8FOLD: Mighty Medley # 26, February 2016, by Messrs. Brenton, Perron, Russell, and Stokes

[Tom Russell]

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-------------- ISSUE # 26    FEB 2016 --------------
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------------SAXON BRENTON-ANDREW PERRON-------------
-------------TOM RUSSELL--COLIN STOKES--------------
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--------------- Editor, Tom Russell ----------------
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

"Seven 'Gainst Thebes" Part 24
   by Tom Russell

In which we return to our old friends Silke, Gulliver, and Three-Nine,
who last we saw a year ago, though only a night has passed the way
they measure time. Ruminations on killing and feeling, and on the
meaning of a missed rendezvous. The fate of two friends, revealed.

"A Kink in the Plan"
   by Andrew Perron

A somewhat more risque story than usual for Mr. Perron and the Medley,
but nothing too untoward; you can always ask your parents to explain
it to you. The story is just as charming, as fresh, and as delightful
as any of his others.

"Beyond the Fields" Part 25
   by Saxon Brenton

Our three protagonists take refuge within the gingerbread castle.
Marcus tells his story.

"Empress of Pages" Part 11
   by Colin Stokes

Fn'ordh searches for the Tome, "quite quietly indeed". On the benefits
of multivision, and how time passes, or doesn't, in the Netherworld.

"The Sideways Tree"
   by Tom Russell

A romance of trees. Kindness, and how it might be diminished. Love,
and how it might grow. For anyone who has ever felt the rain on their
spine; for anyone who has watched as another lost their bristles.


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--------------SEVEN 'GAINST THEBES------------------
---------------------Part 24------------------------
------------Copyright 2016 Tom Russell--------------
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Silke and Three-Nine got back to Hattie's place in the early morning.
   "I see Mr. Adams isn't with you," said Paul Strife, a bit glumly.
   "He never showed at the rendezvous," said Silke. "Neither did Peake."
   "That's disconcerting. And Mr. Gulliver?"
   "Sent him out on an errand," said Silke. He paused, then nodded to
himself: "Think he's found something."
   Silke got down from his horse, who had been ridden hard all the
previous night. Presently his boy came out of Hattie's little hut, and
without a word between them immediately set to work feeding and
tending to the horse. Three-Nine went with him, to tend to whatever
needs were possessed by his own mechanical steed.
   When the two of them were left alone, Strife said to Silke, "Your
boy acquitted himself well last night."
   Silke simply nodded at that. The boy had been left with Strife at
the site while the rest went to the rendezvous. The two of them had
been charged with taking down Hattie's skin and given it a proper
Christian burial.
   "He's a little peculiar, your boy," ventured Strife gently. "Of
course, you're a little peculiar too." It being evident that this line
of discourse would not be fruitful, Strife went to the matter at hand.
"So, what's our next move, Mr. Silke?"
   Silke closed his eyes, letting the thing inside his heart twist
this way and that. "The woman's safe," he said, his eyes still closed.
"Heading some miles west, with considerable speed. Adams is alive, at
Thebes."
   "Peake and my brother?" said Strife, a little impatiently.
   "I can't tell," said Silke. "All... jumbled." If this frightened
Silke, he didn't show it. After a moment he opened his eyes. "Here
comes Gulliver, and the Indian."
   Gulliver's flames went out as he lighted upon the ground on the
other side of the stream. He held Skin of Snake in his arms.
   "He looks in a bad way, John," said Gulliver, indulging the
hard-won liberty of addressing Silke by his Christian name.
   "I think I'm going to be ill," announced Strife, who proved true to his word.
   "Take him back to Bleeding Branch," said Silke. "Quick as you can."

"Information!" demanded Three-Nine of Silke's boy. "Where was the woman buried?"
   "Over there," said the boy. They had marked the spot with a ring of
pretty smooth stones. "Let me ask you a question? Do you feel
anything, when you kill somebody?"
   "I am a machine," answered Three-Nine. "I act according to the
parameters of my programming. I do not 'feel'. Information!"
   "Go ahead."
   "Do you feel anything when you kill somebody?"
   "Nah," said the boy, though that weren't exactly true. Killing was
the happiest thing in the world. Killing was better than bacon. He had
always been fine with that, though he knew better than to advertise
it. Now for some reason it didn't sit so fine.
   The boy looked at the ring of stones.

Gulliver landed at the doctor's doorstep and banged on the door with
his big right fist. "C'mon, Doc! Got a patient for you what's needing
your help something fierce! (Hang on there, Injun.)"
   The door opened, but it weren't the doctor that opened it.
   "Howdy, Gulliver," said Hank.


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---------------- A KINK IN THE PLAN ----------------
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-----------Copyright 2016 Andrew Perron-------------
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Some people, thought Princess Croissant, were harmless because they're
trustworthy; if you gave them power, they would *try* to use it well -
well as they could; and if they didn't think they could handle it,
they'd hand it off to someone who could. Others were harmless only
because they didn't have power; if it was given to them, they would
prove to be very dangerous indeed.
  Unfortunately, Madame Mentalist was one of the latter.
  Team Princess Formation had busted into the geological museum's
Unprocessed Finds Archive, only to find the Masquerade Marionettes -
animated puppets left over from MM's last caper - guarding the Gem
Vault. They twirled into action!
  Princess Popover released a cinnamon shroud, dampening the
Marionettes' pseudopsychic senses. Princess Danish tossed a grenadish
into the fog, blasting them back. Princess Strudel spun her
quarterstrudelstaff and took out two Marionettes, but another got her
behind the knee and she fell.
  Princess Petitfours knelt down, helping Strudel up. "You okay, hon?"
  Strudel grunted, flexing her leg experimentally and giving
Petitfours a confident grin. "You know me, cutie, always ready for
more."
  Petitfours giggled. "Oh, don't I ever." She wiggled her eyebrows.
  "Augh you adorable nerds! Quit flirting and focus on the fight!"
Princess Croissant lifted her croissantbow and neatly sniped the
remaining Marionettes. Petitfours ran through with a flying kick and
imploded the doors of the vault.
  Madame Mentalist looked up, cackling. She had shaved her head and
taped electrodes to her scalp, leading to a vibrating box covered in
buttons. "You're too late, Team Princess Formation!" she said, and
held up - the Peridot of Power! Its glow was dappled sunlight through
summer leaves, burning into the cerebral cortex. "Now *you'll* be the
ones overwhelmed by feels!"
  She slamdunked the Peridot into the machine, and green light burst
from her temples, slamming into the Princesses in a dizzying wave.
  Princess Croissant fell to her knees. Pain could be endured. Grief,
anxiety, she'd overcome them. But she had no walls against a wave of
overwhelming pleasure, of sensation so thick and warm and shivery that
she only half-remembered why she'd even want to stop it - a memory
rapidly fading.
  Somewhere above the fluffy pink clouds, Madame Mentalist was
cackling in glee. "Hah! I win! You can't stop me! Even though all
you'd have to do is press the big red button! But you can't! Hahaha!"
  Croissant sensed movement, half-turned her head. Next to her,
Princess Strudel was rising - no, *standing!* Despite all-encompassing
pleasure coaxing her muscles toward perfect relaxation, she took one
step, then another.
  MM gasped. "But-- wait-- no, stop!" She batted at Strudel, who
pushed her out of the way and pushed the button. MM dropped to her
knees. "Nooooo.."
  Croissant guh'd as the sensations faded away. "Whew... nice job, Strudel."
  "Yeah," said Princess Popover, pulling herself up on one of the
racks. "But how did you resist the, um, the pleasure?"
  "Well..." Princess Strudel looked back at Princess Petitfours,
cheeks burning, rubbing the back of her head. "I'm kinda... used to
it?"
  "...oooooo," said Princess Danish, elbowing Princess Croissant.
  "Oooooo!" said all the girls, grinning.
  "Aaaaaa shut up" blushed Princess Petitfours, covering her face and
her big happy embarrassed smile.


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-----------------BEYOND THE FIELDS------------------
---------------------Part 25------------------------
-----------Copyright 2016 Saxon Brenton-------------
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   "I take it back," Marcus had said as he'd stared up at the Castle
of Wonder. "This isn't just annoying. This is flat out terrifying."
   "So do you want to go somewhere else, then?" asked Deidre.
   He glanced at her, then shook his head briefly but ruefully.
"Actually that's not what I was referring to." He walked across the
gravel and opened a side door, looked inside and nodded. "Servants
kitchen," he said and indicated for them to enter.
   The lights inside were low, but like the rest of the apparently
deserted gingerbread castle the kitchen had its running lights on,
including the glowing embers of a fire in the oven.
   Marcus put the kettle on. "Tea or coffee?"
   "Coffee, please," replied Deidre. She glanced around and reflected
on how convivial the situation seemed, providing you were prepared to
ignore the wider context. Which reminded her to be on the lookout for
the other shoe dropping, and prompting her to sit down with deliberate
nonchalance in a position at the table where she had a clear view of
both doors. Meanwhile a treacherous part of her mind demanded, "Yeah,
but what about the inevitable secret passageways in the wall behind
you?"
   The drinks were poured. Once they were all seated Marcus said, "I
may as well begin. My name is Marcus Oustler, and I hold the rank of
Sturmbannfuhrer in the Reichsmages. I have been a professional
sorcerer for almost two decades, and am arguably the leading expert in
occult medicine. For quite some time I've been very concerned about
the effects of magical pollution on the population's health, and just
recently I've taken steps to remove the sources of that problem," he
said, referring to the destruction of the death camps. "My plan was
that tomorrow... later today I should say... I would carry out a
ritual to reverse as much of the damage as possible."
   He let out a breath. "Now, I'm not doing this with any sort of
sanction, so I'm taking a great risk by talking with anybody about
this. But after I kept encountering you two I became worried that I
was being followed, so when I saw you in Berlin *again*, I cast the
most powerful truth sensing spell that I could and trailed along to
see what you were up to. I am now as reasonably convinced as possible
that what you say is true, that this world is not only broken on a
fundamental level, but that it was done deliberately.  I would like to
know about that. As much as possible, so that if it's within my power
to fix it, I can." Then he shrugged and made a little 'over to you'
gesture with one hand.


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---------------- EMPRESS OF PAGES ------------------
----------------------Part 11-----------------------
-----------Copyright 2016 Colin Stokes--------------
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Fn'ordh was racing against an invisible clock. The Librarian could
call him back into the physical realm at any point, without any
warning, and he could no more resist the summons than he could ignore
gravity or the Four Laws.
   It didn't help, he mused, that time seemed to slip by much more
readily in the Netherworld. Even the vast black sun overhead with its
turbulent red corona never changed position. How long had it been
since he returned from the physical realm? A month? Two, perhaps more?
There was no way to know with certainty, and no way to communicate
with her, either - only if she deigned to call him could he respond.
   Fn'ordh didn't dare waste time in any case. He shifted form again,
cautiously, his dark crimson eye splitting apart and multiplying until
his viscous form was full of dull red points of light. As he slid out
of the shadows, he made sure to keep close to the catwalk's surface,
well away from the edge overlooking the vault floor and its barrier
inscriptions. Spreading himself in a thin arc, he began visually
combing the bookshelves for his target, or anything else of interest;
no reason to stop at just one, when he'd be in enough trouble for
being here at all. If all went well, he'd return with an armful of
treasures when called.
   If all went well...
   His multivision recorded the vault's shelves in minute detail, over
and over, to ensure that he missed nothing. Even the smallest clue,
the tiniest irregularity, might mean the difference between an
ordinary book (if anything here was ordinary) and the Tome he sought.
As quietly as possible - which for Fn'ordh's current form was quite
quiet indeed, if a little squelchy at times - he shifted his arcing
body around the catwalk, completing an entire, torturously slow
circuit of the vault before finally returning to where he began.
   Fn'ordh analyzed the data, concerned. Not one or two, but /five/
points of interest - and only two of them relatively close together.
The five books he had seen were noteworthy for their plainness; where
all the others were shimmering, gilded, dancing with magical lights,
glowing, or any other kind of distracting, these books were utterly
plain and untouched. And they remained so, no matter where Fn'ordh was
when surveying them; all the others would change their appearance
depending on the distance or angle. It was a devious disguise, one
that only a careful and thorough study like his could have discovered
- and one that would surely have confounded any thief looking for a
quick smash-and-grab.
   If he was meant to be slowed down here, Fn'ordh mused darkly, was
there another trap waiting to catch him the moment he made his move?
Or was it contingent on the guards noticing, the barriers breaking, or
anything else? Did /anyone/ know he was here, or had he managed to
escape discovery so far? And what of the five books - would they
trigger alarms when taken from their places, or could he recover them
all with no one the wiser? Or were they false leads, too, and the
/real/ books of value hidden still deeper in the vault?
   Fn'ordh edged over to where two of the books were, and clumped up
into a ball, shifting one eye forward and one eye behind to serve as a
sentry, the rest melting back into his gelatinous body. Extending a
tendril, he rested it atop one of the legitimate books and waited for
a long moment. Nothing happened, so he gave it a gentle tug, and the
book slid effortlessly from between its neighbors and off the shelf.
It would have hit the catwalk and made a noise, if he hadn't rolled
forward to cushion its fall - it made a noise anyway, but a much
quieter sort of *splat*.
   Damned thing was heavy, though. He delicately rested the book
beside him, and waited for the pain to go away, thankful that he
hadn't formed a mouth or lungs.
   Every moment that ticked by, Fn'ordh had to fight the urge to
panic. Nothing was happening, at least not /visibly/, and he had the
sinking feeling that if the effects weren't apparent there'd be no way
to defend himself, particularly in this form. But what else was he to
do? He left the first book where it was, and slid over to the nearby
one, tipping it out of the shelf and catching it securely with four
tendrils this time, having learned his lesson. Yet even after waiting
again, rearward eye glancing between the floor inscriptions and the
stairwell - even then, nothing changed. This horrible uncertainty was
almost too much to take.
   One by one, Fn'ordh delicately removed the remaining books from
their shelves, then brought them together with painstaking slowness,
making sure not to make any sounds and thereby give away his position.
Creeping back into the shadows, he opened the cover of one of the
books at random - the outsides were all devoid of distinguishing marks
or text - and stared aghast at the random jumble of letters and
numbers and odd marks that were neither. Could this really be called a
book?
   The Librarian will know what to do, Fn'ordh decided, and gathered
up the books.
   How much longer would he have to wait?  He hadn't been forgotten, had he?


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----------------- THE SIDEWAYS TREE ----------------
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-------------Copyright 2016 Tom Russell-------------
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There was a tree, an evergreen: she was well-ringed, dependable,
vibrant and bristling, but quite alone.
   A squirrel saw this, and it buried a seed near the tree. The tree
supposed this was out of kindness, for she was herself kind, and saw
this always in others. She waited, impatiently, for the seed to
sprout.
   It did not come the first spring, nor the one that followed. The
seasons passed and she supposed that nothing would ever grow near her.
   The seed did finally sprout into a sapling one spring, and though
she had waited for him for so long, it did not dim her enthusiasm. He
was a silly little sapling, and he would not grow straight. Instead
his trunk snaked sideways, hovering a few inches off the ground. His
branches, if you could call them branches, grew close to his trunk and
would not stretch out. He had no leaves, and when it stormed, the rain
would touch his spine, and he would collapse from the weight of the
water.
   You should try to grow straight, said the evergreen. You should try
to grow your branches out. You should try to grow leaves.
   And the sapling did try, but the more he tried, the worse it seemed
to get. And so when it rained, she stretched out her long branches,
and her bristles kept him dry. Under her branches, and in her soil, he
grew. Not taller, and not straighter, but longer and more sideways.
Despite this, she loved him. Because of this, she loved him. And he
loved her.
   But soon, too soon, her bristles began to curl up and fall off.
Whether it was the pain from stretching out her branches to keep him
dry, or some disease in his roots that had spread to her soil, neither
of them knew. But he was sure it was her fault, and when the pain was
too great, she felt the same. Her bristles fell away; her kindness
fell away. He tried to grow straight for her, tried to grow tall for
her, but the more he tried, the worse it seemed to get. And every day
she lost more leaves, until one night, the young tree felt the rain on
his spine. She had lost all her bristles. Still she loved him. Despite
this, she loved him. And he loved her. The winter was cold and
miserable, and they were cold and miserable together.
   When the spring came, the sideways tree began to grow, if not
straight, then at least straighter. His branches stretched out and
became green. He did not so much stand above or next to the evergreen,
but around her. He didn't try; he simply did. When it stormed, he
stretched out his long branches, and his leaves kept her dry.


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-----------------SEE YOU NEXT MONTH-----------------
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