Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

As the spheres spiraled inward, they grew in size, from pebbles to boulders, and at the center of the spirals, there was a great bare patch, untouched by snow yet stained by gore. A great mound filled the hollow, guarded by stone sentinels, and even from the hilltop at distance Tiris recognized what they were, preserved by the cold even as they had been mangled by their creation.

“Arms,” he said. “Left arms, as you said. And icy waters as far as the eye can see on either side of the isthmus. What shall we do?”

“We cannot turn back,” said Farciya. “Not after all we have been through, all we have seen. We press on, and if death comes at the bellowing jaws of a frost-paguro, then so be it, and roll on the Next Dream, the Dream-to-Come, the Deepest Dream.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

There were no more trees, with only the occasional windswept tops of shrubs and branches peeking from amidst the snow to suggest that anything other than endless ice and howling winds had ever existed. The only shelter lay in hollows within the land, the wind-shadows of hills, the great boulders that dotted the landscape.

Before long, Tiris noticed something strange about the boulders he and Farciya encountered in their trek through the snowscape. As they sat in the lee of one such monolith, shivering in the wind, he saw that the stone was a perfect sphere, as if it had been roughly hewn and sanded by a great invisible hand.

“I have never heard of such a thing,” Farciya said, even as she agreed that the spherical shape was unmistakable. “I fear my experience, and even the rumors we sometimes heard from travelers, ended some days south of here.”

“Perhaps it is a representation of the sun, standing still, or the glittering orbs attending to it, that Ad Dakhla wrote of,” said Tiris.

“Or perhaps it is something made naturally by the same forces that sap the living heat from our bodies,” Farciya countered.

“It could be either, or both…or a warning,” Tiris mused.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“A frost-paguro, I think, I have heard them called.” Farciya huddled closer to the warmth that the creature’s burning body offered. “I thought they were legend, but in a dreaming that can contain the sound-gaunts, I suppose it is not too farfatched that they exist.”

“What else have you heard of them?” Tiris said, himself bundled strongly against the cold and as near to the dead thing’s greasy flames as he dared get.

“Wild stories. That they are dreamers lost to the great snowy wilderness, that there is a mound of severed left arms in the deep wilderness where they make their sacrifice for survival.” Farciya shuddered. “But also that they are simple beasts in a shape we find terrifying, searching for food and warmth, the same as we.”

“That word, ‘paguro.’ What does it mean?”

“A joke, I think. It’s an old word for crab, I suppose because one arm is so much larger than the other.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Based on intercepted plans for the Soviet RDS-119, the MX-202 was developed as part of Project Plowshares. Even given the limited information available on radiation exposure in 1955, it may seem ludicrous that an atomic oven was ever under consideration. But the pervasive feeling among Army brass was that every Soviet invention needed to have a possible counterpart, and as such plans were drawn up for an atomic over capable of baking thousands of goods simultaneously, though thought was also given to using it as a crematorium or a heating apparatus.

Little did the brass know that the RDS-119 was actually a private joke among the Soviet nuclear technicians involved with the Ядерные взрывы для народного хозяйства program, and never actually given any serious consideration. In fact, the leakage of the joke caused a real-life double agent to be exposed. The revelation of this to top Soviet official Sergei Kolypin reportedly caused his death due to a heart attack–induced by laughter.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The creature moved eerily, silently, and where its eyes might have been were a pair of translucent eyelids, with blank white orbs lolling beneath. It charged ahead, bellowing through sharp and yellowed teeth, with its one massive arm pumping furiously with its shorter legs to maintain a furious pace. Of its other arm, only a vestigial stump remained, and the asymmetrical tracks it left suddenly seemed all too familiar.

Farciya drew her knife, but it was barely the size of the snow-thing’s largest canines, and seemed unlikely to do her any good unless she were able to plunge it into some vital spot. Tiris produced the larger axe that they had used to fell firewood during the journey, and when the creature passed him he used the weapon to open its flank, scattering bright crimson across the Harbiyyah snow.

Whatever it was, it could be wounded. It could be killed.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Farciya and Tiris, each carrying both a load on their back and a load on a sled slung behind them, were days out from the Last Refuge, northward. Always northward.

Temperatures had been dropping steadily, and flurries of snow were now falling with increasing regularity. But, Tiris noted, the days were also becoming longer. Often, when they made their exhausted camp for the evening, the sun still lingered near the horizon. In order to sleep, they both found they had to blindfold themselves against the midnight sun.

There were strange tracks, too. Some were simple deer and rabbits, but others were asymmetrical and vile, a mockery of life and of gait. Farciya had never seen anything like them, and Tiris had no desire to make their acquaintance. Harbiyyah Stretched before them both, increasingly barren, but the sun’s odd behavior made Tiris hope, as he never had before, that the Dreaming Moon was somehow near.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

I climbed the Endless Stair, as Le Aaiun did, and did not, when she reached the source of the Dead River. But as the Dreaming Moon rose above me, with perfect Vloles set upon it, I found that I could speak to it, and it to me, though my approach was both endless and futile.

“Immortal, inscrutable Vloles,” said I, “my family and kin are all gone. Taken from me, but in a way that there are none upon whom I might revenge.”

“Such is the way of things.” Vloles spoke in a multitude of voices, as if every citizen of Korton had lifted their throats up as one.

“I fear that nothing is left for me but the Next Dream, the Dream-to-Come, the Deepest Dream,” I continued. “Tell me if I am right or wrong.”

Vloles did not respond, so I continued walking. In time, I asked afresh: “Should I end myself? Cast me upon the plains of baleful Køs and let her horrid light be my end?

“If your rasp should wear, do you then destroy it?” Vloles, its multitudes, asked.

“No,” I said. “You re-cast it, re-forge it, into a hunting-knife. Or, at least, I have always done so.”

“Then that is what you must do. Seek for the north, for Harbiyyah. That will be your forge, your hammer, your tempering quench.”

“Harbiyyah is vast,” I replied. “How will I know when I have reached my destination? How will I know when I have leave, your leave, to depart to the Dream-To-Come?”

“How did you know to arrive into this dream, or any other images that have danced before your mortal eyes?”

“I do not know,” was my reply. “I just did.”

“Then there is your answer,” the many voices of Vloles said as one.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“A vision of Vloles upon the Dreaming Moon, with your loved one calling to you from its battlements…” Farciya seemed to choke, unable to continue, once Tiris had finished his story.

“Is that so strange?” Tiris said. “The these dreamlands’ strange gods should speak to us through dreams within dreams, speaking in riddles?”

An icy wind from the north broke against the shelter, and the flames guttered as Farciya drew her blanket closer. “No,” she said. “What is strange is that I too, had such a vision Years ago. My kith and kin had died, and I beseeched immortal Vloles for a sign of what I should do next.”

She was silent as the wind whistled again, rising to a savage howl before abating.

“The answer was Harbiyyah,” she said. “Here. Now, I suppose.”

“Tell me what you saw,” Tiris said, his voice taking on a gentler tone. “We can compare our visions, and perhaps in so doing come to know our path a little better.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

In my vision, I approached perfect, immortal, inscrutable Vloles, its turreted walls calling to me across the void, and beheld three shadowy figures perched on its living battlements.

“I am the Light,” said the first. “I bring illumination, but also burning-death, blindness, and charred flesh clinging to bone.

“I am the Dark,” said the second. “I bring obfuscation, but also rest to the weary, shelter to the hunted, and the deep cold of deep, still waters.”

“I am the Nameless,” said the third. “I cannot be known, but to know me would bring madness, so that be a mercy.”

I spoke: “Tell me, oh many-who-are-three, oh three-who-are-many, whether huddled within your walls I might find my beloveds, taken from me first in waking and later in dreaming.”

Their reply: “They are within, for all who pass beyond must first through immortal Vloles, the living city-god, pass.”

“I will seek you then,” said I. “I will sail the Dead River to the City of Aaiun and climb the Infinite Stair, if that be what is required.”

“No,” they said, as one and in unison. “Seek us at Farthest North. Aauin’s way is closed, now.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Remote Piloted Drone log, pilot Dale Hillman III reporting. Please note timestamp and galactic coordinates.”

“System is Deep Near-Infrared Survey 1248-99. Please pull relevant details from database.”

“System consists of six major and ten minor planets. Append notes to observations as I read them, please.”

“First planet, DNIS 1248-99a, is of a Hot Jupiter type. Limited economic prospects, but possible site for hydrogen mining or dumping.””

“Second planet, DNIS 1248-99b, is terrestrial. .1 Earth masses, relatively few heavy elements, one satellite that appears to be captured asteroid or comet. Limited economic prospects.”

“Third planet, DNIS 1248-99c, is a super-earth. 8.5 Earth masses. Some trace heavy metals and a thin atmosphere. Tagged for possible future prospecting.

“Fourth planet, DNIS 1248-99d, is the big one. It appears to be a former gas giant that has undergone extreme hydrodynamic escape, stripping away all atmosphere and leaving only the core.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!