Thanks to those of you who voted in the recent poll. Obvioulsy the winner of the poll was Silver Bullets.

So I’m gonna go ahead and do that then.

In other news, I’ve started a blog for writers who find these sort of contests as motivating as I do. It’s starting out with Rilla and I documenting our 3 Day Novels this year. I’ve put out invitations to some other folks who I think might be taking part. We’ll see how that goes.

If you want to join the fray, go to textFIGHT.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

For more information on what this poll is about, and a description of the options head to t’other blog,, and then come on back.

I expect you mostly came from there anyhow

Check one…check one.

So. Let’s see how that works.

After a lengthy period of post production snags, the first three episodes are now up. You can get there by clicking the fin on the nav fish that says Orphans, or just click here.

The final three episodes should be up near month end if all goes well.

Thanks for your patience in waiting, and enjoy.

I spent the rest of the day at the library trying to research the island of Sel Souris. By the end of the day I was ill. My stomach was all acid and dismay, and I hadn’t eaten anything. I left the library in the early evening, and the sun was going down. I drove back to my apartment and was grateful to see Des’ ridiculous car parked out front. He got out as I pulled into my spot.

“Where the fuck you been, mate?” he asked me. “We were supposed to meet up an hour ago. I was fucking starting to worry.”

I put a hand on his biceps.

“Sorry, Des. Honestly.”

“You can’t lark around like that when we’re involved in shit like this, Niles.”

“I know.”

I moved to go inside the house and he followed after me, more than a bit annoyed. He was clearly bothered by more than my lateness. I didn’t think he had enjoyed his fact finding mission any more than I’d enjoyed mine. Once I got inside the door I immediately put the kettle on. When I turned back, Des was staring at my couch with an ashen look.

I turned my head at him.

“Oh christ,” I said, “What mad bullshit has invaded my home?”

Des didn’t answer. He stepped back and shook his head. I stepped quickly to him, because he looked like a man about to faint.

“Des, are you all right?”

It was then that I saw the cushions were crawling with purple beetles. There were at least a hundred of them, and I muffled a sound of alarm.

“Fuck me ragged,” I said to him.

“Shit,” Des said, and he headed to my kitchen sink and ran cold water over his shaved head.

I started to pick them up one at a time and brush them into a shoebox of receipts I tipped upside down. I wound up only squashing a few of them. I put the lid on, and put a heavy book atop it, and examined the floor and my clothes for strays.

I sat on the floor, elbows on my knees, and head in my hands.

“I think I’m going to lose my fucking head, Des.”

“Niles,” he said, looking as shaken as I’d seen him since the bad old days, “I got to tell you something, right? If I do, you have to swear you wont take the piss.”

“Trust me, at this point, I don’t think anything would make me laugh.”

“They were crawling there in the shape of letters. It said ‘help’.”

I nodded and looked at him.

“You have no idea how much I believe you. These fucking things are…unearthly I don’t know what they are, but the aren’t just bugs.”

Des looked relieved that I didn’t seem to think he was crazy.

“How the hell did they get in here,” Des asked?

“Old building,” I said, and left it at that, having no better answer in my pocket.

“Kettle’s boiling,” Des said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. Fancy a cup?”

I was already halfway to the kitchen to pull mugs and pour.

“Yeah,” he said. “Got biccies?”

“Might have. Feel free to root in the cupboards.”

He moved to look, and pulled his hand back.

“I’ll do without,” he said.

I checked the cups before I poured.

We sat at the kitchen table, and had a very civilised and normal cup of tea in silence.

“Those fucking things have a really strong smell,” he said after a few minutes.

I nodded.

“Famous for it, apparently. If by famous, I can say the five people who’ve ever heard of them, know them for it. And for swarming.”

“I don’t normally have a thing about bugs, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, “I know. I don’t blame you.”

On the third chair at the table, I could see a heavy spot in the air, like something was not quite there. I tried to ignore it, and it seemed to raise a hand and wave at me, choosing, at least to keep silent. I’d trade an annoying auditory hallucination for an unobtrusive invisible one any day.

“So,” Des said, “You found out where the beetles are from, then?”

“Yeah. Island called Sel Souris. Somewhere near Gibraltar, but not near enough to matter to anyone. They only live there, so I’m thinking that Jherek and his bunch brought them along for some reason. Fuck knows why though.”

“Makes sense. Like I said, they’re always talking about the island.”

“So I recalled.”

“Didn’t find out as much as I’d have liked to,” Des said. “Near as I can tell it’s Jherek and a load of his family. There’s maybe twenty of them, people say. That doesn’t count the women though, or the locals they hire.”

“They have locals working for them?” I asked, surprised in light of the research I’d done.

“Yeah, but strictly street corner dealers. Weed, heroin. They don’t track in coke or meth. This might be another reason they’ve gotten a pass from the really big boys.”

I nodded.

“Do we know where they hang out? Did you find any other addresses?”

“Well, the house we’ve been to. Some of Jherek’s cousin’s have apartments of their own. They also own that warehouse you were in, and they apparently have a social club above the the shop across the road. Invitation only.”

“Did you get any hints where they’re keeping Carter?”

“Nah,” he said, “but I’m willing to bet it’s the social club.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s what I’d do. I think it’s less of a social club than a drug depot. This means there are always users hanging around, and that means they already have people on guard. Easiest way to manage him.”

I nodded and poured another cup.

“Okay. By the way, you’re right. These people are fucking crazy.”

“Yeah. I didn’t need your confirmation, mate.”

“I tried to find out the history of the island, and see if there were, you know political situations that would profit from exporting organized crime. I didn’t find any. What I did find is that these people hate us. The English. The French. Everyone, actually. I’m not sure why. Apparently in the 19th century they revolted and drove off the French governor and went completely isolationist until the Second World War, at which point they had little choice but to run into people again. It’s illegal for Europeans to set foot on the island.”

Des blinked.

“Sod off. Illegal?”

“Yeah. They let Canadians and Americans and Australians, and thats about it.”

“Madness.”

“It’s a strange little place.”

“Naturally we let the fuckers set foot on our island. That’s everything wrong with us in…”

“I did find something really relevant,” I interrupted. I handed him photocopies of some newspaper articles.

He looked at them, not reading them.

“What’s this, then?” he said.

“Those are the stories of Victor Mayhew and the foreign office and the Sel Souris incident.”

“The what?”

“Yeah. Came and sunk like a stone. I suspect that the foreign office might have worked harder if Victor weren’t a ‘known homosexual’, which is how they refer to him about a dozen times in those pieces of tripe.”

Des ran his eyes over the articles, and at the appropriate place his eyes widened.

“They gouged his fucking eyes out and shipped him to Spain on a fishing boat? And we just let it go?”

“Yeah. He broke their local laws, and that was that. The government paid his flight home, and he went to live with his parents. End of fucking story.”

“They gouged his eyes out,” Des said, “And they dipped them in plastic.”

“Yes.”

“And your boy swiped them back.”

“Yeah.”

“Christ. Everyone is insane in this. Top to bottom.”

“You have no idea,” said the voice. “Just none.

I turned to the hazy spot at the table and glared at it.

Des stood up.

“Okay. So your boy swiped them, and apparently Jherek wants them back pretty badly.”

“You say he showed up out of nowhere one day. I’m willing to bet they showed up here right after the eyes were stolen.”

Des looked at me.

“You think they’re here specifically to get the eyes back? They came all this way for that?”

“For the principle of the thing,” I said. “Yes.”

Des walked to the door.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. I need a packet of silk cut.”

“Sure, I nodded.”

“When I come back up here, I hope like hell you have some idea what we’re going to do. Because, mate, I’m tapped.”

I smiled at him weakly and he left me alone with my thoughts, and a box of angry beetles that clicked and hissed softly through the muffling cardboard.

Nemo walks up the road from Marya’s house, grateful that she is going to make a full recovery, and grateful that her father is a man of some manners and learning. He is not well liked on the island, living as he does in the governor’s mansion. People here do not love the governor. He knows that there is a small army waiting for the final insult, and then they will storm the mansion. The governor knows it too, and spends most of his time sweating and pacing in terror of it. France doesn’t care about this place enough to keep it. If the people revolted, they might just succeed. Of course then France would feel obligated to crash into this island like the power of hell itself and leave it practically free of all human life. That wouldn’t save the governor.

It would not save the world either, as Mr. Verne has pointed out.

Nemo pushes his blonde hair back from his forehead, wishing that his long long life had brought wisdom to him as well, because, as the gods bore witness, he has no idea what is right in this place. There is such beauty in this place, and in what it represents. Never, he is certain, has he seen anything like the little fairies of the mound. Sexless and, stranger still, mouthless. He has no idea how they life or what their actions mean. He does not understand the accommodations that the people of the island have made with them, nor the awe with which they are beheld.

He is afraid he may start to. He is terrified of what Marya calls the purple noise. He would leave this island tomorrow if not for the girl. Never before has he found another like he himself, who is so much older than they seem, and who speaks without speaking.

Almost more importantly, he has never before met people that were not compelled to please him, whom he could not subtly manipulate almost without trying. He has vague memories of this causing miseries untold to him and others, but any attempt to recall these are smothered by bat wings of amnesia. The people born on this little island are perfectly free to hate him, to call him names as he passes. Only the French and the British here scrape after him, and lick at his face for attention like dogs.. He finds he hates them for it more than he would have guessed.

He might have surprised everyone and led the march on the governor’s mansion if it weren’t for Jules Verne, with his serious talk and brilliant mind. He too, alone among the Frenchmen seems able to argue with him, to treat him as an equal. Verne does not think this island is exotic and beautiful. He feels it is terrifying and dangerous.

Verne writes scientific romances, predictions of the future, and it is in this capacity that the governor has called him here. Verne has been on the island for almost a year, in secret, studying the mounds, and what he has deduced is terrible if true, and sobering even id he is wrong.

At present, the governor agrees with Verne. He could change that with a thought if only he were certain. He has no earthly idea what the right thing to do is, but he knows that the fate of the world may turn on this time and this place.

There are two futures for the world here, neither one of them very clear, and neither one certain, and it is his to choose. It is in his hands, his and Marya’s. He shakes his head, half-panicked. She is just a child, and she is his only reasonable counsel. He feels doomed.

He finds himself outside the inn, and he walks up the stairs and knocks on the door to the room Verne uses as an office. There is mumbling and then Verne opens it. He is in a long red with black trim, and under it are pajamas.

“Captain Nemo,” Verne says, smiling, “Did the the girl make it home safely?”

“I was not the captain,” Nemo says, “just a sailor.”

“Impossible,” Nemo says, “not a man like you.”

“Yes, yes,” he says, “the girl?”

“She’s fine, Mr. Verne. Her parent’s are very grateful.”

“It’s fortunate you knew who she was, else we’d have had to keep her in the mansion over night, and you know how these people would have taken that.”

Nemo nods.

“May I come in?”

“But of course,” he says. “is there a problem?”

“Yes. I need to speak to you about the mounds, and about myself. I need your counsel.”

Verne ushers him inside, and shows him to a chair.

“You look,” he says, “as though the world rests upon your shoulders.”

“It does, my friend, does it not?”

“Well,” Verne says, as he locks his door. “Surely we do face a moment of import here and now on this island, but I like to take the long view of things. I don’t believe that one man can save the world, nor doom it.”

“I hope you’re right, I surely do.”

“I have a strange facility for being right, and I have made a living of it.”

Nemo nods, and puts his face in his hands, tired and confused.

“My mysterious friend,” Verne says, “why, of all the people on this mysterious island, have you chosen me to speak to?”

Nemo looks him in the eye and tells him without words that he must immediately remove his robe and complain of the heat. Verne blinks perhaps one time too many, and then smiles.

“Are you not certain why you choose me?”

“I am entirely certain,” Nemo says, as Verne tightens the sash of his robe slightly.

“Then why?”

“Because you will tell me the truth, and because you will believe me, and because you are not an eleven year old girl.”

Verne smiles a slow spreading confused smile.

“I see.”

“I will tell you what I know of my life, what little I know. In exchange you will tell me what is happening here on this island, and together we will decide what needs to be done.”

Verne leans back, his face suddenly deadly serious.

“By all means, Mr. Nemo, let us decide the world together.”

I left Des with the task of going out into his community and trying to get some intelligence on the Jherek organization, practical information like how many and where. While he did this, largely to get away from me for a few hours, I went to the university in search of an entomologist. It didn’t take me very long. Entomology is not the kind of rockstar science that quantum physics is. There are no household names in entomology. I’m not sure why this is so, but it’s so. After a few polite inquiries I was put in touch with a Dr Leonard Somerset, who was an expert on the taxonomy of beetles.

I knocked on the door to his office, and he welcomed me in. I sat down in the chair in front of his desk, and looked the room over. On one wall was a tall cabinet full of narrow drawers. I assumed this was full of preserved samples from what I’d seen on television. The desk was immaculately neat, and there seemed to be a place for everything in the office, and each thing was carefully in that place.

Somerset was a large man, broad shouldered, and pear shaped with bright lively eyes and full lips. His forehead was high, and he moved with precision and with few wasted movements, clasping his hands together on the desktop.

“How can I help you?” he asked in a mild Scottish tone.

“Well, I’m a private investigator,” I said. “Niles Townsend. I’m investigating a disappearance. A kidnapping, actually. The only piece of physical evidence we have is in this jar.”

I set the jar on the table, and he leaned forward to look, and it was clear right away that his attention was fixed.

“These were left behind, I think, by the people who took the victim. I”m sure they aren’t from around here.”

“You’re certainly right, there, Mr. Townsend.”

I nodded.

Somerset opened the jar and gently shook one sample into his hand, and gently stroked the hard shell.

“Surely not,” he said to himself, and then tipped the beetle on it’s back, so that it’s legs kicked and pinioned. The other beetle kept its head pointed to its brother always. I watched that with fascination of my own. It was unnatural.

“Not what?”

“Well,” he said, “I have a suspicion as to what these are, but it seems unlikely.”

“Oh,” I said, “I would say the exotic is a strong possibility here.”

“In order to be certain, I might need to kill this fellow.”

“I understand. Do what you have to,” I said, then stopped short. “They aren’t endangered or anything are they?”

Somerset smiled. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay.”

Somerset reached into a drawer and took out a sharp scalpel and some very small tweezers. He took a mandible in the tweezer and used the scalpel to remove it. He held it up to the light and looked at it with a magnifying glass. He made a soft noise of interest, as the beetle kicked and writhed on it’s back, and his brother in the jar tapped frantically at the glass.

He set the mandible down, and then he put the tip of the scalpel into the head of the beetle, and the flailing began to slow. The other one in the jar settled down abruptly. I felt myself about to vomit, but kept my face calm and expressionless. I neither wanted to interrupt nor think about what I was seeing.

He cut at the underside of the beetle and tweezed it open. He took a deep nervous breath, and then reached into his drawer and removed something that looked like a jeweller’s eyepiece and for several tense moments he gasped and pulled out a small greenish-grey sac the size of a couple of grains of rice.

“How many of these were there?” Somerset asked me.

“Just these two.”

“Remarkable. You may find more. They tend to come in swarms.”

“So you know what they are?”

“Well I will know for sure in a second.”

He cut the little sack and there was a warm spicy smell and a tiny little amount of purple and silver powder slid out, barely enough to see. Somerset produced a small glass tube and used the edge of the scalpel to tip the powder inside, and then he capped it with a small cork.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Anecdotal evidence indicates it’s a type of pheromonal deposit, but the truth is nobody has studied it closely. These beetles are extremely rare. They’re not even classified. Frankly it’s a matter of luck that I’ve ever heard of them. If you’d taken this to someone else, they might have had no idea. It seems impossible, but this, ” he shook the tube, “is a smoking gun.”

“So where are they from.”

“This beetle is from Sel Souris.”

“That’s a place?”

“Barely.”

“And that’s the only place they come from?”

“Well,” Somerset said, “as far as we know. Beetles are common as dirt. Almost more common. We have more beetles classified than any other kind of animal, and we’re pretty sure we’ve barely scraped the surface. Beetles are the true owners of this planet.”

I nodded.

“Well, they’re doing a piss poor job running the place.”

“Their desires are limited,” he said, smiling.

“Do you have any idea where Sel Souris is?”

“I don’t know anything but the name, and only because of the beetle.”

“Well I thank you,” I said, standing up, and I shook his hand. “You’ve taken me a lot further than I was.”

“I’m glad I could be of service. I hope it all turns out for the best.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’d better get back to it.”

“Do you mind if I hold onto these?”

“Be my guest.”

“Thank you. I’ve a nephew in Canada who is crazy for bugs. I’ll make a gift of it.”

I nodded, keeping my opinions to myself, and I left his office.

Marya is lying with her ear to the ground, exhausted and desperate straining to hear the voice again. She hears nothing. There has been no sound since the first word. She has no idea how long it has been that she has been listening, but she knows it is getting dark.

She had given up on the town, where the noise was too loud. She had run past her confused and scandalized friends and right out of town, and down the road, until her feet ached. She made her way to the road that headed to the mounds, where it was not safe to go.

She had laid down there in the crossroads and she was still laying there now, and trying to hear the voice. She kept begging the voice to speak again, over and over until her head ached. It wasn’t working.
She let her body go limp against the loamy earth at the side of the road and sighed. Her whole body had been stiff and rigid, and she had not noticed they had begun to ache.

She gets to her feet and stretches herself out. She rolls her head on her shoulders, stands on her tiptoes until the muscles in her calves feel like the strings on a guitar and she can hear a note strike through her whole body and as it fades, her legs no longer hurt.

She turns toward the mounds and begins to walk into the woods. She is scared because the grownups have told her again and again that she must not go to close to the mounds, because it can be dangerous. The little people live in a different world, and the air they breathe is not the same air that men breathe, and neither can survive for long.

She strides through the woods and with every step the world smells less green and more purple. She knows form old stories that soon she should hear the chiming of the mounds, and then see the mounds where the little men live, and where the beetles come from and return to. Instead, she hears the sound of an engine clattering and clanking. She sees two men from the world dressed head to toe in what looks like diving suits. and she kneels down to avoid being seen. The men speak to one another in French, but she can not understand them because the suits they wear dim and mumble their words.

A small hand rests itself upon her knee, and she looks down to see the little man beside her. His hand feels like a stem of a wildflower. She reaches down and gently strokes the soft tendrils of flax on top of his head. The little man cranes his head up, looking into her eyes. She has no idea what he is thinking, and she wonders if he is just as lost as she is, or if his blank little face is wise and knowing.

“Do you speak?” she says to him in her mother’s tongue, and then again in French. He does not move or give any sign. The men step a few steps closer, and the little man gives a start. He clambers up her arm, and sits on her shoulder. She feels the tiny hairs on his arms tickle her cheek, and he moves her hair to cover himself, hiding.

The men step in the clearing and give a start to see her there. They turn to each other and speak quickly speaking with their arms. She is frightened and stands up. On of the men fumbles with the round glass window on his helmet, and there is a soft hissing as it swings open. The man has a sweaty face, and a big mustache which is drooping and the wax on it is melting.

“Do you speak French?” he asks her, dropping to one knee.

She nods, her legs shaking from fear and from a swimming feeling in her head.

“Don’t be frightened of me, dear. I must look like a monster, but I am just a man.”

“I know,” she says. “You must be very hot in that suit.”

The man smiles and nods at her.

“What is your name?” he asks.

“Marya.”

“I am Jules Verne.”

He was a famous man, and a friend of the governor here to study the little men. Marya’s father did not like him, called him an Imperialist. He seems to her right now to be kind. His eyes meet hers, and there is concern there.

“It is not safe for you to be here,” he says. “You must run back to the road as fast as you can. The air here is poisonous. That is why I wear this suit. Do you understand me?”

“I do, sir. I cannot go back to the road yet.”

“And why is that?”

The other man reaches down hurriedly to tap at Verne’s shoulder. Verne brushes it away like an insect and looks at her.

“I hear the purple noise,” she says, “and it is asking for help.”

Verne recoils as though she had used terrible swear words.

“My god,” he says, “that’s terrible.”

The little man beneath her hair extends his wings suddenly, and is revealed. She feels the softness of one wing as it slides open across her face.

Verne reaches out quickly and grabs the little man in one fist and the purple noise rises in her head in a tearing sound, and then as Verne dashes it against a tree, the noise stops suddenly. The little man is broken and thick milky liquid pours from a tear in his side, his little eyes wide and lifeless as ever.

“No!” she screams at the sight of the little man, broken and still.

Verne spits at the little man.

“Abomination! Changeling! How dare you touch that child?”

Marya looks at the anger on Verne’s face and then turns to run toward the mound, not away. the other man grabs for her, but the suit is bulky and she is small and fast.

She makes her way, hearing them as they give chase behind her. She comes to the edge of the wood, and sees the mounds, but they are not what she heard in stories. The men from the world are there, in suits like Mr. Verne, and their machines are there, digging and black smoke pours from them, and she feels the purple air in her head, poisonous and strange.

When she comes too she is in her bed, dressed in nightclothes. Her face and forehead feel hot, and a wet cloth is draped across her forehead. Her mother is weeping in the next room, and she hears her father talking to someone outside, the tone of it, but not the words.

She pulls back the bedsheets, and she sets her feet on the cold floor and walks into the next room. She feels dizzy and strange, and the light from the lantern is dim, but still too bright for her eyes.

“Mama?” she says softly. Her mother turns and gasps to see her, and in a flurry of skirts, is across the room, and she is gathered up in her mother’s arms and plastered with frightened kisses. She is embarrassed and ashamed that she has caused such worry, but she feel happy and warm also to know she is so loved. She puts her arms around her mother and squeezes.

“We thought you were dead,” her mother says.

“I’m sorry,” Marya answers.

Her mother pushes her back slightly and shakes her roughly.

“You had better be! You nearly killed your father with worry. We’d no idea where you were. How many times have i told you not to run off like that. And to the mounds, no less. Foolish girl.”

She is again plastered with kisses and embraced until she feels she can barely breathe.

She turns her head and sees her father outside, as he shakes hands with someone, and then comes inside. Her father smiles a little, as his wife weeps and kisses her.

“You’re a very ill-behaved little girl, Marya. For the next week, you’ll have no sweets. You’ll be helping your mother here in the house, and when she has no need of you, you’ll study. There’ll be no playing with any of your friends, and no unsupervised trips to town. Am I quite understood?”

“Yes papa.”

“We’ll have to be sure to give Mr. Nemo some cakes for the favour he’s done us bringing you home.”

Her skin flushes again, and she feels dizzy and her knees go a little wobbly under her as she realizes she really doesn’t feel very well.

“Mr. Nemo?” Marya asks

“Yes, he found you by the side of the road, and we’re lucky. Anything could have happened to a young girl unconscious in the road.”

Her mother wails at some imagined terror, and she shuts her mind to it.

Her father comes and kneels beside them, and he kisses her mama on the cheek.

“Don’t think about what didn’t happen, love. She’s fine now. Safe.”

Her mother nods, and Marya is unable to remain awake no matter how many questions. She falls asleep there in the arms of her mother and father, and she dreams of beetles, and little men, and machines that dig and pound at her flesh without mercy or reason.

Des looked at me as though I’d lost my mind, naturally. This was to be expected, as he was a keen judge of people in general, and me in particular. I went into my bedroom and changed into a t-shirt and jeans, and a brown leather jacket. I put on a baseball cap, and some black leather gloves and sneakers. I now looked nothing at all like myself as anyone had seen me in years and years. My face was still and slow.

“You look as though you mean it,” the voice said, the door to my bedroom closed.

“Look,” I said quietly, “I’m done simply hoping you’ll go away. Can you at least tell me this? Are you going to make this more dangerous for me, or less dangerous? It doesn’t matter, as I’m going to do it anyway. I’d just like to know.”

“I’m always here, Niles. Always. You just haven’t been speaking to me, that’s all.”

I nodded. “Anything I can do to return us to that state?”

“Renounce violence and all the ways of menace and danger and intrigue.”

“Far from fucking likely mate,” I said, “Welcome aboard.”

I came out of the bedroom, and Des looked up at me and shook his head.

“I hope you plan on bringing a gun,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I don’t intend to bring a weapon.”

He blinked.

“You’re mad. The things I hear about these people, Niles, they’re not to be fucked around with. Sincerely. they kill people.”

“I don’t intend to bring a weapon. I never said I don’t intend to use one. The world is full of weapons laying all over the place. Now, you say you’ve heard things. What have you heard. Start at the beginning and work through.”

Des let out a sigh, and leaned back.

“It’s not much, and I can’t swear all of it is true, okay?”

“It’s understood.”

“Okay. The Jherek boys showed up out of nowhere about two years ago. Literally, like out of nowhere. One day they just showed up on the streets and were dealing and shylocking, and the resistance from those who currently had that territory was short lived. The rumour has it that Jherek has some information on the right people, and they leave him alone because of that, but also because his soldiers are insanely violent when provoked, and because he isn’t getting grabby. They’ve kept to their little piece of turf and haven’t been grabby since then.”

“What did you mean about Egyptian soul theft?”

“Jherek and his boys seem to be really into the old time religion, they say. One of the things they supposedly did during the turf dispute was to cut up one of the other side, and wrap up each piece and leave it where it would be found. Except for the prick. They left a fake wooden one of those.”

“That is very eccentric,” I said, more annoyed by it than intrigued, by the sound of my own voice. Good to know.

“Yeah, and they let it be known they had his prick, and as long as they had it, the other side had better behave, because if they destroyed the prick, this guy would have no protection from the monsters in the underworld. The other side took it to heart, because, supposedly, a lot of weird things started to happen.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t actually know, mate. Probably just like most of this nonsense. They’re told to be on the lookout for it, so they start seeing coincidences everywhere. Who knows.”

“Since then, they’ve only had to threaten. Apparently, a guy was into Jherek for a couple thousand pounds, and they let him off the debt in exchange for his Greater Ka. He agreed, went through some ritual, and walked away laughing. Two weeks later he gashed his wrists open, and they found him with cats eating his corpse.”

“What’s the Greater Ka?” I asked, “I haven’t read any of this since grade school, if then.”

“Harry at the pub told me it’s sort of like the guardian angel that looks out for you and channels divine wisdom to you as you go through life. In Voodoo they call it the gros bon ange, he says.”

“So basically,” he said, “They are left alone for the same reason you get left alone in jail after you eat your first cellmate.”

He chuckled.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s like half think they’re too crazy to fuck with, and the other half are afraid of the magic.”

“In your gut, Des, what do you think? You think the magic is real?”

He shifted uncomfortably.

“I don’t know, man.”

“I’m asking your gut feeling.”

“I don’t have one, right. I don’t even know if I believe in that.”

I looked him in the eye.

“Really now?”

“I know, I know, Andrew and that. That doesn’t have to mean magic. It could be something else.”

“Fair enough. Do you think Jherek has something else, or is it showmanship.”

He took in a breath.

“Some from column a,” he said, “some from column b. I’m fucking convinced that Jherek believes it.”

“I was sort of thinking along the same lines, actually. Considering the way he talked during our visit.”

Des stood up and walked over to my kitchen window, looking out at the street below. He wasn’t the kind of man who was prone to sudden silences, and so I was torn between interrupting it, and letting it be. I was in the mood to rush into things, and maybe, I thought, I should let him slow me down some.

“Niles,” he said, “This isn’t one guy. This is a whole gang of guys who seem to really like to hurt people. Even with the two of us, the chances are very good that we’re going to get killed here, and that will accomplish nothing for your friend. I hesitate to suggest this, but perhaps you should talk to the police.”

“They’ll kill him. It’s not an option. Does anyone know where this lot comes from?”

“No, they’re all coffee colored, and have accents nobody can place. They just talk about coming from ‘the island’.”

“They’re from an island,” I said.

“So are you.”

I shrugged it off and handed him the jar with the beetles.

“I’m sure these aren’t from around here. I bet we can find out where, though.”

“So what if you do, mate? What good does that do us?”

“I want all the information I can get on where these people came from and why. Forewarned is forearmed.”

“What does it matter where the fuck they’re from? Dangerous fuckers with guns are the same the whole world round.”

“If I know what they want, what they really want, it gives me the edge, Des. THis might be more than money to them. ”
“Whatever you say, but I don’t see how any of that changes your plan to burst in guns blazing and get your boy out of there.”

“That’s not my plan. Anyhow, first things first, I need to find an entomologist.”

Des rolled his eyes.

“Never a dull moment with you, is there?”

“Sarcasm is the refuge of the witless.”

“Blow me.”

Nemo is sitting on the grass on the square in front of the governor’s house. It has been long enough that nobody feels the need to stare at him anymore. His face is familiar to the islanders now, at least those who are likely to see him. Many of the townsfolk think he is simple, because he spends so much time simply watching things, and because he does not often speak unless spoken to. On the island, most people are not inclined to speak to strangers.

Marya is on the opposite side of the wide yard playing in the grass with some of her friends, but she is not paying enough attention to the game and they have begun to whine at her to pay attention. She cannot stop looking at Nemo, the handsome blonde man who had treated her so gallantly, and who was so strange and exotic. The other girls jostle her and giggle and she sticks her tongue out at them.

“Marya is in love with the stranger,” Nicola teases.

“Why not,” says Kleo, “He’s very pretty with those blue eyes of his.”

“He’s too old,” Nicola answers.

“It’s different when the man is older,” Kleo says.

“Not when the girl is 11,” Nicola says, and laughs.

Marya says nothing. She just watches him. He is laying on his back now, and he is reading a book which he holds in one hand. She stands up and walks over to him, nervously. Her friends giggle and call her back quietly. She stands near him and says nothing. She is very aware now of the scabs on her bare knees. He has practically fallen into the book, and does not notice her. This makes her heart quicken, to see the intensity of his attention so totally focused. His eyes move back and forth across the page the same way birds move their heads. She swallowed.

“Hello Marya,” he says, not looking at her, and not moving his mouth.

She takes a sudden step back and stammers as she speaks.

“Hello Nemo,” she says awkwardly.

He smiles, and rolls on his side.

“You heard me,” he says quietly.

“Yes.”

“How marvelous. Nobody else has, but I keep expecting them to. Isn’t that strange?”

She nodded.

“I love you,” she thinks, looking at his face, and seeing that he was really seeing her, and not just looking at her.

He stands up and musses up her hair like her uncles do. She feels her stomach start to ache.

“You think you do,” he says without speaking. “Because there is no person here. This makes it very easy to paint the perfect man on my canvas. It is very common. You’re a smart young girl, and if you think on it, you’ll know I’m right.”

He began to walk towards the mansion, the book under his arm.

“Are you coming,” he says out loud.

She nods, thinking about what he said.

“Nemo,” she asks, “does it make you sad that you don’t remember who you are? it must be scary?”

“Your French is much improved,” he says. “have you been studying?”

“No,” she answers. “I don’t know why.”

“I do,” he says, smiling.

He offers her his hand and the walk around the base of the hill on which the mansion sits, and they walk to the water where the only sound is the waves, and the distant sounds of men at work mining salt.

“You didn’t answer me,” she says.

“You’re right,” Nemo says, “that’s a very rude thing adults do to children. I seem to recall hating it.”

“You’re still doing it,” she says, giggling.

“Am I?”

“Yes!” she bats him with a hand, “stop it.”

He smiles.

“No, my dear. it doesn’t make me sad.”

“Why on Earth not? Are you not very lonely? You must have a family…perhaps even a wife, or a little girl who miss you.”

He nods gravely.

“Perhaps I do. If you like, you can feel badly on their behalf. I can’t. I simply don’t remember them. This life is all I know.”

“It must be terrible to remember nothing.”

“It isn’t,” he says, “but I could never explain it to one so young as you.”

“That is another dirty trick grownups like to play,” she says, tossing a stone into the water.

“We have to, I promise. No word of a lie. There really are things you couldn’t understand. And that we wish you never had to.”

She shrugs.

“Why do you remember nothing?”

“Because I am not like other men, my dear. I can hear you in my head, and you in mine, and that by itself should show you we are more alike than not,” he says. “Is it not so?” he adds without speaking.

“Yes,” she says silently, “but I remember everything.”

“It will not always be so.”

She stares at him with wide eyes that start to brim tears.

“I don’t want to forget.”

“You will, and when you do, you will be glad of it.”

Their conversation had become entirely silent, and they were sitting together throwing rocks in the water, her eyes sad and shining.

“Why? How could I?”

“The older you get, the more things you will have done that you regret.”

“And also the more I will cherish,” she interrupts.

“Losing those will feel a small price to pay. I promise.”

She thinks about this and she reaches out and touches his arm fondly.

“What have I done to earn this show of affection?” he says aloud.

“You tell the truth, and I do love you. I don’t care what you think.”

She blushes, and turns her face away thinking about running away.

He takes her arm, and says without speaking.

“If you love me, you must love me exactly like am your uncle or your good friend. There can never be more between us. I am a thousand years old, my dear, and I think I would be more likely to fall in love with a boy.”

She rears back, her thoughts confused and wordless.

“Is that stranger than what we do right now?”

She blinks.

“No. You give me so much to think about, I think my head will pop.”

“You see. Already you wish to forget.”

She laughs in spite of herself.

“Never,” she says out loud.

“I can tell you that if you should find yourself at the bottom of the ocean for fifty years or so, you may be grateful for the ability to forget.”

“You’re teasing,” she says.

“Not a bit,” he says. “Look and see.”

She steps back uncertainly, and then looks inside his mind, and she feels the terrible dark pressing in so hard and so long that she feels she could scream, but she cannot breathe or draw in air to do it. She feels a gentle nudge in her thoughts and she falls to her behind gasping, and crying.

“That’s horrible,” she says, and he kneels down and brushes the tears from her cheeks.

“And someday I will not remember it at all except in the way you remember things when you were very small, and maybe not at all.”

“I understand,” she says.

“No,” he says, “you begin to, and that is sufficient.”

She suddenly hears the purple noise, and Nemo stiffens beside her, and his hand tightens on her shoulder painfully, and then he releases her.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You should run home for now.”

“I don’t want to. I want to talk.”

He looked at her sternly.

“We have forever to talk. For now it isn’t safe. People will think I am unwholesome if I spend so much time with you, and besides, there is trouble in the mansion, and the governor is looking for me.

“Is that the purple noise,” she asks.

“No. That,” he pauses, “That is something else. I must run.”

He turns and walks toward the mansion, and Marya stays by the water, and she thinks about what she has been told, and she wonders if it is possible she used to be someone else, and if the dreams she has had are memories in hiding. Would her parents not now? The more she thinks, the more questions she has, and the purple noise begins to press and shiver.

For the first time ever, there is a purple word.

“Help.”