the games of drowned children, and Other Stories

jungles from the future and palaces beneath the sea 

how it feels being the only tranny at the bar

 

finally, another three! i've been running around and partying and such so I thought I'd give you all a party too so you can feel included. I hope you like being underwater and also transgender. also I hope you like sad angels and men who fuck tigers because they are in here too.

 

1-6: the sun king's youngest daughter, and Other Stories
7-9: the last universal common omnipotent god, and Other Stories

 

10. The Games of Drowned Children

(Valley of Meadow Bright) 

greenie like monie 

 

The Cast 

 The Sea-Princeling: a terribly impatient boy. desires to play his games and his games only.

The Dolphins: the most boisterous men in the world. desire to do horrifically dangerous things and then force you to do them 

The People of the Valley of Meadow Bright: very very defensive. 

desire to feel like they're doing all they can. 

The Children of the Valley of Meadow Bright: lonely and so very afraid. desire to hide.

The Nymphs of the Silver River: ambivalent and superior. desire attendants and flunkies.

The Woman Who Nurses Giants: demanding and ambitious, but dreadfully provincial. 

desires her children to grow gigantic so she may rule the valley. 

The Eight Winged Angel: despairing and defeatist. desires to bring all dead children to Heaven. 

The Stilt-Legged Devil: deliciously smug. desires to bring all dead children to Hell.  

 

the Valley of Meadow Bright has been completely flooded by a princeling of the sea as his little domain. now it is a great lake of dark green water, and below the surface, on the rolling hills, the marigolds sway dreaming, like the slow fingers of anemones. its surface is not marred by dead pigs or chickens; there are no drowning men screaming for help. only children float, like small buoys, drowned and grey.

 

the princeling has run off from his father's court; led up the Silver River, astray and protected both by the youths the sea king tasked with looking after him. they are dolphins, and few are swifter or stronger; they can quadruple backflip with a corkscrew twist, and smack stones with their tails fast as bullets. as men, they are collegiate in shorts, polos or cable knit, sunglasses and boat shoes. 

 

they carry long silver pistols shaped like the bottlenose snouts of dolphins. they fire pearls, and shoot themselves with these bullets to change their shapes. if they shoot you with them, you will drown in the air and breath in the water, which suits them well. in both bodies they are rowdy, lustful and unkind, and they like to play with their food and prod the little boy to see what he will do.

 

mostly, he tries to play with the other children, which irks them. his games are electric eel jumpropes and poison pufferfish balloons and sea urchin football. children die in these games, but he tearfully refuses to play any others. the bodies of the dead cast shadows on the rippling grass like clouds.

 

the dolphins would have him make old women outswim sharks, or see which old man can swallow the most water before drowning. but in his golden curls is a wreathe flowering coral, and this gives him power over them and the nymphs of the Silver River, who flooded this place for him, and sit on the hills, teasing the shepherds and brushing their hair with combs of dark glass, which draw it long and turn it into fierce whirling currents and eddies.

 

outside the princeling's games, life goes on as best it can. he places bubbles over the heads of his subjects and their animals so they do not drown, and the shepherds and sheep alike all look like astronauts. mothers drop teacups, which float down slowly from their pale hands, and cry, looking at the empty high chairs where their children used to sit and giggle at angelfish.  

 

there is a woman who goes from house to house at night, when the moon is a shaking ghost through the water, and she carries her distaff. when she enters a house, she leaves it upside down in the earth in front of the door, so that it blocks the way, and if you see her do it, she will tell you: do not touch my distaff.  

 

if you enter the home, you will see that she has put a bag over the head of the mother and a bag over the head of the father, and that so long as they wear those bags, neither heaven nor hell can wake or take them, for their souls are invisible to both. you will see that she has the children in her arms, and that she is nursing them. 

 

each night that she nurses them, they grow bigger. when they are big enough, they will be her children, giants so large the land will not hold them, and their own mass would crush them if they stepped foot on it.  they will pull apart the princeling and his dolphins like dough, and she will rule this valley. she has hid her largest down a well. her ambitions end there, at the borders of what she knows, though surely the sea king would desire such an army, and the dolphins would know this.

 

if you touch the distaff, she will step from the house, and in her hands she will hold a child, bruised blue and crushed to death, and she will say:

 

 if you had not my distaff touched

the infant i would not have crushed

 

and she will laugh and be on her way.   

 

an angel and a devil sit on either side of the valley, looking out over the water. the angel is weeping, because he cannot carry all the dead children to heaven at once, and when he leaves the devil will take whoever he leaves behind and walk down with them to hell. the angel has eight wings; the wings of an owl, with which he hides his face, the wings of a vulture, with which he hides his feet, the wings of an eagle, with which he flies, and the wings of a dove, sleeved in long white robes, which he must use in place of arms, for he has none. 

 

across the water, the devil sits. his nose and his chin are long and sharp and shod in iron, so sharp indeed, and so long and drawn together, that they are almost like a heron's beak. his smile is thin and weak, his teeth are black iron nails, and strong. he wears a tight skullcap, like a priests, but his is of a virgin's skin. his horns poke up through her eyes, and idly he plays with her mouth. also like a priest's is his robe, but all of long black hair. his arms and legs are stiltlike, knobbled and many jointed, and at the end of each is a six fingered hand, tipped with iron nails like his teeth. he sits with his knees drawn up above his head, and smokes a long pipe with a single fat toe in the bowl. 

 

by day, the angel and the devil are unremarkable in size, small as men. but in the light of the moon, they appear gigantic, and they sit with their heads in the stars, and their shadows betray them and go out over the water and play tag there, on the little waves. 

 

11. The Man Who Sleeps With Tigers 
(The Island of Palud)

this is so fucking cool shut up oh my god!!!

 The Cast

The People of Tekompa: delirious, not sure they are not dreaming. desire soothing. 
The Young Men of Tekompa: charmingly manic. desire to be constantly busy.

The Young Women of Tekompa: charmingly distractable. desire to waste one another's time.  

The Little Sister: the most determined little girl. desires to save the Princess. 

The Daughter in the Mountain:  few could be less hurried than she. desires to try everything once. 

The Children Who Are Like Animals: the clumsiest most heartbreaking little things.

 desire to be taken care of. 

The Pharmacist: the itchiest scratcher. desires a perfect, virile body.

The Animals: they are like biblical judgement. desire the death of the Man Who Can Talk To Animals or the death of all children in Tekompa.  

The Sister-Lovers: the most desperately obsessed two women could be with each other.

 desire to become one person. 

The Man Who Can Talk to Animals: the most predatory and rapacious a man can be. desires to fuck and bear children with animals and his sisters. 

The Glass Dolls: terribly disappointed in you. desire everything in its place. 

The Princess: a most respectful child. desires to finally feel free. 
 

the hot days and nights in Tekompa pass like the blinking of a lizards eyelid. you can spend a week there without meaning to, things happen that fast and that slow. getting groceries from the square store with the leaky air conditioning takes all day. drinking with the young women takes three. nobody ever sleeps, because with time as it is, what if you woke up and the earth was a small cold stone in the sun king's pocket? people drink a lot of coffee in Tekompa, and the young men smoke meth at the tables outside the cafes at night and run around naked and happy, climbing buildings to steal radios from balconies and satellite dishes from roofs. 

 

they build impossible machines on those nights; little crawling insects with crystal eyes who only bite liars, coiled antenna wands that make your heart lurch and jump in your chest like it wanted to be free, chattering policeman heads that drool clear oil and could command a real cop over the radio, humming golden spikes with little receiver dishes that you stick in your ear to get emotions beamed into your brain from everyone around you. come morning their toys are forgotten, and laughing, struggling to stand, they crawl on their bellies down the roads to work as truckers and mechanics.  

 

one of these boys has a little sister, and every night, she works on just one machine. it is a sword of glass and antenna, with electrical cables that bind it to her head and her heart. she sits on the roofs and works on it with a little soldering iron, all night long. if you ask her, she says she is making something to save a princess. she's far out in the jungle, she says. sometimes, if she angles the blade just right, there's a bright green flash out there in the night and the mist, right by where the bulk of the mountain rests. 

 

sometimes you remember the time you spend here and sometimes you don't. it's the air, the air that spills out of the mountain, that spills out of the jungle that grows on of the mountain like moss. there was a man who was angry with his wife for having too many children, and before their seventh child, a daughter, was born, he wished it into the mountain. now, the fog rises and takes time away, and when she's collected as many days and nights from men and women as it would take to wear that mountain into dirt, she'll make it into an hammer that strikes with the strength of a million years and split that mountain in two and be born. that day is coming pretty soon, sooner than anyone knows. 

 

and nobody knows when the children who are like animals showed up, but they did. children play with a little boy with half a tiger face, all droopy, and they run around and kick a ball until he sighs and keels over dead. none of the animal children live very long. in the pharmacy the pharmacist is pickling some of them in green bottles. he talks loud about how he is sure to make quite a lot of money. he'll pay a lot of money too, crumpled bills for every limp little snake-necked, wing-legged, or beetle-eyed kid you care to bring in.  

 

sometimes they're already dying when they show up, stumbling out of the jungle. dying because something is killing them in there before their stupid messed up hearts and lungs can, dying from big bites out of their backs and heads caved in by heavy paws or arms swole double with poison. 

 

it is the animals who are killing them. soon they will slink into town to do it, panthers and harpy eagles, gigantic crawfish and black snakes and swarms of army ants. chewed bodies will be found on doorsteps and in the homes of hopeful adoptive parents. the pharmacist's collection will be smashed and the little bodies will be mutilated. and once all of the children who are like animals are dead, the animals of the jungle will come out and sit in a circle around the town and stare with hot, hateful eyes through the mist that rises. they will begin to kill human children now, one a day. it is clear that this is a punishment, or a threat. something is wanted of the town that is not being given.

 

there are two women in the village who can talk to animals. they are sisters, and lovers, who spent night after night twining around and through one another until they both dared to fall asleep. centuries were stolen from them, and so powerful did their love grow in those vanished year that now they will not speak to any but each other, nor leave each others embrace, or their bed for anything for as long as they love one another. if torn apart by force, their hearts would explode with grief and blood would gush from their eyes and mouths and ears and they would tear you to pieces with fingers that could pry apart stone. then one would feed herself to the other, who would then devour herself, and they would vanish from this earth. 

 

the children the pharmacist is bottling are not really preserved. they are disintegrating into the green ichor, which is slowly turning black, like a rotting leaf. the pharmacist drinks it when he thinks people aren't looking. it is changing him; fangs sprout from his gums, feathers from beneath his skin. his arms will become long and sinuous like pythons and when he has strength enough he will use them to rip the lovers apart and take one of them for his own.

 

there was a man in the village who was a brother to these sisters, and would have been their lover except they did not love him. he went mad and ran into the jungle, and when hunters came back saying they had seen a tiger with eyes like a man, everyone said that he had been eaten, and that was all they said. 

 

it is true that the hunter's saw a tiger with man's eyes, but he was not eaten. he was inside that tiger's skin. for he could talk to animals too, and he did, and at first he was friends with them. he would bind their wounds, and pull apart the traps of hunters with his hands, and play with their young, and eventually he came to learn all the things that they knew. and what he learned was this. 

 

around the base of the mountain, where the mist pools most thickly, and the trickling water that spills over the stone is rich with many, many hours, things have seeped in from the future. there are strange buildings of smooth, curved stone that looks like fire in the sunlight and glass that folds on itself until it seems to vanish into the air. men from the future lived in these buildings, and died in them, killed by women who infiltrated these arcing spaces and died doing so. 

the apartments are glassy and cold; champagne, potato chips, caviar. white curtains, gigantic bathtubs. all of the furniture is metal. there is glossy pornography in glass frames on all of the walls.

 

the infiltrators wear suits of armor, paper-light, soft and iridescent and feathered like the tail of a peacock, and one who is looked upon while wearing it cannot be remembered while they are seen. they wear masks of green glass which let you see sound, even a breath on the horizon. 

 

they have long rotating knives and machine pistols that fire burning silver darts that melt through walls. their tongues are sheathed with stretching, flexing silver whips tipped with spikes that carry a venom which freezes the blood. 

 

all are dead, killed as they killed their targets by invulnerable glass dolls, gigantic pregnant women whose long hair is fleshy tentacles. they carry a toxin that turns your bones so fragile your own weight crushes them. inside their wombs, asleep but breathing, are young and beautiful women who cannot read or speak. 

 

one of these girls is the princess the girl with the sword speaks of. her sword picked up her signal, way out there, and she is working tirelessly to set her free. when the time is right, she will climb the steeple of the church in the town and lean way out and thrust her blade into the night, and here, in these cold glass houses, the doll that holds the princess will flare green and then slump as though invisible strings were cut, and the princess will spill out onto the floor and she will be free forever. 

 

the animals showed the houses and the dead to the man who could talk to them, and he took these things as his own, and began to live in the apartments. for a long time after he would not talk to the animals, and they did not see much of him, and attended to their own business. 

 

when he spoke to them again, it was only at night. he would talk to them sweetly, lovingly, from places they could not see, until they came to him. and when they came close enough, he would kill them with his hands and with knives or poison and crawl inside them. 

 

and then he would crawl again, crawl to their dens or their nests or their caves where their mates slept and he would fuck them while wearing the dead skin of their mate, and make them bear his children. 

 

and so the animals were betrayed, and they kill the children he forces on them, and they will kill all of the children in Temkopa too, until they are revenged, or until someone comes and kills the man who talks to animals, for they cannot. he climbs in the trees, and he goes invisible, and he uses things from the future to kill them, and he wears the bodies of giant river crabs and komodo dragons and gorillas and anacondas and leopards, and his lust is endless. 

 

 

12. Only Drowning Men

(the Sea King's Court) 

straight up i owe him everything

 The Cast

Fish-Devils: leering and awfully eager. desire to swallow you and bring your soul to hell. 

Treble droplets: most compassionate fish you could meet. desire everyone to get along

Albacore Labailia: the most easily offended fish in the sea. desires a career in the arts.

Abyss Beyond: most dire prognosticator of all time. desires everyone to tremble in fear.

Starphoney Tar: power of positive thinking ass fish. desires everyone to follow their dreams.

Trembling  Sip: the most craven little thing. desires to kill the Sea Herself,

 who she blames for all the fish-devils 

Gurglekruch Pum Cessitate: the most confused fish there's ever been. 

desires everyone to state plainly what is going on. 

Foam Goolather: never not trying to pick a fight. desires to cover this whole party in sticky goop.

Ditherbee Waxweather: nitpickingist old lady ever. desires to be rewarded for her years of hard sailing. 

Stikes Pab Soke: a most probing and curious creature. desires to poke your brain in new ways.

Melt Harshly: fish most thunderous. desires to eat everyone.

Lord Drowned Portunus: incredibly devoted servant. desires to appear tragic and noble.

Lady Drowned Portunus: always trying to act through others. desires everyone to know their place.

Lord Bottle Girl: incandescently idealistic. desires a perfect romance. 
Lady Bottle Girl: petulant and playful as girl can be. desires to remember what being human is like.

Lord Ghastly Squid: most sinister and mysterious. desires to appear dark and tormented.
Lady Ghastly Squid: most cackling and cruel. desires to make others feel small. 

Lord Wooden Athena: rather earnest and prickly. desires everyone to act normal. 

Lady Wooden Athena: most stern and desperately frustrated. 

desires only to be taken seriously by the Sea King. 

Lord General Spume: most full-of-hot-air guy imaginable. desires constant validation. 

Lady General Spume: impossibly insecure. desires to be anything other than what he is. 
Lord Madame Armada: passionate in both love and hate. desires to make love to the Sea Herself. 
Lady Madam Armada: furiously stately and cold. desires to be anywhere but here. 

The Sea King: the most masturbatory man of them all. 

desires to be the strongest, best, most interesting person wherever he is. 
The Sea Herself: the most distant and melancholic she has ever been. desires her freedom. 

sailors curse the sea, for the sea is cursed, and god has left her waters. now she is a slimy copy of the sky, licking the sand like a wounded dog, exhaling salty clouds of silence over the coast. her small waves move without life, waiting for the final roar of the waters.  men who die on her, or in her, are damned; fish-devils follow the ships, carnivorous tombs waiting to swallow souls and swim into hell. sometimes they do not wait. 

 

there are huge jellyfish, nets of nerves and capillaries kept afloat by human lungs and brains flickering with white phosphorus, and octopi with the mouths of women for the suckers on their tentacles. there are whales which seem to be huge, bloated men, hands reduced to flippers, legs grown together, searchlight eyes, probing tongues. there are sea serpents with women's heads, whose bodies are one long white throat, and there are gigantic lurking heads like anglerfish whose lure is a drowning man. 

 

if you are on the ocean, or near it, it is not long before you receive an invitation to the sea king's court. cut open a fish at an unrelated banquet, and a smaller fish swims inside its stomach, a head on each end, one head swallowing the other to form a ring. or an envelope of waxcloth arrives; inside it, a pool of water, and the wriggling ring-fish. the drain bubbles up in the shower or tub, and delivers the creature to you, or you choke and cough it back into your beer.

 

once you have placed it on your finger, its heads release each other, bite you, and suckle your blood. it can live that way forever, but each day that you ignore the beckoning waves, it takes more from you, and grows larger, and if you do not walk into the sea within a week, it will drink you dry. for reaching the sea king is that easy; easy as drowning, though so long as you wear the ring, you will sleep, instead of die, and when you wake, you will be in his court. 

 

in his court you are a lord or a lady or you are nothing. as a lord, you may make a challenge of heroic proportion, which you yourself must perform, first or simultaneously. a lord cannot refuse a challenge, and cannot challenge a lady.

 

as a lady, you may challenge a lord without performing the challenge yourself, but you may not directly refuse any request for a favor, from a lord or another lady, and you may not directly refuse any demand made by a lord. if your will or word and a lord's are contested, yours is expected to lose.

whether you enter the court as a lord or lady depends on which comes most naturally to you, but the sea king's invitation will disturb that nature, for his court is a place of flux and rigidity both, harsh laws that dance to his whim. each invitation carries a condition; when it is met, you will change from lord to lady, or lady to lord. such conditions follow:

 

when you are with only one other person

when you are surrounded by people

when you are challenged

when you are asked for a favor

when you ask for a favor 

when you profess love

when you are confessed to 

when something is spilled on you

when it is dark

when it is light  

 

as long as the sea is his wife and his slave, you are at the sea king's mercy while you are a guest in his court. if you offend him too greatly, the black and crushing water will fill your lungs and pulp your bones. 

 

truthfully, he has not invited you; this is his slave-wife's doing. she longs for freedom, and would have you steal the ring that binds her to him, and give it to her, for she is wed to whoever bears it. if her husband must die to make this happen she would not mind in the least.

 

 the sea king does not mark your presence, for there are many people in his court, many are his children, and most are stranger than you. there is every kind of fish, who wish to be treated like human beings, and men who behave like fish, gawping at you witlessly, bumping their heads against you again and again until you feed them, or eat them.

 

treble droplets: three shining mackerel who have been joined together by the tangled lines hooked into each of their mouths. 

albacore labailia: a nice fat tuna with a beautiful multicolored wig of drowned women's hair.

abyss beyond: a man with bulging blind eyes who scuttles about sideways like a crab.

starphoney tar: a flying fish who claims to have gone to the moon.

trembling sip: an incredibly nervous and shrunken assassin, with a big crucifix and a bulging mouth full of a toxin that will activate on contact with water. has come here to assassinate the sea herself. 

gurglekruch pum cessitate: a barracuda who went into a whirlpool and came out shaped like a spiral.

foam goolather: a combative hagfish just looking for an excuse to goop up the place.

ditherbee waxweather: an old lady sailor who drags around an anchor like a ball and chain.

stikes pab soke: the renowned sea-urchin doctor and acupuncturist, carried around by a drowned man who he controls by sticking spikes into his brain. 

melt harshly: a megalodon trapped inside a slowly melting iceberg. only ever talks about how excited he is to eat everyone here as soon as he thaws. 

 

devils mingle freely with men and fishes here: a thing like a man with its jaw hinged open down to the seabed, something like a crab with a woman's face for a carapace and her huge, taloned fingers for claws, something like a child, crawling like an isopod on long ribs that protrude through its chest.. and then there are the members of his court.  

 

*** 

 

drowned portunus, a grecian statue, borne about by a stone dolphin. Bubbles of golden wine spill from his lips as he speaks. he once saved sailors from drowning by wrestling the waves themselves, but he saved too many, and the sea king's parties grew quiet and dull, and so he turned the boy to stone and sank him to the bottom of the ocean. he is still a mighty wrestler, and can see through the eyes and speak through the mouths of the many marble fishes and grotesques that leer from the pillars and corners of the palaces many rooms. 

 

he is a lord in the light, and a lady in the darkness, where his stone is softer.

 

as a lord, he is most loyal to the sea king, and does not trust the lady wooden athena, for he harbors a suspicion she has a tenderness towards him, and would not see his master served with anything but complete devotion. 

 

in this state he hates the lord ghastly squid, who he sees as a rival for the sea king's champion, and whose grotesque stirs his stony heart with resentment towards his liege for his own transformation. 

 

as a lady, he is fearful of the lord bottle girl, who has more of the sea king's ear, and knows he secretly yearns for the married the lord wooden athena. 

 

and as lady he does love her, deeply and truly, (though only in her lordly aspect), but fears to break the bond of dear camaraderie that binds them.

 

 *** 

 

bottle girl. the sea king saw her proud head over the edge the proud ship she sailed on, and thought to drown her and bring her to his court. but she drank gulp after gulp of the sea as though it were wine, and so delighted was he by this that he changed her to glass, so that she could be his bottle, and serve his guests. this she does, and whatever she is filled with will change her temperament, sweet or sour. she has little heed for her fragility, and is prone to stunts and antics. fish swim through her like giggles. 

 

unnoticed or with few around, she is a lady, but when she is surrounded by an audience, she is a lord, and a very vexing and terrible one indeed. 

 

lord bottle girl suspects lady drowned portunus of infidelity, for she has seen the looks he gives lord wooden athena, and she despises unfaithfulness with a naive temper.

 

for as a lord, she herself has a secret love and it is pure and true to her; she pines terribly for the lord madame armada, and cannot bear to see her as a lady, with the sea king pursuing her in a terrible heat.  

 

as a lady, she has a girlish admiration for the lord ghastly squid; he seems so cool and mysterious, shrouded in white as he is, and she wonders if, having been human once but no longer, he could teach her to be human again.  

 

but the lady bottle girl loathes the lady general spume, who she sees as pathetic, an insecure hanger-on, a wriggling leech. 

 

*** 

 

the ghastly squid. a pale fellow, shrouded like a cloak in the gigantic bone white squid that envelopes him and is, indeed, part of his body. for he hunted the creature fiercely as a man, until she seized his throat and killed him, only to realize she loved him, and could not live without him. now her life is his life, and he is sorely tormented by it. 

 

he is terribly elusive, for (in addition to his clouds of ink) when he makes a challenge he becomes a lady, and cannot be made to carry out his end of things, and if anyone confesses love to him, he becomes a lord, and commands them to leave him.  

 

as a lady, he is a child of the sea herself, who birthed the white squid who is half of him. and he betrayed his mother, by choosing the man that is his other half, and perhaps her heart will never mend, nor his. 

 

lady ghastly squid seeks to torment and humiliate the lord general spume, who reminds him of the worst of mankind, and makes him embarrassed of his decision to join their number. 

 

as a lord, the ghastly squid has a fierce rivalry with lord drowned portunus for the right to be the sea king's champion. he feels the stone man's transformation is more sightly than his own, and secretly thinks that if portunus had been flesh and blood, that hero would have saved him from his squidsome fate. 

 

much less of a secret is the lord ghastly squid's lust for the lady bottle girl, whom he seeks always to accost with his leering eyes and lecherous tentacles. 

 

*** 

 

wooden athena. she is no longer wood, and hates the name, but began life as a ship's masthead in the doomed fleet madame armada sailed on.  glimpsing the sea king swimming huge like a giant below her ship, she fell so in love with him that she became a woman of flesh and leapt to drown herself and join him. he cannot take her affections seriously, and would use her as a jester, only she is so po-faced and coldly devoted. she commands a school of sword and sawfish, who are loyal unto death. 

 

if she is slighted or humiliated, she becomes a lord (she will never do this willingly) and challenges any offender but the sea king immediately, only becoming a lady again when blood (any blood) is spilled upon her. 

 

as a lord, she considers the lady drowned portunus a fast friend and confidant, and prefers her company to her that of her own wife.

 

for as a lord, she is married to the lady madame armada, but avoids her, for the sea king's lust for the madame seems unsightly to the lords eyes, but she is powerless to object.

 

perhaps this is a sting left over from her lady-self's heart, for the lady wooden athena adores the sea king with an aching and eternal love, though he abuses her relentlessly.

 

but her heart is torn and tormented, for as a lady she also feels a pull towards the lord drowned portunus, and the passion of this indecision is such that it would nearly light her wood underwater. 

 

***

 

general spume. a plump and mustachioed figure, stolen medals pinned straight into his hairy chest. when the ship transporting him and his men floundered, he clung to them one after another until they drowned beneath his weight, and when they all were gone, he swallowed a pufferfish whole and tried to use it to stay afloat. it swells inside him when he brags his lying brags, and its spines poke out through his bulk. he is a lord, unless you can find him alone he will be a lady, somewhat shy, uncomfortable, sad and candid. 

 

as a lord, he desires the sea-king's approval above all, and to this end plays the fool and makes a great show of his lust for the lady ghastly squid, pursuing her with great theatrics, like a hunter in pantomime. 

 

he fears his lady-self, and will go to great lengths to avoid being caught in that state. any decisions he makes as a lady he forswears as a lord, and speaks of them in the third person. 

 

as a lady, he has a quiet and complete admiration for lady bottle girl, and would, if he dared, emulate her in any way he could. 

 

in this same state he utterly despises himself as a lord, apologizing and belittling himself at every turn. he will attempt to remain a lady as long as he can.  

 

***

 

madame armada. stately, beautiful, charming. her face is full and smiling, her steps drifting and graceful. the patch covering her left eye is a rose colored shell. she wears one hundred lockets around her neck; the wives of drowned men. she is more beautiful than all of them, and she knows it. Bristling from beneath the layered lace of her skirts is enough artillery to win a war. long ago, her husband lost one with her aboard his ship, and he and his crew blamed her as a bad omen, and took her to pieces as their ship was taken apart.

 

she is a lady until she is asked for a favor; then she is a lord, heedless and sneering. 

 

as a lady, she hates the sea, all sailors, and the sea king most of all, whose endless lust she is always seeking to evade. she will attach herself to anyone who might offer an escape from this court, and is ruthless to anyone who would refuse her.

 

to put the sea king off, the lady madame armada married the lord wooden athena, whom she respects a great deal, but does not love. this plan did not work, and now the lord wooden athena avoids her, for fear of upsetting the sea king. 

 

as a lord, her heart knows more cruelty and tenderness both. the lord madame armada is in love with the sea herself.  this is a love born of hatred; by loving the sea herself, the lord madame reminds herself of the sea king's evil. she seeks to free both herself and her lover at all costs, even their own deaths.

 

but she would not free lord bottle girl, for the lord madame vents her powerless frustrations on that poor servant, and treats her as a slave.  

 

*** 

 

the sea king. his father was a sailor with rotted teeth and a maw that could swallow the moon, a jaw and neck so powerful he could raise a mainsail or haul an anchor with nothing but his mouth. he drank gasoline and seawater, and ate nothing but whale calf. when christ walked upon the storm-water and steeped aboard his ship, this man spurned that miracle, and threw himself overboard rather than kiss the foot of god. his mother was a nereid, one of the fifty daughters of the old man of the sea, and she died drunk and waiting in the house that sailor chained her in. when her son was born, she dissolved into seafoam and blood, and he drank it instead of mother's milk. 

 

his flashing eyes are of pearl. his hair and beard are whirling foam, enough to weave about him thrice. his bare chest and breasts are tattooed with the dark emerald currents of all the worlds oceans, in constant hypnotic motion, and a gigantic crimson octopus squirms to cover his crotch. his broad thighs are scaled with golden coins, and his feet are sandaled with colossal coconut crabs.

 

In one hand, he holds a tarred rope hooked in the mouth of a monstrous albino tuna and a silver chain embedded in the dorsal fin of a night-black orca. the two bicker and gnash and snarl at one another constantly, and the sea king delights in letting their fights overturn tables and fling guests about.

 

on his other hand he bears the mark of his kingship: his fathers fossilized and blaspheming skull, found at last, and set in a huge, heavy ring made of polished coral.

 

he desires madam armada, as a lord or lady, above all. his own greatness means less and less to him each day that she does not acknowledge or admit to it. she is the only one he will not raise his hand to. 

 

less fortunate is the lady wooden athena, whose earnest affection makes him laugh till fat pearls spill from his eyes, and the lord spume, whose sybaritic nature both flatters and irks him. 

 

least fortunate of all is his slave-wife, the sea herself. 

 

*** 

 

in his bondage, she is not the sweet mystery you remember, the million shades, terrible shadows, gentle reveries, stirring all we call lives and souls in our breasts like somnambulists rising from their beds.  now her face is flat and fragments, multiplies like a hydra when she changes her expression. jelly-wings spread from her back in vain, so tremulous you would imagine that even if she could flee this place she would not reach heaven and would be trapped, trembling, hesitant hoverer between the sun and moon. 

 

still, nothing is beneath her consideration. whoever she speaks with commands the full attention of one of her faces, and you can feel it like the touch of a current on your face. the more interested she is, the more her faces turn to you, divide and grow more numerous. when you finish speaking, they roll your words over in your mouths, softly, to themselves. you will find her quoting you in conversation; sometimes even a single word, spoken in your manner. 

 

so long as he is wed to her, she is mortal, and speaks of death often. so long as he is wed to her, she is a lady always. 

 

she is the mother of all life, though much of it has turned its back on her. the lady ghastly squid was her daughter once, before she betrayed the sea by joining herself with the man who sought to slay her. the sting of that betrayal lingers; still, she could forgive. if only. 

 

lord madame armada she loves because of how fiercely the lord hates the sea king. with him, she forgets herself happily, and dreams of standing on a ship rather than lying beneath them. were she free, this feeling would be forgotten.  

 

she has many husbands and wives once (those who have said they were married to the sea were not speaking speak false) and counted the sea king but another suitor till lately, when he found his father's godless skull in the depths and wed her with the ring he made of it. now god is lost to her and all her waters, and the sea king is the only lord and husband she knows. 

 

lovely allison, very nice