Thousand: Seven Hundred Thirty-Four

it fly, a fine cold mist of it blowing from my face, skin wakened by the sun’s heat and light, sloughing away. Considering how the plume of it shows up in your night sky you’d think I’d be blown down to a nugget in a minute, like a dandelion flower gone to seed, a breeze or a breath knocking all the dandelion’s hopes off its head (off its sex?) to a new settlement in an uninterrupted lawn. But it’s not quite like that. My dust shines. That’s all. I’ve got visits and visits in me yet. But the track out

Thousand: Seven Hundred Thirty-Three

left it with me, what could I do? Nothing. Up to that point there was nothing I could do. I was adrift, without volition, without motivation, without a way to change my fate or a consciousness of it. I was no I. There was nothing there. Whether a star thinks about what she’s about, I couldn’t say, but whether she does or not, she certainly goes about it with great vigor. Many a planet is in a state of activity, crust breaking and shifting, atmosphere roiling. I did have frost and, in those brief visits to the sun, I let

Thousand: Seven Hundred Thirty-Two

was not absolutely necessary to do the second thing, perhaps. The second twitch. The second reach. The action. It was the first action after the reaction. In order to go on more energy was needed. In order to use that energy it had to acquired. In order acquire it, well, one had to seek it. There is no seeking without hunger. Let us do something, the first doer said to itself. And that something it wanted to do? Eat. Eat! Of course. I am lonely. I am going to eat. When the traveler stopped off with the transdimensional shift and

Thousand: Seven Hundred Thirty-One

lonesome? How do you know you have a self unless you have the contrast of other selves? If it’s only you, if all is I, this ice, this stone, this void, how do you know what to do with it? Loneliness. The first emotion? No. I bet it was hunger. Hunger is a great motivator. It takes energy to do something. Long before thinking came along there was hunger because a little bit of energy got used to do the first whatever. The first twitch. The first reach. The first reaction. A little bit of energy that wasn’t available then

Thousand: Seven Hundred Thirty

beam of light rushing at maximum speed (nothing in the universe faster!) to somewhere else entirely. You feel shunned, scorned, rejected. Once you have an idea it’s happening. That would be your million year idea. Except how would you ever develop the social consciousness to feel shut out by the indifference of star after star, star upon star, ever more distant, ever more far, as they train their lights on those who matter more than thee? God said, I am lonely. I am going to make me a world. How did he come to know he was alone, let alone

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Nine

life like that. Takes a million years to come up with one idea. One! I mean, I’m not kidding here. A million for one. And we’re not even talking a good idea. The years go by and you think you’re thinking along pretty good when, bam!, the sun goes red giant on you, your thinking speeds up to one idea for every 153,512 years, lickety-split, then the sun collapses to white dwarf, and, man, it’s all over. In deep space there is no time. It’s cold. So cold that no thought would come within a million miles borne on a

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Eight

It’s going to be a long journey. The comet’s curve toward the sun is wide and slow. I like slow. You? Every day things are getting slower. The slower things go the slower time goes. It’s not like you can live at your regular speed while all around you everything slows. You gotta slow, too. In a sense, if you slow at the same rate time slows, it’s as though nothing’s changed. Time keeps at its familiar clip. As far as you can tell. Maybe you’ll live ten thousand years, rather than sixty. Sixty-five? The comet is chock full of

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Seven

luck. Probabilities. Even if you have a ninety percent chance of success, when you jump the canyon, one time in ten you fall in. That makes subsequent jumps problematic.” “Are you offering to be my teacher?” “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will come,” the dragon says, holding up a claw. Impaled on the claw, the girl sees, is one of the dried ticks. “No,” she says. “Then never mind,” the dragon says, tucking the tick back into the fold of its ear. The dragon lays its head on the floor, tucks forefeet under chin, and closes its eyes.

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Six

tucked in a fold of your robe.” The girl searches her person and finds the dates. She tears the paper and pops one of the dates into her mouth. She takes another and drops it into the dragon’s mouth, which, helpfully, is wide open. “Smell them?” the girl says. “You didn’t even know you had them.” “There’s a lot I don’t even know, I figure.” “And that, my friend, would be why we aren’t peers. Not quite yet. You’re a pretty good amateur. Or you’re lucky. Although, without luck, you don’t get far in this game. Most of it is

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Five

sarcasm. That would be unfortunate. Sarcasm has always given the dragon hives. “Hm. Steady, firm pressure stops the bleeding. Steady, firm pressure moves the teeth, or so the orthodonist says. How much steady, firm pressure must a peer pursue?” The dragon reflects. “The premise is, we’re peers? Equals? Possible. In ticks, no. In talks? That I doubt, too. I’ve been gabbing ages longer than you’ve been alive.” “And that’s just one conversation,” the girl interjects. “Yes,” the dragon allows, nodding toward the kneeling angel, “we’ve ages yet. Mind if I steal a date? You’ve a few wrapped in wax paper

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Four

have to have a tick talk?” “No, really. I keep them in my ears. Dried ones.” The dragon digs a curving claw into a fold in its green ear. Flakes trickle out on its palm. The girl squints at the wrinkled little black dots when the dragon holds the palm out. “I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before in my life. But I think I’m not going to be eating a tick. Somehow, if perhaps just this once, I will succeed in resisting the peer pressure.” The dragon closes its eyes and considers the girl’s response. It could be

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Three

its legs wiggling, its mouthparts reaching. The girl rolls her eyes. “Been in any bushes lately?” The dragon frowns and drops the tick on its silver tongue. “I take it you’re the practical sort. Not one to jump to the extradimensional for an explanation when the mundanely mentional will do. If one must choose between only two stances when facing reality I would agree that yours works best most of the time. But I like to see things from a vantage that takes in two or three more stances. Especially when I’m on ticks. Would you like one?” “Do we

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-Two

extinct. Here, for instance. He’s the last one.” The angel is now sitting on its feet, head bowed over clasped hands, eyes closed. “Is he praying it back to life?” the girl whispers. Making no concession to the apparent solemnity of the occasion the dragon scratches at its chest, finds a tick, and yanks it out. “When did you,” the dragon says, then guesses, “Ah! I bet I picked you up between. I’ve heard of the ticks between times. Thought they’d be larger. No, thinking of the hydras, aren’t I.” The dragon glances at the girl, holding up the tick,

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty-One

steps into the hall. “A two-for-one deal?” “I suppose,” the dragon says, “in that what you get for nothing is one for all, if by one we mean none at all.” “Is that what we mean?” The angel is hovering over the inanimate leprechaun, touching it very precisely at points either therapeutic or diagnostic. “Is it dead?” asks the girl. “It might be,” the dragon replies, both of them watching the angel’s investigations, neither wishing to offer to help. “It’s hard to tell with leprechauns. In some places they get to be a regular infestation. In other places they’re practically

Thousand: Seven Hundred Twenty

makes no sound. Hm, thinks the girl, a little disappointed that looking up at the ceiling reveals no gold rope, no keyhole. She raises one hand and snaps her fingers twice. “Calling something?” says a nasal voice. At her feet, sitting like an attentive dog, its scaly tail stretched out behind it, a dragon yawns. The girl stares into its maw of sharp teeth. Finishing the yawn, the dragon says, somewhat inarticulately, “Came with the angel,” and shrugs in the direction of the door where the angel is rolling the last of the invisible membrane in its hands as it

Thousand: Seven Hundred Nineteen

though she follows their passage as the angel drops them, follows them to the floor where she thinks she maybe sees them. Surely the balls are piling up by the angel’s feet. Should she help? As the angel removes this barrier the air in the hall begins to change, becoming cooler. Or is it warmer? The girl tightens the sash on her robe and shivers, sweat beading on her forehead, drops falling from her armpits. Now what? She looks up at the ceiling. A ripple passes along it. The ripple doesn’t seem to disturb the lights or ceiling tiles. It

Thousand: Seven Hundred Eighteen

at the leprechaun and she wonders if it’s smiling. She narrows her eyes. The hand is still stuck up in the air. She looks back at the rectangle of white. An angel again. But is it her angel? The angel picks at the air with long fingernails, seems to grasp something the girl can’t see, pulls at it, a look of concentration on its luminous face. Gradually, the angel peels away a membrane. Large pieces strip away, and the angel rolls them into balls in those long hands and drops these balls, which the girl doesn’t think she can see,

Thousand: Seven Hundred Seventeen

I could drink wine, the girl thinks. But as she gazes into the light, not blinded at all, the angel smiles and raises the chalice as though in a toast. And fades away. To be replaced by the officious visage of the keykeeper overseer who the girl last saw peeking into an empty box. Or a box full of fog. The overseer opens her mouth and it is blank. No teeth, no tongue, no shadow even. Then she is blanked out and the door might as well be open on a white-washed wall. With an effort the girl glances over

Thousand: Seven Hundred Sixteen

looks into the light, she will be blinded. What has the leprechaun done to her? Did it hurt her? It hurt her feelings. A little. Sort of. It was weird and ugly. Which is still true. Maybe it was responsible for this whole thing. The disappearance of the overseer. The blank room. The doors that weren’t there. The angel. Probably not the angel. That was different. That was nice. And the coffee. The coffee was good. The girl looks into the light. And there’s the angel, holding a cup of coffee. Wow! No, it’s a chalice. Wine would be okay.

Thousand: Seven Hundred Fifteen

good kick. She considers the gut, the knee, lets herself picture her foot slamming under the chin, the flips the little creature would make. She’s not going to do that. That would be mean. Besides, who knows what a leprechaun is capable of. It hasn’t moved. Frozen? Did time stop here? Can that even happen? Who knows what can happen. Is it dead? Kicking the leprechaun would require going up to it. Even in the act of knocking it away you’d have to touch it. She has avoided looking toward the open door. Her eyes need to adjust. If she