TALES OF LORCASTLE

Andrew Littler
PART ONE
 PREFACE

Alys Scout was a badger best known for tripping over pants that
were too big for her, and for busying her paws with sleeves that were
too long for her. Nothing about her seemed right, and this bothered
Alys not one bit. She had promised her parents that she would be at
the commencement ceremony but she was running late, and none of
this was a surprise to anyone.

Alys managed to make it through Lorcastle’s archways before the

commotion died down too much, but not long before. She sprinted
as fast as her little feel could take her, she hopped over a few barrels
laying in the street and tripped over a few more. Alys ran into some
of her parents’ friends at the end of a wrong right turn, and then
ran into their wives at the end of a wrong left one.

When she finally made it, the speeches were just about to begin, and
her pants were just about to fall off. Her parents were not too
pleased.

“Get up here, you brat,” her father would whisper at her. “They are
starting.” her father leaned over and scooped her up with one,
perfected motion, and offered her perch on his shoulders.

“Today, my friends, is the first day of many. Today, my friends, my

confidants, my family, and my constituents, is the beginning of an
era. Today, we will start anew,” spoke a tall badger, his name was
Joseph Winthrop. Beside him stood Aedan, an otter.

The former, Alys knew because dad was always talking about him.
The latter, Alys knew, because her mom found him very handsome.

“I would like to thank Aedan for his service towards our people, in
leading us in the civil war that lead us to the point we are at now,”

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the otter stepped forward and waved a short wave.

“And I wish you all to thank him for his service to us all, while
being mindful of the sacrifices made on either sides of the battle.”
He waved again, under pursed lips, and to a round of tempered
applause.

“That we are on the other side of a historic event is now well

understood. This is a time requiring a distinct eloquence, one which
we must approach with the lightest of step. But let it be heard today,
and each and every day henceforth - we are a free people. You—”

Winthrop’s speech was interrupted by another round of applause.

“—you are free. We may not all agree on everything, but we shall be
free to do so, and none of us will be forced to do so in fear. From this
day forward, your life is yours to lead. From this day forward, no
one will decide where you work other than yourself. If you work for
this city, this city will work for you.”

He stepped back again and made a motion to Aedan; they pulled

something from behind the podium, presenting it in it’s silken cover.

“If a beast is able to think to speak, and to contribute to our city,

they are more than welcome to work wherever their talents are
welcome.”

And with that final vowel, the two disrobed the placard between
them, revealing a shield split into thirds diagonally, the oak tree,
representing the antiquity and strength of their city; the raguly
cross, representing the difficulties they all fought through; and an
otter and a badger, representing those two beasts that founded the
city.

The placard, now known as the Crest or Shield of Lorcastle was

hung atop the Lord’s office. Lord Winthrop VI was who thought to

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adorn the Crest with a laurels wreath, as to commemorate the

century with no war.

5
 CHAPTER ONE
The Inkling

There were two types of beast at Basil’s pub, those that knew
how much they should be drinking, and those that did not.
Given the odds, Finley Scout was sitting near at least one of
each, but given the hour, he was in no position to judge.

“Finley, Finley!” called the bartender, Basil.

“Ugh, yeah? What do you want?” the frustrated badger
asked.
“You… you’re a personable guy, right? Like, friendly and
stuff?”
“I… suppose, though this is not quite the time to ask.”
Basil was a large fellow, large even, for a hedgehog.
Hedgehogs grew mighty well in these parts. Most animals
did, actually.
“But like, you can read people, see what they want, what
they're looking for?”
“Yeah, it’s… my job, but… as a bartender, it could be
argued that it is even more-so your job.”
Basil leaned forward, a pair of broad, prickly forearms
pressing against his front table, “just looking for a second

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opinion. That silver fox over there, in the corner. Guy has
been here all day.”
“Basil, I have been here all day.”
“Well, yeah, but you done did something. More than
something, and you a friendly folk. He has just been cleaning
out my stock of sardines.”
Finley looked up, almost interested, “you mean, the
sardines you let out for free because no one else but Phillip
and me will eat them? Good; let him take out the garbage.”
“Fine. It’s just, this guy… looking all shady and stuff. Like,
literally shady, all draped in blacks and blues, y’know?
Something seems fishy with him, like a character in one of
your books.”
Finley sighed, “some folk just like to wear black, it’s a very
slimming colour, you know. And besides, the ‘mysterious
man in the corner of a pub’ thing is so cliche that not even the
trashiest books in my library resort to it anymore. I’m sure
even you have read a few novels, no?”
"Well, fine. I trust you, you’re good with people. But if
anything goes missing, if I find myself looted or something', I
am gonna blame it on him."
"Why him? If anything you should blame yourself, Basil,
for spending so much time looking at that guy over there and
ignoring the little brats trying to siphon some drinks from
you over—“
Basil caught two pine marten kids tip-toeing around his
kegs, grabbed them by their cuffs and their collars, and tossed
them straight over the counter.
"—Hey, you little shits! Finley, you got this?" With one paw
on the counter, the hedgehog leapt over it, tipping over some
drinks, and knocking over some barstools as he ran after the
two thieves.
"Yeah," Finley tried to keep down a yawn. "I got this.”

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"He's going to take a while, isn't he?" the silver fox in the
shadowed corner spoke up.
"Yeah, a little while," Finley suddenly felt anxious. He
could watch over the bar, but he hadn't promised much more.
Finley felt the ground beneath him rumble, "Don't worry, I
am not here to take anything," Finley acted more relieved
than he actually felt.
"You, uh, new in town? Had a drink yet?"
"Yes, well, kind of… and no... but don't worry, I am fine.
My name is Allard, Allard deBurgh, I think I used to work
with your family”
“Pardon?”
“You’re at the library, right - Brakebills Books?”
“I am,” Finley answered, trying his best to remember what
family he did not remember, and what they might have to do
with his library.
“Then look for the name Middleton. Garin Middleton; I’ll
see you around.”
Finley Scout was not often one short for words, but he was
in this particular moment.

Finley Scout came from a family of badgers known for not

acting like they should, but usually getting away with it. He
was no farmer, no fisher or tiller of fields, he did not use his
size to guard New Lorcastle, or any of its neighbouring
settlements. No, Finley lent books, and he did so from the
first floor of his place in the middle of town.
It was a nice enough place, it was a two story brick
building with the first floor exterior painted with a rather
tame shade of yellow. The window’s architrave and lower
siding were the colour of a cheap merlot, and read both
BRAKEBILLS BOOKS AND LIBRARY respectively in a strong

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bronze.
Finley landed this job a decade or so ago. He did not lend
an incredible amount of books, nor did he barter away many
more, but in a city this large, there were enough of a customer
base to keep himself going, and a pub he frequented to barter
any leftovers. It was hardly a job Finley envisioned himself
having as a little kid, but it was one he enjoyed, and one he
was seemingly good at.

“Welcome to Brakebills, we do barters, trades, and borrows -

anything I could help you with?” Finley asked a blonde
marten after the few minutes he gave her to peruse to her isle
of choice.
Her thoughts swished back and forth in her head. It was
not her first time here, but it was her first time here alone.
“What here can you recommend?”
“Well,” Fin said, eyeing the spines before him, “what kind
of thing are you looking for? We have stories about myths,
like this one here, Duke of Magic… more contemporary pieces
like Card of Lankhammer is a good read, if not a bit dry. I just
finished Birds of Yore, and then there are a few liturgical and
paraliturgical texts from recovered churches - Martin the
Warrior, the Elder Tree and that lot. Those are an interesting
read, I can tell you that much.”
She looked lost in thought for a half-second, “what wee
those first two you mentioned about? Duke of Magic, Card
of...”
“Duke of Magic and Card of Lankhammer - the first is about
a duke in one of Martin’s kingdoms that found a talking
dragon in a cave; the latter is about, what was it?” Finley
tapped his fingers for a few rounds, “right! Politics behind the
Civil War of forever ago. The two novels have more to do
with each other than you might imagine, actually.
“Then I guess I should try those two, no?”

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“Whoever recommended them for you must be wonderful

at his job.”
Fin wrung up her books and saw her to the door. Let it be
known that Finley never claimed his job was an exciting one.

“Uncle Finley!” cried one of the best parts of this job. He

could not help but have his entire face enveloped by a smile.
“Hello Avery,” he said, knowing exactly who was standing
right behind him. “Did you finish your book? Hello Wanda.”
“Yup!” The little mouse yelped, jumping up and down in
utter and completely adorable excitement.
“He sure did,” said the house-mouse to his side. He was
still stocking shelves, but these two had been patrons of his
for long enough Fin to know exactly what their routine
looked like. He would call it a tradition, but I was still
deciding on how long something had to be something for that
term to be appropriate.
Regardless of the terminology in use, it was deserved.
“Well that is mighty curious,” Fin said, in a tone
exaggerated enough just so Wanda would know what’s up.
“This book, this… this book just doesn’t want to fit. Hey
Avery, could you give me a hand up here?”
“Mom, mom, could I?!” he begged.
“Of course you could, Avery. Where do you need him?”
Wanda asked, aware that even in his mothers arms, Avery
was not going to reach very high.
“I got him” Finley reached out and let the little mouse
crawl up his arm and make perch on his shoulder. “Now
Avery, you’re small, right?”
“Yup!” He answered.
“But how small are you?” Finley asked.
“Pretty small, I would have to say…”
“Do you think,” Finley chuckled, “do you think you are
small enough to reach into the back of that bookshelf?”

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“Mom?” He asked.
“Give it a shot,” she answered, still trying to guess what
the bloody hell Uncle Finley was up to.
And so Avery scooted. Near the higher shelves the books
were starting to reach the size of some of the cities residents,
and when those residents had children it just started to look
ridiculous. At least Avery was big enough to block enough
sunlight to keep him from seeing what he was actually
looking for.
“Uh, Uncle Finley? I think I found it, but I can’t turn
around, could you—” and before he could even finish asking,
Finley had him by the shoulders and was pulling him out.
“Okay, maybe I need somewhere else for him to find
things…” Fin muttered to Wanda.
“A candy!” Avery shouted, finally taking a look at
whatever he pulled out. He ran straight up Uncle Finley’s
arm, almost letting go of the gaylede he just found that had
been curiously getting in the way of Finleys book. Finley was
well aware of Avery’s fondness for the sweet, almondy fig.
“Well there we go,” Finley said around a grin, sliding the
book into place, “see? Fits perfectly.”
Avery leapt onto the table Fin was standing beside.
“Now what do you say, Avery?” Asked his mom.
“Thankouverymuch Uncle Finley!”
“Well thanks for the help!” Fin replied. “So what can I hep
you two with?”
“You know, Fin,” Wanda hopped up to sit beside Avery on
the table, “you have a thing with kids, they all love you.”
“Well, this one does,” he said, watching Avery trying to
peel away whatever wrapper was around his prize.
“I mean it,” Wanda assured him, “if you are ever looking
for a change of pace, you would make one hell of a teacher,
you would.”
“Well, thank you, but I am not sure how much I would

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help in the classroom.”

Wanda nodded him closer to her and uttered under her
breath, “to be fair, these kids are not bright enough for you to
need to know much to teach them.”
They both chuckled.
“How did he like the book?” Fin asked.
“He loved it!” Wanda answered.
“Then, Wanda,” Finley started, pawing his way through a
pile of books he had at his side, “he might be ready for this
book, Mice & Kings. It deals with a few more mature things
than Sands In The Mountain did, but it is still in his age range.
Nothing mature, nothing lewd or too dark, just… old. He is
long past the age of kings, so it’s going to sound very
different to him.”
“Kings, eh? Kings are good, I like kings. It’s an interesting
era to read of, that is for  sure. Hey Avery? Ah whatever, I
think he got lost in your books again.”
Finley replied with little more than a smile.
“Heard anything from Vicki?”
“Sorry?” he asked.
“Victoria, doofus. The girl you left Kat for. The one that’s
been out East with her dad for months longer than she
promised.
He inhaled deep, “Nothing consequential. She is just… still
there. Way over there. I don’t know why I agreed to this
thing…”
“Because you love her? Or do you sti—”
“—I think I do. I mean, I think I do. I want to…” he
answered, in a bit of a whispered tone.
“Well,” Wanda replied, “you have until she returns to
make up your mind. How long did she first say?”
“She said 3-4 months, and that was 5 months ago.”
“Ouch.”
“Do you think—” she adjusted her seat.

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“—no, no, if something did, they would know by now,”

Fin adjusted his seat in turn, “and if they knew, we would
know. Stuff just takes time.”
“You did promise, I was there…”
“Yeah… but I didn’t thinking ‘whenever’ would take this
long.”
“Well,” Wanda said around a hug, “you still got me.”
“And me!” shouted Avery out of whatever mess of books
he was hiding behind.
Finley smiled.

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 CHAPTER TWO
How is the Drunk?

It was a few days later and Finley was back at the pub. It did
not matter what day of the week it was, or what time of the
year it was - after work, he always went to the pub. This was
his pattern, this is what he did, every single day.
"How was work?” Basil asked, wiping another layer of bad
ideas up.
"Still tedious. How is the drunk?" the last few words found
themselves in an uncertain hushed tone.
"Phillip? Good, drunk, and good and drunk. And asleep
for the past few hours, so don't worry about him, he won’t be
picking any fights any time soon, and if he did, his fists
wouldn’t be worth a damn thing."
"Well, how is his wife?”
“She’s… good,” Basil said, nodding with a mood he could
not yet identify. “Haven’t seen her around these parts in a
long while, though.”

Phillip was Katherine’s on-again, off-again, sober-again,

drunk-again husband… of sorts. She sent their children to
live with his mother more than a few times. That is how bad a

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drunk he was, not even his mother could side with him, and
not even his mother could sand against his increasingly
hesitant wife.
Kat’s parents were a bit of a toss, so she never grew up in
an environment that did much to help her find out what kind
of beast she was. When she finally did, she was already a
mother of one, going on two.
A few more forest-folk came wandering in, and Finley was
sure that he lent a few books to their children; two decently
sized, greying shrew with their (admittedly) wormy tales
came from the north exit. From the more southern, more
spacious exit came a rather stupendously coiffed hedgehog;
it's back was a burnt auburn colour, it's face a creamy white,
and it wore a simple, yet colourful outfit of a light blue linen
shirt with a collar of a deep brown leather. He wore it well,
and everyone noticed.
For this is the kind of place that New Lorcastle was, one
that had spent hundreds of years finding itself, forgetting
itself, and finding itself again.
It just also brought a new generation of problems, and
most of them were named Phillip.

Finley woke to an unusual pattern knocking at his door. Not

that there were many patterns of knocking that he considered
usual, but he knew that this one felt sounded different.
Different, but not completely foreign.
He rolled out of bed, still wondering if there was really
anything to him trying to decipher how people knocked on
doors, or if he just fancied the idea because it made him
smart.
It was not Allard, and it was certainly not Wanda either.
Victoria would not have come home without sending a letter

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first, and however humble Fin liked to imagine himself, he

would expect his partner of a few years to be a bit more
excited to see him than wait for him to answer the door; she’d
know it was never locked.

“Hold on,” he shouted out the window. Not sure who he was
shouting to, and not entirely sure how much he cared to
know. He pulled his housecoat off his bedroom door and
tried to feed his arms through it’s arms. “Gimme a damn
minute,” he rumbled as he rushed downstairs.

Finley Scout was not much a fan of mornings. Were they to be

honest, mornings were not a fan of him either. Especially not
this one.

Well crap.

He opened the door softly, this was not the beaver he was
expecting to see.
“Huh,” he said. “Its you. You, uh, everything okay?”
“Can I come in?” Katherine asked.
Finley waved her in while holding back a yawn, and
rubbing his eyes awake with the heel of his palm.
“Yeah, go ahead. Can I get you some coffee?”
“I’m fine,” Katherine said.
“I’m not. Because it’s the bloody morning, Katherine. You
want some coffee or not?”
“Don’t be like that. And sure, whatever,” she closed the
door behind her.
From the looks of it, Katherine had either been up for a
while, or never went to bed in the first place, and neither of
these two options were optimal. Not to say that Katherine
had a terrible sleeping pattern - being a beaver meant she can
fall asleep almost anywhere, as long as it was build with

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something fibrous and organic.

Neither dared say a thing until the coffee was finished, and
even then, a “thanks” was all that was uttered when Fin
handed her a cup. They both marched upstairs without
uttering a word.
“So,” Fin said, sitting on his couch, “spill it. What
happened now?”
“I… I don’t know. He just, well… Phillip happened. He
came home early last night and… no,” she replied to Finley’s
eyebrows, “he didn’t… do that. Just, Basil sent him home
early and I guess he found somewhere else to drink, or
someone else to bum him a drink. I don’t know where it all
came from, but he was not very… well, reasonable.
“The kids are okay, I am okay. The door is… not okay, and
neither are the tomatoes. But that’s fine, they're just
vegetables… vegetables I do not water enough.”
“It’s a fruit, actually. A berry.”
“Wait, how is that a fruit?” Victoria asked, notably
astonished by the change in tone of conversation.
“Well, technically, anything that is a root, a stem, or a leaf
of any plant qualifies as a vegetable. Fruit are the… ovaries of
a plant; the part with the seeds in it.”

It did not take long for the late couples conversations to resort
to what they used to be like back in the good ’ol days. Finley
knew this route was to the safest one, especially with her
husband in such disrepair, and Fin’s better half on the other
side of the country. It was too early in the morning for the
badger to worry about chance infidelities. they both fell back
into the couch chuckling, making familiar motions without
quite betraying each-other.
“Hah… heh… why are we talking about whether or not a
tomato is a fruit?” Katherine asked, after a little bit of
introspection.

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“To distract you,” Finley’s grin pulled tight. “Because,

Katherine, you look like crap.”
She grabbed at her cup and hid herself in the coffee left
inside it. She smiled, although awkwardly.
“So what all went down, then? He broke the door and
some tomatoes, but I have known the bastard long enough to
know that his restraints are not quite so… precise.”
“Right,” she said into her coffee cup, looking for something
left to distract herself with. “After… that, he just started
screaming at me, waking up the whole bloody
neighbourhood. I grabbed the kids and booked it, and he
only landed a few blows on me,” she punctuated that
admission with an unconscious grasping of her shoulder.
“He is stupid as the warm side of a moist rock,” she
continued, “but not stupid enough to show up at his parents
place like that.”
“So you’re okay, all… all things considered?” Fin asked,
keeping an eye on that shoulder.
“For now, I guess,” she answered.
“You need a place to crash?”
“Not… necessarily,” this was the face Finley was hoping to
keep away from, because this was the face that got them
fooling around in the first place.
“I should go see the kids, but I am not sure how much they
want to see me like this, or this soon.”
He reached out to hold her on the arm where he would
always hold her, keeping in mind the bruising, “Why not just
leave the bastard?”
“Because,” she swept him to the side, “because it’s my
fault. I got him drinking, and I ruined his life.”
“How is it your fault? We all drank together. A fair share of
us still do,“ Finley shot back.
“It’s… it’s nothing, I… don’t like to talk about it.”
“It’s obviously not,” Fin grabbed at her arm again, “you

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owe me this much.”

Katherine replied, each syllable practiced and rehearsed
and delicately released: “I used to get picked on a lot when I
was a kid.”
“You never—”
“I don’t like to talk about it. It was usually about my teeth,
sometimes about having two moms, but it was always…
something. It just stuck with me. I left home, I mean, I came
out west, closer to Caleia because I was sure there would be
more like me, more beavers the closer I got to the ocean.”
“Sorry, I—”
“No, no,” Katherine continued. “It’s fine, it is, I got over
it… it just wasn’t easy being the odd one out. I was just going
through a phase where being a mother was the most
important thing in the world, and I figured I could put up
with Phil long enough to… My kid needed a dad, and I know
how you—”
“—Hey! Stop with that. I didn’t want kids, but I didn’t not
want them this badly. What kind of asshole do you think I
am?”
“Fin, we broke up. We… we were never even a thing, we
just fooled around,” said Katherine, in portions of what was
intended to be a reassuring tone. “Thank you, but no. And
however a great guy you may be, you sure as hell did not
want to take care of someone else’s kid.”
“You sure about that?” Finley replied.
“I’m certain,” Katherine said.
Heh, “As certain as you were about beans being a
vegetable?”
“Touché,” Katherine answered.
“Anyways, you look like crap. Go have a shower, I’ll see if
anything you left here still fits.”

Katherine was not yet sure how to take the whole situation,

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but left the bathroom door ajar. Katherine was strong — she
had to be strong, but she knew how easy it wasn’t, and she
knew she could trust Fin.
Even as she dried herself off, she was not sure what that
was all supposed to mean.

Either Katherine had lost some weight, or Finley was keeping

worse care for leftover laundry than he had anticipated,
because nothing he had in his closet fit as well as it should.
“Thanks again,” she said. Kat did not look proper, but she
did not look improper either.
Fin nodded in return, taking in as much of her
thankfulness as he could without feeling like he was taking
advantage of a very complicated situation. He was not happy
any of this was happening to her, but feeling like the nice guy
felt really nice.
The two beasts were far from close anymore, but they were
not far enough to think that they never were. Stuff happens
and people grow up, but compatible pieces rarely stop being
compatible. They may be less so; their edges may be worn
from excessive use or poor upkeep, and their fit may be
looser than before, but they still worked relatively well.

“You need me to pick you up anything?”

“Uh, no, I’m fine. You sure you don’t mine my hanging
around for a few days?” she was blushing in the way that Fin
knew that she did.
Fin’s ears were twitching, but their betrayal was to nothing
specific. “No, its fine. Its fine. You got stuff to work through,
and I am one of the few that knows what that kind of stuff
that is. I’ll try to think of something decent for dinner. I
usually have plans at Basil’s, but… well, we can talk about

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that later.”

*Gulp*

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 CHAPTER THREE
Not From Around Here

New Lorcastle had certainly become a big city, but it was not
without it’s neighbourhoods, and not without areas that
every neighbour stuck to.
Sir Allard, of shady corner in Inkling fame? This was not
his side of New Lorcastle. It may not be his side of Dunlaw,
but it was most certainly not his side of the city.
It was also getting later than Fin was used to, and more
late than he wished to get used to, and his liver was aching to
get back to work. He had a feeling that this Allard character
was not going to show up for a while, and if he did, he was
sure to remain both silent and shady.
Fin never meant to pay much heed to the old man, but
while in the library, he found a dusty couple of books that
were all authored by a certain Garin Middleton.
“Herblore of Dunwal, Crops of Dunlaw, Dirt of…” Fin
thumbed through a short series of books, detecting an
obvious pattern in the way they were titled.
“What is there even to write about… dirt?” He said to
himself, as puzzled as anyone would be, but still more
interested than he could find reason.

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“Oh what the hell,” the badger uttered to himself, “I mind

as well check out these… gardening books.”
Fin paused a bit, he pursed his lips and sighed. He looked
around his library; his eyes darted left and they darted right,
and then he sighed again. He let loose a lung full of air
through a well-whispered face and sighed again.
“Sure, whatever.”

Since he was born, Finley and his father had a very shaky
relationship. Before he was even able to comprehend the very
concept of a father or a mother, they had a shaky relationship.
Before he could remember existing, or thinking to himself,
they had a very shaky relationship.
Fin’s father, Otto Scout was determined to escape the life
that he felt was forced upon him as a child. He crossed the
nearest body of water and spent the first few years of his
son’s life hopping from town to town until he settled in a
little village right outside New Lorcastle.
Kensington was a nice village, it was a homely village, but
was not quite as developed as where Fin would soon grown
accustomed to, but it was comfortable.
The first few years spent in Kensington were nice; not only
did Finley actually find friends, but Otto found one as well.
She was a nice enough badger, Fin would think to himself.
But when he was not with friends, Finley was often out with
the towns teacher - Mrs. Waterman, and her doting husband.
For some reason, the two thought Finley in need of some sort
of parental supervision.
The Mr. and Mrs. taught him everything he needed to
know, from how to read, to how to write. From how to be a
personable fellow, to respecting a persons privacy. They also,
as covertly as they could manage, tried to teach him about
dangerous relationships. He was not as quick to learn this
subject as he was others.

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 Andrew Littler

Finley was starting to spend so much time with his friends

and his teachers that he never noticed all the things that were
going on at home. He did notice, however, when his dad and
his girlfriend never came home that weekend.

He was still a young child, but Finley was bright enough and
determined enough to make-do and find a way out west.
New Lorcastle was not an incredible distance from his old
home, but it was different enough to feel new, and it was
close enough for him to successfully prove himself right. He
did not know what happened, but he knew it was his fathers
fault, and he didn’t need his help. He was not wrong in this
assumption.

In retrospect, Finley found that his father abandoning him

was one of the more intelligent things he could have done. In
retrospect, Finley found that his father may not have been the
best father in the world.

“—ley? Mister, mister Finley?” A recognizable voice was

accompanied by paw on his shoulder, “You there?”
Finley shot straight out of his haze and suddenly felt all
sorts of anxiety attack his gut.
“Oh sh—! We, uh, barter, tra—”
“—No, no!” The voice answered, “its fine, everything is
fine. You were just… stuck reading.”
Fin took a few second looks around him; he was on the
floor, in in the middle of a hallway bordered with books, and
a pair of legs and a tail.
“Oh!” Finley shot straight up, put down the most
enthralling book on gardening he had ever read, and
recognized the badger from a few days prior. He centred on

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his feet and tried to retrieve as much professionalism in as

little time as he could.
“Well, that was quick,” he said, “sorry, I didn't get your na
—”
“—Abby, it was Abby. And yeah, I am a… well, a quick
read.”
“How did you—?” Finley asked. He was a tall badger, but
being tall didn’t make reaching shelves much easier, it just
made them taller.
“— They were great,” Abby said, “whoever recommended
them to be was wonderful at his job,” she said with a smile.
“What… what were you reading there?”
“Something on gardening, and crop planning and… stuff.
It… might be written by my grandfather, but that is up for
debate.”
“Oh! That’s interesting…” She said, her eyebrows in a very
sudden arc as she trailed of, “Well, you got anything else in
mind?”

Finley was never good at telling who was flirting with him,
but the pained romantic in him spent so much trying to find
connections with his life and the novels he had in stock that,
once every while, he struck gold.
Finley was never good at telling when he struck gold,
either.

“Anything about this Martin character?” Abby asked, “You

mentioned him before. Who is he?”
“You know, the mythical hero that stayed beasts with a
comically sized cleaver. That one.”
“A cleaver? Like, the big, rectangular hatchet thing? The
one that doctors use to cut through bone and the like?”
“Precisely, yes, although you seem to know your fair share
about it already.”

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 Andrew Littler

“I have family out east,” she said, leaning back and forth
between and leaning in a rough estimation of the east, “so I
have worked with knives all my life, but we don’t share
much about Martin over there.”
“Hm,” Fin uttered a he grabbed a seat, “what would you
like to know? He is not quite my… forté, but I do like the idea
of me knowing something other beasts don’t.”

Neither of the two in Brakebills Books knew exactly what

Abby meant by the expression she replied with.

“Well,” he started, “who was he?”

Finley cracked his neck from one side, and then the other,
and then cleared his throat into a closed fist.
They were both there for a while.

The weather had afforded New Lorcastle a curiously brisk

day, but the summer would still peek in every once in a
while. Finley was never too sure where the old fox went to,
but he could not get rid of the feeling that the old coot was
still hanging around New Lorcastle. The town felt suspicious
in absolutely no discernible way, but in absolutely no
discernible way he felt supported by this.

One part of being the only librarian at Brakebills Books that

Fin really enjoyed was that he could close shop whenever he
wanted. He didn’t, of course, because he had patrons to help.
But when he didn’t — on those odd, slow days at the library,
Fin could just go to bed.
One part of living atop Brakebills Books that Fin did not
really enjoy was that, if someone really wanted to borrow a
book, they just had to yell at him really, really loud.

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As such, Finley’s Third Place was of prime importance.

It was Saturday morning and Finley decided to keep his store

closed for the day. He was usually closed on Saturdays, but
people came by anyways. But not today, today he would
actually lock his door. Today was pickup day.
It was nice seeing New Lorcastle this early; it was nice
catching different shadows, and different colours, and
different sounds. It felt refreshing to still find things in his city
surprising, even if it was because he was too tired to
remember anything from any previous visits. The one thing
he could never forget is that if he missed this shipment, he
wouldn’t get anything new for another month, and that is if
he were lucky.
Finley also just really liked the dock - he could tell when he
was approaching it by the fresh scent of the morning fading
into one of the ocean. It was not so much a clean smell as it
was a fresh one. Fin had always loved the ocean, and often
wished he had more of a proficiency towards working on it,
but alas, working on the water was not in his blood.
There were a few docks in New Lorcastle, and there were
more than a few ships, but the Pike Dock was the smallest
and the busiest. The smaller ships tended to be the quicker
ships, and the larger ones tended to take their time emptying
themselves. Fin supposed there must have been a place to
park them all between trips, but he had never been.
It was probably neat.

“Well there you are,” called a voice from the dock. It was
Francis, Francis was a hedgehog. Francis did not like being
called Frank.
“Hey Frank,” Fin replied,
“Don’t even start. You’re late,” Frank said, starting off the
morning with a fair portion of a ribbing.

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“I am early and you know I am early, do you have my

books?”
“You are late. You are late…r than you should be,” he
continued.
“I am early,” Finley repeated, “less early is not late.”
“It is to me,” Frank scoffed, “and yeah, got them all tied up
and everything. You know, all that time you left me with,
being so late and all.”
“Good morning to you too, Frank.”
“You… ugh, sign here,” Frank said, holding out a pad of
paper, a reed, and some ink.
“Thank you Fran… Francis. Thank you.”
Frank replied with a smile, capped his ink, and rolled his
paper and reed.
Good 'ol Frank.

It was odd seeing how so many residents his fair city had,
and how many daily schedules they existed within, and how
many of them lived so completely separate from another.
Sure, his schedule fluctuated during the week, but he always
left work around the same time, he took about the same route
to the Inklings, and ate dinner around the same time. But
when he adjusted that schedule by just an hour, he would
walk through an entirely different cast of characters he had
never seen before, each going through their similar, yet
entirely different, daily schedules.
Fin wondered how many of these people he actually never
saw before, and how many he just forgot. Over and over
again.
He walked past one of the few churches left behind.
Architecturally they were impressive, and spatially they were
important, but there were not many gods worshipped there.
There were some smaller groups that went there, and would
be there tomorrow morning, but they had long since become

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the exception, not the rule. Phillip sat upon those pews more
than anyone else did.
He was not there at that very moment, when Finley passed
by. He always found himself peering through the windows -
he knew not to, he knew it was rude, but at least here he had
an excuse, or could muster one up right quick if ever asked
for one.
Fin could have taken a rickshaw home, but he figured he
could use the exercise. When he got home he swapped a bag
of books for a bag of tools and headed to his backyard.

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 CHAPTER FOUR
A Third Place

With Finley messing around in the back, Katherine made her

own way around the city of New Lorcastle. She grew up here
with Fin and Basil and Phillip, but it did not take much for
her life to grow in a very different direction than that of her
friends. Phillip and Katherine settled in a different side of
town, which changed just enough to change everything.
Their life was different, they had kids and they had a new
family to work on. Their priorities were different, and they
wandered around different parts of town at different times
than they used to, and their lives slowly drifted away until
they all forgot they forgot about each other.
Katherine figured she owed Basil a visit.

“Hey, is Phillip… awake?” asked a voice behind Basil.

“—Wait,” he shot straight around, “Katherine? What the
hell are you doing here?”
“I’m…” she suddenly felt out of place, “in town for a bit.”
“As in… Fin, for a bit?” Asked Basil in a tone she could not
decipher.
Katherine took a beleaguered sit, “What do you have

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against him anyway?”

Basil took a step back, “Pardon? I have nothing against
him. He is a bit of a… uh, rake, but he is still a decent kid.”
“Well, I always get a tone out of you whenever I mention
him.”
“You are never here long enough to hear me mention him
much,” Basil said.
“When I am here, I always get an attitude. And I think we
have known each other long enough to tell if—”
“—It is not him, and it is not you.” Basil slammed down a
mug of beer with more muster than he had intended, but he
imagined it got his point across.
“My problem is him and you; you and Finley.”

Basils tone and volume would vary in regard to how close

any other of his patrons were at any given time. He poured a
few more beers while keeping a watchful eye on the beaver
before him.

“We fit, he always says we fit—”

“Fitting together doesn’t make you a good pair. I mean, it
does, but not in the sense you think. Your pieces fit because
you are broken in the right, complimentary places. You—”
“—Quit it with this.”
“You enable each-other.”
Basil wiped his counter a few times and Katherine glared
at him a few times, each while each practicing whatever
points they were planning to make whenever the other
actually said something again.
“Why do you care?” Kat broke down and asked. She was
the one drinking.
“Because he is my friend,” he shot back.
“But is he, is he really?” Kat replied. “I was there when
chose sides, and I was there before. This is nothing like it was

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when we were kids, so why do you care? You just like being
included in something, even when you aren’t, don’t you?”
“Do you want me to stop serving you?” was all that Basil
let himself say.
“Do you want to tell me why you care so much?” She was
a stubborn beaver, and even more so with a drink or two in
her.
“Because,” Basil started, his face collapsing into his paw,
“because I saw what happened when I didn’t stop Phillip,
and I don’t want that to happen to either of you again.”
Katherine tried to reply, but nothing came out.
“You two are fine blokes, but I don’t like how you two are
together. Not my place to judge, whatever, but both of you
can do much more, and neither of you help eachother with
that.”
“Who says you could have stopped him? Who says it was
your job to? It was a bad decision, but it was my own bad
decision.”
“Besides,” he continued, “he is still waiting on Victoria.”
“Heh,” She chuckled,“ he sure isn’t waiting hard.
“…Case in point.”

Basil had his attention stolen by a few customers’ shouts’ and

he had to temporarily leave the conversation. It was not
uncommon for Basil’s half of a conversation to come in short
bursts. Katherine went back to her drink while Basil attended
to his customers.

“So what are you really doing here?” Basil asked, the tone of
their last few traded words still lingering in the air.
“Family crap,” Katherine said, yawning, stretching and
running her paws down her spines.
“I have to find Phillip,” she started, scratching at
something she pretended was on her pant, “finally tell him

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off. But before that, I have to get drunk enough to get the—”
“—might not be the best strategy, all things considered…”
“Well, yeah, but you know how I am — how he is, how it
all is,” she uttered.
“We all do, but you still have to do this properly. Preferably
with him off the bottle, too. You know how he get—”
“—Yeah, and I have the bruises to prove it.”
“He throws a strong punch while sauced, but he can’t hit
worth a damn. But… would you mind doing it somewhere
else. This place is still recovering from the last time he was
upset.”
“How has he been?” Kat asked.
“The dru—”
“—no, Fin.”
“Didn’t you just… see him?” Asked Basil.
“For the first time in months, sure,” Kat started, “but it’s
not like he is going to be very honest with me, even if I asked.
You’re his friend and his bartender, I am sure you know
plenty.”
“Bartender client privilege,” Basil retorted, holding his
hands aloft.
“Tell me the other stuff, then” Katherine pleaded.
It was one of those odd times of day when everyones
schedule intersected with everyone else's, and for the first
time since this morning, The Inkling was half empty.
“Well, there has been one guy — older gentleman, a fox,
silver fur everywhere, he has been asking about him. Looking
for him… looking around for him. But get this, he wants to
talk to him about his family.”
“Hah! I knew that boy for years and not even I know much
about his family, what is he expecting to hear?” it would be
lying to say that this jolt in her mood was not at all influenced
by her drink.
“That’s the thing, says he worked with his grand-dad.

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Garin or something,” Basil whispered, not wanting any such

news to travel.
“Well, that’s something, that is for sure.”
“Do you have any coffee?”
“Yeah,” Basil said, “gimme a minute.”
“Who is this friend of his, then?” Kat asked.
“Allard, I think. Looks shady to me, but Fin argues
otherwise. He says I should read more books or something.”
“Is he still working there?” Katherine asked in a bit of
shock.
Basil shot back, eyebrow askew, “Still? What would you
expect him to be doing?”
“I dunno — one sugar, please. And I dunno, I figured he
would be something like a teacher by now. Or at least,
sometime; eventually.”
Basil nodded, pouring boiling water over the most
uniformly shaped, ground, and coloured coffee beans he
could manage to find. Coffee wasn’t a huge attraction — but
Basil was enough a fan to always keep some at hand, lest
someone else wanted a sip.
“Just one sugar?” he asked for clarification.
“Yes, please,” Katherine replied, as prim and proper as she
could pretend to be.
Basil cracked his neck and popped his shoulders as
Katherine nursed her drink, and as this round of regulars
meandered nearby.
“If you wanna meet Allard, he should be here—”
“Who?” she asked, “right, Fin’s friend. Nah, I’m okay, let
him deal with his own drama, and I will my own.”
“Okay, well,” Basil started wiping the table, again; “I gotta
get back to work. I don’t know when Fin comes in, but I don’t
have — hold up! — Much time to talk. You okay?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Katherine said.
“Okay — I said hold on!” Basil said to a customer, “— See

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you... later? Yeah, I’ll see you later.”

Katherine sat in the Inklings, nursing her coffee until it
cooled down enough to drink straight. She hopped off her
barstool and waved at Basil as she took the rear exit out.

There was a term Finley learned growing up that really stuck

with him: a third place. Ones first and second place were
where that one lived, and that one worked; a third place, then
is where one felt comfortable and welcome enough to ignore
the stresses of those first places; a place to relax.
In Finley’s case, his first and second place were right on-
top of each other, and his third was The Inkling.
When Fin was at the Inkling, he didn’t have to be nice to
people, nor did he have to explain much about religious
history. He arrived at his third place in the rush after the one
Kat left with, and was there for a few hours further.

“Finley, Finley!” called Basil.

“What now?” Cursed Finley.
“You’re zoning out, man,” Basil was ever the concerned
bartender.
“Sorry, tired.”
“Coffee?” Basil offered, half-ready to pour him a mug, and
half-ready to not bother.
“Just get me a beer.”
“Didn’t you say you were tired?” Basil asked.
“Don’t you have other patrons?” Finley shot back.
“Fine, coffee,” he said.
“There we go,” Basil did not like this side of Finley, but he
was no stranger to it, either, especially not lately.“Any news
from Victoria?” Basil asked as he lit the stove aflame.
“Nope,” uttered Finley; his shoulders slouched, his elbows

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splayed across the front table.

“How long has it been?”
“Six months,” Fin answered quicker than he meant.
“How long did she say?”
“Four months. Well, three, but three to four… so four.”
“You doing okay? I mean, damn, that is… a lot of months.”
“Yeeeeeah,” his last syllable dragged a fair bit.
“That was a rhetorical question. You are not doing okay,
you are doing this. And this is not okay.”
Fin’s brow furrowed, but did little more.

Fin was an odd case. Finley, Basil, Katherine, and Phillip all
moved into town about the same time, and they all fit pretty
well together. It was a perfect storm, of sorts, as they all
helped each other get through whatever had gotten them
there. They were a good bunch of kids, but then they stopped
being a good bunch of kids.
Before she settled on Phillip, it was Fin and Katherine that
were inseparable. This was about the same time that the
Inkling was bequeathed upon Basil, and they started
spending a lot more time around alcohol.
They all took to drinking quickly, and while Finley insisted
he was more tolerant than most, Phillip was most certainly
not. Being himself the purveyor of the joint, it fell upon Basil
to make sure Phillip got home. Being himself the gentleman,
Finley made sure that Katherine got home, and Katherine
often made sure that Finley stayed with her.

Like most things in life, and especially in New Lorcastle,

things were never quite as they seemed. Take the Winthrop's
for example - they appeared to take care of the city with both
aplomb and consistency, but the transitions of power were
never as seamless as they appeared; there were power
struggles, there were grudges and enmity between the family

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members, but they all knew to keep it quiet; they all knew to
keep their doors locked.
The Inkling was no exception to that rule. Yes, Basil loved
his job and he found a definite satisfaction in operating a
proverbial hub to the city he loved so much, but the Boisson
family did not always share such notions. It once had a
kitchen, it was once a proper pub, but years of neglect had
long since left it empty. It was cleaned up by his grandfather,
but no one since then had bothered to do anything with it.
Basil was not an old hedgehog, but he as not a young one
either, and he had to make sure not to worry how this place
might be treated when he was gone. Basil loved providing
such a space to those in his city, and if he wanted it to last, he
had to make sure to keep at a quality that would stand the
test of time, and would be expected of those next in line.
He was a humble beaver, this badger, but not even that
could keep him from acknowledging the homeliness of this
location; some lead busier lives than others, but wherever on
the spectrum the residents sat, they each deserved a place of
respite. They just also deserved one with a more variety in
their choice of wheat-based products.

“Well, what do you think?” A voice behind Fin asked. Finley

didn’t even have to turn around, or look around to know who
it was. He only barely recognized that voice, which meant it
could only be one silver fox.
“Well, it wasn’t what I was expecting, that much is for
sure,” Fin answered Allard.
“What were you expecting?”
“Something more like my own dad, although I guess I
shouldn’t—”
“—your dad was…,” Allard paused to think about the best
word to use, “…unique? No, that’s not it. Antagonistic? No…
your dad was—”

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“—a dick?”
“For want of a better word? Yes. You’re just… your
mothers son more than anyone else. I didn’t know her much,
but I knew Garin loved her, and that no one knew what she
saw in your dad.
“So what happened?” Asked a suddenly solemn Finley.
“I know that Garin saw her as a bit of a sieve for your
father; it was only through her that anyone found him
tolerable. When she died, her effect did as well. Not suddenly,
but it quick enough to get away with you before a better
home could be found.”
Finley looked disappointed, but was not entirely sure if
that feeling was warranted.
“So what do you want, then?” He asked Allard.
“I want,” Allard sat up and swallowed something hard, “I
want to act as a… speaker for the dead. My adventures with
him were not without casualty, but because so much of it was
so far away, none of their family were going to learn about
them. These are not problems I would wish upon anyone
else, but neither are they problems I would wish put to
waste.”
Finley could reply with nothing more than a pitter-patter
of his tail upon the pubs floor.
“I am not sure I follow.”
“I may not have known your mother much,” Allard
continued, “but I knew your grandfather enough to give you
an image of the family you come from.
Fin slouched over, running claws through his hair, trying
to run this all through his head.
“You are not your father, and he was not his. He ran away
from his family because he was a coward; he ran away from
you because he was selfish. I know you like helping people
and books are your way to do so. Your grandfather liked to
help people, he just had a different avenue.”

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The two sat together for a while, looked at each other for a
while, and thought about everything that had just been said
for a while. Words were said, but none were said orally.
After a few more cleared throats and a few false starts,
Finley finally spoke back.
“See you tomorrow, then?”
“Excellent. Good night,” Allard spoke, trying his best to
hide whatever congratulatory tone was hiding in his voice.

39
 CHAPTER FIVE
Round One

Fin and Allard met a few mornings after then. They settled in a
tight corner of the Inkling, one where the noise of the other
customers would not be too obnoxious, and where their sitting on
their asses all afternoon would not get in the way of too many folk.
It was right beside the farther end of Basil’s countertop, right next
to a round window, and right atop a stained, seasoned, and well
oiled sliver of a fallen oak tree. It was the biggest of the few in the
Inkling, and it came with as much character as those who sat
around it.
It was far from a tome, but the notebook Allard pulled out and
flattened upon the table was grand. He thumbed his way through
the first few pages before laying it down and assuming as much of a
teachers bravado as he could muster.

I didn’t to the mayors office often enough to ever get used to

it and I could never tell if he ever had a new secretary, or she
was just wearing something different. She made me a cup tea
and I spent the next short while nursing it and staring at the
Crest on the wall behind her. I tried my best to not look at
everyone that walked into and out of the office foyer, but I

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could never help it, and snapping back to the laurels or the
figures on the shield just made me look suspicious. That is
when I saw your grandfather for the first time, when she lead
him outside, and that was when I was ushered upstairs.

“Come in,” he said under his breath as I tapped on his front

door. I stepped in to see that he was still staring out his tinted
windows, amusedly.
“Steveston is about ready, sir," I said, “to get boarding, that
is. Have you readied a team yet?”
Winthrop pushed his chair back and, with his paws atop
his desk said to me sternly: “Now son, I hope you understand
what I am handing to you. You are young, not the youngest,
but you are still young, but you did a good job finding out
about that church, and you deserve this.”
“I understand, sir. Thank you,” I answered.
“I just want this to stay as quiet and eventless as possible,
and to stay as close to home as possible. It is not that I do not
trust these men, nor is it that I do not trust my city…”
“I understand, sir, fear is an expected variant in any
decision. If you are honest to your people and forthright to
them they will understand their reluctance. Sir.”
Winthrop gave me a solid handshake, and one of two lists
of names, “You are a good kid, don’t make me regret this. I
have a few names of folk you might want to recruit, but
whoever it is you talk to, make sure it’s someone you don’t
mind spending a few months with. I will gather the rest.”
And so I did.

“Hello Mr. deBurgh, long time no see, what can I get for
you?” there stood an otter of reasonable height, wearing an
impressively potent moustache, in a light-blue shirt with a

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dark blue vest, four gold buttons holding it over his belly, and
a well worn apron.
“Is Kiparoo still working here?” I asked.
“She certainly is, but she is on her lunch break, should be
back within the half-hour, though.”
“Excellent, also, do you have any chocolate in stock?”
He raised a finger and nodded me to wait for a second, in
the way that he always did. He returned with a carved box of
dark brown bricks of a chocolate that teetered on the edge of
dark black. Like he always did. It smelled a bit like sweat, a
bit like cabbage, and a few bits of something that made that
combination actually smell like something good.
“A pound?” he placed a small brick of the stuff into a small
bag.
“I’ll take two.”
Fin wandered in waiting just enough to keep his legs from
falling asleep, and just enough to not be thought as a
wandering vagrant.

There is a certain kind of connection someone makes when

they lock eyes with another. It’s non-verbal, it’s non-anything,
but the moment you catch the sight of someone waiting for
you, you know you are waiting for you. I found a bench
outside of Achard’s Groceries to wait for Kipparoo at.
“I never took you to be much of a government stooge,
Allard,” Kipparoo greeted me like an old friend would.
“Good to see you too,” I replied. We shook hands with a
grip that was unsure of the consequences.
“How well do you know Winthrop?” I asked.
“Not enough to know what he is up to, but enough to
know that he is up to something.”
Observant rabbit, I thought to myself.
“Would you believe me if I told you he was interested in
you joining him, well, us, on that… something?”

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“I am going to need something a bit more specif—”

“—a trip to the end of the world, perhaps?”
That didn’t give too much away, did it? I asked myself.
She leaned in closer to me, one paw leaning against the
bench I sat on. Even to a fox, someone would have been
considered her natural predator a few lifetimes ago, she was
intimidating. “How literal are we—”
“—pretty literally,” I replied with much shorter a breath
than I anticipated. “And just more than I am really wanting to
tell you about.”
“Sure, why not? I always knew that thing about the world
falling in half was bollox.”
“Believe me, Kiparoo—”
“—Kip, keep it short.”
I leaned over, resting my arms on the table before us, “it is
very real.”
Her leg tensed up and my side of the bench went up just
enough to notice, “we just might now have a get across..”

Winthrop was sending us to sail past Steveston, an old fishing

village just south of New Lorcastle, where Rhead was visiting
from. Although a fairly small beast, Rhea was the best in her
class and had been thrown around when this idea was being
formalized. While nothing had been set in stone, was
spending the next few days in town with the latest fish
shipments.

Rhea was not an especially small squirrel, but she was still a
squirrel and even a tall one is pretty small. The leaves were
soon to fall, but the dark-wine coast on her back was not
going to be replaced by something more seasonally
appropriate without a fight.

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While it was a point of pride that in this New Lorcastle you

were free to employ yourself with whatever best suited you,
if you were born with squirrel-sized hands, you would be a
fool not to use them. With his decree, Lord Winthrop I freed his
citizens from the jobs of their families or their species, but in
some cases, size really does matter.
Rhea was sewing through a text-block when I first walked
in, but I thought it appropriate to let her finish before I said
anything. The size of her hands were far from necessary, but
they sure were welcome. Her table was busy, but recently
swiped clean. After tying a few threads off, I approached her
with a proposition of sorts.

“What? No! That is a terrible idea. That man, he… he just has
no idea what he is talking about.”
“What kind of person does not want to see the end of the
world?” I asked.
“The one that spent her entire life,” she started, flipping
through a few hundred pages, making sure that everything
was in order. “The one that spent her entire life, her entire
childhood being told of the rest of the world falling off. I don’t
even—”
“—oh come on, that—” I interjected.
“—I don't even care if that doesn’t make sense,” Rhea
corrected, adding to a growing pile of text-blocks on the table
beside her. “Two, four… eight… ten, eleven, twelve… ugh,
finally.”
“Sorry?” part of me wondered she had said something, or I
was just distracted by all of this stuff around me as he pulled
a wooden vice from underneath her table.
“Sweet Martin, how many are you making?”
“A dozen. The school is running low on functioning
teaching material. Give me a second.”
She pressed one book in the vice and brushed on a healthy

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amount of glue to the stack of folded paper and thread that

made up a text-block. I do not really what a healthy amount
of glue is, but he looked satisfied.
“You have ten minutes,” she said, checking her watch.
I leaned back a bit, “were you really that scared?”
“Yes!” She shouted. “Very fundamentalist family, very…
woe is me, very persecution complex kind of family. Have you
actually been to where we are going?”
“Yes, just not… past it. But I can’t tell you much more than
that. But what I can tell you is that, by the time I was your
age, I would kill to know what was on the other side of
Greenwood.”
“Well, of course you did. We all did. We would all kill to
see anything past whatever curtain there was in our lives.”
Rhea was not having any of this, and despite the definite
vertical advantage I had on the squirrel, I was certainly not
feeling it.
“Exactly, so what is different now? What are you afraid of
now? Book binding is not that interesting, unless it’s a
someone…”
Rhea blushed, staring at her feet.
“Then, by Martin’s Beard, just invite her.”
“Her?” Rhea asked.
“Yes, I said,” finally feeling like I had something to say
here: “We are not your parents, nor are were their church. We
really don’t care. Unless—”
“—she’s a squirrel, she’ll fit.”
“Then I don’t see a problem,” I said.
“Fine,” Rhea said, twisting the crank on her vice, “I’m in.”

I had known Uli since I was a kid, and his bakery was one of
the first places I went to when I first came home. He was a

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 Andrew Littler

proud stoat who grew up in a very loving family. Whenever I

visited him as a kid his mother would always treat me as one
of her own and always leave me with a sweet snack or two
for the trek home.
Whenever I came home, his face was the one that always
seemed to stay the same. He was steady, he was sturdy, and
was a more reliable than his ability to know when a loaf was
done.
“Allard!” He shouted. “Give me a second, wouldn't you?”
“Yeah,” I breathed in heavily, breathing in the scent of
bread and scones, going through my pitch in my head, and
eyeing whatever he had on display. I heard his oven slam
open.
I patted down my shirt and gave my back a good stretch as
he took whatever he was baking out to cool.
“Still the regular?” He asked.
“Yeah, a Crown Loaf. But I got something else on the mind,
too.”
“Oh?” He grabbed a pair of tongs and picked out the
freshest looking loafs he could find.
“Well, you still working with the city?” I started, picking
something out of my eye. “I know you used to cater to
commencements and all of that kind of stuff.”
“Since the first one, actually.”
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Well,” he corrected himself. “Not myself, by my family.
Richlea has been with the Lords of New Lorcastle since the
very beginning.”
I scratched my ear, “that’s news to me. Where did that pop
up?”
“Heh, sorry. Gill has been working through the family
records. I knew we went back, but not that far back. Why do
you ask?”
This is when Uli started feeling old. This is when I started

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feeling old.
“Gill, already? What is he, like, 4?”
“16,” Uli answered with two hints of a chuckle.
My face collapsed into my hands and I rubbed my temples
hard enough to almost forget that I was missing a dozen
years. “Martins Ghost, when did this all happen?”
“Well, in the past decade or so, I guess. Time is a vile
mistress sometimes. And here you go,” he handed more bags
than could ever be deemed necessary for what I ordered.
“You’re going to go out of business if you keep like this,
you know,” I said.
“Not if you take this long to come for your next visit, I
won’t.”
It was around now that the wrinkles on an old friends face
started to show, and started to betray how long it had really
been.
“Hey, remember those adventures we used to have?” I
asked. “As kids, I mean.”
“I do,” he nodded, taking my tone shift to mean more than
just idle reminiscence.
“How would you like to go on a real one?”
Uri’s enthusiasm deflated , “I cant, man. Maybe I could.
Maybe we could have as kids, but pretending to beyour big
brother only worked for so long. I got a family, man. I got
Gill, I got—”
“I can’t imagine it will take too long. And I know, I know I
have missed a lot of time with you. I am not saying I can…
make them up, or anything, just…”
“Friend, we took very different, very divergent paths,”
Basil started. “You did all of this stuff as a kid, you went off
with Ricker and then… well, we don't have to talk about that.
But if he couldn't make it then, how am I supposed to make it
now?
I rest my hand on his shoulder, even then I was long past

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missing Ricker. “I'm sorry this all happened, but this is

different. Think of it as one last… one last hurrah. Ricker and
I had very different missions than Winthrop has for us now.
This is different, I wouldn't ask you if it were not.
“I can’t tell you too much about it, and considering how far
we go back, I hope this adds an air of importance to the
situation. We are… we are going on a boat trip, and Winthrop
needs a few people of able mind to accompany us.”
“Where would we be going?” He asked, rolling some
dough with the kind of acute precision decades of practice—
“The end of the world.”

The rolling pin broke off its handle as it hit the floor, and left
behind a cloud of flour while I was promptly ushered out of
the Richlea Bakery.

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 CHAPTER SIX
Round Two

“Well, what do you think?!” Basil shouted, shoving a plate full of a

traditional breakfast dish into Finley’s face.
“I think, my friend,” he said, pushing back the offer just enough
to find room to slide into the table, and to rest his groceries. “I think
that you should let me sit down before you ask me that question, but
they do smell great. Very… how do you say…? Very… not beer.
They are definitely not beer.”
“I’ve been branching out.”
“This is pretty far out,” quipped Fin.
“I decided to give the kitchen another whirl. Maybe I will be able
to offer you all something more to sober up on than peanuts and
anchovies.”
“It’s a good branch,” Finley replied around the sound of him
chewing.

Allard cracked his neck, cracked his knuckles, and cracked open his
notebook, the pages looked well read.

The next name on my list was one of my favourite creatures

in the entire world. His name was Manning and I’ve known

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him his entire life. I met his mom a long while ago, and
reminding him of this was his least favourite thing in the
world. Manning was an easy catch, I just had to know what
to say.
He was an otter, and in turn, so was his mom. Hew knew
how to fix whatever happened, wherever it happened. It
wasn't even that he knew what he was doing all the time, he
just had a way of finding out what had to be done. He was a
tough kid.

“Yeah, you can find him out by the docks,” pointed a small
fisherman, her coat as torn and faded and bleached as one
worn for so many summers should also be. The fox’s paws
were worn bare, and her gloves were a near obsolete amount
of disrepair. She was an old codger, but fishing had a way of
keeping even the most elderly shining brighter than anyone
would assume.
It seemed like a good hobby to pick up at home.
“Er, thanks,” I barely remembered to reply, and this routine
kindness caught little more than air.

Manning was not a tall otter, but he sure knew how to steal a
scene. And while he was still a slim otter, he was not lacking
meat on his bones.
“What now, old man?” Manning’s voiced travelled well
over the cool water, even if the dock was curiously busy for
the time of year.
“Good to see you too, kid. You can tell your mom to rest
her weary heart, I think I found you a job.”
He held the air for a few moments.
“Manning, I—”
“—shh,” he said. “Hold that thought.”
And in half a heartbeat, the otter dove into the ocean; spear
in one hand, father’s knife in the other. Three seconds was his

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record, but this took him at least five to break the water with
his catch.”
“I mean,” I uttered, running towards the dock as fast as I
could run without him noticing. “Unless you are already
getting to old for this stuff. I counted a lot more than just
three seconds. How do you think mom will feel when I tell
her you are already too old to work a job?”
He spat a fish I had an oddly hard time identifying at my
feet, it still begging for breathe around the fillet knife stuck
between its gills. I stood there, waiting for Manning to catch
his breath again, hearing nothing but his latest catch making
battle with the grou—
—his staff made quick work of that fish, landing square in
the eyeballs, piercing one and exiting the other.
“You know what mom says about playing with your food.
Don’t want to get on her bad side, do you?”
“So what do you want?” Manning made an art out of
speaking through a sneer.
“A job. A good job. A proper, good job, and one you might
actually find some satisfaction in.”
“End of the world? You found something down south?”
“Hrm,” I was not expecting that kind of reaction. “What do
you… I mean, what—”
“—it’s okay, no one told me. Look at that fish there. I saw
your reaction, you can’t name it, can you?”
I kneeled down, popped the spear out from the fish’s
empty eye and took closer a look than I knew what to do
with.
“Uh, tuna, I guess?”
“Nope, salmon. Sockeye salmon. You can’t tell what it is
because it’s not supposed to be this far up.”
The otter flipped the fish in his hands and drug his fillet
from the anus to the belly, stopping just before the gills.
“You ever seen fish this bright red?” Manning asked,

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twisting his knife and displaying the flesh.

“Should… I have?” I asked, taken a fair bit aback.
“No. Tuna is orange, a soft orange, and see the marbling?
Much more fat than in the tuna we usually see up here.”
Manning placed the fish on the dock, sawing off it’s head,
it’s fins and tail and started to skin it. He broke the bones and
laid it flat. He took his knife known down the back of the
sockeye and handed me a portion.
“Try it out,” he insisted.
I did.
“I mean, yeah, it’s great, but what’s your point?”
“My point, old man,” he stood up, batting the head off the
dock with his tail. “Is that nothing around Lorcastle tastes
like this. It either came out of nowhere, or it came from
somewhere; either fish come out of nowhere all of a sudden,
or there is a new somewhere we have to worry about.
“It means, old man—”
“Hey,” I interrupted. “Not that old.”
“The point is,” Manning stood himself straight up, looking
as self confident as he sounded. “That there is a reason we
have fresh water fish up here. And that reason is why you are
being sent down past Steveston. That reason is why you are
being asked to look for the end of the world, and find out
what replaced it.”
He was a smart kid. I did not know he was this smart.
“Does this mea—”
“—yes, it means I will come,” Manning answered.

Well, that… worked.

His name was Art, and his family of bears ran most of the
rickshaw business in all of New Lorcastle. Bears loved two

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things: space, and fish. Being that the case, they were either
here getting fish, or the outer wards eating it. I think they
were first put there to guard the city, but that isn’t really a
thing we worry about anymore. A fish or two is usually all
they charge to catch a ride.
“Where to?” Art asked, as he pulled out the nicer of the
few wooden rickshaws he had with him.
“How familiar are you with, uhh…” I checked my notes.
“Blundell?”
The bear groaned.
“Enough, I can get you there in a few hours. Hop on. I
hope you don’t mind neighbours.”
I nodded as I hopped on. I dislike neighbours, but not
enough to be rude about it.

As the city grew, so grew the need for transportation. Sure, a

badger or two could carry around whatever a handful of
students to class or something, but as the population hit
handfuls of thousands, so did the room they took, and their
need to get around it.
And so, a succession was made, between Lord Winthrop II
and a community of bears that their services would be
provided to whoever needed it, to wherever they needed it,
all within the caveat of ‘reason.’ It was not a bad deal, and
relatively few of the cities residents were even aware that it
was an official one, but it was still one based on relatively
malleable promises.
Art was not one of the higher ups. Art knew nothing of
these discussions. Art was just a really nice guy.

It was nice to see New Lorcastle grow and develop as Art and
I (but mostly Art) travelled from the centre of it all to the near
the outer wards. It was nice to see the patterns form and
develop the further out we went, and it was nice to see what

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took and what did not. Most towns had a form of pub at the
centre of the district, and even more had a bakery or tea room
within walking distance.
It was interesting to see how the buildings evolved, and
how the development of the neighbourhoods formed around,
or in spite of, the patch of land they were built upon. Some of
them were built around a pond, and some formed around a
creek, or an especially sturdy embankment. Having only
visited a few of these in the past while, it was curious to see
what I recognized, and what I did not; what felt familiar, and
what felt new.

“Margery?”
It was a name I was not used to hearing, never mind
saying. When Art parked himself outside of the city, I went
through my notes again and rehearsed my proposition. I had
not seen this woman in years.
“Gimme 45,” Art shouted as he trekked off down the road.
I did not use the Bears’ rickshaw system often enough to not
feel a tinge of nervousness as I watched him leave. I shouldn’t
have and I knew it, and it’a not like we were out in the
middle of nowhere. Nowhere did not often have a name, and
this place most certainly did: Blundell.
She was a marten, wearing light, off-shoulder dress of
three layers. It fit better than most I would have seen, and
assumed this was because she was likely the one who made
it. She rushed out of a back room from somewhere nearby,
sewing needle between her teeth, the knees of her dress
between pinched fingers.
“Yes, yes? Sorry,” she paused, resting her paws on her
thighs. “Yes, sorry, I was… I was in the back working on a
project. Who are—”
“I apologize,” she said standing quickly upright, running
her paws down whatever amount of her dress had fallen out

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of sorts. “Forgive me, where were my manners?” she asked,

correcting herself.
“Yes,” she reached out a paw. “I am Margery. How… how
may I be of your service?”
I reached out in turn, “Hi, I am… well, my name is Allard
deBurgh, and I come here as representative of Lord
Winthrop.”
“Ah, yes, that would make sense,” she said.
“How… how do you mean?” I asked in return, eyes
perched precariously on my brow.
“Just, well, we don’t see many foxes around these parts, so
when someone no one here recognizes shows up, I figure
something is up. And, well,” she eyed me toe to tip; her arms
crossed, her chin jutting out just a tinge. “You do not look
quite dressed to, uh, till the fields, that is.”
I replied half-askance, one eye slightly more pinched than
the other, “I guess you’re right. Anyways, he would like to
offer you a position on a… ship down south.”
“How far south?”
“Well, a bit more south than you are imagining. I can’t get
too deep into it, but it’s right around the… end of the world.”
Her half of an askance turned to half a glare, but on the
other side of her face, “the end of the world?” she asked.
“Like, the old fairy tales? That end of the world? The one that
is further down south than we are really allowed to go?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say as much as not allowed to go as—”
“—well, that is effectively how it works, though. We had
this idea drilled into our heads by our teachers and by our
politicians that the world broke in half during some
fantastical civil war,” she was getting a bit too ornery for my
liking.
“What is the real reason we cannot go down there? The
shipping docks in Steveston have been busy for decades, if
not more. What are they keeping from us? Why are we so… I

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 Andrew Littler

mean, it’s been hundreds of years, and we have only ever

spread out east, we—”
“—miss, please. Margery, what are you trying to get at?”
“Im trying to,” she scowled while rushing right up to me,
her hair all sorts of amok, fingers pointing right into my face.
“Get some answers out of you. Why aren’t we going any
further down than Steveston? The ocean is a much quicker
way to travel than through a continent of trees and
mountains…”
I stared blankly at here while brainstorming any other sort
of reaction.
“Miss… it’s real. I mean, it may not be… exactly how it has
been written for the past...while. But we’re not… well, not
me. I’m not, I’m not the one in charge, but you’re not being
lied to…”
I backed away.
“Margery, look, this was clearly a bad idea. And I
understand what you are saying, but you… you have to
believe me, this is not made out of malice. I have been there,
and it’s for our protection.”
Margery snarled at me.
“I don’t know what happened to you, but that is for you
and yours to work through. Have a good day.”

I did not expect Art to come by right away, but I sure as hell
wished he had come quicker. I waited at the borders between
Blundell and whatever city it sat beside, testing how long
range a weapon that woman’s piercing glare continued to be.

Basil returned from his duties in the kitchen, but Allard was far too
into his own storytelling to ever noticed. Similarly, Finley, was too
busy imagining how literal that woman’s glare was to notice that
the bar had long since closed, and the oil lamps had fallen to a dim,
intermittent flicker.

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“Damnit, look at the hour,” Finley had just pulled himself out of
haze.
“Sweet mercy!” Basil exclaimed, looking at the hour.
“Godda— Fin, don’t you have work tomorrow? Well, today?”
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes just noticing how dark it was already.
“I’ll be... *yawn*… fine. I’ll be fine.”

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 CHAPTER SEVEN
Knock, Knock, Knock

With the Inkling long since closed , Basil thought it best to

finish cleaning up. That is to say, it was time to finally get rid
of Phillip.
“Come on, Phillip.” Most of the lights from the cities roads
had been snuffed out or run dry, and the tables around the
drunken bastard had long since been cleaned and had their
chairs leaned into them. All but one.
“You know I am closed. I close at the same time every day,
and every day—”
“Err’day you tell me. Err’day you says I know when’s you
closing. Err’day you tell me the same thing! Err’day!”
“That is because, Phillip,” Basil had his paw, soap, and
towel cleaning out any mugs he might have ignored.
“Because you are still here every day. Because you have been
here for as long as I can remember, or anyone I can remember
can remember. Before your wife can remember.”
The tone of the conversation dropped just a smidge more
than Basil had anticipated.
“Don’t you even…” Phillip uttered, with about as much
sobriety as was left in hm. “You don’t know… y’don’t even

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know Kath’rine. Y’don’t even know what she done did.”

“I do, actually,” Basil continued cleaning, keeping measure
of his tone, and keeping constant watch on the town drunk.
“It’s her fault, you know, you—” Phillip tried to throw off
both bartenders that hazily stood before him.
“—one,” Basil started counting, dodging to the right of the
angry drunk.
“—she has nothing to do—”
“—two,” Basil continued, ducking from another flailing
fist, positioning him away from the harder liquors.
“—with this, y-you don’t know w-w-what kind of person
—”
“—and three,” Basil caught Phillips fist with a hook and
rolled him over his hip onto one of his barstools.
“Damnit,” Basil cursed himself. “I was hoping to miss
that… Now go home.”
That little scuffle was all Phillip needed, it seemed, to sober
up enough to remember where home was. He passed out in
the alleyway there, but at least this time it was the proper
alleyway.

Basil was not one to kick Phillip straight out of the Inkling,
but things had to change, especially if he wanted things to
change. He went to the back of his kitchen, pulled out bags of
onions, carrots, chickpeas, oils, peppers, and got to work.
Basil had to get used to this stuff if he wanted to offer this
kind of fare to more than just his friends. A few loafs and a
few cakes were one thing, but as tight nit as New Lorcastle
was, The Inkling saw more traffic than anyone in it would
dare to imagine. If Basil were going to offer a few things, it
would only make sense to offer a few more. If he was going
to get that kitchen running, he mind as well make good use of
it.
Basil took his knife to the whetstone, and diced and

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 Andrew Littler

minced a generous amount of onions, celery, garlic, cloves,

and whatever else he had sticking around. That broth could
sit for a long while, enough of one to offer him time to sleep.

“Now, where were we?” Basil asked is grandmothers cook

book, (to whom he assigned her personality). This thing was
a prized possession of his, it’s bright red cover, and it’s pages
all crimped and stained with oil. It was in a tasteful state of
disrepair; one that showed it’s use, but at the same time, it’s
respect given. What he remembered of ol’ Evangeline is that
she would rather her things be used than be preserved.
Basil thought doing both was a fair compromise.

1 pound of celery, 1½ pounds sweet onions, 1 pounds carrots, 3?

No, 6 cloves of garlic, 6 whole black peppercorns…

No recipe lasts generations without a few additions made,

and with a recipe of this vintage, it was bound to find itself in
excess of ingredients. His addition was the fennel bulbs, and
about twice the garlic. By the time he finished preparing all of
the ingredients, his paws were starting to ache. He threw this
and the remaining 2/3s of the ingredients into a barrel of
water and let it simmer for just about long enough for him to
catch some shut-eye.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Fin and Katherine meandered into

Basil’s pub, and it was just about time for Basil’s regulars to start
meandering in as well.

“Well that is a couple I was not expecting to see anytime soon,”

spoke the hedgehog that stood in charge of this whole operation,
trying his best to hide a yawn.

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“Hardy har har,” replied Fin.

“It is nothing like that and you know it,” Katherine replied.
Basil poured Katherine a drink and slid it to he and she took the
drink and took herself a seat.
“So what do we have here?” she asked, eyeing Allard more than
anyone else. “Or who, really.”
“This is Allard” Fin said.
“Allard, Allard deBurgh, pleased to—” his pleasantries were
interrupted by Basil yawning a yawn big enough for someone his
size, “meet you. Pleased to meet you.”
“Basil?” Allard asked.
“Gimme,” the oversized hedgehog pinched his eyes shut and tried
to shake himself awake. With his second half a dozen cup of coffee,
Basil also brought with him an assortment of plates upon which,
were an assortment of baked goods. This wasn’t exactly a breakfast
meal, but this was not exactly a breakfast, and they weren’t exactly
paying for anything of this, so none of that mattered.
“I know it is not much of a meal yet, but I like to think I have
something here,” Basil explained behind a very toothy, very prideful
grin.
“Here we got a bannock bread with an vegetable soup in an old
family broth,” continued Basil, as he placed a lumpy loaf of bread
alongside a bowl of soup. “Some molasses cookies to nibble on
between mugs of coffee, and your pecan apple flapjacks are still in
the oven.”

The molasses cookies were sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. The
flapjacks were the bell of the ball, and the bannock bread was in
constant supply, as was the marmalade. The soup was to die for.

“Now, where were we?”

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 Andrew Littler

Basil and Finley were both wrenched to attention by the

sound of Allard’s chair tearing across the floor of The Inkling.
They shot as many glances around the pub as they could
manage, but caught nothing but a slight rat-tat-tat on the
floor.
“I’m down here, you blokes,” a small voice uttered. A
small voice that Finley recognized more than most.
“Martin’s Beard, Wanda, you gotta warn us when you show
up,” Finley gasped, clutching his chest in a way sarcastic
enough (he hoped) to not worry anyone.
A small house mouse tip-toed through a largely empty
pub, making sure not to step under anything or anyone. She
wore a simple blue dress, but she was finicky and handy
enough to weave a bit of a crinkle pattern on the collar and
the cuff.
Finley had known her for a few years, and Allard had
known her a dozen or so more.
“I’m terribly sorry, Sir Allard,” she whispered. “I just
wanted to say goodnight to Finley… on behalf of a certain
Avery of mine.”
“Sweet mercy, Wanda, I’m sorry, I… I never knew you
were here.”
“It is more than fine,” she replied. “Allard has a way with
words, he does, and he lead an interesting enough life to talk
about.”
“How do you two know each-other, anyways?” Finley
asked as he rushed to gather whatever things he had brought
to the pub.
She smiled a very welcome smile, “Oh Finley, dear, I have a
life other than just being a mother, and most certainly had
one before becoming one. Before even the days of The
Clover.”
“The Clover?” Finley asked, one eyebrow prominently
cocked.

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Basil had gotten up by this time as well and was wiping

the table clean. “Tomorrow night, then?”
“I might—”
“Hey-hey-hey! What is this thing about the Clover?” said
Finley, interrupting a certain silver fox.
“It’s a grand ol’ ship. We’ll get to it. Now, Finley and
Wanda? I bid you adieu, then.”
As the conversation died down, the late-night patrons of
the Inkling started to hear how quiet the rest of the city really
was and, in shushed embarrassment, tried their best to hurry
up and blend it.

The pub was near empty by the time Wanda had showed up,
and the lamps and lanterns hung outside were well into the
respective oil chambers. Mr. Finley Scout and Ms. Wanda
Wilsteed grabbed a barstool near the rear exit, as to give Basil
room to ignore them.
She blushed in the way a sweet mother would.Wanda had
always been a kind, lovely, and wonderful house mouse. She
was very… outward with her kindness, but she managed to
never make it come off as too aggressive.
“Oh bugger,” Fin said. “How long have you known Allard
for, anyways?”
“We go… way back. He got me through some… rough
stuff with my parents. How else do you think he found out
about you?” Wanda cracked a smile.
Wanda hit Finley on the shoulder as she leapt from the
barstool to leave the pub, but he did not notice. He did not
notice her because Wanda is very, very small.

The walk home was quiet and it was calm and it was cool,
and for the first time today, Fin didn’t have anyone to distract
his brain from going off by itself. Sometimes he would think
about what the world would be if it kept to those religions of

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yore. But not tonight. Tonight was thinking about family, and
for the first time in a while, he wasn’t hating himself for
doing so.
From what he could tell from the back Garin’s books, his
grandfather changed everything. He never gathered that he
was an incredibly expansive thinker, just a different one. He
started with the idea that different crops may have different
nutritional requirements, and everything went from there.
Garin started with an understanding of the world, and
created a whole new one. He was the flood that lifted all
boats.

The more and more Finley read of Garin Middleton the more
and more he recognized, and the more and more he
appreciated his relation. It had been generations since his
books were published, and their wisdoms had long since
been employed, but it answered the questions he had never
bothered to ask.

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 CHAPTER EIGHT
New Boat

Kip, Manning, his friend, and Rhea were there already, with
their assortment accoutrement they did not feel comfortable
spending much time without. My bag was my accoutrement.
His fathers fillet knife was Manning’s.
The lot of us waited around with pursed lips until Garin
showed up, with Uli and Gill in tow. It turns out I was more
right about him than I thought.

“You sure about this, Gill?” Uli asked within earshot.

“Me? Dad, it’s just a bakery. I have been working with you
for years, you’re the one going on an adventure.”
“Just… take care of your mom, will you? And where is she,
anyways?”
“Heh,” Gill chuckled, “in no need to being taken care of.
Have fun, eh? And then tell us all about it.”
The two pine marten hugged, communicating more with
grips at eachother’s backs, and their dampen faces than any
father and son tale could ever dare portray.
“I guess we best start heading aboard, then” I quipped
lightly as Uli approached us.

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New Lorcastle sported a very cleverly built docking station.

This whole operation was built against an incision cut into a
neighbouring mountain; cut into the mountains rock-face was
an impressive staircase doubling back and forth from the
docks, to a clocktower, and what appeared to be a sorting
station.
The station fed to the loading arm, which transferred crates
of rations to and from the docked traffic. I was not sure what
to be impressed by more, the assortment of gears and ropes
that built the loading arm, or the hundreds of steps they
managed to fit into so little space.

The Clover was a really nice looking ship. While generations

old, it looked cared for. It’s hull was carvel-built, which
meant that the hull planks were built edge to edge, while the
sides were built with the planks overlapping. It was hardly a
slow ship, but our trip left me with more than enough time to
go digging into the ships history, and pages upon pages of
uninteresting minutiae about how the ship was built.
Upon the mizzenmast flew a flag, and upon that flag at the
Crest of Lorcastle.
“I try not to use it too much,” Lord Winthrop insisted,
“Winthrop XI was of the more gaudy of my ancestors. But it
has proven itself useful in the past while.”
“I mean, when someone gets a chance to make a ship, it
makes sense to make the damn hell out of that ship, no? The
name is Manning, by the way,” he shook hands with Lord
Winthrop.
“Winthrop. Just… just Winthrop, no Lord is needed here.”
Manning smiled.
“Now find yourselves a seat, we will be undocking soon.”

My lot spent the next hour or so helping out Winthrop’s lot

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wherever we were welcome, but if anyone was going to need

our help, it would not be so close to shore. It was nice to see
this much of our ocean, and the smell of the docks I loved so
much was only tenfold out on the ocean. Before we left dock,
Lord Winthrop called a few of us, and two of his own men,
into his quarters. It suddenly felt less roomy.
After fiddling with a few gears and flipping over his
private dinner table, Winthrop presented to us a proper
nautical desk; drawers for pens, measuring tape, and extra
paper included.
“I guess it’s about time you all introduce yourselves,” Lord
Winthrop said to the lot before us, but staring right at me.
“Sterling d’Oulli,” stood a beaver in a bright red smock.
“Yates Fiennes,” stood a marten in a pair of aged, baggy
trousers and stone-coloured legwraps.
“Aoibhín d’Ivri, sir, Captain Aoibhín d’Ivri,” stood up a fox
in shirt of chainmail and leather, and a hood of brown and
green, and adorned with patterns of gold and blue stitching.
“I assume the lot of you know each other.

Some of us did, but some was enough for now.

“How familiar has Allard made you all with our plans?”
Aoibhín, standing to Winthrop’s left, asked.
“Not an incredible amount,” Uli answered. “Just about the
church he was going after, and the grand tree they found.”
“Hm,” Aoibhín answered around pursed lips, “Of course.
Well, as your acting commander in chief, I reckon I should tell
you all the rest of what went down. Give you another chance
to back out, if need be.”

Into the overturned dinner table was an eloquently carved

and painted map of the entire Kingdom of Dunlaw, atop the
blue background of the Sea of Caleia. New Lorcastle was at

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the top left with a black triangle, while Steveston was

afforded a white one. Falcon crest, Gelderland, Acstone, and
Brehill were noted with white triangles. The Whitecrown
Mountains were illustrated on the far right with an
appropriate grey tone, and the Greenwood Forest with a dark
green one. And, well—
“Wait,” Uli said, noticing the bottom half from the map.
“This is real? I mean, I stopped buying the end of the world
thing ages ago, but I just assumed the coast went on forever,
or found uninhabitable desert or something.
Kip hacked up whatever form of awkwardness was sitting
in her throat, “Yeah, I never really understood the end of the
world… argument. Or I did, but I didn’t. It doesn’t make any
literal sense, but it’s been taught to us for so damn long that
no one seems to be arguing it. I figured it was a political
reasoning of sorts, but I never found much of a nefarious
intent behind it, so there was not much to look for.”
“And there we have it,” Winthrop piped in. “We are a
smart city, we are a large city. It is kind of fascinating how
quickly we have expanded, but… we are also a scared city.
Not the populace itself, but the higher up you go, the tighter
you see the balance. The fact that you don’t see it is good.
That is my job, to keep you from being scared - even if it
means I keep you from knowing too much.”
Manning’s eyebrow was now standing fully erect, “er,
what of?”
“We don’t… know. We are hoping to find out,” Fiennes
said. “The bit about the other half of the world breaking off
was just a convenient story that we told ourselves, and
continued to tell our children. It was hardly manufactured, it
was just co-opted… for a higher purpose, if there is one.”
“So what happened? Manning asked, less assure of himself
by the second.
“We don’t know for sure, we just know what we heard

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second-hand, and we know what was left in it’a wake:

nothing. The world was gone, and however little sense that
makes, we had neither the tools or the want to look much
further. We know a lot of us died, and that is about all we
cared about at the time.”
“That’s where Allard comes in,” Yates Fiennes said. “He
was with us when we found the edge of Greenwood Forest.
And that is where we are going back to.”
“How many did we lose, then? In the Civil War, I mean.”
That is when I piped in: “We did not start recording any
sort of census until, well, after the founding of New
Lorcastle.”
“You're welcome,” Winthrop quipped.
“But if we were about half the size we are now, and we lost
a third of our population… that’s, what, three thousand?
3,300 souls? It doesn’t much matter on what side of the way
they were on, they were still us.”
“Well crap,” replied enough of us in unison to anonymize
anyone involved.

“Lay aloft and loose all sails!” cried Aoibhín, her crew, was of
forty souls, and just about as many different types of beast.
They tended to be of the larger sort, but not all of them.
A few marten and stoat scurried up the cobweb pattern of
ropes sorted between a seemingly inordinate amount of
masts, topgallants, and topsails. They were thin and fast
enough to make quick fashion out of the maneuver, and in no
time flat, let loose the gaskets that tied the ships sails to its
lofts and secured them tightly.
“Sheet home lower topsails!” She cried to the rest of her crew.
Again, they pulled at the myriad of ropes in rehearsed
precision, letting go the buntlines for the lower topsail and

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pulled them tight.

This is when the Clover started to take shape. It always
looked like a boat of some elaborate grandeur, but without
the lower sails inflating in the wind, it just did not look like a
proper ship.
“Hoist upper topsails!” Aoibhín cried again, letting loose
from her tough demeanour a tone of excitement in his voice.
She was the best of the best, Winthrop had said, but the best
of the best did not often sail to the end of the world. Or at
least, what is referred to there-as.
Her crew pulled at another of the myriad of ropes, and cast
off this set of downhauls and buntlines. The brace was eased,
and they heaved the halyard, securing both the yard and the
sail that is controlled.
As a great finale, the captain of the Clover called out once
more: “Hoist the t’gallants, hoist the royals!” and so his crew
did, as had they had rehearsed so often before. Finally, the
halyards are manned, the the yards each hoisted each sail set.
“Not even you all could bugger this one,” she said to your
grandfather and I. I like to assume this was his form of a
sarcastic tone.

We spent a lot of time together, the lot of us.

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 CHAPTER NINE
Gardening

He did the research, he got the seeds, but now Finley had to
actually do the work. Now Finley had to put seed to soil and
make up his mind as to where the asparagus was going. The
thing that he was most nervous about was time; autumn was
creeping on him, and he wouldn’t see how any of this
worked until the winter.
As Fin tilled the soil, he started to imagine how it would all
look. He would separate each patch of land with a line, and a
small piece of note paper with their assigned seed. He
already decided the layout twice before in his notebook, but
that only meant there were at least two renovations left before
he made up his mind.
“Okay, I got this,” he started, but quickly corrected himself:
“Damnit, no… not there, okay,” Fin said, switching the
onions with the potatoes on his notebook. He cursed himself,
what kind of idiot would even dare to think onions could
grow next to… “Damnit!” He cursed at himself again,
knowing that he should know better than to put potatoes so
close to tomatoes.
“Finley?” Called the second floor of his library.

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“In a minute!” He called back. “Switch the beans with

the… no, they can’t go together either,” Fin uttered to himself,
puttering around his backyard.
“Finley!” Shouted his second floor again.
“That was not a minute! I asked for a minute!” He was
really sure he had it this time, but every time he moved a bag
of potato seed, that damn spring cabbage.
“Damn!” He shouted.
“Damn— what?” Kat shouted.
“Fine. Beetroot it is,” Fin said in a huff, “and what do you
want?”
“The door!”
“Oh! Right!” And Finley sputtered back to work,
disappointed bag of potato seeds in hand.

Fin started with the asparagus; they would take the longest to
grow, so he mind as well get them over with, they would go
in the top left. Next? Tomatoes. Asparagus and tomatoes have
mutually beneficial effects, as did the broad beans and the
spinach. The beetroot, though? No one cares about beetroot,
but it was easier to replace the potato with that than find out
where the hell it could go. Finley was very tired, very
stressed, and very full of dirt.

“I’m back,” said Abby, not completely sure of what to do in

such a situation.
“Oh!” Fin said in more shock than he felt comfortable with,
“right! A patron, of course. Sorry, I was… just gimme a sec,”
Fin ran his paws under the nearest faucet and tried to dry and
quickly and as best he could.
“You’re back,” he said, “do you have the, uh, time? Abby,
right?”
“Quarter past ten, and ye—”
“—Katherine! You were supposed to—”

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“—I did!” She replied from through the second floors

kitchen door.
He exhaled, making sure to not let anything from that
mornings coffee greet his guest, “sorry - must have lost track
of time,” Brakebills Books usually opens around 9:30. 10:15
was definitely later than 9:30.
“Who’s your friend?”
“Old friend, she came looking for a place to crash for a
while,” replied Fin, trying his best to denote the word friend
with a slight shrug in his shoulders, while at the same time,
not really noticing. Abby handed Fin back his copy of
Brilliant, My Counter. Her face did not leave it the most
uplifting review.
“What were you doing in the back, anyways?” She asked.
“Yeah, sorry about the mess,” Fin said, batting his tail
against the doorframe to let loose any dust that may be
sticking around. “I found my grandfathers book a while
back,” Fin was scratching at his chest, not quite sure at what
he was scratching, “decided to give it a shot.”
“How does the shot go?” She asked.
“Well, it’a messy one, but it’s relaxing… if not terribly
distracting. Again, sorry about—”
She reached out as casual a consolation as a paw on his
forearm could suffice. Something might have happened, but
neither of the beasts noticed.
“Excus—”
“—oh!” Fin snapped out of some sort of something as
someone entered Brakebills. “Gimme a sec,” and Finley
quickly brushed past Abbey, trying his best to not sound
surprised of unprofessionally distracted.
“Hi,” Fin uttered, sputtering through two isles of fiction
near the front doors.
It was a stoat that Fin recognized only enough to not be
sure if he should recognize him. You had to be a very

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recognizable beast for Fin to even bother to remember your

name.
This stoat was not quite that recognizable. Abby was.
“Hi,” he repeated anxiously, “how may I help you? We do
barters, trades, and borrows,” Fin always leaned on the side
of telling too much, rather than telling nothing at all.
“Just looking,” he said. They often were, but Fin sound that
being the first to say something made it easier for someone to
be the second.
“Well, just gimme a shout if I can.
He grunted in reply. It was still the morning, and it did not
take long for the populace of Lorcastle, New and Old, to
evolve away from mornings. It was quick, sudden, and
necessitated the creation of coffee and tea. Tea came much
sooner than coffee, as pouring boiling water on a leaf was
much easier to deduce than the fermentation of a certain seed
of a certain fruit.
“So how is the gardening, then?” Abby spoke up from
behind. “Anything interesting?”
Fin was keeping his eye on he customer as he scratched his
head and replied: “Asparagus, tomatoes, beans, spinach,
beetro— no, not beetroot, and… uh, potatoes, I think. I hope.”
“You think? You hope?”
“Hey now, I’ve never done this before, not this much. At
least when I built the trellises I could tell that it looked like a
trellis pretty straightaway. Everything I planted still looks
like a clump of dirt.
“You’ll do great,” Abby said with a smile.
“So!” Finley said, interrupting his own thought, “anything
else in mind? However grandiose it may be titled, Blacksmiths
of Freedom seems right in your alley.”
“Yeah, I think I checked the back cover of that a few weeks
ago,” and she trailed off a bit, “Hey Fin? Finley? Whichever
you prefe—”

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“Fin works.”
“Fin then, what do you do after work? Usually, I mean,
what do you usually do after you close up shop?”
“The Inkling. Usually.”
“Well,”Abby replied, “I might just see you there, then. I
mean, I gotta go now, but… if you don’t—”
“I don’t mind at all, see you there,” Fin answered with a
smile.

Finley is almost positive that he did something for most of

the rest of the day, but for the life of him, he could not tell you
what.

Finley’s size never helped him feel especially useful here.

Anything he could help with seemed in spite of himself. Sure,
he was big and he was strong and he could lift things and
hide his alcoholism well, but he grew up feeling as if he was a
wasted badger. He never had much of an upbringing, so
when Fin found something he was good at, he just stuck with
it, even if it did not fit him. Fin spent his life accepting things
as they were given to him and he knew he was lucky for what
those things were, but they were never him.
Fin was big, but never big enough. He could lift things, but
he could never lift enough. What made him a badger, or what
being a badger made Fin, never mattered enough to him for
him to do anything with.
He was nice enough, but that wasn’t a profession. He
could read well enough, but that wasn’t much a profession
either. He could recommend books well enough, but that
wasn’t really a passion of his. He liked to watch people and
see people and analyze people so he could find ways to help
those people, but a good book could only impact a life so
much. Finley wanted to do more, but he did not know what
that more was.

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“Uncle Finley!”cried Avery from behind him in the most

glimmering of tones. His mother was surely there in to.
Ah, yes.
“I was wondering where you two had wandered off to,”
joked the badger, making as precise a ruffle in the small
mouse’a hair as his oversized paws could muster. Avery ran
up Fin’s arms as Wanda hopped on her favourite table,
finding herself a more appropriate angel for discussion.
Antwerp continued his quest onto the book shelves, an his
mother did whatever she did that made it look like she had
something to say.
“How was the book?” Fin asked, “Mice & Kings was it?”
“Yes-yes-yes,” she sputtered, “he love it. But then…”
Fin’s face was as sure what face it was making as Fin was
what Wanda was talking about. His tail stopped swaying
when he started to decipher whatever it was she did that
made it look like she had something to say.
“Since when do you have a garden?” Asked the house-
mouse.
“How did you—?”
“Burlap bags of seed and soil look a lot less square than
those of books do, son. And we don’t live that far away…”
“Heh,” Fin said. Clever, he thought.
“Wasn’t even me! Avery was looking for you a while back,,
he deduced it all himself.”
“All of it?” Fin asked.
“Most of it,” Wanda corrected herself.
Fin bent his left wrist inwards until it popped, and did the
same with his right.
“It’s a nice hobby. A bit… off and on, if you will. Planting
and planning was a lot of fun. Waiting? Not so much.
There was a pause between the two for a moment or two.
The time was spent both trying to find out what to say, and

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trying to figure out where Avery was and what he was doing
without actively looking for him.
“Ah—”
They paused again for another moment.

“Fine,” said an exasperate Finley.

“Hrm?” Wanda asked, one half of a grin appearing in her
cheek.
“I’ll… I’ll teach Antwerp how to garden. However much I
can. I can only promise to be… better than he is.”
Wanda leapt onto Fin with as big a hug as she was
physically capable of offering without a series of increasingly
uncomfortable movements.
“Just… don’t expect miracles, Wanda. I don’t even know if
anything I make is edible.”
Wanda kissed him on the cheek, “Avery adores you, it
doesn’t have to work, it just has to be… Uncle Finley!”
Fin grinned again, “you two still want to get a book?”
“Yes!” Avery screamed, launching himself from the highest
shelf in the Horror section back onto his new teacher.
Fin handed over his latest literary selection, “From of Wood,
the story of a princess, a mask, and the frog spirit of the
forest.”
Wanda took the book with pride in her son, an he took to
her arm with an equally obnoxious an contagious amount of
glee.

I don’t know what kind of mouse that kid will grow into, Finley
thought to himself as he opened the door for his favourite
patrons, but he sure as hell will be it.

[ FIN GOES TO THE INKLING]

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 CHAPTER TEN
A Progression of Time

15 / October / 437 C.E.

The Clover reached the end of the shoreline just as the sun
left sight of their starboard.

“Helmsman!” called Aoibhín, looking through her sextant and

eyeing her map.
“Aye, aye, sir!” called a muffled voice.
“Left full rudder,” she commanded.
“Left full rudder, aye,” Bellowed the muffled voice in return. In
due time, she Clover started to creak again. “Sir, my rudder is left
full, no new course given.”
“Rudder amidships,” she commanded with an authority she
handled elegantly.
“Rudder amidships, aye.”

The Clover quickly straightened out, and Aoibhín kept us far

enough to avoid any rock formations that had gathered near
the Greenwood’s shore, but close enough to still see it. None
of it looked discernibly new, but all of it looked fascinating.

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It was far from a quick maneuver, but it felt very sudden,

and it was hard. The less seasoned of the crew grabbed onto
something nearby, while the rest leaned around the oncoming
waves. This is where the adventure really began. This is what
they were looking for.

“My rudder is amidships, no new course given.”

“Steady as you go,” called the captain.
“Steady as you go, aye,” replied the bellows.

Aoibhín called her crew to furl a few sails until she hit a
comfortable 55 knots. The only beasts that had been this far
south were in her crew, and none of them had travelled East
enough to see the ocean; the Sea of Caleia. While no one was
sure of what to expect out here, if this course proved right,
the Clover should hit the ridge in less than a month. A month
is a very long time for something to very, very wrong, and
that wasn’t even including the predicted estuary that was to
lead past the forest, and through the brackish water.
Having since gotten over the feeling of pure excitement,
adulation, and unadulterated fervour, the crew of the Clover
retired to where they were before. They sat on the deck, they
sat in the gallant playing games of Chess and Checkers and
the martens and stoats raced up and down the masts,.
Everything went back to normal, but this time, with an
amount of tension in the air no one was used to, and no one
was fond of admitting.

“Now, where were we?”

12 / November / 437 C.E.

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“Excuse me?” Aoibhín said in as much a mock tone as she felt

she could get away with.
“Sir, I mean. Aye, aye, sir,” replied Muirin as he left the
captains quarters.
“What was that about?” I asked, motioning to the closing
door as I stepped inside
“Well it’s not like I will have this much power for long, I
leave this ship when you do.” Aoibhín replied. “I gotta have
some fun with it. Come in, sit down.”
Aoibhín ushered to a seat in front of her. She unfurled the
map and took a pencil, a compass, and a pair of callipers
straight to it. She checked her notebook, her calendar, and an
assortment of other maps she had laid about the table before
me as I took my seat.
“Sir,” I said, half reminding her that I was still there. “How
far do you reckon?”
She deflated into her chair, a weekends worth of
exhaustion burst out of her, almost sending a speck of spittle
in my eye. She yawned and I yawned in turn. She offered me
a glass of something and I downed it before she even told me
what it was.
It was tea. Hot tea. I regretted that move.
“Care for some more?” She chuckled.
Through pursed lips I nodded in reply, still trying my best
not to swear right in front of her. Because, for some
unexplainable reason, this all felt very different with her in
such a seat of power.
“Thank you,” I finally managed to squeak out after
scalding my throat.
“Considering that we do not have the rest of the map with
us, I cannot tell you for sure. But at this speed, and without
any hiccups, three weeks and a bit. And that is only until we
reach as their argent latitude. We are going the very long way
around.”

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Now Finley yawned of his own accord.

“You mention hiccups, or something of the sort. How much
are you expecting something to go down?” I asked.
“Im not hoping for something to happen, I am just
expecting it to. Too much time; too many variables.
Something will go wrong and the anxiety is killing me.
She leaned back and stretched, Allard just yawned again,
this time waiting for his tea to cool down.

It was a long day. It was a long day of many long days

passed, and there were many long days left to follow.

27 / November / 437 C.E.

“No!” Screamed our stoat and deep-water fishing aficionado,

Merek.
“Pay attention this time,” she commanded. “There is a
point on the ocean - you cannot see the point, it comes out
from the shore and where it meets that deep water, that is
where the fish are. In the summer, remember this? There is
layer in the water that is too war for the fish to live - what
you are looking for is the point between that, and the top of
the water.”
It was not especially warm out today, but the wind had lost
itself and we were a few hundred meters from the shore,
stuck in a standstill. To pass the time, Merek thought to
replenish any amount of tuna we had on board. To pass even
more time, a large swath of the crew talked her into some
lessons. Some of us were returning to the city with our ship,
and those some of us wanted to know how to get a decent
dinner on the way there.
At least they knew not to fish close to each other.

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Each of the crew watched as Merek hooked her bait, and

each of the crew cast their lines in a rehearsed mess.
“The key to fishing this, the flutter,,” Merek pointed to the
thin, almost metallic piece of bate they all had used, “is
letting this thing fall on slack line. When you get that slack
line you are going to get some nice flutters, and if you can
find yourself—”
“—Merek?”
“—in a sec, Layton. On a drop like this, this flutter can be
real, real deadly. If you find yourself a stack of fish, between
the surface and the red-zone, that is where you are going to
get some— damnit! Can’t believe I missed him.”
The gasp behind her sounded like no one quite knew what
to sound like.
“It’s fine. A lot of the time when they're stacked, just lifting
up my rod tip and letting it sink a good meter or two. That
should do it. For some of you. Maybe. And yeah, Layton,
what do you want?”
“I… I dropped my rod.”

Well, at least they tried.

17 / December / 437 C.E.

Life was slow on the Clover, but our captain did her level best
to keep us motivated. It had been a week and a half since we
left Clover Port, and we were both running out of things to
talk about.
“How are Rhea and, what was it, D—”
“—Dawn, sir. Her name is Dawn.” I corrected her.
“Right,” Aoibhín nodded, knowing full well she will not
remember both of those names. “How are they doing? Given

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their… professions, I did not imagine they were your first

choice.”
I grinned, “not my first, but far from my last. Rhea is a
good worker, good with her hands, and if we want to put
anything to paper, I imagine we might want someone more
adept in the doing so.”
“And Dawn? What about her, what does she have?”
“She has Rhea; seems like a nice enough lass, keeps to her
and her other half's side. I don't think she would be here if it
weren’t for Rhea, but if we are there as long as I think we
might be, we are going to need all of her. It’a just that all of
Rhea includes someone else.”
“Well, at least they can entertain each other.”

Their conversation was interrupted by countless noises

pelting the roof above them. The noises continued. A very
frightened crew erupted around her quarters. Aoibhín
launched herself out of her chair, over her desk, and just
about through the front door, I followed suit.

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 CHAPTER ELEVEN
Percival The Dumb

As the summer crept ever nearer, the warm started to feel hot,
and the hot started to feel more uncomfortable. It was dry
and it was humid at the same time, and the heaviest coated
beasts of the fair city of New Lorcastle were found more and
more time near the water. Even for those that never learned
how to swim, or who’s arms are too short to spread a very
graceful stroke, the cool breeze was welcome when it came,
however rarely it did.
Fin heard a diminutive chuckle from behind him, it was
Wanda and Avery. Now Fin was yawning, too, and it had
barely hit midday.
“Why is he called The Wise?”
“Because that is what cult leaders always do,” said Basil,
handing both Fin and Allard a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” one of them said.
“Yeah, thanks,” said the other.
Allard replied over an uncomfortable plume of steam, “it’s
standard cult behaviour - giving ones self such a name helps
them (attempt to) claim divinity, or that they are on some
special mission from some higher power. It’s not necessary,

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but it’s useful.”

The Inkling was more busy than ever, and not just because at
this time of day, it provided an optimal amount of shade.
There were plenty of trees outside, along with an even greater
plenty of brick buildings - it is just that none of those trees,
(and very few of those buildings), offered drinks. Basil had
been offering baked goods for a while now, but those he got
drunk in days past still liked to get drunk. Especially one in
particular.

The barstool erupted as it crashed over Finley’s shoulder. He

caught himself on the way down to the floor.
“What did you say to her, you cunt?!” It was Phillip, he
was not yet drunk enough to black out, but was still drunk
enough to get angry.
“Godda—” Basil grabbed at Phillip’s collar but met the a
stool leg to the face.
“You won’t, you won’t get away that easy!” Phillip
shouted, Basil caught him as he swung his left fist. Fin gutted
him, but Phillip had enough booze in his bloodstream to not
tense up. The bastard hedgehog hit Fin back in the forearm
and managed to weasel himself out of the bartenders grip.
“So now she wants a divorce?!” Phillip hammered the
wooden leg into Basil’s throat, knocking him over, and
turning back to Fin.
Fin was panting. He was big, but not used to moving
around this much. “And what,” Phill landed in a few more
strikes on Basil and got his arm around his neck. “What the
Hell do I have to do with that?”
Basil pulled himself back up and Phillip turned to look at
him, “you know exactly what you have to do with this. And
you too, you fat bastar—” Fin sent him and his assailant back
over a table by kicking off the bar table. Phillip took most of

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the damage, but again, didn’t feel much. Fin spun out of his
grip but found a fist full of quills in his thro—
“What the,” Basil hit him with his left fist, keeling him
over. “Hell are… you,” he nailed him with his left arm,
hitting right below his ribcage. “Talking about?” Basil got him
another hit in a vital organ and ducked the bastards
retaliation.
“Victoria,” Phil started, hitting back at his neck—
Finley lunged forward and knocked Phillip back outside of
the pub, he tried to hit him back, but Fin caught his arm and
broke it, and sank his knee into his throat.
“What the Hell about Victoria?” Finley said, panting,
looking over the riddled body of the bastard named Phillip.
Finley only had coffee and water in him that morning, and
neither of those helped dull the pain as his body came to. “I
haven’t seen her in weeks, you little—”
“Uh, yeah, then why—” his attempt to worm from under
Finley was short lived.
“—because you’re an abusive husband who has taken
advantage of your wife’s situation and has used it to unload
any sort of responsibility onto her, letting yourself turn into
this bloated, clueless degenerate.” Grant stepped in and
drove his heel into Phillips paw “I do not know what your
and Kat’s deal is, but if this is how you react to it, then that is
how I know you are not the one standing up with.”
When Katherine walked up to Phillip, she was not
especially cautious about how much dirt she kicked around.
“When I want to talk to you, I will talk to you. But only
when I want to. I will see you when I am ready, now get the
bloody-hell out of here.”
His adrenaline had all but sucked itself dry down there on
the ground and Phillip was almost forming coherent words
with semi-coherent thoughts behind them.
“Bu—what about—”

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“They’re at your mothers. I tell you only because that is the

one woman you won’t stand up to, and sure as hell would
not try to beat up. Your mom is on my side, that is how
depraved you have gotten.”
Katherine left one final foot full of dust in the air and went
back to her seat inside.

The tone was different from that day forward. Things felt
different. They sounded different. It looked brighter after that
day, and not only for Katherine. No, Phillip was always a
blight on that city, and while he was not that often a threat to
anyone in the city, he made it harder to look forward. His
present acted like a small anchor to that neighbourhood, it is
just that no one had noticed.
Phillip did not ever see Katherine again; she was never
ready.

[Abby shows up! She has dinner with Fin and Kat.

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 CHAPTER TWELVE
Percival The Wise

17 / December / 437 C.E.

“Lieutenant?” she shouted from her doorframe. My

designation as second in command did not carry onto the
Clover. Instead, an otter replied in a rushed tone.
“Captain,” he stood erect, saluted quickly and backed
straight down. “We are under attack. From somewhere
amongst the Greenwood Forest, sir.”
“Orders to the helm,” shouted a space in the ship I still did
not recognize.
“Right full rudder immediately!” she shouted, “Lay aloft
and loose all topsails! We need to get away from these forests.
Lieutenant, what do we have to defend ourselves with?”
“Four bombards, sir. They are being readied as we speak.”
“Helmsman?!” Aoibhín shouted as she peered through her
own telescope. “Where are they?”
‘Still loo—” cried a muffled noise from atop the mainmast
as another cloud of arrows interrupted their sky, and as one
in particular found it’s target. Ova fell straight from the
mainmast and landed with a thud in the ships galley, and an

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arrow in her chest.

“Get down!” Aoibhín shouted, diving under the bulkheads
as the marten from before collapsed in half beside her.
“Still looking, sir,” a second quick marten ran to her side.
“Still looking sir, we just need to—”
Another arrow pieced the martens chest and pinned her to
the ships galley. The whole crew ducked as their hull was
pelted by another legion of arrows, some knocking each other
off course.
“Rudder amidships, fire at will!” Aoibhín shouted.
“Rudder amidships, aye, fire at—”
In quick succession, four mortar and granite balls flew
from the hull of the Clover and straight into the woods before
them. The Greenwood forest groaned in reply as a third
volley of arrows erupted from the forest.
A third marten ran down the mizzenmast, making sure not
to set eyes on her sisters, “we think we found them; two-
ninety-two, sir.”
Aoibhín aligned her telescope and took a look at the
damage. The archers were still hidden, but their their
trebuchet was knocked out of hiding.
“Orders—”
“Two-ninety-two!” The captain barked.
“Two-ninety—” the helms confirmation was drowned out
by the sound of another round of bombards being fired. With
about as much precision as a moving target could muster,
another crop of trees were mowed down. The echos flew as
the ground exploded around each mortar that hit. The arrows
returned, but with less precision, and about half the number.
“Sir,” asked Manning, Kip by his side.
“How are we looking?” Aoibhín asked in between looks to
the forest.
“We have,” Manning was panting, “a dozen injured, can’t
tell how serious until we—”

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Another round of arrows were sent our way and another

round of bombards and mortars tore through them, laying
waste again to the coastline before us.
“—until can can take a closer look at our crew.”
“Someone take these marten’s to the infirmary, right
quick,” she shouted into the ether.
“Yes sir,” barked a rather large hare, scooping them in each
arm and hopping off.
“How much longer do you think they can last?” Kip asked.
Aoibhín plucked an arrow from her ship, “just hold tight.“
“Sir?” I asked.
Aoibhín breathed in tightly, “they’re shooting with
longbows, so considering that, and our ships speed, they
have about seven minutes in range of us before they have to
regroup. Considering the density of that forest, the are not
moving fast. Seven minutes.”
Aoibhín grinned enough to know that this was not the
place to do so, she caught the hare in the corner of her eye,
her face looking busy enough to have the answer she wanted.
The captain nodded in her direction.
“With a maximum range of… 250 meters, let’s say,“ Kip
was biting her lip and tapping her foot, trying to do her best
calculations before more arrows came her way. “Two times "
times…” Aoibhín launched at her as another round of arrows
flew by, pinning her to the ground among the whole rest of
our crew.
Another fleet of came from the forest, but all but one came
short; one landing in the mizzenmast, but most hitting the
side of our ship. As the arrows continued, their trajectories
betrayed their loosened grip; we were already cruising out of
their target range, and they were rushing to keep at pace with
us.
“… yeah,” she said smiling, “yeah, she’s good.”
Our captain rose back to her feet and pulled Kip with her,

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“well thank you, a second opinion is always appreciated.”

And she was right. They were both right. By the time they
armed themselves again, they caught nothing but air. We sent
another round of mortars just in case.
“Mark your head,” Aoibhín commanded as the Clover
continued down the Dunlaw coastline.
“One-eight-two, sir,” came the reply.
“Come right to one-nine-five.”
“Come right to one-nine-five, aye.”
The Clover’s crew barely kept itself from collapsing in a
collective sigh of relief. The damage was done, but no more
was expected. By the time we had all gathered their
respective bearings, The Clover.

“Allard? Find out whatever you can about Percival. Percival

the… bloody, Wise or whatever it is he called himself. I have a
hunch.”
“Sir,” I replied.

19 / December / 437 C.E.

Aoibhín and I had been at this thing for hours and I finally
decided to put it to rest. There was more than enough reading
material to keep me busy, but not enough hours in a day to
grind through it all. His name was… or at least, the name he
was known for, was Percival the Wise. He ran one of the
reformation churches near the wards of New Lorcastle. There
had not been many churches around these parts since the
Civil War, and not since the Civil War was there one to worry
about. The churches were not scared away, they just ran
away.
“Pardon?” Finley asked, prompting Allard to go further into the

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cities past than he had planned. Allard sighed in return.

Back when Old Lorcastle was first founded, there was one
dominant religious group: Children of Martin. They were a fine
bunch of beast and they even helped found the kingdom. But
as Lorcastle grew and expanded and evolved, so did discord
and strife. So did those among us who complained that we
were not who we used to be, and that those immigrating from
the forests around us were diluting our values. This was not
all of the Children, nor was it a significant portion of them,
but it sure was a loud one.
It took a few years to ferment, but in the end, the Children
of Martin incited the biggest Civil War Dunlaw had ever seen.
We lost a good third of our kingdom that day, along with
anything south of the first 400 clicks of Greenwood forest.
That is the church that Percival is trying to reform, and the
end of the world is where Aoibhín, Yates and I found him and
his flock.

“Damnitit,” brushing stacks of literature onto the floor with

enough of a bang to warrant question.
“—the hell was that?” Aoibhín asked, stepping over one
book and picking up another. “Find anything yet?”
“Nothing. There is no amount of doctrinal reasoning for
any of this,” she handed me some wine. “Thanks.”
“Well,” Aoibhín asked, “how literally are you reading these
texts?”
“How do you mean?”
Our captain pulled out a few transcripts of Percival’s
sermons that she managed to collect from a while back.
“He keeps mentioning things like ‘faith without works is
dead,” and he goes on and on about how his constituents
should interpret The Four Branches and less about taking it
literally… find out what this all might mean” she said,
dumping a stack of transcripts in front of me.

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“Hey! What about you?”

“Kid,” Aoibhín quipped, “I still got a ship to run.”

20 / December 14 / 437 C.E.

It had been an awkward few nights since the attack, and

Aoibhín felt that a funeral would put an appropriate finale to
the weeks proceedings. She said as much in her speech.
“… and I do believe that, were they able to speak to us,
those lost would want our mourning to interrupt what we all
came here to do. Let us not travel past the end of the world in
vain, but let us not forget who's lives it took to get us there.”

It was a sweet bit of a speech, and our captain told it well, but
it was more procedural than anything. We all got on this ship
knowing the risk. As cliche as it was, it had it’s place, and it
gave us all something to strive to protect. There was nothing
said that had to be, but nothing said that we were not better
for hearing.
With each name read, so was was their body tossed
overboard; their bodies wrapped in wool and doused in oil.
“We can pay our respects, but we have to get back to work
in the morning.”

“Alton Ede.”
“Patrick Sherris.”
“Evan Bell.”
“Ova Damoyen.”
“Allie Babington.”
“Clint McElroy.”
“Angelina Hand.”
“Delphine Campbell.”

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“Arlen Howe.”
“Ross Win.”

We hoisted up our Crest half-mast, and sent with each body a

single arrow set aflame. It mattered less where these
traditions came from than that they were performed with
respect.

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 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Wooden Square

“How do buns from Basil and soup from me sound?” Fin

asked as took the last step.
“Great! And thank you again,” Katherine said.
“Sorry?” Fin asked, ruffling around with some bags and
books downstairs.
“I said thank you again. Would you like me to get the water
going?”
“Oh, sorry — and yes, please. I should have some barley
left over. It’s in a red bag.”
“Want to boil that, too?”
“If you don’t mind,” Finley replied.
“I certainly do not mind,” smiled Katherine.

And so, like countless times before, Finley and Katherine fell
into sharing the kitchen like it was their daily routine.
Katherine stirred in the wild greens, the singing nettles, garlic
and dandelion, while Finley portioned the broth, and made a
ketchup out of leftover mushrooms. Katherine tossed the salt
and the pepper. Finley buttered the buns.
It was a simple dinner, like they used to make together

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when the were growing up. It was fresh and it was good.
This was the kind of thing that had kept Fin and Kat
together: they both cared, and they both fit. They grew apart
as a couple, and in the years since, had grown apart even
more, but they still worked well together. While neither were
perfect, their friendship was still a net positive for them both.
They helped each other more than they liked each other, and
this feeling sat in their between every conversation they had.

As Fin laid there in his bed, both his and Katherine’s backs
each facing each other, each of them actively trying to forget
the past few hours.
Finley wondered how much of a mistake this place was.
Not that he held anything in particular against New
Lorcastle, or Old Lorcastle, really. He may have evolved
further and faster than his ancestors had ever dared dream to
but with this new world, so grew his problems, so grew
everyone's problems. Stress was never an issue to those living
in the forest, and neither were affairs, alcohol-poisoning, or
self-reflective mornings.

“Got any plans for today?” Katherine asked, having long

since taken occupancy of both sides of the be.
“Uh, not that I know of,” a very self-reflective Finley
answered from his side of the pillow, picking at a blister of
sorts he found on his paw.
“You seen Basil lately?”
“Yeah, I gave him a bit of a visit the other day,” Katherine
replied with a fair share of a pause in her voice. “He still
seems bitter.”
“Well, all things considered…”
“I suppose,” replied Kat, not quite feeling in the mood for

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Fin to list those things that were being considered.

“How about yourself?” Fin asked in turn, getting himself
ready to finish off the weekend, brushing ant knots he could
find in his tail.
“Pardon?”
“Any plans, I mean, or are you just… keeping low?
Keeping low sounds like a good idea, give him time to…
wake up, I guess.” Katherine nodded in solemn reply.
“I might just go for a walk, I guess. I know where about
town to avoid.”
“Walk me there, then?”
Kat answered with a kiss on the cheek.

“So what is it, then?” Katherine asked as the two left through
the front door downstairs.
“Pardon?” Fin asked.
“Your family. You never talked about them much, but you
seem pretty excited by this Garin guy,” said Katherine again,
locking up the door behind the two of them.
“Well, I haven’t had anyone to tell me any of this stuff up
until now. So it’s not that I refuse to talk about them, it’s just
that the only amount of family I had was a, well, dick. Elric
never even told me about mom… which makes sense, in a
way.”
She was right, Fin was never one to talk much of his family,
and this made keeping track of who he said what to
incredibly difficult. And so he did. At least, Fin went through
as much as that book he read had reminded him of
happening, give or take a few self-aggrandizing flourishes. It
took just about enough time.

“I think,” Katherine said around an awkward hug right

outside the Inkling’s earshot, “I remember some of that
happening. Thanks.”

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Fin shrugged everything off.

“You going to be okay?” He asked.
“Yeah. I only stopped by for a few moments before, I don’t
want to make any more a commotion than is necessary. I got
some people to see down the road a bit, so I will stop by
tonight if I see you all.”
The two hugged each other again just in case and parted
ways for the rest of that afternoon.

The Inkling that Finley stepped into that afternoon was not
the one he remembered leaving those days ago.

First of all, someone was in his seat. Second of all, the whole
place smelled different. But first things first: someone was in
Finley’s seat.
“You look like you need a drink,” Allard said from the
front of the pub.
“It’s… different,” Fin uttered hesitantly.
Allard replied with an arch in his brow, “you noticed?
What do you think he was doing with all those meals he has
trying on us? For someone so observant, you do not seem
incredibly so,” Allard patted his friend on the back.
“Someone took our seat,” Finley replied.
“It’s not our seat,” Allard said. “And where have you
been? It’s been… well, been… well, days; not quite enough
time to worry, but enough to notice.”
“Planting a garden, actually,” Fin replied.
“Hah!” Allard chuckled, “I wanted you to read Garin’s
books, I did not expect you to become a disciple of them.”
“I’ve been looking for something to do, something to keep
me distracted” Fin said in attempt to defend his choice of
projects, “and this seemed like fun. Besides, there isn’t much

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work to do other than watering it all in between forlorn bouts

of waiting.”
Basil looked proud, “well, it is something, that’s for sure,
but it sounds like more of an afternoon project than one that
would last a few days.”
“Yeah…” Finley sighed and stared at his feet, “that’s the
thing. I got into it, and then I got… really into it. One day I
planted everything, and then the next day I thought, ‘Hey,
what about a border around it all?’ And then I thought ‘Hey what
about a trellis?”
“Well?” Basil showed up out of nowhere, about as excited
as either of his guests had ever seen him. “I thought it about
time I start treating this place like a pub, and not just a bar.”
Fin tried to be happy for Basil, but he could not get over
the fact that there was someone in his seat. His glancing back
and forth made this obvious.
“Hey, it’a not my fault someone actually got here before
you did,” said Basil, catching on to his friends awkward
glances. “What have you been doing, anyways?”
“Gardening,” Allard said before Fin could.
“Hey now,” Finley started, “you’re the one that got me
interested in this Garin bloke, you are in no position to mock
my attempts to follow suit.”Allard chuckled. Basil did so in
turn. “And I’ll take a coffee, too,” said Allard.
The three sighed together.
It took a bit of getting used to not looking at the same
backs of the same chairs as had been made tradition, but
Basil’s other tables were not completely without merit - they
were still flat, and they still held beer.

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