in, most skills, to someone that could be trusted to run that trade or craft for a few days should the master craftsperson be ill or have to leave the commune for a few days.

Nix had nothing but time.

She moved her way through the skills of the commune, each year focusing on a new collection of related skills. Farming, animal husbandry, food production from the commune animals, animal care; well, that year had been pretty easy for her as Nix had a way with live things. She learned cooking, sewing, tanning, brewing, foraging, hunting, herb craft, building and even distillation for essential oils and spirits. Although she did not know it at the time, Nix keeping herself from boredom would eventually be using those same skills to keep herself alive.

Of all the useful skills she learned that kept her and the pride safe, comfortable and healthy, she never would have guessed that distilling would be one of the most important skill later in the Deadlands. Small pockets of survivors and the other loaners needed alcohol. Equally useful for medical needs and lonesome nights, a bottle of spirits was a powerful item for trade. Thankfully, Nix had learned distillation and infusion, so the alcohol that she made actually tasted pretty good. She could also grow some wicked good cannabis and kept a crop outside with her others

Nix had learned about people wanting to be 'off the grid' at the commune, but in the time after Revenant Day, they wanted to be off the map. The locations of camps, homes and even crops were carefully guarded secrets. People had been stripped down to their base and raw requirements of physical needs and security. The rest of the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs could suck it. No one was being self-actualized these days. Most were dug in like squirrels and hiding their nuts for marauding bands of assholes who did not care to put in the time and effort to secure the needs and safety for their own people.

However, not everyone was in possession of the same set of skills, but they had requirements for the same set of needs. Without the knowledge of how to produce those items that had disappeared from circulation, there were really only two ways to obtain them. Theft or trade.

Only a few of the pre-Revenant Day festivities were still held to, but Thanksgiving was one that was rigidly and stubbornly entrenched. Even among people who had so little, they were thankful for all of the things they had. Perhaps, more so than ever before in their lives. So, when it was time for quarterly market days to occur in this region, Autumn Faire was held the week before Thanksgiving.

As the time of year was approaching, Nix had been preparing her goods for market and making sure to be outside each night at dusk. The wagon was loaded with strong beer, distilled spirits, small but useful blacksmithed items, cannabis in small jars. wooden spoons, wooden shoes, wool roving, various vegetables (especially pumpkins) and her signature item- bottles of applejack. It was one of the strongest alcohols Nix produced and came from the fruit of a dozen orchards. It was potent, delicious, and got her anything she wanted in trade.

The day floated each year, because having set patterns was dangerous and stupid. So, at dusk, two nights before Autumn Faire, a volley of flares would be fired into the darkening sky. The first three were fired over ten minutes, just to get everyone looking in the right direction. The second volley of shots would be rapid and number between 1 and 10 flares.

Just one flare meant that something was wrong and that all sites had been compromised. As soon as a site had been cleared, they would try again. Two through ten flares provided a location for the Faire. Handed out at Summer Faire, each known attendee would receive a list of locations numbered two through ten and would keep that list safe until the next season.

Sitting in her rocking chair on the porch, surrounded by her piles of cats, Nix watched the first three flares, unbelievably bright, light the darkling sky.  After a few moments, the second volley came with seven flares, which meant the Autumn Faire site would be at the great barn at what remained of Tupelo Farms. The location was home to an early 19th century house and soaring barn that sat at the edge of what had been an 18th century turnpike. The house was fairly tumble down, but the barn remained straight and true.

Nix was pleased and would leave the day after next for her brisk 10 hour walk with a wagon, a cow, and two cats.

Continue- 9. To Market Day

Queen of the Cats 7. Piñatas

7. Piñatas

Nix laid her head upon the soft coat of Tonkinese fur and let herself be lulled by the quiet motor of the cat's purr. She reached up and scritched at his belly and the cat stretched luxuriously and promptly fell off the bed. "Oh, buddy, you ok?" Nix asked, peering over the edge of the bed. The cat blinked vacantly up at her with eyes like the ocean, so clear and blue that Nix seemed sure she could see straight through to the back of Chaucer's skull. He proceeded to hop up onto the bed and repeat the process thrice more. It was a good thing he was soft, sweet, and behind stone walls because Nix was fairly certain if she put her ear to his fuzzy head triangle, she would probably hear the ocean.

While this feat of remarkable, but hilarious, antics were repeated, the other cats in the room just stared at Chaucer in a way that seemed to intone "Have you no dignity, man?". Chaucer merrily ignored or did not notice the feline disdain being side-eyed in his direction, he just kept having fun and demanding occasional cuddles. On any average shitty post-apocalypse day, this cat could always make Nix reshape her face into something like a smile and maybe even cough out a dry laugh. Comedy in the dead lands was scarce, but Nix had all she could ever need.

It turned out that, after the apocalypse, Nix got to see more cats than she had ever hoped to and she had learned a single, startling fact: some of them just sucked at being cats. The stunning Tonkinese cat with the tiny peanut brain was gentle and loving which were great qualities before Revenant Day, but were not in a cat's favor in this not-so-brave new world. The one thing they had going for them was that they were good jumpers, insanely fast and they could climb better than any of the dead.

As a somewhat ironic aside, sometimes the dead would try to climb trees, posts, or fences after a feline. Around ten feet or so above ground, most climbs got harder and required a bit of thought. That was not a thing the dead had in spades. Sometimes it was just amazing that they could shamble down a road in their leprous horror, enough parts missing that it made many of them hard to look at. 

Once the dead reached the point of the climb where planning and care was needed, they generally peeled off like pasta and fell to the ground. Then, there was the splash. Now that most of the dead were several years post shuffling off their mortal coils, they were no longer in prime condition. In fact, it was becoming obvious that they were coming apart at the seams and losing their stuffing. The earliest of the Revenants could step in a pothole, pitch forward on the macadam and then perform their own impressions of a water balloon fight, but just once.

About a year earlier, a clump of stumbling corpses had peeled off from a road and somehow ended up outside of the Murder House and Cattery. Nix had picked up some bronchial infection and was fevered and wheezing, but something still needed to be done. When the dead congregated, they made a not-so-joyous noise somewhere between moaning and hissing. This always drew more corpses and the problem just got larger. While attempting to get herself into some protective gear, Nix had laid down for a moment and shut her eyes just for a second. When she popped awake and tried to scramble upright, she was thwarted by a coughing fit. 

Before her breathing had evened out, she caught a sudden flash of black as Nocta landed on her chest, flinging her backward onto the bed. Nix attempted to argue with the cat, then realized she was arguing with a cat and thus, probably needed a longer nap. With Nocta like a purring hot water bottle on her chest, the cat meticulously cleaned her paws, claws extended as a reminder. Nix just stopped fighting and went back to sleep. 

The next morning, Sampson woke Nix and was excited, signaling for her to follow. "Timmy better be at the bottom of a well, Lassie." Nix grumped as she followed. Sampson was leading her out to the second floor porch. Still terribly ill, Nix took a moment to gather herself, hoping that the dead had not doubled overnight while she had slept.

Nix found a sight she had not expected. It looked like a party had been held at the base of the trees lining the clearing around the block house. At the bottom of each tree, Nix spotted what looked like a bunch of thoroughly battered yet colorful pinatas. After a moment of sickness addled brain coming online, Nix realized why this was the worst party ever. To keep her from getting herself murdered while sick, the cats had taken care of the dead by running about, treeing themselves and just waiting for the dead to follow, fall, and splatter.

Turning slowly, Nix saw that most of her cats had followed her and Sampson outside. They all looked quite pleased with themselves, although some were still grooming bits of corpse from their fur. As she continued to stare, they became more pleased, accepting her silence as appreciation. Garibaldi threaded through the porch of rolling felines and dropped a hand at Nix's feet.

"Jesus." Nix croaked. Staring at the hand, Garibaldi, the pleased cats, and the festively decorative yet festering dead, Nix decided she was still far too sick to deal with the stomach-churning mess below. In a moment of pure despair, knowing how much more these corpses would decay and stink, Nix tried to calculate how many holes she would have to dig and how much dragging of the dead she would need to clean up this awful party.

As she leaned on the railing and considered, two vultures circles in and came to rest in the clearing below. They merrily hopped from corpse to corpse, picking the very best of the morsels. Nix glances up and saw the tightening circles being flown by so many buzzards that she did not try to count them. Nix kicked the hand off the porch for the arriving clean-up crew to enjoy.

Heading back inside, she refilled water dishes and refilled food bowls. She ate a can of soup, swallowed some more cold tablets and just went back to bed. A quick shower, clean pajamas and then a dive back under the covers. The cats came in as they finished their own meals and everyone settled down for an Autumn afternoon nap.

Sometimes, you just had to roll with the punches and the dead man's hands. Nature had this one and Nix let it ride.


Continue- 8. The Things We Learn

Queen of the Cats 6. Phoenix and Ed and Alice and Nocta

6. Phoenix and Ed and Alice and Nocta

Nix might have been five or six years old the day she came home in tears from Sapling Society. In what passed for a group activity school for her age of youngsters had made drawings that day. They had been asked to draw themselves with their mommy and daddy, or daddy and daddy, or mommy and mommy, or mommy, mommy and daddy (no judgement) and what made them each happy.

The other children has used swaths of the 100% recycled newsprint paper and as many crayons as possible to make lavish and painfully bright colored pictures of happy groups of people with houses, toys, sports and games. Nix drew herself, a fence at the edge of the compound and a kitten on the other side of the fence. The kitten made her happy when she petted the soft black fur through the fence and played with string. Nix had asked to bring the kitten home, but Ed and Alice told her it was a lot of responsibility and maybe she could have a kitten when she was older.

As Missy Joy walked around the gazebo, she talked to each happy little flexible sapling about their drawing and helped them label some of the less clear objects, like a brown lump on a table meant to be meatloaf but looked rather a bit like a pile of excrement. Nix was coloring in the grass on the hill beyond the fence in many colors of green, because she always saw it as a patchwork of colors and not just one green.

"Phoenix..." Missy Joy hesitated. "Where are your mommy and daddy in your picture?"

With dark and soulful eyes, Nix gazed up at her "Missy Joy, I don't have a mommy or a daddy."

"But Phoenix, I've met your family. I know your mommy and daddy." Missy continued, still trying to hold a gentle smile on her face through her confusion.

"Missy Joy, I have an Ed and I have an Alice. They said that those are their names and I should always call things by proper names or I would be..." Nix seemed to search for the rest of the phrase. "robbing them of their personal right to self-identity and forcing them to conform to societal norms that are bullshit." Nix finished in a single breath, hoping that she had remembered all of the right words and all in the right order.

"Oh, dear. Yes, I see. Um. Beautiful picture dear. The grass and wildflowers are really pretty." Missy tried to sound unconcerned and pleased with her pupil's work. She wasn't certain she had managed either but Nix returned to coloring and she padded away.

At the end of the day, the Sapling Society took their drawings inside the Mess Hall and hung them up on the walls so that the whole commune could enjoy the elementary but adorably sweet art. Nix proudly hung up her picture which showed her house and herself playing with the kitten at the fence, the tall marijuana plants behind the house and the rolling green hill outside the compound fence.

A few other Saplings noticed and began staring at Nix's drawing, trying to understand. One child piped up and asked Nix where her mommy and daddy were, and Nix repeated her response that she had neither, just an Ed and Alice. The other children looked either confused or started to laugh. The laughing ones were the ones that made Nix's stomach feel all whirly like soda and too many cartwheels. "Phoenix, you are so dumb you don't even know what parents are. Your mommy and daddy are Alice and Ed and my daddy says they smoke too many drugs and that makes them stupid."

Missy Joy noticed the knot of children and tried to walk as quickly as possible to cut off what might be unkind words. She should have walked faster. As she arrived, the children were laughing except Nix who was looking balefully at the ground. When she lifted her tear streaked face she whispered "but they asked me to..". Missy could not get the children to stop laughing fast enough in her class of only positive comments and uplifting messages. The rules of their school forbade her from telling the children they were nasty little brats and mean as their parents even when it was true. Separating the children and making each go stand by their own picture helped regain order.

Nix never moved and had just looked back down at the ground. She turned back to her picture and carefully removed it from the wall, peeling off the tape with great care so the paper was not damaged. She rolled the brown paper up like a tube and walked out of the Mess Hall, even though Missy Joy asked her to please come back for the apologies. Nix kept walking.

As she opened the door at home, Alice's eyes widened at the state of her daughter. Nix wasn't given to weeping or tantrums and Alice wasn't even sure what to do.

"Phoenix bird, what's wrong? Why are you crying?" Alice asked tentatively, not sure if this was how you dealt with tears.

Her only child answered her with the words "Because I have no mommy and daddy". She set down the rolled picture on the coffee table and did not break stride. In her room she changed into not-Sapling clothes and walked back out the door just moments later. Alice sat on the couch looking at the lovely drawing that she could not imagine had caused this strife.

Phoenix Alexandria MaryJane Verity Kobesky curled up on the grass beside the fence and tapped the fence with a rock a few times. Just a few minutes later, her only friend, a tiny black kitten came racing over the hill and tumbled down most of the other side in her excitement. The kitten rubbed herself all over the fingers that stuck through the fence and even licked them. Her girl was not playing the same way she usually did and the kitten wanted more. The poof of black fur turned away and ran along the fence line, out of Nix's sight. She cried even harder as her best friend just left her on the grass.

Nix rolled onto her back and just stared at the overcast sky, unsure how to make her tears stop. Finally, she was able to quit the crying sobs and hiccoughs and get herself to just eye leaking sadness. And that was when it hit her. Literally.

A tiny black kitten landed on her chest using a force that should not be possible for her mass and then screeched her joy directly into Nix's face. Over the years, the kitten screech would mature into a screaming yowl that could stop a heart or wake you from the soundest sleep. The kitten and Phoenix played happily on the grass. There was tumbling, screeching, pouncing and more than a bit of falling over.

As the day dimmed to sunset, Nix made a few decisions in her head and nodded to herself. She picked up the kitten and marched home. When Nix arrived she observed Missy Joy leaving with Ed and Alice standing on the porch. Approaching, her parents rushed toward her but she put her hand up to stop them.

"No." Nix said, halting them. "I am sad and angry and I don't want hugs right now. I would like a set of encyclopedias and school books. Real school books. I am not going back to the Saplings and I can learn faster this way. I am keeping this kitten and her name is Nocta. I am big enough for the responsibility and will take care of her. I can do more chores so we can buy things kittens need."

Phoenix then walked right past her parents, tears still in the corners of her eyes. She did not like angry and sad, especially together. She took two bowls, a box, an old newspaper, scissors, a chunk of chicken from the fridge, and calmly proceeded to her room and shut the door.

After cutting up the chicken and filling the other bowl with water, Nix shredded the newspaper and filled the makeshift litter box. After tiny Nocta had eaten and drank her fill, she started looking around the room. Nix picked her up and set her in the box. After a brief game of jumping out and being placed back inside, Nocta scratched at the newspaper, performed her evening toilette and then hopped out of the box. Nix set the kitten on the bed while she put on her pajamas and then climbed in beside her best friend. It had been a long day and Nix fell asleep quickly. Nocta curled beneath the girl's chin and closed her eyes, purring softly.

A few hours later, the door creaked open as Alice and Ed peeked in. As Alice made to enter the room to fiddle with the comforter and do something motherly, the kitten's eyes opened slowly and she let out a low warning hiss. Alice backed up and left the room, looking over at Ed once the door was shut.

"Well, we kind of deserve that." Ed whispered sadly. Alice responded "I didn't realize parenting would be so hard." Quietly, they padded off to their room.

In Nix's bed, Nocta seemed to almost smile as she let her eyes slowly close. No one would hurt her girl so long as she could help it.


7. Piñatas

Queen of the Cats 5. The Shopping

5. The Shopping

Nix mused that if there were no people remaining in the houses or stores, and goods had been left behind, it really couldn't be counted as theft anymore. After the seven years since Reverent Day, most people had gotten smart and gone into the country to hide, attempted to fortify and defend for a time, or just had the shit murdered out of them. The dead people had just gotten up and gone for a wander. There was likely no one left to claim these houses and goods, so Nix used small towns like big box stores. Attics and basements offered up a lot of useful stuff.

Working her way methodically through homes and businesses, Nix packed up trash bags of things that could be helpful and set them on the curb outside. Outside was not a fabulous place to hang out, but trash and trash bags were universally ignored in these places. Trash, debris, rusting metal and the staggering dead. Sometimes Nix would find a small group of people and those were the ones she wanted to avoid the most.

After she cleared each building, Nix left her trash bag outside and quickly moved to the next building. After shopping an entire town, she could come back that evening or even a week later and pick up the bags if things had started to feel 'funny' and she had bolted half way through her shopping.

The only items she would pack out immediately were medicines, medical supplies, aged high end liquors or well packaged plant seeds. Any thing else she could likely come back for.

When Nix shopped, it was with a very different posse of cats. Town team had all been owned cats and you could see it in their expensive breeding and perfect conformation. She took the ones who had lived in cities and suburbs and excelled at getting in and out of tight spaces, over fences, and avoiding humans who wished them harm. Nix seemed to be the only human left for whom cats were companions and not used as spit roasted meat or a dead man's juice box. It made a lot of sense for them all to stick together and work together.

The town team consisted of a Siamese named Theo who mostly rode on her shoulder and his low growl told Nix that something was approaching. Talulah was a calico convinced of her superiority, but also correct in that assumption, as her Hemmingway paws were basically hands and she could open doors and manipulate a shocking number of items in her murder mitts. London, the Lykoi served as distraction so others could hide, because the sight of a tiny werewolf stopped all humans in their tracks. His hair was perfect and he was very, very fast.

There was Zoe, a remarkably chill Abyssinian with glittering emerald eyes who always seemed to know when the group had taken a wrong turn and got them headed back the right way. Oberon was the building scout who oozed into the shadows with his jet black fur and verified that buildings were clear of the living and the dead. Pixie Bob had the heart of a lion but she was a naked Sphinx with no tail. Once Nix figured out how to adjust baby clothes for her, PB also helped with shopping by finding caches of baby food and nabbing cute baby outfits for herself. Last of the shopping brigade was the obsidian black Shadow who would take a high position and watch for anything amiss coming their way.

The town team was fierce, efficient and could run like hell. Each member, including Nix, could fold themselves away into tiny and improbable spaces until danger had passed. When clear, they would hear a single call from Shadow and follow the route out of town that he had chosen.

In this grouping, they would hop into the Prius that Nix had stolen. She managed this grand theft auto by shoving a mostly skeletonized corpse out the car door and pressing the start button on the steering column. She found the key fob in the pants pocket of Senior Bones and the first stop they made was to an auto parts store for seat covers and a great deal of air freshener. The Prius was quick, quiet and conservative with fuel, basically the perfect car for a post-apocalypse reconnoiter.

Nix would always hit the pharmacies first, then the liquor store. The drugs were helpful for herself and the cats and some of them made for good trade items. The liquor was medicinal applied to skin, consumed by oral route or traded for excellent trade items. High value items went straight into her pack as the cats scouted the town. Once done in the pharmacies, Nix would emerge to find out which feline was waiting for her to follow. They led her to cashes of food, hidden drugs of the legal and illegal sort, canned cat food, sometimes cat toys, blankets that did not contain dead people or would lead her to places where they had found items she would want.

Talking a moment to tell each one how good and smart they were, the felines would receive a quick touch and treat while Nix bagged the goods. Sometimes, they even led her to other cats. In those cases, Nix would let the town squad do the convincing while she kept working. Occasionally, they would find a cat that was deeply injured or sick, even dead bitten. In those cases, work stopped, the cat was collected and they hauled ass for home.

Out in the Med Shed, Nix had installed metal animal crates against a wall, so if she needed to put a feline on bed rest or limited mobility, she could. Over the last few years she kitted the space out as a vet office and read every book on cat veterinary medicine she could. Broken legs could be set and crushed legs could be removed. There we're not many procedures that Nix would not at least try if she was certain that it could be the only save for a tiny life.

The dead bitten were the worst. The wounds festered and the fever washed over them, they ached in every joint and cried in pain. Unlike the first time, Nix now had the knowledge and supplies to dim their pain, reduce their fevers and debride their wounds, but it was still awful.

It was a few years since Nix encountered her first dead bitten animals in the months after the compound collapsed and she found herself alone with all of the cats from the commune following her. She would find an animal bitten, and at first she would observe because she needed to know what would happen and how she would have to deal with these pitiful creatures. Once they died, would they also rise up again? The answer was no. Animals with shallow bites or scratches might live but those with deep wounds went painfully. Nix learned the most humane ways of ending their lives to speed them to the end of their pain.

Then it was Olwyn. A tiny grey puff of fur somehow got herself grabbed and bitten. She limped her way home and Nix sobbed to see her pain. She curled up under a chair and would not come out. The other cats spent the night watching over her in shifts and her tiny body heaved one last breath near dawn. Nix carried her to the hole in the yard behind the trailer they had taken over and gently covered her with soil. Neither the cats nor Nix did anything that day but nap in piles to comfort each other.

At dinner time, Nix put down the plates of turkey baby food and kibble mixed with rice and canned chicken and then mostly got out of the way, shoving the back door open a foot so the yard cats could come in for the night and have dinner. Sitting at the yellowed Formica table and reading a 5 year old newspaper, it took Nix a moment to notice the the cats were clearing a path and there was a lot of sniffing and confusion going on. When Nix looked among the cats, it took her a moment to find. Tiny, grey and dirt covered Olwyn was sitting by a plate and eating in her dainty way but with obvious hunger.

"Holy shit, holy shit" whispered Nix as she stood and slowly backed toward the living room, trying to figure out if she had just let a dead cat inside and how many others would be bitten before she could save them. Her arm was reaching for the baseball bat behind the door when Olwyn looked up at her.

Her eyes were clear and not the milky haze of the dead. Olwyn gazed up at Nix and made a pleased chirrup sound. With a happy raised tail, she took a straight line right to Nix and merrily weaved between her human's boots. She seemed a little more stiff than the other cats, but she still had a large wound and needed medical care. She was not dead. She was not risen dead. Olwyn was just alive again and really needed a bath.

That night Olwyn had her bath, her wound cleaned carefully, some antibiotics and was placed on the bed by Nix so she could keep a close eye on the tiny cat who curled into a neat circle and purred with joy.

Cats, when bitten, did not behave like any other animal and Nix wanted to know why.


6. Phoenix and Ed and Alice and Nocta

Queen of the Cats 4. Rebirth

4. Rebirth

After a long day of cutting up and planting potatoes gleaned from a field five miles away, Nix woke in one of her least favorite ways. Nocta, her ancient and unchallenged queen cat was sitting on Nix's chest and shrieking directly into her face. Once a beauty of ink black fur, soft as a night breeze and silent as death, Nocta was no longer so plush nor soft but she was still in charge and her stabby little paws could always find the softest parts of your anatomy to stand on.

"What? Shit! What the hell, Nocta!" Blearily, Nix sat up in bed looking for the crisis. There were no cats in her bed. Nocta continued to scream but ran for the stairs to the upper floor. Nix ran after her, nearly on all fours up the steep and treacherous staircase. There, in the center of where the best morning sunbeam would fall later in the day, Nix could make out a number of cats sitting or laying in a circle around something.

Flipping the switch, Nix turned on the single LED bulb and saw that Splat!, a massive calico with a disturbing and fanatical love of sharp cheddar cheese was in the center of the fray. Splat!'s markings looked funny until Nix realized that her belly had been colonized by a litter of newborn kittens rather than a new calico pattern. It had been a long time since new kittens had been born and had a chance to survive.

Nix's Murder House and Cattery was paying off. It was nearly two years after Nocta had woken her with another heart-stopping scream session and then led her to the strange house in the middle of the night. The very next day, Nix and her parade of cats had quit the Meth Shack and trekked here. No roads approached the house. There were no tire tracks, no disturbed portions of the forest floor that showed entry or egress. No one lived in it or had already looted the place. It was weird. It had walls and was defensible. It wouldn't burn. With minor changes, it would be just about the safest place they could hope for. They were home, or as close as they felt they could be.

As the human cat approached, the clowder made space for her near the main attraction. Kneeling down, Nix crooned to Splat! and then joined the pride in their sprawl on the floor. Splat!'s head was kissed many times and she was told what a good girl she was. After a few moments, she rolled further onto her back, placed her paws on Nix's slightly teary cheeks and kneaded her skin in the way of biscuit making cats of all time. Splat! purred with all the rumble one cat could manage and her impossibly small spotty and ginger babies ate, slept or were groomed by their new pride.

Soon the content purring spread throughout all the cats, and that is how everyone slept. A pile of happiness, purring with six tiny reminders of life at the center. Marmalade, the green-eyed massive ginger tom who was pretty obviously a very proud papa, remained awake or lightly dozing while sleepily grooming Splat! and still keeping out an eye for danger. Before Nix truly sacked out, she crept to the switch and turned out the light. She considered returning to the wide open luxury of her bed, but instead returned to her place on the floor and snuggled back in, quickly dropping off to sleep amid the purrs and paws.

No matter the beauty and joy of the night, the walls were patrolled, rodents were murdered and the property remained under the weather eye of grizzled toms and coal dark felines who were prepared to cause hell for the dead should the need arise.

5. The Shopping

Queen of the Cats 3. Nix's Murder House and Cattery

3. Nix's Murder House and Cattery

Nix had taken over a number of houses, buildings, shelters, forts, towers, hotels, a tree house and even one ill-fated school bus in her years alone, but finding the stone blockhouse was a gift. It must have been a folly for the rich or a fortification for someone very paranoid indeed. In the end it had not done any good for its builder, but it had become home, base camp, cattery, and sanctuary for Nix and her felines.

The first floor was built smaller than the second, with just a single door in the front face and a pair of tiny windows. That was one more ground floor door than the cagey young woman found comforting. Using the same local river rock, flagstone and a few bags of concrete from a shed, she used her commune learned skills and bricked up the small door and windows, making the edifice appear seamless. She removed the wooden stairs to the second floor balcony that cantilevered out over the ground floor. Nix replaced the original entry methods with a rope ladder that was pulled up most of the time, a cat beam that would drop away under the weight of even a small person, and the manual dumbwaiter and cat platform that could only be operated from above.

That ground floor edifice was one of the more normal parts of the house and even after two years of residence, Nix and the cats still kept finding secret niches, doors, sliding panels and other weirdness. The second floor entry hall accessed from the balcony contained two great fireplaces and a number of richly appointed but somewhat moldy chairs. However, it contained no obvious doors that would access the rest of the house. It had taken Nix a full week to find the catch which released an inner wall of a fireplace, letting it swing back like a small door so that a tall person must stoop to pass. The catch was located inside the opposite fireplace for maximum inconvenience.

Some part of Nix always wondered if she was living in a Camp David for magicians or a serial killer murder house. Each time she opened a new room, she hoped for a hat and wand rather than a pile of human limbs. Luckily, she had found neither dead people nor magic tricks as the first would now try to eat her and the second would just distract her so she could be eaten.

Passing through the fireplace, most of the second floor seemed almost normal in that it contained the right kind of rooms for a house, but they seemed to have been randomly collected from time. The kitchen was all stainless and shining modern industrial. The pantries were stocked with shelf stable foods of all kinds, wrapped in multiple layers of plastic to keep them fresh and insect free.

The dining room contained a ridiculously long table with a hilarious compliment of chairs, surrounded by rich painted frescoes of hunting scenes and velvet curtains that puddled on the floor as if they hid enormous windows rather than yet more stone. This room was deeply appreciated by the household felines who could each choose their own chair or pile of velvet curtain for a good nap and leave open seats remaining. Nix amused herself by serving a Thanksgiving dinner for all home occupants at the table their first year in the house. The conversation was limited but it was a hilarious show to watch the cats sit on their chairs as esteemed guests and gnaw at their turkey bits from lovely china plates. It was entirely worth washing all of the dishes later.

If not for the multiple sets of identical furniture, the library seemed almost normal. Bookshelves with rolling ladders lined the walls and the room looked like it had been designed after a 20th century gentleman's club. Thankfully, there were no mounted heads and the books still remained dry.

At least the ground floor room lacked much in the way of surprises, being just a large open space with shelving around the walls and in some short rows. Canned goods, plastics bins of supplies, some guns, a lot of ammo, a room full of batteries that were charged by the solar panels on the roof, controls for the well, fuse box. Yes, this seemed perfectly on the level for the average paranoid schizophrenic or up and coming spree killer. Funny enough, their paranoia and planning had absolutely paid off, just not for them.

Top it off with a twelve foot high walled garden that contained a maze of sorts. The various endings of which brought you to the outbuildings. A grand old stone barn in which Nix took to raising rabbits, chickens, and two milk cows that had wandered onto the property one day. Finding the external door to the barn had been a special hell and in the end it had been Sampson who found it. At another end of the maze there was a shed full of tools, saws, crowbars and other dismemberment favorites. Nix just closed the door to that one and hoped to never open it again.

One long shed looked like you could perform sterile medical procedures, grow a lot of pot or cook up a great quantity of various high grade street drugs. In memory of her parents, Nix grew two pots of marijuana named Ed and Alice respectively, plus a fair number of potted catnip plants. She reserved the rest of that space for home surgeries she hoped to never perform.

Back inside, the block house third floor was just a collection of oddly themed bathrooms and bedrooms and the attic was an open space under the eaves, one of the few places with windows where you could see for a distance. In the two years since finding Nix's Murder House and Cattery, she made herself comfortable by pulling a few of the king sized beds into the largest bedroom. This almost always assured that she could sleep and wake up surrounded by cats, rather than beneath a pile of them. With few exceptions, the entire gang like to eat and sleep together as this had kept them alive through some crazy times.

As Nix slept each night, the older Toms would roam the house to make sure nothing was amiss inside. Out on the walls, there was always a black furred sentry or two that made sure the walking corpses kept on walking right by. Any that came too near were enticed to a merry chase after a nice, warm and juicy cat who always disappeared into the forest once the dead had been redirected.

Nix's Murder House and Cattery was good for the whole pride.


4. Rebirth

Queen of the Cats 2. Revenant Day

2. Revenant Day

Nix had been 14 when Revenant Day had occurred. It was the first day when the dead got back up from where they had been put down. Apparently, when they got back up, they also got very angry and none of them were vegetarians anymore.

Living on a rural "bullshit hippy compound" was probably why she was still alive. It certainly had kept her parents alive for years longer than they would have managed on their own.

Ed and Alice were sweet but mostly wanted to love the earth, grow marijuana, smoke marijuana and raise a daughter who would be kind and gentle like them. Instead they got a changeling girl child with a mouth like a sailor, an ever curious mind, and a certain way with cats. The commune barn cats were always leaving their kittens with Nix while they went to hunt or just lay uninterrupted in a sunbeam. Ed and Alice were just happy that Nix had one thing she could love and treat gently. They concentrated on that and growing their plants, even as the world flew apart in chaos.

Perched in one of the community rooms, a small crowd watched an ancient console television that showed what was happening in the cities, how the dead were multiplying, how they attacked and made more dead. Nix turned the situation over in her mind and headed to her attic room for a good think. Upon arriving, she found that a whole litter of kittens had been left in her bed. Nix always found that she thought better with a pile of kittens, especially the extra fluffy ones.

Phoenix (mythical bird, not city) Alexandria (for the Library) MaryJane (for the weed) Verity (for truth) Kobesky (because she was Polish AF) was a kid saddled with a lot of names, a lot of cats, and suddenly a lot more chores. Unlike the other kids, she took to the new work with a seriousness beyond her years before anyone on the commune had seen one of the dead. She found holes in the fence and mended them, located weak spots and flagged them for additional fence posts, and found places where the earth had sunken or washed out and listed them for adding fill dirt, concrete and rocks.

Seizing an over-sized map in the mess hall for her purposes, Nix used push pins to note all the cities where the dead had become a pandemic rather than a problem. At first it was the largest cities, then then slightly smaller cities and it just kept spreading.

Each morning, while thoughtfully chewing her toast, she would set new pins and use yarn to connect them. The thing she noticed were the interstates. The yarn bloomed out from city to city along major roads. No major roads came near their compound, but Nix decided it might be a good time to make sure that zero roads to the compound were visible to outsiders. Infected people could still drive cars. The dead seemed to follow roads as they shuffled about.

The news stopped suggesting that people should shelter in place or reporting where safe locations were. In truth, when too many people got together, one of them would hide their infection, not believing in their fate. About two weeks later, they would stand up as a corpse and start sharing their fate with all of the other people who were nice and safe in that location.

Nix asked her dad to gather up some of the older men from the commune and bring them to the mess hall with the map. Most adults would not listen to a teenager unless they had a trusted grown-up backing them and visual aids. Nix imagined if the world had not gone upside down, she might have had a future in marketing. She wedged the kitten in her hoodie pocket down a little deeper and massaged his face until he slept. A kitten climbing from her pocket would probably put a dent in her credibility.

Her dad had been Incredibly smart and mostly collected other men with families. Men who had something to love and something to lose because they would be far more likely to start immediate work and keep at it. Maybe Ed could have been some sort of community organizer if he didn't live in a nowhere compound and maybe smoked a little less dope.

As the men stood with crossed arms and looks of disinterest, Nix explained her map and her plan. One by one they started to listen. Their compound was not on any maps. Their "road" was one sign, 30 feet of concrete off of a state highway and then two ruts for miles. With a few days of work, some fill dirt, some dragged over fallen trees and the misdemeanor removal of a county road sign, they could be entirely forgotten. With the work of the whole community they could erase their road, make it impassible and add extra earthworks around the fenced commune. The group was already mostly off the grid. It was time to finish the job.

The adults set an immediate start date for the work and the next day "Bliss Drive" ceased to exist. Two days later, no one would ever have guessed a road had been there even if they had driven on it. They would think they had missed the turn somewhere else.

Nix started to teach all of the cats that their world now needed to end at the fence. It took a few years to get that across, but finally, she managed it. As she did her chores there was ever a tumble of kittens who pounced, wrestled, gnawed her shoelaces and ran after the teen as if she were their mother. The barn cats taught them to hunt, but Nix taught them how not to be hunted. Older cats helped to reinforce the lessons.

The commune was free of rodents, both inside buildings and out in the fields. Even in bullshit hippy land, the time of free rides was over.


3. Nix's Murder House and Cattery

Queen of the Cats 1. Nix

1.

When the brown and somewhat grizzled tabby cat dropped into a low crouch, so did the woman. From their vantage point, she could see two things: a pair of plump rabbits in a hollow down the embankment and the dead man limping his way down the remains of the asphalt road.

The shambling corpse was nothing near fresh, clothed only in the tatters of a pair of gore stained khaki pants. When she found the more recently-turned-nightmares, she could take them down, smoke the meat and use it to refresh traps for larger prey. She could also use it as bait for the dead in pit traps and on pike lines.

Neither she, nor the cats, would eat it. but this was not a world where you allowed waste. Not anymore.

She glanced at her companion, utterly still except for emerald eyes that watched both dinner and death in turn. Together they waited. Once the dead man was far enough down the road, she signaled to the cat. The silent and massive Maine Coon padded away, heading to circle around to the back side of the hollow. Once in place, she watched the plume of his tail stand upright, then drop. Sampson was ready to work.

Un-shouldering her bow, she tugged an arrow from the quiver, nocked it, raised the bow and in a single act of breath and motion she inhaled while drawing the bow and exhaled while she let the arrow fly. There was no cry from the rabbit, it just tipped over. The second rabbit tried to race out of the hollow, using the worn path. It never saw death come as Sampson pounced, grabbed the rabbit by the throat and lowered himself atop the still struggling rabbit as the small life extinguished in silence.

In a few moments, the woman dressed in greens and browns met Sampson at the bottom of the hollow. He sat calmly beside the rabbits, ready to defend them if he must. "Good buddy", she whispered and slipped him a piece of dehydrated venison. As the cat chewed thoughtfully, he stood, walked a few feet away and sat again with his paw gently touching something before him.

In the leaf litter, he had found a nest of young rabbits. They were cowering and terrified, but their eyes were open and they were large enough to survive. "Welcome to the breeding population, fellas. You are going to the bunny barn".Gently, each of the five kits was placed in a cross-body basket lined with grass. The previous generation were stowed in a oilcloth bag to leave no blood trail behind.

With nearly silent movements, Nix checked the hollow for anything left behind, or edible plants, finally tucking some chanterelles into a pocket. Sampson finished his job of pawing up the earth where each rabbit fell and depositing odoriferous gifts of his own to cover the scent. With a nod to the cat, the pair quietly left the hollow and paused to make sure no new dead had wandered into the area.

A large, red cat with one eye and a permanent scar of a snarl dropped out of a tree ahead of them. Garibaldi reporting that the coast was clear and he was tired of sitting in a tree. He stretched dramatically, staring up at Nix and waiting for his payment. "Yeah buddy, you did good too." Nix stroked his rough coat and felt his deep bass purr for just a second.

The three trekked home with Sampson and Garibaldi alert for the awful dead and Nix obscuring their path and weaving plants and tree limbs to each other to keep away the awful living. Not being found by anyone was pretty integral to not being gnawed into oblivion by the dead, or much worse by the desperate cretins who had never found a place to settle down and try to make a living.

As they approached the abandoned, and likely once charming, chalet, hunting lodge or whatever the hell it had been, more cats popped up out of holes, rustled out from under leaves and dropped down from well hidden perches in the trees making a motley parade of color, pattern, size and fluff that was truly stunning to behold. Nix and her volunteer army all headed for the field stone building that Nix had carefully seeded with moss in the cracks. Later she had transplanted vines near the base. And nailed broken boards across windows. From the outside, the place looked a miserable heap of mold, damp and collapse.

Some thirtyish cats followed. Nix climbed her rope ladder and most of the cats walked the balance beam of the single 2x4 that leaned from the porch to ground for their easy access. On the balcony of the second floor Nix used a rope to pull up a platform upon which several cats were sitting. As they reached the balcony they stepped off the platform with stiffer limbs, limps and one with just three legs. Getting old sucked, but she wouldn't get rid of the creatures that had helped keep her alive, simply because they had aged.


2. Revenant Day

Second Impressions and the Death of Grudges

Reeeaaaaalllly tired pelicans land and find wine.

First introductions, especially in or around the SCA, sometimes fall a bit flat. At events there is a lot going on, many people are in a rush, and some people just want to get to the point of they day where they can chill with some friends, perhaps around a fire or whilst toasting with a tasty beverage. Being in a rush and part of our groups of friends can make it super daunting for someone to get a good first impression of you. New people are often suggested to steer clear of some group of people for some reason. Enmity can build for no reason that can ever be traced. Sometimes a person can feel they are doing the 'right' or 'noble' thing by taking a conversation they overheard back to someone being discussed. All of this can lead to crazy blow-ups and sometimes schisms in groups of friends that sever those friendships forever. Sometimes, this resulting hot mess is the first time you may have real contact with a person. That impression may stick around for a bit. That impression can even leave you angry for years.

I consider myself deeply lucky that some of those first impressions that I left on someone and someone left on me were able to be obliterated. But it takes rather a bit of work and a lot of adulting to pull it off.

Reset Point 

You have to be honest with yourself to find out if you are ready for that, but sometimes these things just drag on long past any reasonable period and everyone is just tired of the upset. You have to be willing to apologize, sincerely. You have to be willing to say "Yeah, I'm not even mad anymore." And you have to be entirely willing to put your hand out and say: "Hi, [person], I'm [name] and I'm happy to meet you." 

If both sides are not ready to meet in the middle, it does not work. Second impressions are a bit of a thought exercise in which both participants agree to wipe the slate, stop referring to ancient woes and punch the reset button.

I am happy to say I have cultivated some of my most incredible friendships this way, and I treasure them. I remember how hard, in each case, that we both had to work and the leap of faith we both had to take together to pull it off. Once you have newly met your new friend there are usually some tears and sniffles, but also an overwhelming sense of lightness as all the anger, rage, annoyance, other people's agendas just pour out of you. At that point, you should probably go find some ice cream together. You have done a good thing.

A Brief Caveat

If you seem to fail each time you suggest this sort of relationship re-start with people, if it happens over and over again- there is a single common denominator you should look to: yourself. If you approach each person demanding an apology, that's probably not going to go over well, unless you are willing to do some very serious and public apologizing yourself. If you are continuing the behavior that got you to the place you are at, then you aren't ready for a reset. If you come to the door with threats and accusations, no one is going to open that door and invite you into their house. That door is going to shut faster than it does for religious missionaries and door to door insurance salesmen. You are still free wheeling down your own road and have not yet found the bottom of the hill. Just remember to rear break, then front break when you do.

I Shall Not Yield

So, you have The Grudge that Will Not Die where one person becomes convinced that someone is constantly defaming them or speaking ill of them or trying to make their life harder in some way. Sometimes, but with remarkable rarity, this even may be true. The grudge holder may agree to some small changes in the root causes of the squabble in the name of putting the whole matter to rest. However, they become rather annoyed when that does not pay big dividends and entirely re-frame them in a new light.

By this point in the grudge, one party is usually just done and has wandered off to do something else while the other holds on to their ire and shouts it from the hilltops- but it leaves them a sad little king/queen of a sad little hill. Is that really the last stand you want to make. The hill you want to die on? If it is- fine, your choice. But, remember- your grudge-war playmates will only stick around for so long until they find other and more pleasing things to do.

After that, you and your grudge, when mentioned, may net an eye roll, an ugh and an epithet because you have reduced yourself to a two dimensional character defined only by your grudge. But, that's likely all you will get when anyone recalls you at all.

From The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

Mr. Toohey: "Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."

Roark: "But I don't think of you.”

Importance or Power: the wide gulf between the two in the SCA

These are the things I find of Importance within our club:

• Fun: This is what a hobby is supposed to be
• Friendship: The moment that it all clicks into place and you realize that you have come home to a family who love you, no matter their relation via blood.
• Passion: falling in love with an art, fighting, service or some corner of the SCA or medieval period which you may not have even known existed before. Or meeting the medievalist of your dreams.
• Learning: keeping our medieval arts, martial arts, crafts, sciences alive through continual teaching and learning with information always moving forward.
• Respect: Meeting people of so many different background, abilities, real lives, knowledges, and learning how to work with them. When you give respect, you get respect.
• Service: If we're gonna have a game, someone needs to do some work. Pitch in when you can and be thankful for those who pitch in the rest of the time. Say thank you. Say it often, loudly and in public.
• Stewardship: Leaving the SCA better than you found it: event positions, offices, new ideas, regalia, recording our own history and training those who follow us in these positions.
• Medieval Ideals: Chivalry, Courtesy, Courage and more. This is what we are here for, right?

However, if we are very, very lucky- we find a nexus of a few of these Important factors (which are likely different in ranking for everyone) and that's when there is a true magic. We work, we serve, we enjoy, we laugh, we come together and we are all at our best.

Here is where I believe Power exists in the SCA:

• An electric socket
• Sketchy extension cords that probably violate a safety code or 5
• Gasoline generators (also sketchy)
• A breaker box (sometimes full of spiders)
• A knife switch beside the breaker box (quite satisfying to throw that switch)
• Powering that AC which makes us that sweet, sweet cold air
• Lights during night courts (heralding by torchlight truly sucks)
• Air mattress pumps
• Professional kitchens at campsites (triple double ovens- oh yeah)
• 10 Norse lads (and/or lasses as we are equal opportunity raiders) crewing a viking boat. Rowing is a lot of work and you have to have some tough arm and chest muscles to pull those oars and still move the next day.

I am, however, thankful for all of these as well. (Especially the AC and lights in the bathrooms at night).


If you believe there is actual Power to be had in the SCA- it's time to check yourself. If you attempt to use that imagined Power as a bludgeon, especially towards those of lower rank- it might be best to go find something else to do for a while.

The Year of Sweet Corn

Dedication: To Cordelia on the anniversary of her entry into this world. Thank you for being one of my dearest and most morbid friends. Because of you, I have kept writing, always hoping just one I would write any piece as good as your work. This one is just from the heart, well, my black heart. Birthdays are for personalized gothic horror, yes?

The Year of Sweet Corn


Once, there was a Seneca girl who was not much like the other girls on the reservation. She was not an Indian princess. Her tribe, like most, had no such thing and she learned as a child to roll her eyes at such tales. To most, she was not even of the tribe because her mother was a white woman whom her father adored and married.

The odd little girl learned her histories and loved to sit by her father,, an elder and listen to the language of their people pour from him like a waterfall on rough stone- jagged, powerful, and beautiful. He told stories of the tribe and in the low light of dusk, he made the tales come alive. His daughter's heart was so full on those nights were she could nearly touch their gods and goddesses, feel the sweep of twirling woven cloth as he spoke of ancient dancers. She could taste corn that had been blessed and blessed again, a sweetness like no other and she could hear a heartbeat rhythm that could have been her own and could have been the sky or the earth or the fire or all of those at once.

Although her parents loved her very much, she found that she did not easily fit into the shapes of life that most people occupied. Especially, she did not enjoy the molds into which little girls were supposed to jam themselves and emerge with long eyelashes and a coquettish grins. That, simply, was not her style. She found those girls false and empty headed. Yet, she tried and went to gatherings of 'kids'. Milling about the edges of the soda and chips, she would find the first moment when no one was watching her and she would slip away.

Instead, she would walk. She loved the night and dark things. She found beauty where others felt their hearts begin to beat faster. Where most people walked with extreme caution and the highest alert singing in their sinew, she ran heedless into the shadows and the shadows loved her for it. She could just sit in the forest and read, listen to music on her second hand disc-man or just listen to the trees and the wind and sometimes it was almost like she could hear it talk to her. She loved every piece of the land, exactly as it was.

Unfortunately, this is not a universally loved approach to life because those who cleave together against the dark abhor those who travel freely in that world. They become suspicious, then jealous, then angry and then they find a reason. It never needs to be much of a reason. Anything will do. A smirk. An eye roll. It does not matter.

On a half moon night, she walked home through the woods, having escaped another awful gossip fest. She decided to buy some time walking a rambling path home so she could plausibly tell her parents she had tried to spend some time with the other kids and that she was not completely miserable as she knew they would just feel bad.

As she was about to step into a patch of moonlight, she heard a twig break and some leaves crunch on the other side of the clearing. As she had learned, she went entirely still and her ink decorated Chuck Taylor sneaker settled back to the ground without making any sound. She silently cursed herself for wearing a black t-shirt with a massive white band logo on the front. Shit.

A clamor of girls from the party tumbled into the clearing, loudly and perhaps a little drunkenly, shushing each other.

"Shut up. I know she came this way. I SAW her!'
"Shhhhhhhhh"
"Bitch. I so want to kick..."
"Holy shit. She's right there"

Like a pack of wolves, the hair-sprayed and mascaraed platoon finally noticed her and all slowly turned to face her.

The lone girl with the goth t-shirt and the punk rock style set down her purse by a tree, hoping it would still be there when she was done getting her ass kicked. This wasn't the first time she found herself outnumbered or cornered, just the first time it had happened in her woods. Wondering how they had found her, she pulled her hair back and secured it with an elastic. Her hands fell to her sides as she took one last deep breath.

Stepping out of the trees, she moved into the moonlight and paused in the clearing. This was going to suck. A one to five tramp ratio was not good odds, even if they were a bit drunk. The girls began to move forward with their sharpening grins, but behind them, in the shadows, something else was moving.

The shapes were large, too large for people. In the fitful moonlight through the leaves, it looked for all the world as if boulders had stacked themselves into cairns and were shuffling forward. she was looking at walking legends: Stonecoats.

The girl began to open her mouth to tell the awful girls to run, because she realized that she was seeing a story come to life and was pretty sure about what would come next. A hand settled onto her shoulder. A massive hand of shifting pebbles, stones, and rocks of all sizes held together in some kind of beautiful and terrifying dance set with such care upon her shoulder. A bass rumble behind her said "No. You are to watch. You are to understand and remember."

The girl swallowed hard and then tried to be as still as possible, to be a threat to no one. Still, the wolfish girls snarled their curses and staggered closer, not noticing a creature like a mountain in front of them, not hearing the nearly silent mountains closing in behind them.

The rock giants stepped up, one behind each girl. The Stonecoats of myth and legend casually thumped each girl on the head and caught their bodies as they fell. She felt the weight of the rock giant lift from her shoulder as he rumbled "Get your things and come with us." She did as she was told. Very, very precisely. She searched her brain for anything her father had told her about these beings, but decided to keep her thoughts to herself.

It seemed like they had walked a long way, but that was probably just what happened when you walked with a group of living (wait, were they living?) myths. They came out of the forest and into cleared farm land. In the distance, lights of homes could be seen here and there and the girl realized that she knew right where she was- less than a mile from her own home and in one of the largest corn fields on the reservation.

The spring and summer had been terrible for crops- too much sun and no rain and then too much rain and no sun to be had. The corn was stunted, the ears small and everything seemed to be wilted. As the Stonecoats and their prizes approached, a woman emerged from the corn. Her skin was pale, her hair paler still, and her teeth were brilliant white and straight like perfect white corn. Her dress was the green of stalks and husks and as she moved she sounded like the sigh of the wind through the cornfield. With a gesture, she pointed the Stonecoats to rows of the field where they dropped their female burdens.

The goddess of the corn sang quietly, plaiting her corn silk hair into small, neat braids and cutting one off for each girl that lay by the field. She tied their hands together with the silken braids and then made a small cut in the neck of each girl. As the corn goddess finished, a rock giant gently collected each girl by her feet and trundled away down the long rows of corn, the girls and their trails of blood glinting in the moonlit furrow behind them.

The giants were gone. The dying girls were gone. The half Seneca girl stood beside the field with Onatah, the corn goddess, and could not find a single word to say. The rustling gowned goddess noted the girl's discomfort and turned toward her, slicing one last braid from her hair and tucking it into the pair of slightly unsteady human hands. Leaning down, the cornsilk goddess kissed the forehead of the girl and whispered "You are more Seneca than all of them together and are always safe here. Take this braid to your father. Tell him the Corn Maidens have been chosen and sacrificed. It will be a sweet corn year."

With no further words, the pale goddess turned and melted away into the field and the Seneca girl ran for home. When she arrived she attempted to compose herself, but her father saw the look on her face as she tried to creep by to her bedroom. "Child, what is it?" he asked with a gentle voice. Still trembling, the Seneca girl held out the gleaming cornsilk braid to her father. He plucked it from her hand with a smile. "A sweet corn year, I see. Wonderful! Go to bed dear. We'll talk... eventually." Smiling, he walked off toward his library, muttering something in Seneca, as he navigated through some piles of books and stepped over a napping cat.

The Seneca girl went to bed and yes, the corn was especially sweet that year. The fat cobs were swathed in gowns of pale and soft green leaves, flowing long corn-silk tops and when shucked, the corn was white as pearls, straight as arrows, perfect like baby teeth.

It was a memorable harvest.

South. East. South.

It was never a case of the mountain not being there anymore, but rather that the mountain was still a little bit there and you just needed to know how to look for it.

In memory it remained indomitable and black, only ever glimpsed with the right kind of eyes. Small eyes that saw in pixels. Unrefined animal eyes that saw in only shades of grey and motion. It was especially revealed in strange edges of visions when an eye did not look directly at the mountain, but to the side of it. In the periphery, sharp planes and time-worn but geometric shapes played in the margins between vista and simple brain.

The Monarch butterflies remembered the mountain, mostly because it was hard to forget something you could still see. In the foreign light of their insect eyes, the mountain still stood. Indomitable, and a bit blurred about the edges as if swathed in a mist. However, the sun shown upon its frozen, jagged planes and lines, and it sometimes winked a knowing brilliant gleam from an inky black and glinting jet facet.

It was not a kind place, nor had it ever been such. The butterflies that stopped there to rest were sometimes just gone the next morning. The massive clumps that hung in trees like overburdened grape vines depleted in numbers overnight. There was no sign of fallen butterflies upon the ground. They were simply vanished. The remainder of the flight would then take off as a rather truncated flock, no longer a glorious spectacle in a cloud of color with the gentle susurration of millions of wings. Instead, the sound was that of a rustle of some dozen satin ball gowns as small orange clouds curled away like smoke into the mists.

Once those survivors were gone, no eyes were left to notice the butterflies remaining behind the wine-dark glass, each flying frantically in an attempt to reach the sunlight and their fellows. Following the instinct to fly, they battered their own wings and wore down their stored nutrients. They slowed and then stopped like a child's toy as the battery runs low. Nothing outside the glass was left to witness the battered insects give in to the cold inside the mountain. Each by each, they tipped over and fell dead. The mountain fed and was sated.

With enough years and generations, the island had culled out the butterflies that would rest upon that mountain. Over the ages, the tiny minds of butterflies became hard wired against stopping on the island overnight. Their minuscule memories or, perhaps seeing the mountain in the far distance somehow dissuaded them, so they flew on. The Monarchs changed their route of travel and did not stop. The lighter than paper insects began taking their pass over the lake as one long flight. It was grueling but that was somehow better. The new route created some loss, but ameliorated the yearly decimation of their species.

The stream of southward flying amber and black wings would suddenly turn at 90 degrees east and fly for about five miles. After that, their course with abruptly correct to south and the creatures that hardly possessed a brain and had never flown this migration path somehow knew precisely where to go and where to avoid.



Between the coming of people and the departing of the butterflies, other species, mostly small mammals, birds and fish would try to make a go at a colony on this island seemingly without predators.With smaller populations, the mountain needed to wait for there to be enough living creatures, breeding creatures and extra creatures that some could just become lost as they slunk, or crawled, or fluttered, or hopped, or swam around their home island of black glass and basalt. The diet of the mountain dwindled and year by year it became a bit harder to see. Misty, sliding further into the periphery of the eye and also curling in upon itself in some atrophy of starvation.

Humans have always had a difficult time arguing with any disparity between eye and mind. The changed course of millions of butterflies was quite noticeable, but it took humans rather a long time to notice since the navigation of the Monarchs took place far out in a deep lake. Humans had few vantage points from which one might glimpse this spectacle and most of those were boats.

And thus, via boats, early people came to this strange island. The first people were of the oldest tribes who searched for good hunting, fishing or resources. None of those were found save shards of black glass that could be chipped and flaked into wickedly keen edged weapons. Unlike with the small animals, the tribal people noticed when fewer people returned and boarded their boats at the end of the day than had disembarked in the morning.

They searched until the sun was setting, the light burning gold over the black planes and angles of the rock, blinding the searchers. When no trace of the missing was found, they retired to their boats and moved further out into the water. Lashing their crafts together for the night, they passed a solemn and near silent night on the water. In the morning, they searched again and saw only strange reflections of their own faces, reflected back with rippled details that sometimes did not look like their own visage, but rather that of the missing.

There is something that reads as deeply wrong to the human mind when you look into a reflecting surface and note that your reflection does not precisely mirror the actions of your own body. The head in the mirror turns slower, the smile lasts too long, the expression in the face is not your own or someone is standing behind you but that image exists only in the faces of the obsidian and there is no one behind you when you turn to check.

Thus, the first peoples left and told stories of terrible loss and a mountain of death to any who would journey to this black island of nothing but sharp edges, pain and loss. The mountain sat for many ages and again became hungry again. From Black Island, one might notice the occasional rumble like thunder from far beneath the mountain. The very earth there growled, considering releasing a bit of magma from the center volcano but usually only managed a few wispy belches of smoke. From time to time, a group of brave men in small boats would come and try to prove themselves against the island. They were not victorious in anything but feeding a nameless monster that contentedly returned to slumber when the few surviving voyagers ran screaming toward their boats in hasty departure.

Many years passed and the mountain noticed boats. Large boats. Large boats that must hold many people. As the mountain was invisible to most eyes, the larger ships just did not come its way. Somewhere in the black heart of a black volcano, amid the chorus of weeping voices in many languages, an idea emerged. The mountain consolidated to one last tall peak. Pulling back the energy of the many lives that bound the island together, the outlying volcanoes, the young ridges of obsidian began to crack and with just a single year of ice and heat, they crumbled into the water forming an inconspicuous shoal in an otherwise very deep channel of the giant lake.

The last volcano slipped almost entirely behind a veil of mist and shadow and light and illusion and discomfort to any eye that might land upon it. Black Island, above and below the water line, waited and it was quite ready. Those ships did come. Oh, yes. Full of people and treasures, they ran at speed through the deep channel night and day. Most were lucky. Others were not.

With a keel torn asunder, rudders detached and holes sliced through the hull by sharp volcanic glass, there was very little time for the people on board to make decisions. Some ships began their sinking right there where the damage occurred. Sometimes survivors of these accidents would see the Black Island and swim furiously for its shores. Washing up on the sharp, black shore, they called themselves lucky for a little while. Soon, concerned with the lack of fresh water, game, vegetation or cover they grew anxious about how they might survive until rescue. They needn't have worried. Soon they were just reflections in the midnight glass.

Others went down with their ships and were probably the lucky ones, unless that ship sank at the roots of the black shoal. In that case, they just became rippling faces in the midnight glass facets that were underwater.

Wrecks small and large would be shifted away to deeper places in the lake. The shoal would sometimes rearrange itself to be much lower like a channel but in an entirely new spot. The peaks of the shoal would then be found closer to the formerly safe passages, sometimes just 20 feet beneath the waterline. The perfect depth for snagging a moderately drafting boat that had considered itself safe to run at speed. Oh, how the wood would cracks and shatters, and upon hearing those sounds, the hungry black glass would let itself be glimpsed by the ship wrecked humans.

The island did not know how much or what it had eaten. It was just a monster of rock and intent. A darkling maw waiting for the next bit of prey to arrive. The prey always came. It still does sometimes. The mountain remains hidden and sated. The ships remain sunken and full of fish and death. The black windows of obsidian below and above the water line can still be viewed with so many pairs of eyes of so many species trying to look out.

But, the butterflies can see the mountain. They have not forgotten to cross the immense lake and make no stops. They fly south, then east, then south again and are precise in their directions.



Copy write 2019, Kristen Gilpin
All Rights Reserved



Sources and Inspiration:

NOTE: The pop articles state something very different than the scientific articles. Lincoln Brower does not ever suggest a giant mountain, rather how flyways develop around obstacles. But a mountain that could 'go away' with little trace. to me, means volcano. Sure enough, Lake Superior's Superior Shoal is a massive conglomeration of basaltic lava flows which are mostly well below the center of the lake- except that pesky part that is only 6 meters below the surface of the lake near a busy shipping channel. So here we have butterflies, a missing mountain, 20 square miles of underwater shoal and debris, a area previously volcanic active and a rift which can sweep away rather a lot of rocky mess. To me, this equals a story

1. Gizmodo Article (2013)

2. MONARCH BUTTERFLY ORIENTATION: MISSING PIECES OF A MAGNIFICENT PUZZLELINCOLN P. BROWERDepartment of Zoology, University of Florida,Gainesville, FL 32611, USAThe Journal of Experimental Biology 199, 93–103 (1996) 93Printed in Great Britain © The Company of Biologists Limited 1996JEB0122

3. Lincoln Brower (1931-2018) Memorial

4. From Wikipedia: The Superior Shoal  is a geologic shoal of approximately 20 square miles (52 km2) located 50 miles (80 km) north of Copper Harbor, Michigan in the middle of Lake Superior, the highest point of which lies only 21 feet (6.4 m) below the lake's surface.[1] The shoal is a hump of Keweenawan basaltic lava flows with ophitic interiors and amygdaloidal tops in an otherwise deep part of the lake, and though fishermen had known of its existence for generations it was only officially charted in 1929 by the United States Lake Survey.[2]:193 It has been theorized that the World War I French minesweepers Inkerman and Cerisoles, which disappeared during their maiden voyage on Lake Superior in mid-November 1918, may have run aground on this shoal[2]:192 and some have theorized that it may have been to blame for both the disappearance of the "Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes" on November 21, 1902 and the sinking of the "Titanic of the Great Lakes" on November 10, 1975 (the SS Bannockburn and SS Edmund Fitzgerald, respectively).[3][4] It is one of the known off-shore spawning and foraging habitats for the juvenile lean lake trout.

5. Monarch Butterfly Migration: A Mystery Of The Natural World - HD Documentary