March 19, 2015

From “The Death of Childhood Dreams” by Victorina Rudolf

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We saw you come here on the back of our compatriot. The words were deep and resonant, knowing and kind, and they were articulated without any motion at all on the part of the perhaps-whale save its gentle bobbing in the air. We could tell that you were in need of aid.

“Yes,” said the girl tremblingly, teaching out a hand. “I’ve lost my friend, I’ve lost my way, and I must get to the Great Eye.”

The perhaps-whale’s wordless tone grew concerned. Yes, we know of the Great Eye at Childhood’s End, it wordlessly intoned. It is beyond our power to reach.

“Why?” said the girl petulantly. “You could fly me there in minutes.”

No, we cannot, replied the perhaps-whale. For you see, we do not exist.

The girl raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You look like you exist to me,” she said.

Of course, for we are childhood dreams, borne upward by winds of belief and sustained by the power of innocent minds. But Childhood’s End is the death of all such dreams, the grey crushing that accompanies all such young things. We exist only for those who believe, or can be made to believe, and to pass through the Great Eye at Childhood’s End would be, for us, to cease.

“I don’t believe in you,” the girl replied. “Whales can’t fly.”

You, a child, should know better than anyone the difference between what one says to others and what one feels to oneself. The tone without tone of the perhaps-whale sounded light and amused at this. Suffice it to say that we would not, we could not, be speaking if that were really so.

“So that’s it, then,” said the girl. “You won’t help me.”

Why would you want help to reach such an awful place? Childhood’s End is the death of wonder and dreaming, the graveyard of games and fun, the tomb of carelessness. To pass through the Great Eye is to lose all those things. Why not stay here, stay outside it, forever? You would grow older but remain a child. does that not appeal?

The girl bit her lip.

Is that not the darkest and most desperate desire of your heart? Surely you have seen them where you live, those who never leave home, those who still wake to mother’s fresh meals, those who know nothing but play and games their whole lives.

The girl thought about poor Bear, the gobs, and all she had seen and heard up to that point. “That sounds…terrible,” she said. “As bad as Childhood’s End sounds, that sounds just as bad. Isn’t there another way?”

There is no other way. Childhood is sunshine and adulthood is night. It is one or the other, always.

“What about sunrise?” the girl said defiantly. “What about sunset? If you won’t take me there, I’ll go alone.”

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December 22, 2014

From “The Fundertaker” by Karen Fede Hurtt

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“There he goes,” whispered one at the approach of a tall, gaunt man in black and a stovepipe hat. “The Fundertaker.”

“He doesn’t look fun at all,” said the other. “Why do they call him the Fundertaker?”

“Well-”

“It’s because he takes fun, isn’t it?” cried the first speaker. “He sucks the fun out of every environment, doesn’t he? It’s his nourishment! He feeds on fun the way others might feed on anger or shame!”

“Will you let me finish?” the second snapped. “Look at what he’s carrying.”

The Fundertaker was holding a net. With it, he dipped into the tanks behind the Metromart fish counter and removed the dead fish, adding each to a small reeking velvet bag.

“He’s the Fish Undertaker. He takes all the dead fish from the pet stores and gives them a proper burial.”

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January 13, 2013

From “Astride the Great Fish” by Victorina Rudolf

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Without Bear to guide her, the girl could only wander aimlessly and desperately through the endless forest. She’d have given anything to have him back by her side, despite his often irritating old-fashioned demeanor, despite the secret fear that the others from school would laugh at her if they knew her childhood toy had escaped the dumpster (which had long since consumed her classmates’ toys).

Absent his determination, his steel, she was lost. It was painful to admit; twelve years old was practically grown up, after all, and what sort of grownup relied on teddy bears to guide them through far and enchanted wolds? What sort of grownup hovered on the verge of tears instead of taking charge?

And what sort was consumed by a deep and trembling fear when it was clear something was following her?

Horrified that it might be more gobs, or worse, the girl deliberately wandered through a muddy patch backwards, making it look like she had stumbled in the other direction, and then carefully doubled back through patches of fallen leaves that would betray no sign of her passing. It was a trick she had honed in years of hide and seek in the woods at Grandpa’s house, and her naturally light step allowed it to be pulled off without more than a soft rustle of fall foliage to betray her position.

The girl approached the shadow in the woods from behind, with the gob dagger drawn, though she had no idea how to use it. As the approached, the creature came into focus: a great grey blob that floated on the still air, controlling itself with large and gossamer fins. It looked like nothing so much as a large fish.

Hoping to scare it, the girl burst out of the underbrush with what she hoped was a very fierce yell and the gob dagger raised high. The curious fish-thing pivoted and faced her with a terrible gurgling sound, and the girl prepared to bury her dagger in her pursuer up to the hilt.

Then she saw its eyes.

Wide, sorrowful, fearful…they were like a mirror of her own. The girl lowered her weapon. “You’re just like me, aren’t you?” she said in her most soothing tone. “Lost and afraid.”

The creature bobbed, approximating a nod despite its lack of a neck.

“What do you say we travel together, then?” the girl said. She approached and calmly stroked the beast’s scaly surface. “We can be lost together.”

Gentle fins lofted her off the ground and onto the fish-thing’s neck, and the girl rode her newfound companion in the direction of the setting suns.

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January 28, 2011

From “The Conabin Fish Revealed” by Hanna M. Kelsey

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The Conabin Fish was named after its discoverer Augustus Conabin, a naturalist on a British exploration vessel. Conabin’s crew took shelter from a Pacific gale in the lagoon of an atoll that the captain named Sarah Anne Island after his eldest daughter. The ship was there long enough for the naturalist to go ashore and collect specimens. Most were unremarkable palms and crustaceans, but a large stream flowing from a freshwater lens yielded a distinct-looking species of what appeared to be a freshwater triggerfish. It was brightly colored in a dazzling pattern according to Conabin’s notes, and fed off small shrimp and other invertebrates in the soft sand.

It was only years later, when the British Navy attempted to press a claim to Sarah Anne Island, that it was found to have vanished, with no trace of the island in its reported position and soundings indicating over a mile of ocean below. Conabin’s specimens were dug out and examined; though badly discolored and damaged by preservatives, experts concurred that they resembled no known species.

It represents one of the most enduring mysteries of zoology to this day.