Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

It has long been known that humans bestow their own names upon birds. The American Robin calls itself the Cheerily-Yeek, for instance. But they had long known of the human name for them, and sought to correct the misconception that their distant cousins the European Robins were their close kin. So the robins made sure to sing their name loudly, close to humans, so that they might be educated and call them by their proper appellation.

Instead, their song became so ubiquitous, so well known, that in the minds of many humans, they eclipsed their distant cousins and became the only robins in the world. This understandably, was a great disappointment to the European Robins, who as proud tyrant flycatchers did not enjoy sharing their name with any other.

Eventually, the robins–or is that the Cheerily-Yeek?–decided that they would grudgingly accept the name for humans only, out of gratefulness for the humans bearing with Soft Worms to the soil of their lands.

Even as it was that the first finches fell like gentle seeds from the cone of the World Pine, they were opened to temptation by the great False Sun. Shedding light but no warmth, forever leading birds astray, the False Sun promised much and always delivered…with terrible consequences.

Many an unwary finch was swept up in his machinations, for he desired to bring low all that the World Pine and its lover the True Sun had set about to create. In one case, among many, the results of such a poorly thought out bargain remain to this day.

A finch patriarch was once worried that he would not be able to safely raise a brood. He was beset by predators, and humans took ever more of the forests from him. So he appealed to the False Sun, asking for space for his family to grow.

The False Sun promised him virgin lands where he and his kin would be cared for like gods, fed and bathed by powers greater than they. Jumping at the opportunity, the patriarch agreed.

Soon after, he and his family were captured by humans and imprisoned. The humans took them to a strange land, and the patriarch was forced to watch his progeny taken from his flock and imprisoned. He returned to the False Sun and begged for salvation from this situation. The False Sun reminded the patriarch that he had been given everything he asked for – his progeny were not going hungry and they were colonizing new lands. That their food came from humans and the new lands were cages was incidental. But, upon hearing the patriarch’s plea, the False Sun agreed to see his people freed from bondage.

And so it was that one day, miraculously, all cages were opened and the finches flew free. It was a hard life, harder than it had been, but the patriarch was satisfied that this fulfilled the terms of his bargain. But soon, he noticed that contagion and disease were spreading among his kin, and that many were stricken blind or dying.

He returned to the False Sun, and was told that this was the price of his freedom. Since the children of the patriarch were in a new area, since there had been no other finches taken with them, his line was forever destined to be sickly, and the new diseases that his wild cousins had long since become immune to were now his to cherish.

Trust not the False Sun, fledglings. For even the best-intentioned bargain with it ends with only sorrow.

The Great Mountain, He Who Touches the Sky, was in the process of creating the world. As he made each animal, he asked them which color they wanted to be, and then honored the request. Some foolishly chose garish colors and were quickly eaten, while others chose mundane colors that were so shy as to be cowardly.

Chewink and Joree, the great Father and Mother of Feathers, were fashioned by the Great Mountain and then asked what color they would like to be. To his surprise, they immediately fell to arguing.

Chewink felt that a bright color was needed so the towhees would know their own, and Joree held equally strongly that a dark color was the proper choice for concealment. They also both repeatedly argued for and against a camouflage pattern, changing their mind and then doubling back upon themselves.

Exasperated, the Great Mountain suggested that Chewink and Joree each choose their own colors, as the bluebirds had done, only to have them immediately choose different colors, decide they liked the others’ colors better, and then switch, before switching back. And the issue of a pattern was still in the mix as well.

Eventually, they told the Great Mountain that they would like to be brown or black, but also a bright color, but also white, and with a cryptic pattern to lose their enemies. Confronted with the impossibility of this request, the Great Mountain nevertheless fulfilled it. Chewink would be black on top, orange on his sides, and white beneath, and Joree would trade black for brown. When both protested that their request for camouflage had been ignored, the Great Mountain assured them it had not, and sent them on their way.

It was not until they hatched their first brood that Chewink and Joree understood. Their chicks were born with the pattern of the forest floor, only growing in the bold colors they had asked for with time and experience.

In this, as in all things, the Great Mountain showed both its wisdom and its mercy.

The northern cardinals have a story about a great hero of theirs called Chirr. Well, a number of stories, really. Chirr, and his wife Took, are the subject of many a tale whispered by a broody cardinal hen to her eggs as the life within stirs, or proudly sung from a high bough by her husband.

Once upon a time, as it is with many other birds, Chirr was dull-colored, much like Took, although of course they could still easily tell the difference. Took was the most beautiful and desirable cardinal hen in the great wood of the world in those early days, clever and fleet, and whomever could raise a brood with her would surely sire a line that would inherit the earth. Chirr therefore sought her hand, but he was only one of many.

Unlike the other birds, who only preened and boasted, Chirr actually asked Took what she valued in a mate. Took told him that she desired a mate who could provide for her while she brooded, who could help her build a strong nest to contain their strong children, and who was clever and fast enough to outwit the many predators that sought to dine on cardinals.

Chirr first brought Took a seed, tenderly cracking it open and feeding it to her, to show that he could provide for her and her brood. Then he brought her strong fine pine straw from the great elder trees, long-felled and now only dwelling in legend, to show that his nest–their nest–would be strong.

Took was impressed, but Chirr was racked with doubt about how to fulfill her final request. He thought that he would go to the top of a tall tree and sing loudly, inviting predators to eat him so that he might demonstrate his superiority, but the predators were too foolish to find him, as the brown of his feathers blended too well with that of the forest. So Chirr decided to ask a favor of the great sky, which has ever sheltered and given sanctuary to his kind.

“O sky,” he asked, “let me dip myself in the warm red glow of your sunset.”

“But why, O Chirr, would you wish to do such a thing?” the sky replied. “For then your enemies could surely find you.”

“If they can find me, I can show that I am strong and fast enough to beat them,” Chirr replied. “And if I am not, then being eaten is punishment enough for my foolishness, is it not?”

The great sheltering sky agreed, and it allowed Chirr to dip himself in its sunset, with only his mask and beak remaining uncolored as he left it exposed to breathe.

When next Took saw Chirr, his brilliant red color made him a beacon to every predator in the great old woods. But true to his boast, Chirr was able to deftly escape their grasp.

“If I can advertise my presence so and yet still return to you, time and again, with food,” said Chirr, “you know I have fulfilled the last of your requests.”

Took agreed, and she chose Chirr as her mate. And from their line arose the great line of cardinals that stretch unbroken to this day. And every son of Chirr, when he reaches his prime, will take on the same challenge, to prove the same mettle, while his brown wife and brown children look on with awe and wonder.

A madman or a prophet once said with a cry
The moon’s just an egg, up there in the sky
Laid by our earth all those eons ago
Waiting to hatch, and waiting to go
What sort of a thing a world lays in a shell
Is not ours to see, is not ours to tell
Another world perhaps, all shiny and new
A bright scattered ring, incredible view
Not a world itself but the path unto one
If ore we haul out, ton upon ton
Though if egg it be, and if never it falls
What will we do if it never hatches at all?

“Do you…think we’re actually getting anyplace?”

“Well, that mountain is definitely moving. Getting bigger all the time. We’re getting someplace.”

“But when we get there, won’t we have to climb over it?”

“I suppose we could go around it.”

“But either way, it’s a lot of effort.”

“True. But we’ll never get where we’re going otherwise.”

“And where are we going?”

“To the mountain!”

“And why are we doing that?”

“Because it’s definitely moving, and we have to catch up with it!”

The grinning automaton, its features uncannily like those of a circul clown, opened its chest to reveal intricate clockwork, further protected behind a sheet of glass.

“It’s like a clock,” the first traveler said.

“That’s right,” said Beltrame, its voice box creaking.

“A clock that runs on, let me guess, jellybeans,” the second traveler laughed.

“Not quite,” said Beltrame. “Allow me to share with you a riddle. A furnace needs fuel if a clock it’s to wind; your body does too, I wonder what kind?”

“I can run on jellybeans, sure,” the first traveler laughed.

“But they must be rendered,” Beltrame said. “Digested, spat out, transported.”

The second traveler’s grin faded. “But that would mean…”

“Your blood,” the automaton said. “Give it to me.”

K’sid found his cousin at the water’s edge, watching the waves crash in as the storm ebbed.

“The ocean is a giant mirror,” said Ette.

“When it’s calm, maybe,” K’sid said.

“I don’t just mean a literal mirror,” Ette said. “I mean a mirror of our souls. Sometimes bubbling and churning. Sometimes calm and peaceful. The things that go into it sometimes disappear forever…and sometimes they float back up unexpectedly.”

K’sid wasn’t sure what to say to that. But seeing the look on Ette’s face, he decided to simply sit down with her and silently watch the water as skies faded to blue over them both.

“And why not?” thundered the dragon. “Knowledge is far more powerful and enduring than gold or silver, and of a not insubstantial antiquarian value.”

“Yes, many hoard books.”

“This is not a hoard,” the dragon replied. “It is an organized library, accessible to serious researchers for a modest fee. My assistants have read every book in the collection to me, so I know their contents as one of my less enlightened brethren know the jewels of their bed.”

“Okay, okay. What about the Book of Raj’Leb?”

The dragon-librarian grew thoughtful. “Is that the one in code, with a peacock on the cover? Pah, a useless sphinx taking up space in the collection. If not for its uniqueness I’d have been rid of it long ago.”

“What if I told you I might be able to translate it?”

“Then I’d tell you, morsel, that I might be able to lend it to you. For a price.”

“Dr.” J. Carlos Gilmeier entered the rarified canon of cranks thanks to his relentless promotion of a theory he called “the time-space band” or TTSB for short. He argued that space-time was able to both stretch and contract, in an apparent misunderstanding of the theory of space-time curvature via gravity, and that it endlessly looped around itself like a rubber band.

Born into a wealthy family, Gilmeier claimed to have concocted his theory while studying particle physics at the Sorbonne, but an analysis of his academic records reveals only two years of business school before he dropped out. Nevertheless, Gilmeier began taking out advertisements in newspapers and magazines for his theory, which attracted attention as much for their amateurish illustrations as for their word-salad descriptions. The advertisements were followed up by a “lecture tour” that attracted few adherents, and a number of self-published books, articles, and even periodicals on the topic.

Eventually, as his inheritance ran low, Gilmeier resorted to attempting to crash scientific conferences and gatherings, repeatedly challenging anyone who would listen to a scientific debate. Later advertisements, often destributed as paper fliers, claimed that anyone who could disprove Gilmeier’s theories would be entitled to a $50,000 cash prize–money he probably did not have at that stage.

Eventually, Gilmeier’s increasingly incoherent trieatises and rants began to be appreciated as outsider art, and he was able to support himself in a modest fashion through paid speaking engagements for fans–though they would always have to be careful, as Gilmeier would become defensive and angry if he thought he was being mocked, and was known to physically assault critics.

Following Gilmeier’s death following a fall at the age of 77, recordings and GIFs of his speeched became popular internet comedy fodder and were often parodied. It is often claimed that this is in poor taste, as Gilmeier may have been an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, but that has not stopped his name from being applied to the absurdist comedy group The Gilmeier Foundation, as well as the act of “gilmeiering.”