Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Bloob
(Sialia sialis, eastern bluebird)
Quarrelsome, argumentative, pushy, muscling smaller birds out of the way when there are precious arthropods at stake. But in the house sparrows, those bibbed invaders from far-off lands, a formidable foe arose, one that did not hesitate to build his nest around the bones of your young. Yet your brilliance, brown feathers blued by a trick of the light, is the ace in the hole. No one mourns a house sparrow, but at the thought of a summer without bluebirds, the hue and cry went up. Birdhouses, solely for you, now dot the countryside. Feeders burst with farmed mealworms. Whoever said looks can’t buy happiness has never been truly blue

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Gandalf
(Zonotrichia albicollis, white-throated sparrow)

His long white beard is a sign of neither wisdom or age yet he wears it proudly, conjuring seed gleanings from even the poorest soils. Off-key exclamations echo happily, too spontanious for songs yet too melodious for cries. Spells, perhaps, cast beneath wild black brows streaked with yellow. Charms for a safe migration, prayers to keep house sparrows at bay, cantrips for warm weather to bake off the evening chill. We will miss him when he vanishes over the summer, taking his battles to far-flung lands, before reappearing once more as if by magic or resurrection as the halcyon days grow short.

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Sassy Bird
(Thryothorus ludovicianus, Carolina wren)

The sole song of winter, bursting forth from nearby branch, followed all too often by a trill that is fearsome in its alien, raptorine suddenness. That both come from such a tiny ball, a needle-beaked walnut of curious energy, is remarkable. Tail cocked at a jaunty angle, investigating impractical pockets with nesting dreams. Coat pockets, drain pipes, winter-cooled grills, they all sing secret songs of safety that only winter trillers can hear. Personality and impracticality all in one, a tiny mirror of ourselves.

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The remaining members of the Zombie House of Preservatives have voted to impeach Zombie President Brayne for a second time. Accusing Brayne of “formenting a buffet” by urging his zombie supporters to eat members of the Zombie Congress, the measure passed 50.5-49, which was enough to carry the House after 338 members were devoured by rabid Brayne supporters last Wednesday. It was technically a bipartisan measure, as the upper half of Mortician Party Representative Pons joined with the 50 surviving Necrotic Party members in passing the articles of impeachment. The remaining 49 members of the Mortician party, which includes the torsos of 6 members and the lower halves of a further 4, opposed the measure.

Mortician Party representatives gave a wide variety of excuses for voting to support Brayne. “We, really, deserved to be eaten,” said one party member. “It’s our own fault.” Another Mortician Party representative claimed that the pro-Brayne horde had been a “false flag attack” of living humans disguised as Brayne supporters. The most common response to questions about the vote from Mortician Party members, however, was “shut up.”

The impeachment now moved to the Zombie Senotaph, where a 2/3 vote among the remaining Senotaphers is required to remove Brayne and bar him from running for reelection in 4 years. Given that same body’s acquittal of Brayne one year ago, after he was captured on tape eating a world leader, a conviction seems unlikely. Despite the attack, Brayne’s opponent, “Dully” Oblongata, proclaimed that he still intended to take power even if he was exercising it from “within the stomach of the opposition.” At press time, Brayne had not formally responded due to the confiscation of his tongue by the Zombie Security Advisor, but had made a number of what anonymous sources call “angry noises.”

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“The name’s José Donzerly, and I’m a national hero,” he said, thrusting his chest out.

“Oh?” said the Prylzakian border guard, looking bored. “You don’t say.”

“I’m mentioned in the American national anthem, even.”

The Prylzakian looked up. “You’re joking.”

“José can you see, by the Donzerly light?”

A pause. “Welcome to the Republic of Prylzakia, Mr. Donzerly.”

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Uri Savashadam, the top Israeli assassin, stared across the table as the joke hung in the air.

“Did…did you just make a joke about how drinking only almond milk would be just nuts?” the client said.

“Yeah,” Savashadam said, downing a tall glass of the stuff. “Is that a problem?”

“Well, I’m just not used to it.”

“You’re used to assassins with sticks up their ass, eh?” Savashadam laughed. “Well, I like to make jokes, so deal with it. Murder can be fun, so why not enjoy life while making a killing, eh?”

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Chris ran a hand over the book, feeling the raised print under finger and palm. It was glossy, like a well-loved leather binding, even as it looked utterly new and unread, its leaves parchment-brown and ragged as if they had just been cut. On the title, embossed into the center of a sunburst, was Chris’s name.

“What is it?”

The oracle regarded Chris through the featureless expanse of its mask. “It is your book,” it said. “Your tome. Every story in your life, that has happened or will happen. Written at the time of your creation by the same hand.”

“What if I change something in it?” Chris said.

“Many have,” replied the oracle, evenly. “People have traveled here through fire and death, through their own private purgatories and worse, to set hands upon their tome. You may tear leaves out, alter them, or add new ones.” The oracle gestured to an inkstone and calligraphy pen at its side with a robed limb.

Chris opened the book to the section indicated by a fine ribbon bookmark. Glancing at the page, it seemed to be about the encounter with and questions asked of the oracle.

“The bookmark represents where you are,” said the oracle. “Changing the leaves that have gone before will alter memory. Changing the ones yet to come will alter reality.”

“Why would someone want to tear out their memory?”

“It is by far the most common action among the lucky few that have made it here,” the oracle said. “But the choice is yours. Alter memory, alter reality, or leave the book as it lies and return to your waking life.”

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Digging Bird
(Pipilo erythrophthalmus, eastern towhee)

We hear you calling your name from the verge, proclaimed boldly by a shy speaker. When you venture out, kicking with both legs for buried and chitinous treasures, your red flanks shine above white, with midnight black or chocolate brown above. But there are no songs about you, no poems, no postcards. Your brilliance is every bit the equal of bluebird, redbird. But without their brashness, their showmanship, you remain a well-kept secret, scratching your work onto paper of unyielding clay. Perhaps that’s how you prefer things.

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Laser Bird
(Colaptes auratus, northern flicker)

Echoing there, on the verge of the woods, a sound straight out of science fiction. A lonely Endor laser blast, cutting through the gloom of the real 21st century, the real and depressing future. Perhaps he knows he is declining, as the second-growth pines of the south are plowed under for ever more condos. Perhaps he knows that his kind may never see a future like the one hinted at in their calls. Or perhaps he knows it is easier to fade away like a strange sound echoing in the woods. When we see him, rarely, he is on the ground. Silent. A ersatz pigeon, with nothing to link him to the fading call we hear every so often on the wind from the woods.

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Laughing Bird
(Sitta canadensis, red-breasted nuthatch)

We hear him up there in the pines, cackling at a secret joke with a pal or two. What is so funny, that this tiny tree-hyena is in stitches? Perhaps he knows that there are birders nearby, birders with decent cameras who would love to catch even a fleeting snapshot of him. But Laughing Bird is small and fast, a blue-orange blur, and he knows that anyone with a camera capable of capturing him is camped out by the lake looking for migrating shorebirds. His is the laugh of the carefree, the jester, who has let you in on a private joke even though no one will ever find it as funny as he does.

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