Son of the Wolf

Illustration by Shabazik

In her small cell in  Castle Kreuzfeldt. , the center of the Holy Order of the Sword of Nortender, Pris, daughter of Amphy the Amphibian Girl,  looked across the wooden table at the earnest young werewolf, and sighed.

Behind Pris, in various stages of slovenly undress were Pris's two Ozcura half-sisters, the orcpeliers  Hortense and Magdalena, who were giggling, whispering lewd suggestions in Pris' ear and winking at the increasingly uncomfortable werewolf.

In her journey north through Aels, Pris had been captured by a band of orcpeliers - Ozcuras who had switched sides from the armies of the Dark Legion of Demons and enlisted, for a variety of reasons - with the Dark Legion's mortal foes, the Christian kingdom of Nortender and the Holy Order of the Sword. The warrior monks of the Order took many non-humans into their ranks, a tolerance regarded as near heresy by many others in the Christian kingdoms But humanity was losing the Second War of the Power at this point, and the Order needed to make use of anyone it could.

The heads of the Order did not seem to know exactly what to make of Pris, who seemed both human and yet not entirely human. She was not exactly a prisoner, but not exactly free to go, either. She had avoided telling them much about Earth , and the ways between the worlds that she had used to make her way to Aiers after the death of her mother.

Discovering her two half sisters - daughters of Layla the Chain Mail Bikini Warrior and her father, Bog the Barbarian, had been a decidedly mixed pleasure. Pris, who had idolized the father she had never known growing up in the Louisiana bayou, found the reality  of Bog the Barbarian's notorious womanizing and his many, many offspring all over Lower Poliforia and the continent of Aels an unpleasant surprise, and her two new sisters had a special knack for getting on her nerves.

"Could you two knock it off?" said Pris, taking an irritable swat at a grinning Hortense. The two were even more annoying than usual. They had recently decided that Pris's adherence to what was, to them, an unnatural and debilitating form of chastity was actually detrimental to her health. Their crude and clumsy attempts to fix her up with knights of the Order, the stableboy, the renegade succubus working in the library, a Galaw orc prisoner and any passing stranger that caught their undemanding fancy were a constant source of aggravation to the somewhat withdrawn, aloof, diffident-seeming Pris, whose reserved manner concealed a shy, sensitive nature. 

There was nothing shy or sensitive about either Hortense or Magdalena. "It is so romantic! He is looking for his father who he never knew! Hiz father came from that stupid Earth planet you is always going on on about" Hortense said.

"I never go on about..." replied Pris had replied angrily.

Hortense waved a grey, clawed hand dismissively "It soundz like a real boring place anyway."

Magdelena  sidled up to the bench alongside the werewolf, who recoiled from her with a look of horror in his soft brown eyes. "It iz fate! First you tell him about hiz father and, uh, heal hiz soul or something..."

"And then you fuck!" said Hortense, eyes glittering. "Can we watch?"

"No, you cannot..." Pris halted and began again "We are absolutely not going to..."

"But why not?" asked Magdalena, "Loooook how cute and fuzzy he iz!" 

The young werewolf stood up abruptly, depositing Magdalena on the floor. "I must apologize, gentle Lady Pris, for the uncouth ways of my orcpelier companion. On my honor, I,  Frank, son of my father, Frank, have sworn an oath to train in purity and chastity, until I can take my place in battle alongside my brethren of the Order."

"Some in this order" Frank the Werewolf Knight added, a slight edge in his voice, "may not take their vows seriously - I do! Be assured, Lady Pris, that the sword of Frank is ever ready to guard you, and I have no intention or desire to violate the sacred temple of your body. "

"Um, okay" said Pris.  Hortense groaned. "He iz alwayz talking like this."

"The Dark Legion of Demons has been sent to plague Aiers as a condign punishment for our grievous sins" said the young werewolf "the sins of all it's peoples, including even the humans, who brought the word of Christ but who often most stand in need of His forgiveness!"

"Some humans think we werewolves to be wholly creatures of darkness" continued Frank, his voice rising, trembling a little with long suppressed emotion "but if He wills it, I will prove otherwise on the battlefield!"

"Ah..." replied Pris "Well I guess you can do that."

"My father died before I was born" continued the werewolf knight "and my mother was taken by a fever when I was young. I was taken in by a family of Christian werewolves far, far to the north of here. They knew nothing of my father. "

"We were not liked by our human neighbors." The young werewolf paused,  

"I do not blame them for that, considering how many of my kin have enlisted in the service of Hell. I have long ago forgiven them. Humans are now my brethren, and in their schools, here and elsewhere I came to understand that Christ Jesus saves all, that all are equal in Him. But all the time I was growing up, I thought to myself - I knew - that my father had been a hero! He must have died fighting the foul fiends in the south, else why did my mother flee north with me into Nortender, into Christian lands?"

"When these good orcpeliers told me you came from Earth,  - a word that is one of the few things my poor mother left me - I came hoping that you might have known something of my father. legends, ballads perhaps."

"Earth is a very big place" said Pris, gently "I don't think that..." Pris stopped in midsentence. All this time something had been increasingly nagging at the back of her mind, something about the young werewolves' appearance, the way he stood..."Wait Your name is Frank, right? And your father's name was Frank as well?"

"The very same name, a name I hope to bear with honor" replied the young werewolf gravely "although, begging your pardon, gentle Lady Pris, the way you pronounce it   is very strange"

And then, suddenly, Pris knew. The way he pronounced his name in Lower Poliforian, that's why I didn't recognize it right away. 

"Oh my God" Pris said "You...You're the son of Frank the Werewolf!

And then the memories came flooding back.

"You knew my father?" the young werewolf sat down "Please...please tell me about him!"

"My mother knew him. Back on Earth, after she'd come back from this world"

"Your mother..." the young werewolf paused, "Wasn't she the one they called the Swamp Demon? The Amphibian Girl? The Killer of Ozcuras?"

"Ha!" said Hortense. "Her mom tried to kill our mom" added Magdalena smugly "but our Mom was Layla the Chain Mail Bikini Warrior. She way smarter than frog lady!"

"Goddamit, Magdalena!" said Pris , pale with fury  "try saying that again"

Magdelena just laughed, and Hortense shook her head "Our half sister is kind of boring and real touchy but I guess we iz family after all."

"Please." said the young werewolf "from the stories I've heard about your mother, Lady Pris,  she only fought the unconverted Ozcuras  of the Demonlands, not orcpeliers in God's service! Surely she fought on God's side whether she knew it or not!"

"The only side my mother was ever on was her own" muttered Pris

"Can you tell me about my father? What did he look like"  The young werewolf's soft brown eyes were fixed steadily on Pris. "Tell me everything"

Pris' mind was in turmoil. What am I going to say to him? 

Back on Earth, back in Louisiana  where she had grown up with her cryptid mother, living with her in the riverside cave  that was their home, she had known Frank the Werewolf.

 Frank the Tweaker Werewolf, a skinny, mangy smelly creature, who barely survived by breaking into apartment mailboxes, prowling cars, stealing copper wiring, and similar crimes. In his criminal career, Frank displayed determined, stubborn stupidity. He nearly died when a  attempt to take down a power line for the copper left him with severe burns. He would break into convenience stores, start drink cans of malt liquor from the cooler and be found passed out on the floor the next morning. As as werewolf he was feared by no one, and his ill-timed attempts at burglary invariably resulted in him being beaten and stomped nearly to death by his would be victims, or sped on his way as he fled the scene by a homeowner's shotgun.

Pris could still hear's Frank the Werewolf's aggravating, intolerable whining voice as her mother Amphy grimly extracted the shotgun pellets from his hide with a pair of tweezers. "Dammit, Amphy!" Frank was complaining "I'm a werewolf! I'm a feared supernatural creature of the night! Why the hail  ain no one afraid of me? Why don' they have no respect?"

"It's not werewolves folk have no respect for" said Amphy "It's just you, Frank"

Frank had shown up when Pris had entered Napoleonville High School. "This was a difficult time for her for all the usual reason and for other reasons as well. Her mother, Amphy the Amphibian Girl was a unacknowledged but all too real and universally feared figure to those living in the area and it was no secret that Pris was her daughter. As a result Pris led a lonely existence, surrounded by a invisible bubble of fear. 

This  was in no way made any easier by Pris walking into the main living area of their cave and being presented with the unwelcome spectacle of her mother huddle on a blanket next to a naked hairy canine thing. The room smelt of wet dog and unwholesome physical activity, overlaid with a faint bluish haze from the meth bong Amphy and her friend had been passing back and forth as they watched Jeopardy! on an ancient b/w portable Tv set.

Amphy turned and saw her daughter, and instantly leapt to her feet as she tossed a blanket over her companion. "Oh, hey, lil' tadpole, you home early..."

"Don't think we've been introduced, Mom" replied Pris.

"Kin I come out from under the blanket now?" the werewolf asked .

Pris had never seen her mother quite so flustered "Shut up, Frank!" Amphy snapped, and punctuated her request with a kick "You stay under that blanket until I say otherwise!"

"Listen here, lil' one" Amphy hissed very rapidly to Pris "don get the wrong idea that just Frank he don mean nothin' what yore dear father and your mother had was love this ain love this jus' kine scratchin' an itch now how about you uh, go  on to your room an' I'll hustle him out of here real quick, okay?"

"Goddammit, Mom! A werewolf?"

Amphy blushed a deeper shade of green "Your poor mother got needs, lil' one. When you older you'll understand" her mother finally muttered, not looking at her daughter.

After that, her mother's new boyfriend seemed to be there all the time, showing up at all hours of the day or nights, wanting to get high for free, needing to borrow money, whining at length about his bad luck and about how nobody ever gave him a break.

Pris hated seeing Frank slouching around the cave, how he cringed and wheedled and begged for drugs from her mother ("Feelin' awful sick, if you coul' see your way to frontin' me a teener I swear I'd pay you back on th'...")

Pris also hated the effect that Frank seemed to have on her mother, the way Amphy treated Frank with faint contempt, ordering him about, rarely if ever using his given name but addressing him instead as "furball" or "hey, you". 

But above all Pris hated hearing the muffled cries and groans from her mother's sleeping area. You said my father was the only man for you Pris thought furiously, feeling betrayed on behalf of the father she'd never seen. At such times she wished that somehow she could summon her father, Bog the Barbarian, from distant Aiers to set everything right. He'd cut your fucking head off, Frank, and then Mom and Dad could be together and we'd be a family and everything would be fine! Pris said to herself, hot tears welling up in her eyes.

Weeks of frustrated hatred finally came to a head when Pris brushed past in one of the dimly lit cave tunnels and felt - or thought she felt - the werewolf attempt to grab her ass. Whirling around, Pris grabbed Frank by the throat and slammed him against the tunnel wall. She felt his skinny, body tremble helplessly, saw the look of mortal terror on Frank's furry face. 

"Real sorry, Miz Pris, just an accident, din mean nothing..." Frank choked out the words.

"Shut up!" Pris had never been angrier in her life "You ever even think about touching me again, you rotten fleabag and I will wring your fucking neck!" Pris slammed the hapless werewolf against the wall again, before releasing him to slide down and fall to the tunnel floor, cringing and holding up his arms to shield his face.

"Stay way the hell away from me, Frank!" Pris hissed. Repeating that " it just an accident, real sorry" Frank got shakily to his feet and stumbled down the tunnel away from Pris, muttering random apologetic words as he went.

Cursing under her breath, still furious, Pris made her way to her part of the cave, turned on her sticker-covered boombox and popped in a mixtape, fast forwarding until she got to Gang of Four's "Armalite Rifle" She put on her headphones and turned up the volume.

Armalite rifle police duty eh?

Armalite rifle use it everyday

It'll do you damage it'll do you harm

Blow your legs off blow your guts out

"Do you damage, Frank" she muttered 

It'll do you damage it'll do you damage

Damage damage damage damage damage

Pris rewound the cassette tape and listened to the song again, imagining blasting Frank the Werewolf to bloody rags. She felt a little better.

The next morning, Pris entered the common area of the cave a little apprehensively. Had her mother heard the altercation she'd had with Frank last night?

Her mother was setting out breakfast - two bowls of Froot Loops cereal, two glasses of Sunny D quasi orange juice  - when she saw Pris. 

"Morning mom" Pris said.

Amphy looked up, an odd, uncertain expression on her flat green face. "Mornin', lil' tadpole" 

Something's different Pris thought. Then she noticed that the pile of dirty blankets, shopping bags, glass pipe and other assorted filth that Frank had had brought into the cave with him was gone.

"Um" began Amphy "Your dear mother owes you an apology, lil' one. Had no right to inflict the furball on you, an' I know how much you hated havin' him aroun'  He gone for good now, an he won't ever be back. And I won't ever put you through nothin like that ever again, I swear. I know" Amphy paused, looked at the floor " I ain exactly mother of the year as it is, and I surely mus be a sore trial to you at times, dear one, but no call to make matters worse."

"He's gone?" said Pris

"Oh yeah, gone for good, he ain darkening our doorstep - well, cavestep ever again!"

"Mom" said Pris "You didn't..."

"No, no, nothin' like that. It kine in poor taste to be cuttin' the throat of someone you recently shared uh, intimacy with...although I declare I was tempted when a half pound of Chine White mysteriously grew legs an' vanished from here. But, no."

"No" said Amphy, grinnin' "Poor ol' Frank, as you may have noticed, ain exactly doin' to well here, ain really fittin' in. So I says 'Frank', I says ,You need a change of scenery. Some place with co-operative females an lots of yer fellow werewolf kin to help you out!"

"Huh?" Pris said, sitting down to her Froot Loops "Where would that  be?"

"Oh," Amphy said, waving one big webbed hand at nothing in particular "Far away, lil one. Far away from here! Showed him how to get there an' gave him some advice on where to go and who to see over there. They'll make him feel right at home, fix him up proper!"

"Um, okay, whatever Mom" Pris replied.

"Important thing he gone, an he ain never comin' back!" Amphy picked up the plastic jug of Sunny-D. "Here have some more of this, citrus, keep the fuckin' scurvy away!"

Whatever the truth of Frank's final destination was one thing was certain - as her mother promised, Pris never saw Frank the Tweaker Werewolf again.

"I...I didn't know him personally...too well."Pris stumbled, as the quiet young werewolf in the surcoat and tabard stared at her.

"He was distant, quiet" Pris improvised frantically "Your father always stood up for what be, uh, believed in...he had a real passion, for, uh, justice."

"Of course" replied Frank, Jr (as Pris mentally dubbed him) "Of course. And that is why he came from distant Earth to Aiers, to fight for God's cause against the foul fiends. He fell in unequal combat, defying them until the end. Sacrificing himself to save us all."

Wait Pris thought Something's wrong here. Frank was no heroic fighter! Frank was terrified of everything! There's no possible way he ever defied any foul fiends!

And then suddenly Pris knew. Mom! she thought.

"Far away, lil one. Far away from here! Showed him how to get there an' gave him some advice on where to go and who to see over there. They'll make him feel right at home, fix him up proper!"

Mom sent him here! Mom sent him to Aiers!

Poor taste to slit your lover's throat? Her mother had thought of a better way to dispose of her unwanted canine companion. Gave him some advice? Her mother had told him who to see and where to go on Aiers, all right!

 Did she tell Frank about all the hot 24/7 pussy Frank could get from the Ozcura warbands or even the supposedly Christian orcpeliers? Did she forget to mention what Ozcuras did to their lovers afterward? Pris recalled a common saying on Aiers - Ozcuras always break their toys.

She glanced over at Magdalena and Hortense, who were grinning and showing their sharp little pointed teeth. Pris shuddered. Poor stupid horny Frank! Even he didn't deserve that!

Or did her mother urge hapless Frank to visit his werewolf kin in Pumori's domain, in Howl? "His kind" indeed? The werewolves of Howl had a short way with petty thieves like Frank and in short order the easily angered Pumori would have had Frank's mangy hide nailed to the city walls. Did her mother fail to inform poor Frank of that?

Of course she did Pris thought That was why she was so certain Frank would never, ever return from his trip across space and time, walking the ways between the worlds to his certain death!

Behind cheerful rural cryptid Amphy, behind a loutish facade, was another personality that came out when needed - Amphy as she had been millions of years in Earth's distant past, when she was Lieutenant Inarraa, intelligence officer in the Second Main Directorate of the Army of Great Dagon - cold, calculating, cunning and cruel. 

A elegant solution Amphy /Inaraa must have thought Let others do your killing for you, just by withholding a few facts from your victim.

And again Pris wondered - had her mother overheard the altercation in the corridor that night, when Frank - maybe - tried to grope Pris? That alone would have enough to seal Frank's fate.

And now his son was sitting across from her.

"Thank you, Lady Pris" he was saying. "Thank you for telling of my father, of his bravery and selfless sacrifice.

What? Pris thought I hardly told you anything at all!

"I swear I will take my place with my comrade Knights of the Order - although some say I am too young yet! Deus Vult! I will avenge my father in honorable battle against the Dark Legion fiends!" The expression on the young werewolf's face seemed almost transfigured.

Oh God Pris thought You've been lied to all your life. First his mother - devising some facesaving myth to hide the sordid reality of  Frank's wretched demise. As I did, just now

Pris thought, with a kind of helpless despair I lied because it was easier, because I couldn't tell him the simple ugly truth so I made up a pretty lie instead.

And these lies are going to get him killed. 

Looking at Frank Jr, Pris saw now how much he resembled his poor hopeless father - how, despite all their differences they were alike in one respect - they were both doomed.

"Again, many thanks Lady Pris" the young werewolf "Your tales of my noble father will give me courage in the fight to come. You have done me an immense service."

Pris wanted to scream No, no you fucking fool, no I haven't! I've helped to lead you down the road to your death, just like my mother did to your father, all those years ago!

But instead she just nodded, and tried look gracious, and said as little as possible.

Much later, after the werewolf knight had departed, Pris sat staring out one of the narrow windows in the tower. 

Her Ozcura half-sister Magdalena came upon silent Pris.

"Hmmph" said Magdalena "Staring out the window? Hortense and  I went to lots of trouble getting you together with that cute wolf boy and nothing happenz! You iz really weird half-sister! 

"Sorry" Pris replied.

"You goin to start fadin' away if you don't loosen up a lil' an' get some" Magdalena assumed a slightly hectoring tone "We iz your half-sisters an' we iz only thinkin' of your health.  Also we iz rresponsible to Brother Cleves for you stayin' alive an healthy..."

"Look" said Pris, turning away from the window to face Magdalena "I'm fine, just not not in the mood for..."

"You been  crying?" Magdalena said, seeing Pris' swollen eyes and wet ear tracks down Pris face.

"Whatz there to cry about?" asked the Ozcura, genuinely puzzled. "It a nice day, sun shining, me an' Hortense was thinkin of doing a lil reconnoiterin across the line and maybe collect a few headz, do a lil' looting...We can get two coppers each for our erring sisterz headz, easy money! You should come with uz, half-sister Pris, show you lotz of wayz to sneak up..."

"Not up for it just now," Pris said, wiping her eyes. "Maybe another time."

Magdalena shook her head "Crying over nothing! First sign of your brain softening! Pretty soon your brains gonna run out your ears an your junk gonna fall in. Don say your dear half-sisters didn't try to help you!"

"Not too late yet" Magdalena added. "There a real cute elf boy started workin' in the library, we could grab him an tie him up an you wouldn't hardly have to do  anything..."

"Thanks" replied Pris "I think I'll pass."

Magdalena threw up her grey clawed hands in disgust. "Fine, fine" she muttered, before finally stalking off down the stone corridor.

Pris watched her go, and then sat down again, suddenly feeling very tired.

What was I crying about? Pris thought. She had never been much for tears, in contrast to her emotional mother. She always hated the idea of losing control. 

Was it for her mother, long dead and left behind on Earth? Was it for Frank Junior, who she knew would soon lie torn and lifeless on some some bloody battlefield or another? Was it for poor, wretched Frank, Senior, hopeless and miserable, who would have been better off never having being born at all? Or was it for herself, as the two fates of father and son revealed to her that the world was a pointless, meaningless cruel trap, leading nowhere but to pain and death?

Dear reader -  who ,whether you know it or not yet, are caught in the same cruel trap - perhaps poor Pris was crying for all of them -   pathetic Frank Sr, doomed Frank Jr, her  mother Amphy, who Pris missed every day... 

Perhaps she she shed a tear for all of them.

 And for all of us as well, our futile plans, our approaching death,  - all of you reading this now.

May the ever merciful  wonderworking Daughter of the Deep forgive us all.

The Lost One

Artwork by Arnilo


Greenhall, that grim, battered stone keep, loomed over grey seas and wind swept beaches, over the sprawling pirate's town that had sprung up around it, over the ships and slave pens of the greatest reiver these seas had ever known - Argora Blackbolt, Galaw orc, pirate chief. It was she who had repaired and now resided within Greenhall Keep.

Outside wind and rain battered at the windows of a small chamber just off the main hall. Inside the chamber, looking out at the grey windy void, rgeough narrowed yellow eyes, was Argora herself, six feet tall of  High Galaw orc, muscles moving beneath smooth green skin, dressed in canvas and boiled leather. She was at the prime of her life, with only a slight streak of grey in her hair. At a table sat an immense figure, another orc but as dissimilar to the Galaw as night is to day - an orc of the Vanolosé, Blid by name, accountant and advisor to Argora. He had an abacus near to hand, and was making some notations in a set of great leather bound ledgers.

"...and with the lasht month's takings, we have five thoushand  nine hundred and fifty two pounds of gold, twelve thoushand shix hundred eighty-two of silver in coin and bullion at our ready disposhal, while in ranshomable prishoners we have..." Blid was saying.

"Enough, Blid" Argora turned away from the window. "It's hard even to concieve of such wealth. For me it is, anyway. The wealth of Argora Blackbolt..."The Galaw orc smiled slightly "For Argora Blackbolt it's only her due. For another Argora..."

"The other Argora?" Blid looked up from the ledgers.

"Argora as I was." she replied "Growing up friendless and shunned by all."

Argora paused "You know, a while back I revisited the nostalgic scenes of my youth."

Blid knew, but decided to say nothing. It had  not been a profitable venture.

"Burned down a few wretched huts, took some pitiable goods, slew a few people who were unlucky enough to be remembered by me. But none of them remembered who I was at all, none remembered the starving child I had been, none remembered the shunned one who, they, as children threw stones at and drove from their company. I must have seemed like some manifestation of pure chance, robbing and burning and slaying for no reason, like a storm or a plague among their miserable goat herds. It wasn't nearly as satisfying a revenge as I had thought it would be, when that starving child wished death and destruction on them all."

"Really, I shouldn't have hated my old kith and kin" Argora continued "They taught me an important lesson. About how you can only depend on yourself in this world, and that the chains of family and your neighbors are the first things you must break if you ever want to be free. No one will give you anything you don't take."

Blid, having closed the ledgers with a sigh - in these moods, Argora was not interested in bookkeeping - put away his ink and replaced the abacus on a shelf.

Argora was still talking, partly to Blid and partly to herself "Well, I havn't done so badly, have I? And I've paid off many debts. Oh, yes. Have you ever heard that story they tell in Nortender - you know, the one about the knight who is the head of the Order there, on his deathbed? And - as the followers of the Nailed God do - they ask him to confess his sins and forgive his enemies before he dies. And  the knight replies, firmly: "I have no enemies to forgive - I had them all killed."

 Argora laughed "Well, that's me, all right. Although..."  She turned to Blid, frowning "Tell me true now...does the frog-bitch still live?"

"She ish surely dead by now" Blid replied, evasively. "Say, I wash wondering" he said, to change the subject "what exactly is thish?" Blid picked up a small, battered wooden figure from the shelf next to the abacus.

Irritated, Argora snapped "Don't palm me off Blid! About the frog-bitch, is she..."

At that moment a tall, graceful person entered the room, not quite human, a young deer woman - the doar, Flea. Argora turned to her and they embraced. No one knew where the mysterious doar had originated, beautiful and mute as she was, but she had been brought up by the ruthless pirate chief as her own daughter, and at times seemed to be the only thing Argora loved. 

"How are you my dear?" said Argora. The doar nodded happily, and rapidly mimed contentment. Argora smiled, turning to Blid and saying "Well, we'll discuss you-know-who at another time."

Blid was examining the wooden statuette. Battered and worn though it was, there were flecks of green paint still remaining on the bare wood. One of the statue's arms had long ago been broken off - the other extended an empty fist, as if it had been holding something.

Flea crossed over to Blid and touched the wooden statue. Blid gave it to her, and the doar examined it as well.

"I don't know what you see in that thing" remarked Argora "I've had it as long as I can remember, before I became Blackbolt, actually. I have no idea where I got it, or when, but it's plainly of no value. I keep meaning to throw it out but for some reason I never do."

"There are traces of fine carving on it" Blid said "but nothing I am familiar with." Flea turned the statuette over and over in her hands.

"Wherever I got it" said Argora "certain it is no one gave it to me. No one gave me anything as a child."

And now we travel uncounted miles away, far from Aiers and Greenhill, through space and time to somewhere else, millions of years ago in our own past, on a continent long since sunk beneath the waves. It is the Southern Continent, and we are in the Lowlands of the Realm of Great Dagon, on an entirely respectable small estate of the seafolk gentry. We see a small green figure sitting on a slight sandhill next to a miniscule stream. This figure is none other than she who we know, in years to come, as Amphy the Amphibian Girl.

 She was called Inarraa then,a young tadpole, bright and new herself in that springtime world, and she was the much loved and much cherished young mistress, heir to the estate. Just now she was playing among a vast array of toy soldiers, waiting for some of her cousins to come back and help her maneuver her army.

"Lets see" she said to herself, arranging a line of green spearwomen on a rise in the ground "this Ro takes the high ground here, an' then I put the stone thrower here an' then the battle can start!"

A growling in her stomach reminded her she was hungry, so Inarra picked up the lunch box a human servant had brought down to her a little while ago, and opened it to see an array of carefully packed fresh fish and rice rolls, kept cool by the white laquered lunchbox. She was about to take one out before she sensed that someone was was watching her. Inarraa looked up.

Some distance away another small green creature, dusty and disheveled, wearing a tattered grey smock, was looking intently at her. At first Inaraa thought it was one of her cousins, but she  then noticed the near human features. Inarrraa tried to think. Were there green humans? 

And unbidden, came a memory of the session she had had with her last tutor, the one she didn't like.

 Inarraa had no idea exactly why she didn't like the new tutor, but there it was. Something about the new tutors faint condescension towards them all, the slight imperceptable sneer of an Inqanok town dweller , the amused tolerance of the rural countryside's backwards ways. 

During the last session the topic was human beings and their different types. Her tutor had laughed and said "Well, no matter what outdated superstitions claim, really, humans are just mongrels, biologically inferior. Science tell us that they are impure, lower in the great hierarchy of life, and that we seafolk are the only pure race. All this old-fashioned stuff about they and us being sisters in Dagon..."

At that point the door had opened and her mother looked in, frowning. She motioned to the tutor to come outside, and they both disappeared down the hallway to her mother's study. Inarraa listened but could only catch a few disconnected phrases of the argument that ensued - "will not have blasphemy taught my daughter" "there is no morality in a fact..." "your contract states, ma'am" "outdated folk-beliefs are..."  among others.

And that afternoon saw the new tutor and her baggage getting on a carriage and disappearing down the dusty road, to Inarraa's relief.

Later, her mother had taken her aside "Young one" she had said to her "our human tenants are our responsibility, a very great responsibility. They are lacking in many respects but they are our sisters and brothers in Great Dagon, and we must never be so arrogant as to forget that. We must help them and guide them, and someday you will be mistress here - and I hope you keep that in mind Inarraa."

And now Inaraa saw that the small green creature with bright yellow eyes was looking intently at her box of rice and fish, with a hungry expression on her face.

Inarraa thought to herself "I am the young mistress here" and thought of her mother handing out fish to sick and aged tenants of theirs. Determined to act like the generous young mistress, Inaraa pushed the lacquered box over to the strange little green person, who first stared at Inaraa, as if fearing some hidden trick. 

"Go on" said Inarraa "take one. It's all right."

Somehow reassured, the little green creature fell upon the rice and fish and stuffed it into her mouth with both hands, quickly gulping down all of the remaining food as Inarraa watched, wide eyed.

"Well" said Inarraa, a little taken aback "you certainly must have been hungry."

The food box forgotten, the little green creature was crawling around a line of Inaraa's toy soldiers, picking one up, examining it, then putting it back. I wonder if she has any toys of her own thought Inaraaa, pitying her. 

Her visitor had picked up a toy spearwoman, and was looking at it with obvious longing. A sudden desire to be very generous, as generous as befitted the young heir, the young mistress, overcame Inarraa.

"Do you like that one?" Inarraa said softly "You can have it to keep if you want. I have lots more."

The strange little girl looked up at that, and Inarraa nodded and repeated "It's all yours" For just a moment, Inarraa thought she saw a tentative smile on her face.

At that moment, Inarraa heard voices behind her, and turned to see several of her cousins running down the hill towards her, back to play with her.

Inarraa turned to the strange little girl and was about to say "You can play with us if you like" but the strange little girl was no longer there. She was gone, and so was the toy soldier. And there were no marks on the sandy soil to indicate where she had been.

"That's odd" thought Inarraa, and throughout most of that afternoon she wondered, from time to time, where the strange little girl had gone, and hoped she might re-emerge from the surrounding sparse forest and play with them. She looked so lonely, and so lost.

But presently she forgot all about her visitor, and the missing toy soldier.

"No." said Argora "nobody ever gave me anything" She shook her head. "Come along, Blid" she said to the giant Vanolosé orc "I want to take another look at those ships we just purchased. Those bastards will cheat us blind if we don't inspect what they send us thoroughly."

And yet for some time after Blid and Argora had left the chamber, Flea stood alone, pressing the battered little wooden statue to her chest, with a faint, shy smile on her face. 

Toys

Amphy remembers...

"I had lotsa toys when I was a lil tadpole- toy soldiers an' toy birds with flappin' wings, board games an' a model sailing ship I made myself, a model of a three-master ocean crossin schooner of the Free Traders, all made of wood an' ivory and lil' metal castings! You could set all the sails, raise an' lower th' anchor!"

"It took me a month to put it together, even with my mother helpin' - I is sorry to say she cursed the writers of the instruction sheets now and them, some Inquanok merchants went by the name of Frog & Heller, something like that, but we got it built at last an sailed it around in one of the fish ponds!)."

"Toys in my day wern't no plastic shit neither, but made of polished wood an' veneer and lacquer work, bright enamel color on thin metal! I had hundreds of toys, whole armies of hand painted toy soldiers, kites, all manner of things to play with and to set yore dreams on! So did my cousins an' nieces when they showed up! Even the local lil' human children I played with sometime made their own spinnin' tops and stuff like that, near as good as them store-bought ones. Not to mention that, every year, on them days sacred to th' merciful an' wonder-workin' daughter of the deep, my father'd hand out handfuls of pennywhistles an' other things like that to the children of our tenants!"

"The best toys came from Inquanok City, of course and we had their product lists ever' year, and if I'd been a good lil' tadpole and learned my lessons an' didn't give my tutors a hard time, I got to pick out what I wanted and my dear parents would send away for it."

She pauses. "Funny thing was, a lot of the toy makers an other small manufacturers in Inquanok was humans, not seafolk. They was free humans, who'd bought themselves free from serfdom and came to the city to make their own way. Or sometime Free Traders left the life of the sea and settled in Inquanok and started businesses. Frog & Heller who made them flappy flying birds and them model ships was humans, and actually, so was most of the other toy makers, including those who catered to the higher aristocracy, even the families of the priestesses of Dagon. They didn't have the seafolk prejudice against commerce, saved their money an' worked hard."

Amphy falls silent for a while. Finally she continues. "But the war came, and the anti-human pogroms in the capitol city put an end to all that. A shameful business - the riots, the parading of innocent humans down the streets, the lynchin's and all. Some humans died when their shops was burnt down aroun' them, others were hanged at street intersections, or just cut down as they tried to flee. It took the Municipal Constabulary a long time to restore order, an' some say they didn't try very hard. Them families were as loyal to Great Dagon's realm as anyone else - they had no sympathy for the human Commonwealth, who'd enslaved and killed their human kinfolk when they invaded the lowlands, But it didn't matter how much they'd contributed to the war funds, or how often they proclaimed their loyalty - the rabble didn't care, and their business rivals who'd secretly envied them all along didn't care. There were some who tried to stop it, an here and there a family was spared, a shop left unburnt, sometimes the neighbors would hide children... I heard that Anaraa vos Pashaan, last an greatest poet of the Silver Age among us, stood without fear between a terrified group of humans - most just children! - and a mob screaming for their blood, spread wide her arms and shouted that if they wanted the lives of the innocent then they'd have to take her life as well. She was famous everywhere in Inquanok, and that mob backed off an' slunk away. But that was rare. The vast majority of those who wern't out actually killin' just stood back an' said an' did nothing."

"A shameful business! Those who would never have th' guts to fight in th front lines bravely slaughtering helpless civilians - fellow citizens! - at home. Disgusting! Even I, who hated humans more than you could imagine, when I heard about the riots in Inquanok and the murders, even I was horrified , and thought to myself that we'd shamed ourselves before Great Dagon with the blood of the innocent, and how could we be forgiven for that?"

 

Amphy sighs "But no other choice but to fight on, of course. And after that, no more toys from Inquanok, and no more a lot of other things, either - it turned out the pogroms ended up crippling the Realm economically in all kinds of ways, and it never really recovered. After the war, when we of the Second Main Directorate went through the records of the Special Higher Police and foun' they'd incited a lot of the violence, on account of some crazy bullshit about racial unity, or something. Well, them special higher whores hurt us worse than any spy could ever have. And in turn them secret police bitches met their fate, when the First Marshal and the Army finally openly took over and settled the old rivalry with them once and for all.  But by then the damage had been done. We were purer and poorer, to be sure!"

"Of course, I'd long since done with toys, an' anything else except bitterness and believin' in nothing at war's end. Even survivin' was like ashes in my mouth. Everything was gone an ruined by then. But you'll never know, only I remember now, that los' world of mine before that awful war, when I was Inaraa, not Amphy, happy and mercifully unknowin' what was to come."

 

On Leave

Young Inarra, green and scaly, oversized webbed hands and feet, gangly and awkward and an adolescent as the seafolk counted such things, sat in the chair across from her mother's desk in her mother's study, trying to look anywhere but at her mother, waiting for her to put down the estate account book. Her mother was a respectable member of the Children of the Sea -the nagaa - covered in smooth green scales like her daughter. She wore half-lensed reading glasses, fastened to her noseless flat face by a elastic string looped around her fin-like ears. Her hair was pulled back in a rather severe bun, with only a touch of grey here or there among the jet-black strands. Although she had big, powerful webbed hands, she handled her writing brush with ease, making notes in the account book in the precise, elegant handwriting, that years ago, had won her a first place Prize for Penmanship at the Academy competitions she participated in as a student.

The study was in a corner of the big house, with sliding teak and rice paper walls partly open to catch the cool breezes from the ocean's edge to the south. It was an austere, orderly room, in keeping with her mother's taste. On the walls, on shelves concealed behind more sliding doors, were row upon row of account books, year after year, for the last decades since her mother had taken over running the estate from her late grandmother. Elsewhere, Inarraa knew, there were archives going back some six hundred years, carefully preserved, the history of her family and the land - the rice paddies, the fish ponds, the generations of seafolk and their human tenants who had lived, worked and died here. Sometimes Inarraa , if she thought about it, felt the weight of all that history, but never did it weigh quite as heavily as it did now.

The sun was beginning to set. and the shadows in the room were lengthening. One of the human house servants padded soundlessly into the room and lit several oil lamps from a long glowing taper she carried, and, after bowing to her mother and Inarra, padded silently out of the room once again.

Her mother finished making an entry , closed the account book, carefully washed out her writing brush in a elaborately carved little jade water holder, dried the brush with a small square linen cloth, capped the water holder, and put the bush, the inkstone and the water holder away in a drawer of the desk.

She peered at Inarraa over her reading glasses and sighed. Inarraa's heart sank. If there had been any doubt in her mind concerning the subject of the discussion she was about to have with her mother, that doubt was now replaced by apprehensive certainty. Inarraa studied the pattern of the rice mat under her feet intently, as if hoping to find some mitigating explanation there.

"Inarraa" her mother began, and then sighed again. She seemed uncertain how to begin. She took off her her reading glasses and polished them with a silken ribbon. Her mother hesitated, then started again "Inarraa...do you know why I've asked you here tonight, daughter?"

"Um, well..." Inarraa began, knowing perfectly well why she was there. The young girl looked over her mother's shoulder at one of the wooden squares in the rice-paper and teak screen standing behind her mother's desk as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world just at that moment.

"You are no longer a child, Inarraa" her mother began "you are a young woman, and, up to a point, I have believed in giving you privacy and extending this family's trust in your good judgement. But with that trust comes responsibility on your part, you know."

"I know" muttered Inarraa in a low tone of voice.

"Now,unlike some families, we have never felt it necessary to enforce strict rules of separation. Your friendship with that human Mirah, the Free Trader girl - that is not in any way a problem. However..."

Here it comes thought Inarraa, already wincing in anticipation.

"...when it comes to relations with our human tenants, it is quite another matter. Please understand - everything you do you do as the young mistress, and becomes known very quickly. There has been..." her mother paused "talk. Gossip."

"Oh" said Inarraa, unable to think of any other response.

"Inarraa, on other estates, in other families, for the mistress to carry on a relationship with one of the family tenants is a accepted practice. Indeed, on some of the great estates, it is tradition that family members assemble harems from among their humans! But that has never been and never will be a tradition in this family!"

"We may be, as some would say, members of the lesser gentry, and unlike some of the great estates, we do not claim descent directly from Great Dagon! But we have worked this land far longer that most of those great ones, many of whom are no more than former wholesale fishmongers who bought land and a dubious certificate of ancestry from the Priestesses of Dagon! We have worked on this small estate alongside our humans, unlike those grandees, those newly minted gentry who live in Inquanok, rarely visit their holdings, and who depend on overseers to whip their gambling and whoring funds out of their tenants! Inarraa, do you aspire to that kind of status?"

"No, oh, never, Mother!"

"I should hope not." replied her mother "We did not bring you up that way. But Inarraa, I must tell you that your father and I are very disappointed in you."

"Father knows?" Inarraa looked up at this.

"How could he not?" her mother replied sadly "How could I conceal it from him, when as I say, there has been talk. Shameful talk. Inarraa, your dear father is especially disappointed in you just now."

Disappointed. Her mother and father, unlike the overseer parents of children on the estate, were never angry at or furious with their daughter. They were never more than disappointed. But disappointed was a word that carried all the weight of six hundred years or more of family tradition, of expectations and responsibility. Disappointed was a word that lay on Inarraa's conscience like a massive lead weight of disapproval.

"I'm sorry, Mother" Inarraa said, staring miserably at the floor.

"Inarraa, I understand you are a young woman now and that there are certain, um" Her mother paused.

Now her mother shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and, for a moment, looked away from Inarraa.

"Certain...certain...temptations. One played with the children of the human tenants when one was a child. One sees a former playmate working in the fields, ahem, as naked as usual - and humans, somehow, manage to be more naked than we seafolk are, all that skin and, ah, other things plainly in view.... " Her mother's discomfort seemed to increase "and, ah, one sees, you see, as if for the first time, how, uh, comely he or she is and, well, one thing leads to another and, um...well, I am well aware of how such things come about "

Now Inaraa looked directly at her mother. Was she about to confide something?

But the moment passed. "It won't do, Inarraa! Surely you can see that. Our humans are simple people, and you cannot trifle with their feelings like this. If you continue,your lover will sooner or later expect, well, favors. She will imagine herself above the rest, and this will sow trouble among the other tenants! How can this end well for her? She is, when all is said and done a human. You cannot recognize her status legally. It is unfair to her; worse, it is cruel to lead her on so. Surely you can see that?"

Inarraa nodded in agreement, knowing what her mother said was true. Already she had been coming to the same conclusions on her own, and had felt more and more uneasy and ashamed as the illicit relationship - that had begun so carefree, so easily that summer - continued on it's course.

"Now" her mother continued "if, instead of our Lowlands, all this was taking place in the human border kingdoms - there would be no problem at all. There, the humans enslave each other, sell their own kind on the auction block like cattle. If a human master or mistress there wishes to sleep with one of his or her slaves, it is, I understand, no great matter, and if they tire of their concubines they simply get rid of them. The humans of the border kingdoms may treat each other like beasts but that is not the way of the Children of the Sea! Our tenants are tied to the land and our service, but they are not just slaves, they cannot be bought or sold, and they certainly cannot be used as sexual appliances!"

"I receive the latest journals from Inquanok" her mother went on "and I read about these new sciences" her mother spat out the words in contempt "this biology, this so-called evolution that says that humans are no more than beasts, inferior animals! Detestable rubbish! Were we to accept this new teaching, this science - why, soon we'd be no better than the humans in the border kingdoms!

"We have never been overly religious in this family; it's true. From ancient right we could take our place in the yearly rituals to the Other Gods on R'yleh -it's true, I have never found that a very useful or appealing prospect! But one belief of our ancestors I do hold to - that humans are no more beasts than we seafolk are. We are, as the most ancient wisdom tells us, sisters in Great Dagon,born of the same Primordial Egg! Of course, the humans are lesser creatures, but they have a place assigned them by Great Dagon, as do we. Our responsibility is to protect and guide them, and theirs is to serve. Their welfare is our concern, and it is our duty to shoulder the difficult tasks, think for them when they cannot! If you want to see how it would be without our guidance, you need merely look north to the wretched human slaver "free principalities". Or Sanbenetra, that den of vice and infamy!"

"Inarraa, someday you will be mistress of this estate, and that grave responsibility will be yours. Do you think you can continue as you have begun?"

Now truly ashamed, her voice choking with remorse, young Inarraa replied "No, Mother, I know I cannot! I'm so sorry I've let you and Father down!"

Her mother's voice softened " Inarraa. you are our daughter, and your father and I love you dearly. There will be no punishment for this unfortunate incident - you are no longer a small child. I know you understand what the right thing to do is, and I trust you to do it. But..."

Inarraa looked up

"You must do it yourself" her mother said "You, yourself, must go to the poor girl and tell her - it is over, it is over forever. That, I think, will be punishment enough, if punishment is needed. Can I trust you, Inarraa, to do this?"

"Yes, Mother" Inarraa replied, her heart sinking.

And the next day, at the pre-arranged tryst between Inarraa and her human lover, Inarraa told her everything. The young human girl did not argue, did not make a scene; she merely sat on a mossy log in the little sun-dappled grassy hollow that had been the scene of such happiness for them both, and began to sob, great tears rolling down her face as Inarraa watched helplessly.

Later, another human tenant dropped off a package at the big house for Inarraa. Inarraa opened it and found, neatly rolled up and tied with a string, all the poems she had written for the human girl.

After that, Inarraa avoided the part of the rice paddies where she knew the human girl worked. But she never entirely forgot her in the years to come.

The years rolled on, one after the other. Instead of attending school in Inquanok, the young mistress marched off to war, war with the great human Northern Commonwealth that lay beyond the petty border kingdoms. First victory at Sanbenitra, then disastrous defeat at Bloody Ridge, and then the advance of the human armies into the now practically defenseless seafolk Lowlands in what the Commonwealth claimed was a war of liberation.

The Commonwealth armies seemed unstoppable, the fertile Lowlands -source of most of the Realm of Great Dagon's food supplies - forever in their grip, the invasion or reduction by starvation of the Islands and Inquanok only a matter of time, until against all expectations, the seafolk raised new armies, and stopped the human Commonwealth in a desperate stand along the Dragon River. The seafolk stopped them and then threw them back, fighting one bloody, bitter battle after another, driving the hated invader north, until they finally regained the Lowlands from the humans.

As they retreated, the Commonwealth carried out a scorched earth policy, destroying rice paddies and fish ponds, poisoning wells, burning everything that could be set alight, driving as many of the former tenants of the seafolk before them as they could to be "liberated" into forced labor for the Commonwealth. The seafolk inherited a ruined land and a starving population, the once-bountiful Lowlands now a mere shell of what they had once been.

It is summer once again in the Lowlands, and we are in Reeasthaa, once a sleepy little village along the old post road connecting the interior to the sea. Very little of the former village remained, most of the buildings either torn down for material for hasty fortifications, or burned to the ground when the Commonwealth decided that they could no longer hold the region. Now the site of the village was occupied by draft animals and silent lines of humans impressed by the seafolk as porters, by quartermaster and military police units of the Army of Great Dagon, and pitiful knots of starving, skeletal humans, too weak to be drafted as porters, who feebly tried to beg scraps of food from the northward-marching columns of advancing seafolk soldiery. Most of the forest cover in the area was gone now, the soil drying and turning into choking dust under the blazing summer sun.

One of the few buildings that survived from former days was the sturdy baked-clay and wattle headquarters of the pre-war Rural Constabulary, now occupied by a small Military Police unit. Inside the headquarters was a Military Police officer, looking over the papers of a Lieutenant who stood before her.

"Lieutenant, ah Inarraa." said the Military Police officer, a somewhat faded seafolk woman, with a strong smell of raw rice spirit about her. "Now that's a name seems familiar. did your family..."

"Our estate was near here, before the war" said Lieutenant Inarraa. All traces of gawky adolescent was gone from the taut, scarred figure who stood on the other side of the desk.

"Ah." said the Military Police officer "Please, please, we don't stand on ceremony here in this backwater, please sit down honorable Lieutenant - I'm getting a cramp in my neck looking up at you. sit down, sit down, honorable one. Name's District Captain Olyshaaa, military police commander and head of reconstruction for this area. which is a rather awkward combination, you'll agree but we make do, we make do. damned little to reconstruct, I'm afraid - the human bitches did a through job when they pulled out of here. "

Lieutenant Inarraa sat down on a repurposed wooden crate, as buzzing flies congregated on a reddish stain on the wall behind the district Captain.

"On leave? Not where I'd choose to spend my leave - down the road a half-dozen miles or so there's a nice new whorehouse and a little casino,don't cheat you too much and the whores don't have too many diseases, not yet, anyway. Classified officers only, so there are some standards! Tell them I sent you and..." The Captain saw the Lieutenant frown and went on hurriedly "But to each their own, I always say. Now, you were saying there's a service we could do for you? We of the Military Police, always ready to help a comrade you know. and what can I do for you, honorable Lieutenant?"

"My family lived in the big house, about a mile east from here, along the Willow Road, on the hill." Lieutenant Inaraa replied. "I've come looking to find out what happened to my parents."

"Your parents" District Captain Olyshaaa hesitated for a moment, and looked intently at Lieutenant Inarraa. She then reached under the table and produced a dirty green bottle topped by a cork "Here honorable Lieutenant, have a drink on me, rice spirits, very smooth. won't blind you, no wood alcohol. Have a drink, talking's dusty work."

Inarraa hesitated, then shrugged, opened the bottle and drank from it, wincing a little as the raw spirits went down, before handing the bottle back to the District Captain. The District Captain took a drink in her turn, and then set the bottle on the table next to her.

"You understand, honorable Lieutenant, there's no possibility that they're alive somewhere. we know that much, at least..."

"I know they're dead. I've already received letters from my cousins. What I want to know is how they died, what happened to them, perhaps..." Lieutenant Inarraa hesitated "where they're buried."

"I'm sorry Lieutenant" the District Captain sighed "The damned humans took care to destroy every record they might of had, and only they really know what happened, exactly. But, yes, we do have a little information. "

The District Captain stood up, crossed over to a pile of bound papyrus notebooks leaning against a dirty clay wall. Pulling one out, she opened it and flipped through it until she found what she was looking for.

"Um." District Captain Olyshaaa began, "Mother, Ayeeeshaa vos Isharaaa, father Minra va Leeythaa. Now, first I want make it clear that your parents were offered help to evacuate when the Commonwealth armies approached. They were warned repeatedly about what might happen. It's true, it turned out later, that the danger was far greater than anyone at the time realized, but they were warned. They refused to leave, apparently, citing the welfare of their tenants as a concern."

"I see." said Lieutenant Inaraa.

"Now, from interviews, it seems that your parents were not interfered with when the first Commonwealth troops came through the area. In general, this appears to have been normal procedure, front-line troops usually ignoring stray civilian seafolk. It is true..."

District Captain Olyshaaa hesitated for a moment "that when a column of Commonwealth troops passed by the estate fields, a certain number of your tenants lined the road and cheered them on as liberators. Not all. As was usually the case, most human tenants sat back to see what would happen before they did anything."

"However" continued District Captain Olyshaaa, looking over her notes "there don't seem to be any records indicating that anyone denounced your parents to the occupying forces, as, sorry to say, was the case in other districts."

"Go on" said Lieutenant Inaraa.

"After the initial occupation, much of what we think we know about the fate of your mother and father is mostly guesswork. We do know that they both survived living in the big house on the hill for several months after that, as we have a scrap of a Commonwealth record noting that the "head of household A.V. Isharaaa" lodged a complaint with the occupying authorities regarding the use of humans as forced labor by the occupiers and the abduction of humans by border slaver gangs in the wake of the armies. No response to these complaints has been found."

"We believe it was about then that their household staff either ran off or was pressed into service as forced labor. About a month later - although our interviewees contradict themselves here - the new relocation policy was announced.We do not know if your mother and father were separated or went together to the the so-called relocation area in their district. We have no information on what happened when they arrived there. "

"What we are certain of is that no one who was called to those relocation areas was ever seen alive again."

Lieutenant Inarraa was silent.

"I'm sorry Lieutenant." The District Captain shook her head "That's really all we know. As for where they might be buried.."

The District Captain crossed over to a map hanging on the opposite wall. "so far we have found mass graves, each holding from a hundred to a several thousand bodies, here, here, here and here. The passage of time, the advanced state of , well, decomposition, and their liberal use of quicklime has made any identification of bodies impossible."

"One other thing" said District Captain Olyshaaa "the so-called 'new relocation policy' was put into effect well before the Commonwealth suffered defeat at the Dragon River, it was put into place when they thought their position in the lowlands was secure. There was no question of military necessity nor were the victims soldiers who had been captured in battle and honorably executed in accordance with the laws of war - they were defenseless, harmless civilians, all of them. This policy was not on account of any panic or last-minute revenge - it had been planned out long beforehand, and was carried out in cold blood." For a moment the District Captain dropped her neutral tone of voice "Gods below curse the rotten bitches, rot them all, damn them to Hell! Murderers!"

"Thank you for your time, honorable District Captain Olyshaaa" said Lieutenant Inaraa with no visible show of emotion "I've found out what I needed to know.

"Ah." said the District Captain "Please, have another drink..."

"Thank you but I must take my leave." replied the Lieutenant "If I start now I can make it to my family's home before nightfall."

"Well, but honorable Lieutenant, where are you going to lodge ? Now, a carriage will take you down to that establishment I mentioned and they do rent rooms for the night. Really, you shouldn't be alone..."

"I have no need to rent a room." said Lieutenant Inaraa "I intend to spend the night at my home."

"Lieutenant..." District Captain Olyshaaa began to say something further about better accomodation down the road.

But by then Lieutenant Inarraa had left.

Lieutenant Inarraa was delayed by a torrential rainstorm that erupted when the was two thirds of the way there, and so night had fallen by the time she arrived at where she remembered her family home had been. Peering into the darkness, through sheets of warm rainh, at first she could see nothing at all, and thought for a few seconds that she had taken a wrong turn scrambling up the hill, missed the location entirely. But then a flash of lightning revealed, here and there, posts sticking up from the muddy ground - the remains of the house's foundation.

Inarraa finally reached the spot where her family home had been. Little remained. A post here, a trampled teak screen here. The occupying Commonwealth troops, before putting what was left to the torch, had used the building as a garbage heap and a latrine. Her face a mask, sometime outlined by sudden flashes of lightning, the torrential rain beating down on her, Lieutenant Inarraa walked back and forth, trying to remember where each room had been, what it had looked like.

Finally she found a torn scrap of paper near where her bedroom had been. She sat down on a fallen teak beam, staring at the scrap of paper trying to read it by the fitful flashes of distant lightning, trying to decide if the writing she thought she could see was her mother''s handwriting. As she held it, the scrap of paper disintegrated in the rain.

After a while, Inarraa buried her face in her hands. She stayed that way for a long time.

It was almost noon by the time Lieutenant Inarraa returned from the ruined house, bearing a small bag of scraps she'd retrieved from the wreckage.

" Next cart goin' north, honored one?" replied a soldier leaning against a broken down haywain "Be one along any minute, Lieutenant."

"I'll wait, then" said Lieutenant Inarraa

"No shortage of transport goin' north, honored one!" Another soldier laughed "North's where the war is!"

As Lieutenant Inaraa waited, she became aware of a commotion among the group of starving human beggars behind her. She ignored it, until she heard a voice cry out "The young mistress! It's the young mistress!" Then she turned, and saw one of the beggars pointing at her and repeating "The young mistress! She's returned! It's the young mistress." an excited murmur arose among the other humans.

Slowly, Inarraa walked towards the human who was pointing her out to the others. as she got close, the rail-thin human - a female - turned excited, glistening eyes on her, tears running down her cheeks. "Daughter of the deep be praised, it's the young mistress come back to us! It's Inarraa!"

"Yes" said Lieutenant Inarraa "I'm Inarraa."

"Oh Inarraa," the human cried, relief and hope in her wasted face " we've had such a terrible time since this awful war started. No food, beaten and enslaved by those soldiers from the North, and what happened to your poor parents, Inarraa! But you're back! You're back! You remember me, don't you, Inarraa? From the old days, the good days? remember those poems you wrote me? Remember?"

"Yes" said Lieutenant Inarraa "I remember you. How could I forget?"

The two soldiers were disputing the result of a dice roll, and several carters were watering their giant ground sloths and checking the strapping on their cartloads, when they heard a wet, butcher-block sound. They turned to see Lieutenant Inarraa, bloody short sword in one big webbed hand, standing over a headless human corpse, the body shuddering as it pumped great gouts of bright red blood into the dirt. The severed head stared blindly into the sun as the remaining humans shrieked and tried to back away, tried to flee, betrayed by their thin starved bodies, as the Lieutenant, her face a mask of blind fury, advanced on them, blade drawn.

"Uh, say, wait a second" said one of the quartermasters, making no move to get near sword-wielding Inarraa. One of the soldiers laughed and another said "real temper that Lieutenant's got!"

Just as Inarraa was about to strike at another screaming human, helplessly curled up in a fetal position at her feet, awaiting the fatal blow, a strong arm gripped Inarraa's sword arm and another encircled her torso, The District Captain breathed rice spirit in Inarraa's ear and said rapidly "Uh, know how you feel, just calm down now all right, you made your point but, uh, we kind of need them for hauling, you know. Overlook this one, whats a human more or less, but kinda a black mark on my record if you slaughter the rest why would you want me to have a black mark on my record?"

After a long,tense moment, the district Captain felt Lieutenant Inarraa's body relax. "You going to be all right now, honorable one? Can I let go now?" After another moment Inarraa nodded, and the District Captain let go. Looking about, the District Captain spotted a carriage. "they're going north, hurry and I can get you right on there, get you on your way! All right?"

" Lieutenant Inarraa reporting back from leave, ready for duty, honored Company Commander!" Inarraa said as she stood at attention.

"Your leave still runs for another four days,Lieutenant" replied her Company Commander "what are you doing back here so soon?"

"Begging the honored one's pardon" said Inarraa "rear area didn't agree with me! Thought I would come back early."

"Well, fine" said the Company Commander. "Just as well, they're going to be cutting leaves short anyway. Word's been passed down - we're going on the offensive again, into the Northlands! You'll have your work cut out for you, Lieutenant!"

"I can't think of anything I'd like better, honored Company Commander!" Lieutenant Inarraa said.

 

The music box

"Amphy, I think those fish you brought for the birthday party might be a bit...off."
Amphy gives me one of her "I am the young mistress of this estate, hairy ape person" looks (not nearly as common as certain other, more primal expressions) and says, with a very faint trace of ancient remembered hauteur behind her usual faux-Louisiana diction "Smell don't mean anything, which I wouldn't have to explain if I wasn't stuck here on a world of (pause) humans."

Amphy the Amphibian Girl turns to you.

"When I was growing up, when I was the young mistress, in polite society you didn't actually eat the fish you got as gifts, if your family had any social standing at all. You displayed them nicely arranged on a table outside on the front lawn to show guests arriving how many good friends you had! Of course, folk who didn't own any land and mostly worked an' lived underwater couldn't do that and never bothered with it, but in the city it got fashionable to give and display little ceramic fish in the front of your store front or commercial enterprise." Amphy makes a faint but audible sniff of disdain.

Interestingly, I notice that her faux-Louisiana accent has diminished perceptibly

"But we was kind of traditionalist that way, not pretentious like them great families who were absentee owners of the big estates, putting on fireworks displays an' all. Our family was just as old an' established as any of that Ry'leh crowd, with their claims to be descended from Dagon himself, and we weren't no jumped-up noveaux-riche merchants neither, the kind who'd buy themselves a few hundred acres or so in the Lowlands and rent a summer home on R'yleh so they could attend the midsummer rites and act like they was just as good as the higher aristocracy because they could buy their way in with gold."

"My family didn't play them games; we stayed on our modest holdings an' worked alongside our human tenants. The honest countryside gentry one of them old regime ministers called people like us, an' you could hear the sneer in her voice when she said it, even if she called us in the same speech the backbone of Dagon's realm. Well, my mother and father never cared what some fool with a sash of office in the capital city thought, and they both used to say that the broad stream of history inevitably flows in the direction of progress and reason, whatever this or that individual did or said. That was my mother and father's - Gods below comfort them! - true religion an faith, an I believed it too. We all did. But after Bloody Ridge the broad stream of history swept into the Lowlands in the form of the human Commonwealth armies, an brought nothing but destruction an' death."

Amphy pauses for a moment.

"I never really found out what happened to my family I'd supposedly marched off to defend"

"My mother was on some local committees, nothing important but that might have entitled them both to to a place on them lists the Commonwealth later said they never had. I can almost see my dear mother, patient, reasonable to the end, complaining about our tenants being impressed into labor as virtual pack animals for their armies, trying to explain, thinking that somebody would understand ..."

"I hope it was quick, I hope they was together at the end. But I never found out the details, nor their bodies neither in the burned out garbage heap that had been my childhood home. Hate to think of them in those mass graves we found when we retook those lands... but really, it doesn't matter, I suppose."

"But I'm sorry. I shouldn't bring up such things. Now, long before that, when I was 13 or so, I remember the best birthday I ever had. A lot of my friends, showed up, even from a couple estates that were far enough away they hired a wagon to get to our place. I had a lot of friends in those days, an' I was so happy! My mother said to me, after I'd recited the old-fashioned family oath, that she and my father were proud of me because my tutor had said how well I'd done that year with my studies, and she said since I'd worked hard I deserved something special, and she brought out something in a little package, small but kind of heavy. I opened the package and I can't tell you how I felt when it turned out to be something I'd always wanted but never imagined anyone could actually own."

"It was a clockwork music box, a tiny one, intricate and shining like a piece of jewelry. I'd never seen one before. They was made thousands of miles away on, the other side of the world, practically, on the Eastern Continent, where they was far more advanced in metalworking an' fine things. There might have one or two others in all of the Lowlands, perhaps a few more in Inquanok City. Impossible to buy anywhere, really, but as it happened my mother knew the owner of one of the open-sea trading vessels that once in a great while tied up on the Eastern Continent. She waited four years until it finally showed up. I never asked what she paid for it of course... You can't know what a magical thing that was to someone who'd never seen anything like it before. All them shiny gears and music at my command, anywhere I liked. Came with three little cylinders, so you had three pieces of music."

"From what I've been saying, I suppose you can predict what i'll say next, that I lost that wonderful gift and the memory of that happy day, when I lost everything else. But that ain't what I is going to say. Look here."


Amphy opens the leather pouch at her side and pulls out a small object wrapped in a velvet cloth. You unwrap it to see a small, intricate mechanism, slightly tarnished, slightly discolored but otherwise showing little indication that it is hundreds of thousands of years old.

"Still works as well as ever. They wrought well on the Eastern Continent, as you can see."

Amphy smiles at you

"If you were paying attention earlier, you may recall that the fish weren't the real birthday gift. That's just traditional. This is my real gift. Not exactly sure why, except you gonna have a lot more birthdays and me...well, I think soon the Gods Below is gonna have mercy on their poor abandoned daughter at long last, pretty soon now. So you can make better use of it than I can. My daughter Pris gets my old sword, and you get a music box. It not too difficult to use. There's the other two cylinders, and there the crank to wind it up, and that lever starts it . Already wound it for you, so just push that lever down..."

You do so, and the little music box emits a faint whirring and clicking noise. And then you hear the first notes of a song from a time long before the dawn of recorded history, from lands long since swallowed by the seas, from the distant springtime of the world. The tune is nothing you've ever heard before, thin, tinkling and slightly eerie. The notes are subtly different than any you've heard before. based as they are on another, inhuman, system of harmony. It is also very beautiful, and as you listen to the music box whirr and play it's song, you can almost see that summer's day, see the bright sun and blue sky, hear happy laughter and, for a moment, you can almost see the young Amphy, happy and unknowing, surrounded by her friends and family.

"Happy birthday" says Amphy the Amphibian Girl.