tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53694682024-03-14T06:35:15.256-04:00as far as the eye can seeRussian Fairy Tales from MaineDas Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.comBlogger726125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-37070453381282425172013-06-29T17:59:00.001-04:002013-06-29T17:59:26.768-04:00The Haunted House 1908<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Zo2EKNRIQlE" width="459"></iframe>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-38515870510048657712013-05-08T04:06:00.002-04:002013-05-08T04:07:34.341-04:00Lost Post CardAll these sweaters make me feel creepy. Like an undead witch carcass is dangling just overhead, gasping and plotting.
That’s ridiculous. Your Gammy made you those sweaters. To keep you.
What?
To keep you warm, I meant.
Where is Gammy now? Is she still on that 5-Day Coastal Pacific Excursion on board the Norwegian Sun? She’s been away since before the last frost.
Gammy is in the insane asylum.
What?
Gammy is on that 5-Day Coastal Pacific Excursion on board the Norwegian Sun that you mentioned. She sent you a post card!
I haven’t seen this post card. Is it here?
It might be behind the television.
I looked behind the television.
It might be under the refrigerator.
I looked under the refrigerator.
Why did you look under the refrigerator?
I was hoping to find your cigarettes.
It might be with Sarah’s toys.
I looked with Sarah’s toys, and alls I found was a note from Gammy. It was etched into the blade of a nineteenth-century machete, and it said “fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.”
When is Chopped on? This isn’t my show.
Why do we have an antique machete with a note from Gammy on it?
That’s the post card I was talking about.
Some post card! You can harvest sugarcane with it!
Did you find my cigarettes?
I looked up her note on Google Translate and it says that she’s in an insane asylum. She wants us to get her out.
Why? You need more sweaters to complain about?
No, I like Gammy. We should spring her.
So, we took the antique machete and leapt out of our comfortable chairs and kicked the front door open and sank knee deep into the mud in the front yard and slogged through the mud for hours and finally reached the van with the handicap plates.
We started up the van and I knocked the machete against the roof racks on purpose.
We took off west on 5th St toward N Mayfield Ave, turned left onto the Interstate 215 S ramp, merged onto I-215 S, took the exit onto I-10 E toward Redlands/Indio, took the California St exit, turned right onto California St, turned left onto W Redlands Blvd and then into the driveway of the Inland Psychiatric Medical Group.
We opened the trunk and tied about a dozen bedsheets together and threw the string of bedsheets up into the air until one end caught on the sill of an open window about 6 stories up, which knocked over a potted begonia, and the sound of broken earthenware woke Gammy. She came to the window in her flowered shift.
“Fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.” she said calmly.
“What’s that, Gammy?”
“Fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.”
I looked at Ma. What is she saying?
I don’t know. Climb up and ask her again.
We don’t have a phone?
Just go! We’re missing my show!!
So I climbed up the bedsheets with the machete thrust into the tie of my velour bathrobe.
Gammy! I can’t climb any higher. What do you want?
“Fammi uscire da questa merda manicomio. Il cibo è pessimo e non hanno cavo.” she said, ask she lowered another creepy sweater to me.
I climbed back down, and we drove back to the house. I called and got Gammy a pizza and ordered her a Netflix subscription.
The undead witch carcass dangled overhead, gasping and plotting.
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-73306476076446479012013-05-08T04:05:00.002-04:002013-05-08T04:05:46.170-04:00Honey bees also use odor recognition for finding foodWhy are the bees copping such a sarcastic attitude all of a sudden?
I blew a little smoke from my beloved pipe, hoshchey Kthe Deathless, on the hive. They’re all waving their bee butts around, like “Oh, smoke? Really? What a surprise.” And going back to their business, rebuilding damaged nests for pupae and collecting propolis.
Right away I could tell they were upset with me for something. I took a puff from Khoshchey and began to review my actions during the last few days, as the cloud of bees around me gave me the “oh no, everythings fine, why do you ask” look.
On Tuesday I brought a troika of collected “under-leaf buds of white birch, poplar and aspens, which allow bees to create in beehives the ideal protection - propolis.” They seemed quite pleased, as they waggled their pollinators and began to help me “vanish [my] anxieties concerning danger of «age illnesses», premature breakdown and withering of appearance.”
On Friday I had left my terrible assistant Foma unconscious in the mud near the beehive. He just smelt too terrible to keep him in, or near, my troika. I covered him with mud and layers of club moss in hopes that something in nature might biodegrade the horrible stench of his normal life. I hadn’t thought of the bees actually being affected by my leaving him nearby. After all, they don’t have noses at all, DO THEY?
If I had Google I might have figured out that “Honey bees (Apis mellifera) have 170 odorant receptors” and that they get supremely PO’d about leaving Foma so close to the hive. However I live in 1466, before Google or the journal Genome Research. I have to go with my gut. And I just wanted to retrieve my disgusting assistant Foma after I was done getting some honey from the bees, and toss his drunken form back onto the troika after the smell quieted down.
But no. All those odorant receptors TOTALLY RUINED the bees’ weekend. No bee girls would come over after the sock hop. None of the little bees out flagging down cars for a car wash (sorry troikas for a troika wash, I forgot I live in 1466) got anybody to stop, cause once they rolled down their birch-paper windows they got a whiff of Foma’s ungodly stench and stamped on their slate accelerator pedals out of Tver!!
So, that’s why the bees are totally dissing me.
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-41642218836704786912013-05-08T04:04:00.001-04:002013-05-08T04:04:47.947-04:00When in doubt, Google image search "moon man 1970s children's book"Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-71253863178543202052013-04-22T06:35:00.000-04:002013-04-22T06:35:01.822-04:00Tver was "Formerly a land of woods and bogs" OK? It just makes sense. It got trampled over to make room for Moscow's suburbs, OK? Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-5978785265292119072013-04-22T06:28:00.002-04:002013-04-22T06:28:35.641-04:00I was Tatar, and you?Many Russian boyar (noble) families traced their descent from the Mongols or Tatars, including Veliaminov-Zernov, Godunov, Arseniev, Bakhmetev, Bulgakov (descendents of Bulgak) and Chaadaev (descendents of Genghis Khan's son Jagatay). In a survey of Russian noble families of the 17th century, over 15% of the Russian noble families had Tatar or Oriental origins.[11]Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-66026479578592644802013-04-09T01:13:00.002-04:002013-04-09T01:13:06.850-04:00Who’s baking bread in this evil wigwam? That must be the smell of baking bread, which is always welcome in a hopeless leathery kiln of a room like this one. Nobody here is going to bake any bread. This place is where you get eaten, or you eat a rat or a frog, or find a bone to suck on. Been nothing but death, death, death for hundreds of years, here in Baba Yaga’s place. The smell evanesces, and then I catch it again: bread! I look over at Frommers, who’s just crying into his beard with his eyes closed. I’ve been here before, gotten out before, even surprised Yaga so that she laughed out loud and forgot to kill me. Never smelled anything like bread here, though.
It has occurred to me that Yaga might be out of town. Her pestle is gone, and her noisy old traveling sweater made of horseshoe crab tails. The place is lacking something, even in the way the fleas cross the floor like they’re on vacation, all lackadaisical and brimming with whimsy like. The boss has left. So who’s got me and Frommers all tied up and dying of thirst, next to the iron oven and the fleas and the heap of fresh scalps? Who’s baking bread in this evil wigwam?
I wink at the fleas, and some of the saucier ones sort of bound around and click their flea heels at me. So my hunch is right: there’s some kind of reprieve at work. I’m not khleb dreaming. What’s more, the flea parade is moving towards this worn mess of a rug, made of woven particolored rags like a suffocated jester. They stream into one side of the rug, but they don’t come out t’other side. What gives?
I spend a minute stealing Frommer’s belt and knife, and then roll my fat self across the floor away from the oven and over to the nasty rug. The smell of bread gets a whole lot unmistakeabler. Somebody under that rug is making some nourishing buttery goodness. It’s like April sunlight streaming in through a window, but it’s covered by a flattened clown. I pray for some kind of water, since I’m so thirsty, and I bite down on the belt I stole from Frommers with my hands tied together, and I try to roll over to the mangy rug.
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-86727305923798121302013-03-31T17:06:00.004-04:002013-03-31T17:08:10.024-04:00The Horrible Hen of Hrastvecy⟴
They both stopped for a moment and stared at their hands. The blood was inevitable, of course, and the trembling and the burn marks. Where had the chicken feathers come from, though? That was weird. Was there a chicken involved, and they were both so involved that they had missed it? Had someone been casting feathers from a high branch as they pummeled one another? Now that they were paying attention, there really were a ton of feathers under foot, and floating around them like snowflakes. Afanasy glanced at Frommers and made the “let’s take a break from brawling and figure out this chicken thing” gesture. It had gotten dark since they had begun to try to break one another, and a pair of crows had found an ear behind a log and begun processing it. Afanasy produced a glowing coal from a sack at his waist, and used it to start a little fire in a heap of dry pine needles. The thick smoke from the smoldering needles frightened off the crows and the light from the fire made the smoke heavy and weighty between the two foes. There was a pair of eyes reflecting light from the pine woods to the northeast, where the land declined into marshland. They blinked and then reappeared. Afanasy gestured again to Frommers. Abruptly, Frommers picked up a helmet and tossed it, rotating expertly, at the pair of eyes. There was a deep, throaty clucking from the gloomy void. A spreading of flightless wings and a determined charge over snapping underbrush. The two bitter enemies confronted the raging fowl as symmetrical parts of a whole, Afanasy striking with his left and Frommers with his right. The mindless creature, which loomed over them like a spinning cedar, coughed out a gob of foam and blood, and brought its sail-sized wings over and across them like a boat righting itself in a hurricane. Frommers and Afanasy felt their skulls bounding off each other with the force of a wave trying to dislodge a piece of coast.
Baba Yaga’s hut looked a little better than the last time he had awakened there. She had taken down the depressing garlands of seaweed and onions, and widened the only window so that there was a view of the wet mud outside. There was a smell of damp hair, pepper and dried tar that drifted into Afanasy’s nostrils. A stream of determined-looking fleas crossed the floor and streamed over his boot. Something was definitely different. Had Baba Yaga gotten married or something? “Yaga?” “Baba Yaga?!” No response. The fleas paused and staggered for a moment, as though they had lost their sense of purpose. A crock of pickled vegetation burst open, with a shower of brine, garlic and sochevitsa out into the wooden interior of the shack. Frommers hadn’t opened his eyes, but he turned to Afanasy and coughed “I don’t smell Baba Yaga.” Afanasy reviewed replacement ideas in his mind. Who else lived in Baba Yaga’s haunted shack? Who would dare? Who else needed a place to live that bad? Then he remembered Yaga’s pretty niece from Yemen... what was her name?
Baba Ghannoush. Please let it not be her.
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-28642381468690143302013-03-31T17:05:00.001-04:002013-03-31T17:05:37.085-04:00The God of ShoesThe god of shoes finally ran out of money.
It seemed like only weeks ago that everyone was driving him nuts with all the checks they had to mail him! “More money?!” he would angrily shout as he opened another envelope with his special pinky nail that he grew out for opening envelopes of money. “More money?!? Just put it back in the mailbox. Who has time for this?!” he would grate, covering the pile of money from an hour ago with a fresh layer of how-do-you-do.
He would even try to give the shoes away, but nobody would take free shoes. “Just put a price on them already!” was the complaint. So he would slip a Sharpie from behind his ear, lick a finger, work a sticker out of his vest pocket, write some ridiculous number on the sticker, and before the smell of the ink had even quieted down, there was another sack of wherewithal to deal with.
He would make the ugliest shoes Mankind had ever seen. He would make a shoe and put it next to a turd rolled in hay, and compare. “Yep, that shoe is uglier!” he would chuckle. And he would put a price on it so humongous that the poor sticker would just wheeze and wilt. Just zero after zero, after five, after nine after seven, and then he would cap the Sharpie, and then take the cap off and add some more numbers. “There aren’t enough of these shoes!” was the complaint.
“How did I run out of money?” he asked himself, watching all of his shoes strolling past him. Sometimes someone would stop, slide a coin between his toes, and wink at him.
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-76183461941142360152013-03-31T17:03:00.000-04:002013-03-31T17:03:32.186-04:00<a href="http://www.umaltezskychrytiru.com/en/">My favorite restaurant. <a href="http://www.umaltezskychrytiru.com/foto/09.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://www.umaltezskychrytiru.com/foto/09.jpg" /></a></a>
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-40295797805097078762013-01-11T10:20:00.001-05:002013-01-11T10:20:51.832-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lflt3blkwI1qemxfbo1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="317" width="475" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lflt3blkwI1qemxfbo1_500.gif" /></a></div>
Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-36992716967900464342012-06-05T14:02:00.000-04:002012-06-05T14:04:54.903-04:00Talking With Dad"You were seriously born inside a tree?"
"Sure. An egg was deposited inside an ash tree by a mammalian skunk-wasp using its ovipositor, and fertilized by the tree itself. The egg matured over the course of about 75 years, and I was born mashed in between layers of dewy phloem. About forty years later the layer of phloem I was born in finally became part of the protective outer layer of the ash tree, and I fell out through the bark and had breakfast."
"What?"
"Sausage, eggs, kasha, and grapefruit juice. Apparently a hunter had left his breakfast near the tree and forgot about it. I guess."
"No, I mean how did you survive for one hundred and fifteen years inside a tree?"
"I drank sap, and thought about sports."
"What?"
"Football, mostly. And the Highland Games, like the caber toss and Maide Leisg. I was lonely, I imagine."
"No, I mean how did you even know about sports?"
"Everyone knows about sports, son. What's wrong with you?"
...
"So you're part tree? And part mammalian skunk-wasp?"
"Near as I can figure it, anyway. But I feel like a regular ol' fellow."
"Hm. So, how did you meet Mom?"
"She was enslaving a village with her three-headed serpent, and I sidled up next to her and asked for a pinch of snuff."
"Why didn't she enslave you?"
"My pretty eyes, and rakish grin. That's what she always told me. She did entomb me in a chrysolite mine for a few months, though, after I said her chicken-legged apartment was dumpy. Do you have any more tobacco?"
"Foma? Tobacco."
Foma rose from the mud with a horrendous sucking sound, dropped a leather pouch into the lap of the reclining hermit, and collapsed back into the mud.
"Did you actually live together in the chicken-legged apartment?"
"No, no doors, no windows. Plus it's full of human bones and old magazines. And she keeps it too damn hot! It's a sauna in there. A sauna of bones and man jerky."
"Is there even a shred of human goodness in Mom?"
[They laugh heartily together for several minutes]
"No, seriously."
[They wail with laughter as a light rainstorm passes, and a group of villagers pass by, hunting for mushrooms]
"She does love that three-headed serpent, I'll give her that. Say anything bad about ol' Ghugguk and she'll drop you right off her flying mortar into the Sun. And she has a great sense of humor."
"Do you still see Mom at all?"
"Sure! She's right over there, remember?"
And Afanasy remembered that she was, in fact, sitting on the other side of the sauna, whistling, and constructing an enormous deadly scythe out of volcanic pumice.Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-30373685774104720292012-01-24T13:37:00.001-05:002012-01-24T13:58:21.443-05:00Job 28: 3-4Man puts an end to darkness<br />
and searches out to the farthest limit<br />
the ore in gloom and deep darkness.<br />
He opens shafts in a valley away from where anyone lives;<br />
they are forgotten by travelers;<br />
they hang in the air, far away from mankind; they swing to and fro.<br />
<br />
Job 28: 3-4 (ESV)<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="comtext" colspan="2" style="color: #001320; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">Mr. Peters thinks that both this verse, and <a href="http://niv.scripturetext.com/job/9-26.htm" style="color: #0092f2; text-decoration: none;">Job 9:26</a>, refer to navigation, then in a state of infancy; for the sea is not so much as mentioned; but נחל nachal, a torrent or flood, some river or arm of the sea perhaps of a few leagues over, which, dividing the several nations, must interrupt their hospitality and commerce with each other, unless by the help of navigation. According to this opinion the verse may be translated and paraphrased thus: The flood-rivers and arms of the sea - separateth from the stranger, מעם ג meim gar, divides different nations and peoples: they are forgotten of the foot - they cannot walk over these waters, they must embark in vessels; then they dwindle away, דלו dallu, from the size of men, that is, in proportion to their departure from the land they lessen on the sight; נעו nau, they are tossed up and down, namely, by the action of the waves. This receives some countenance from the psalmist's fine description, <a href="http://niv.scripturetext.com/psalms/107-26.htm" style="color: #0092f2; text-decoration: none;">Psalm 107:26</a>, <a href="http://niv.scripturetext.com/psalms/107-27.htm" style="color: #0092f2; text-decoration: none;">Psalm 107:27</a>, of a ship in a rough sea: They mount up to heaven; they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, ינועו yanuu, (the same word as above), they stagger like a drunken man. Mr. Good's translation is singular: -<br />
<br />
He breaketh up the veins from the matrice,<br />
Which, though thought nothing of under the foot,<br />
Are drawn forth, are brandished among mankind.<br />
<br />
This learned man thinks that it applies solely to mining, of which I cannot doubt; and therefore I adopt the first interpretation: but as to agreement among translators, it will be sought in vain. I shall just add Coverdale: With the ryver of water parteth he a sunder the straunge people, that knoweth no good neighbourheade; such as are rude, unmannerly, and boysterous.<br />
<br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table></td></tr>
</tbody></table> (from <a href="http://clarke.biblecommenter.com/job/28.htm">Clarke's Commentary on the Bible</a>). </td></tr>
</tbody></table>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-56805079781524456132012-01-11T19:53:00.001-05:002012-01-11T19:53:03.614-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyxlTQmFIaUHTH9ZQZSGCaYQ85QPVh0C0g6ZbnJp3pnu0sihF7aIs7vm8wVp5jPo2KGelspFKlqTRuJYiviDrStA938zK9gihqmqoiYQvdkuhs_Ccgprsl_ztjX5BgE4r7zAky5A/s1600/wL0aF.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyxlTQmFIaUHTH9ZQZSGCaYQ85QPVh0C0g6ZbnJp3pnu0sihF7aIs7vm8wVp5jPo2KGelspFKlqTRuJYiviDrStA938zK9gihqmqoiYQvdkuhs_Ccgprsl_ztjX5BgE4r7zAky5A/s1600/wL0aF.gif" /></a></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-81257077576405799512011-10-27T06:28:00.001-04:002011-10-27T06:28:18.745-04:00<a href="http://senorgif.memebase.com/2011/10/25/funny-gifs-now-thats-my-kind-of-hamster/?utm_source=embed&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=sharewidget"><img alt="Now That's My Kind of Hamster GIF - Now That's My Kind of Hamster" class="event-item-lol-image" height="211px" src="http://chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/funny-gifs-now-thats-my-kind-of-hamster.gif" title="Now That's My Kind of Hamster GIF - Now That's My Kind of Hamster" width="320px" /></a><br />
see more <a href="http://senorgif.memebase.com/?utm_source=embed&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=sharewidget">Gifs</a>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-16095253969768869932011-06-17T09:57:00.000-04:002011-06-17T09:57:07.058-04:00The Bleeding Draighor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizxMpcsF3M6t9HELvSQZAGSnLjbdMtILI8iT2SG0cKtO7NBOrdpGxnWcicdJqrAFlKDCvrQjIhaPp_4xfKl3Ftoc_bP1PuEpCSb9aA0cJ1UcICRdMSdaSSpiM7k_NC8rgCob_K-Q/s1600/isle-of-zeilan-taprobana-old-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizxMpcsF3M6t9HELvSQZAGSnLjbdMtILI8iT2SG0cKtO7NBOrdpGxnWcicdJqrAFlKDCvrQjIhaPp_4xfKl3Ftoc_bP1PuEpCSb9aA0cJ1UcICRdMSdaSSpiM7k_NC8rgCob_K-Q/s320/isle-of-zeilan-taprobana-old-map.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.2969811907969415" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Afanasy was making his way to the kvas wagon with his bees, but the idea of arriving before dusk was ruined by the blood and the shallow breathing. The poor guy! Somebody was propped up against a larch tree, barely breathing, with blood on the front and some nearby like he had tried to spit it out but there wasn’t enough pep to get the spit more than a few inches away. Sad, obviously.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This guy was blending into the evening better than anyone Afanasy had known in the forest. The whole bodily form was like a charred ember from an old fire that you find, absorbing sunlight for some future use, and withdrawing into the shadows like some kind of Original Shadow.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not that he knew a whole lot about healing, but he tried applying some honey and some bloodwort to the burns and the missing pieces of this guy. If only he had some kvas, or something stronger. He was just getting ready to do his special Alnus Rugosa call, wot sounded like a bunch of pea-hens rutting, when he saw something in the brush about a verst out. Not just something, really, since he saw the pewter eyes that weren’t eyes. Dmitri Shemyaka! What a miserable son of a peat bog. The same cretin that blinded the eyes of Ivan’s pa, Vasily. Now he hides out here in the woods, all palsy-walsy with Baba Yaga and her half-sister Baba Ghannoush. Those eyes of pewter, staring at the poor guy leaning against the larch tree, just waiting for the moment to administer the killing blow. What a jerk!</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Afanasy grabbed a handful of sod and root-ball, which made a nice improvised whip. He gave it a couple whirls around his head, distilling the rich soil from within the root ball, and then let it fly toward the nasty pewter eyes. Those eyes couldn’t see anything pretty. They were made for fighting. The rootball hit him square between the eyes and knocked him flat. The bees got there first, then Afanasy. Dmitri was obviously expecting him, and blew some kind of bladder full of mustard fumes on Afanasy, which was perfectly terrible for someone trying to see things. There was nothing else after the mustard, except for a whole bunch of snow. The snow made everything worse, and before long Afanasy was just guessing what anything in front of his face even looked like. He could see exactly nothing but white. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">White isn’t so bad, he reasoned. Everything is snow. Like I stuck my head in a snowbank. He could still hear everything OK, except everything he saw was white. White bear. White bees. Forget it, he couldn’t see. His eyes gave up for now.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then he saw the Moon. Beautiful! The moon was all grey and serious against the white of the blindness he was absorbing. So the moon was kind of dark against the white of everything else white. A reverse moon. The moon was hanging there in the sky, the only shape Afanasy could make out against the blind white landscape. And the moon relaxed into a pearl shape. The world was a cool, dead, white world, and the dark moon was dropping into a perfect pearl shape, and the pearl shape was an earring on a perfect woman. The woman was some sort of classical temptress. Afanasy was lost in nostalgia and projection: the pearl shape of the moon had become an earring on a woman who was perfect.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When he got his vision back, this would be very hard to explain to anyone.</span></div></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-69213866603127827532011-05-20T03:33:00.000-04:002011-05-20T03:33:42.618-04:00FLORG<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Syncopate; font-size: 72pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Florg</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> licked the inside of his glass helmet, and tasted salt. It reminded him of his days in the briny deep, glaring upward through the shadows of fishing boats and grinding his fangs. The helmet never fit exactly right, and he could always get his forked tongue out through the burst seals, and taste the brack and kelp. There was always a little seawater sloshing around his purplish catcher’s-mitt face, which he couldn’t empty out since one hand was a huge mechanical lobster claw and the other hand was tightly gripping his cleaver. So the seawater just sloshed around his chin and lower lips, like a plague of blowflies. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After he crushed his first trawler with his insane claw, and gnawed the good meat out of the fishermen, he was convinced that his divine purpose on Earth was to find more good eatin’. He spent a few minutes choosing his favorite scimitar from the pile of relics he had foraged from the ruins of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hy-Brazil" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hy-Brazil</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and wrangled it angrily into his belt. He also folded the enormous </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">S</span><a href="http://www.oocities.org/dkhuntercorp/p210.html" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ig Sauer P210</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which he had found in the unrealistically gigantic undersea colony of genetically modified Danish Jægerkorpset, into its custom-made holster at his belt. </span><img height="1047px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/b2kGg5BQimZ7xzWbgmk8nZDq0VY7nNls3HNBN-BiEu81TOcD5nrtfTMnJRrfEQwRQDmnRMUc3p6DFxnsA82GGspCO8nw3VStTmHS2A0znZVQGTcrd_E" width="800px;" /><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And began to surface.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Surprisingly, he found himself in Lake Huron. There began a terrifying roiling of the lake’s surface, as though the lake were in a pot that had been set to boil. To make some boiled ham, for instance. Or boiled potatoes. Men, children, even women pointed from various directions at the terrifying roiling of the lake’s surface. Even the six members of the failed D12 posse, Bizarre, Artis, Kuniva, Swifty McVay, Eminem, and Fuzz Scoota, pointed at the terrifying roiling of the lake’s surface! They began to compose a multi-layered rap about the terrifying roiling of the lake’s surface, but a giant mechanical claw as big as the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Building" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Guardian Building</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> surfaced before they even finished their rap, and separated all the rappers into little segments that rained down on the picnic table where they had been rapping like pinata candy. Detroit was in trouble! Florg was about to destroy the</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_of_Democracy" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "the great arsenal of democracy"</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">! Florg, stop!! Florg, what the crabs!!!! KNOCK IT OFF!!!</span><br />
<h1><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The two deceased members of the D12 posse, Bugz and Proof, set up a </span><a href="http://www.pollsb.com/polls/p5419-lasonic_ipod_ghetto_blaster_old_school_boom_box" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lasonic iPod Ghetto Blaster: old school boom box with built in ipod dock </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in heaven and played </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dirtbombs" style="color: #114170;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dirtbombs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’ Ultraglide in Black and some other crazy crabs that Florg was just not ready to hear. His glass helmet kind of twisted on the broken seals, and then some of the smelly old seawater escaped, FINALLY, and he knew he could get that annoying glass helmet off at last. Then he could really hear the Dirtbombs and stuff, even without external ears or anything, and he used his scimitar from Hy-Brazil and his enormous Sig Sauer P210 to rebuild Detroit into a great arsenal of democracy, which it really always was.</span></h1></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-16082935604483776462011-04-17T13:34:00.000-04:002011-04-17T13:34:16.861-04:00That is One Brilliant Snake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: xx-small; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 40px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">“There is the well-known story of the snake 120 feet long that was killed in the River Bagradas during the Punic Wars by the Roman general Regulus: </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">he used catapults and ballistae as if he were storming a town.” </span></span></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Pliny the Elder </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Natural History: A Selection</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">, p. 113. Translated with an Introduction and notes by John F Healy, 1991</span></span></div></div></blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlXL6o1I8jFitZfNjXTUdXMC0iRnEq4L3rI_VmPXNImb9KHgpV3bIsuBO6T7H3glW0Toa7EgfPvZB0X2p2FYOaRLh0qOP4FzF3pxCdKLYN7c-oNFSeb5wml3bXHWP050VEhe9yg/s1600/Metamorphosibus+Insectorum+Surinam+bla+blabla.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJlXL6o1I8jFitZfNjXTUdXMC0iRnEq4L3rI_VmPXNImb9KHgpV3bIsuBO6T7H3glW0Toa7EgfPvZB0X2p2FYOaRLh0qOP4FzF3pxCdKLYN7c-oNFSeb5wml3bXHWP050VEhe9yg/s320/Metamorphosibus+Insectorum+Surinam+bla+blabla.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hey Afanasy!” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Who is that?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I think that’s Ivan.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That is terrible news. Ivan the guy who runs the place? He never talks to anyone unless he needs something. He’s going to send me to go kill Swedes or something.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Afanasy!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yep. How can I help you, Ivan the third, ruler of all Rus? Are we killing Swedes or somebody? Cause I’m more of a beekeeper and a wrestler. I’m terrible at Swede killing, and there are hundreds--”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Afanasy, I need you and your creepy forest buddies to go kill a snake.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No really”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No, seriously, there is some kind of snake as big as a village and it is not going away. Go kill it, and we will drink merrily and eat like Vikings.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Ivan, if you’re in there, I owe you. Don’t even worry about the eating and the drinking, cause I will just take care of this snake and you can rest easy, okay?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It is as big as a village, according to reports.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Mmm hmm. You need anything else while I’m out? Some firewood? Mushrooms? A vest?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The snake was in Gorodslavl’ yesterday, so it’s probly in a village nearby, and if you are wondering if you’re in the right town, look for terrified villagers and missing cattle.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yep! Okay. See you at dinner, Ivan.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Afanasy left the high walls of the Kreml’ without having even seen the Tsar of All Rus, Ivan III. There was a high window overlooking the gardens and the spot where the bedpans got emptied, and the voice of the Tsar sang out reedily over the sounds of the girls playing inside. Ivan had paid for Afanasy’s education and a whole bunch of his meals at the Kreml’, and Afanasy had always felt sort of endebted to the old creep. If he needed a snake killed, he would just drop what he was doing and take care of it. How hard could it be? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“That is some snake.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Where?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Past the birches and the haybales. It looks like a village.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The thing with the tunnel behind it? That’s a snake? It looks more like a pilgrimage. Like a bunch of things that happened separately, except that they’re all in the same place.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yep. How are you going to kill it?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m going to tell it to leave.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“SNAKE!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The snake was like a prosperous villager’s entire life moving around, swallowing up goats and cattle and slow-moving </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">babushkas</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. At least the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">babushkas </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">were grateful for a change of routine. The goats and the skinny cattle protested loudly. Afanasy enjoyed tearing out a big ol’ birch tree and swinging it round, contacting the snake’s snout with a wet “pock.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The snake didn’t stop moving forward, but it gave a neat look to the fat man with the tree. It was calculating how many calories the fat man contained, and if it was worth re-routing itself to the other side of the birches and swallowing the striped bald guy with the tree.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was a terrifying eyeball. Just a sliver of pupil up the middle, and a solid acre of death all around it. </span></div></span></span></span></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-38391723312287153522011-04-11T00:17:00.005-04:002011-04-18T00:03:33.456-04:00Afanasy Nikitin and Baba Ghannoush<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
<div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifraq3kbx6HMZxdppCb9rRIxn_x9QUj_swAz8unO8n4pNlZQOb2MlLNG_stVjOewZNF9KtEVmQdoWu-nPQ5ua9pr8wT4U8dkIuZgU1bxqb5k1EBjLfDp9SRS-DoKrh_L54nVPc1Q/s1600/20061015223230%2521Ilia_Efimovich_Repin_%25281844-1930%2529_-_Volga_Boatmen_%25281870-1873%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifraq3kbx6HMZxdppCb9rRIxn_x9QUj_swAz8unO8n4pNlZQOb2MlLNG_stVjOewZNF9KtEVmQdoWu-nPQ5ua9pr8wT4U8dkIuZgU1bxqb5k1EBjLfDp9SRS-DoKrh_L54nVPc1Q/s320/20061015223230%2521Ilia_Efimovich_Repin_%25281844-1930%2529_-_Volga_Boatmen_%25281870-1873%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">Afanasy and Olga were crouching in the tall grass, waiting for their chance to steal more food from the soldiers. They already had a sack of meal, a box of plums, and a hogshead of hog's heads. The soldiers were smashing open another crock of vodka and many were beginning to drop like cordwood into the clay. Something moved in the hedges a few yards east, and a branch broke loudly.<br />
<br />
"Foma must have gotten out of the bag - probably smelled the meat cooking on the campfire. You keep an eye on the aide-de-camp with the blunderbuss, and I'll go quiet him down." Afanasy began commando-crawling across to where Foma was hiding.<br />
<br />
The aide-de-camp set his blunderbuss down and began singing atrociously with a half-dressed Cossack. "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" I believe. Olga quickly dashed, ferretlike, from the grass across a clearing and into the dusky camp.<br />
<br />
Afanasy froze. Did Olga see the sentry in the tree with the damascene cuirasses? Perhaps not. She came to a stop directly beneath the sentry and hid herself behind the very pin-oak tree he sat in.<br />
<br />
"Lord, our deliverer and holiest of holies, please deliver that beautiful woman. Amen."<br />
<br />
A long leathery arm reached down from the branches, bundled a handful of Olga's cassock, and yanked her abruptly up into the tree.<br />
<br />
Afanasy lunged at the spot where Foma hid, hoping to use the besotten serf as a projectile. When he cleared away the grass, however, he discovered not Foma but a group of six or seven hungry brigands also waiting for an opportunity to steal food from the soldiers.<br />
<br />
"Pardon!" he hissed, as he turned tail and ran pell-mell toward the tree where Olga and the sentry were tucked away. "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" immediately ceased. The blunderbuss exploded and Afanasy heard a carcass of one of the highwaymen drop heavily behind his sprinting feet. The explosion brought the attention of the entire reeling camp of soldiers on to Afanasy and the team of thugs behind him. The thugs drew bows and a soldier fell as a whistling passed Afanasy's cocked ears.<br />
<br />
Only feet from the Olga tree, Afanasy tripped over a drunken private and spun, shouting, into the clay. A soldier with an oak barrel over his head made a phlegmy roar and another boozer came at him with a rusty javelin. Afanasy rolled deftly to his left, kicked at the shins of the barrel-holder and rolled backwards over his own head. The javelin came down and sank into the barrel, and Afanasy sprang up, catching the javelin-tosser across the jaw with a solid right hook. Two of the stinking brigands leapt onto his back and began to pummel him about the head with something like brass candlesticks. Afanasy began quietly singing his own setting of Psalm 37, tugging both assailants off him by the ankles, neatly bouncing their skulls off one another and then collected the candlesticks.<br />
<br />
"Hmmm. Venetian, I'd guess."<br />
<br />
He sent one spinning end-over-end at an archer as another arrow clipped his chest, tearing a hole in his jersey. The blunderbuss fired again, and a toothless thief with half a beard and half a baked pig spun and fell over Afanasy's left shoulder.<br />
<br />
Afanasy yanked the rusty javelin from the cask, causing a foamy geyser of Bavarian aspic ale to gush up. With this the brigands ceased to take any interest in our hero, and descended upon the cask. He picked up an abandoned leather shield and lunged back toward the tree. A shower of arrows began to descend upon him as more soldiers were rousted from their drunken nest, and he crouched for a moment under his rattling shield. He prayed once again for Olga, who had now been captive for a full three minutes. There was a momentary pause in the archery, and instantly the strains of the Volga Boatmen's song began again. Using the javelin, he pole-vaulted elegantly up into the branches of Olga's tree.<br />
<br />
"Olga! Olga?" he shouted, as the arrows began to shudder into the trunk and boughs. He looked furiously at the branches above him, below, and then scrambled, snapping the haft of an arrow from his shoulder, looking to holes in the trunk where the cur could have hidden. Another arrow buried itself in his leg, and a third penetrated through the chain mail over his ribs enough to take his breath away. The branch beneath him slipped away and he felt himself tumbling through space as the night overtook his eyes. </span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"> ♒</span></span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">He knew before he opened his eyes that he was back in Dmitri Shemyaka's crappy stone fort. It always smelled like ozone and burnt cabbage, and he kept all the windows bricked up so the air felt suffocatingly close. He could also tell that the arrow shafts had been taken out, with great skill, doubtless by the blind surgeon himself, and the wounds dressed with something like gunpowder. He felt shot through with melted candlewax. </span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"Hey great! You're alive! Now I can blind you. Welcome back."</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"Where are my bees?"</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"In bee jail. What'd you think - I'd let them go back to the Kreml and get your toadies for you?"</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"I don't suppose you know where Olga is."</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"You'd best thank your glauenfraupt I don't. I'd have killed you, and saved her for blinding! Is she lost?"</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"One of your guys took her. He was in a pin-oak, with some expensive-looking cuirasses."</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"Sounds like she's with Fergamont. He's some sort of half-Saxon half-Swede whelp. He's not very careful with women though. Baba! You should hear this!"</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"Baba Yaga!? She's here in your crappy little hideout? Come on..."</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"No, no. Baba Yaga's getting old and tired, and getting far too friendly with Ivan and his milquetoasts. Yaga's days are numbered, babe. This forest belongs to Baba Ghannoush."</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">There was silence, then a rustling of heavy crushed velvet and heavy tread of a jungle cat. </span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">More than six feet tall, and redolent of musk and orchids and loam. She walked slowly, barefoot, the better to hear her panther's pads and claws on the pumice floor. Her legs, bare to mid-thigh, were unmistakably shaped like an athletic woman's, but covered with radiant patterned fur like a panther's. Her strange velvet robe was slung over one ivory shoulder like a toga, and her arms were unnaturally long and lithe, like gently undulating asps. Most peculiar of all, her iridescent gray hair and her ivory face were simply out of focus. Stare as Afanasy might, he could get only the faintest idea of her appearance. He couldn't take his eyes off of her.</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"Fergamont has one of the Shuisky girls - she's probably with him at the Vydischchii camp tonight, if she's even still breathing."</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b;">"Whatever is left of her will be here by nightfall," she breathed. She sounded like gas escaping from a vent.</span></div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A great pestle, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and a pair of sapphire eyes, sauntered into the cramped hall on what looked like peacock legs. </div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Hey! It's Baba Yaga's pestle!"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"It's much nicer than hers. Hers is old." she gasped, bounding effortlessly up and into the wooden bowl. The pestle took a step back and vanished through a doorway. The whiff of musk and orchids and loam lingered for a moment, and then the crappy burnt cabbage and ozone smell was all that was left.</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Any other information for me before I remove your beady little eyeballs?" croaked the pewter-eyed wretch.</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Not really. Why are you blinding me, again? I thought you had it in for Ivan. You think he's going to trade his eyes for mine? A swap?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"I just like reminding him I'm out here, every once in a while. I thought it'd be a nice excuse for Ghannoush to introduce herself at Ivan's oh-so-regal court, with a sack of your eyeballs." Shemyaka was efficiently sharpening a nasty-looking little dirk with an s-shaped blade, drawing it against a strop while he spoke.</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Ideomenes! Bring the sack for the eyeballs please. And some cotton balls for the sockets. And I'd love a glass of aqua vitae and coriander." He turned to Afanasy. "Ivan's father had my eyes put out many years ago. Or did you know that already?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"I've been told. You were going to poke my eyes out the last time you captured me, remember?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"It's coming back to me. How did you escape that time?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"My idiot Foma was hiding in your galley and snuck out under a serving dish. You thought he was a suckling pig when you smelled him. Then he bit your - "</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Yes! The roast pig. Ideomenes! No roast pig, you understand? None! None at all!"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Ideomenes bobbed into the hall, hunchbacked and hooded. He was pushing a heavy wooden cart missing a wheel.</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"No pig, master."</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Good!"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Why is your voice different, Ideomenes? Why do you sound like a woman?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"I'm not Foma, master."</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"I know that. Foma only speaks when he wants something, am I right?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Afanasy and Dmitri chuckled together at this, and shook their heads as they silently recalled how awful Foma is.</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Ha... no, but really. Do you have a cold or something?"</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="entry-content post-body" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">At which point, of course, Olga took the burlap eyeball-bag and pulled it firmly over Shemyaka's disbelieving head, then pulled the drawstring tight and secured the knot with the nasty little zig-zag dirk. She drank the aqua vitae and coriander, and parked the broken cart and the cotton balls on top of the villain. With the two damascene cuirasses, she flayed the linen cords binding Afanasy, and together they ran into the stables where a pestle awaited. Shemyaka, head still bound, shook his fist at the sky as they soared into the clouds.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-57069698784986838802011-04-11T00:16:00.003-04:002011-04-11T11:54:52.987-04:00The Time that Afanasy Nikitin and Alnus Rugosa Wrestled!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b; font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18px;">Doris had some sort of brass and glass contraption on her head, and wore only a sash with jewel-encrusted daggers ensheathed. She wore black silk armbands. She looked like some sort of Chinese martial artist.<br />
<br />
"Doris, Das. Das, Doris." and she too touched foreheads.<br />
<br />
"Let's avaunt to the mezzanine, before the wrestling begins!" sang out Anna. We were in a warmly appointed drawing room of some indiscriminate style. The walls were parqueted in rich amber wood panels, and the scents of exotic perfumes, powdered liquid and unguent hung heavy in the air. Great heads of pre-Cambrian animals hung on the walls, their titanic racks of antlers streaking madly through the air overhead. Anna was already bounding up the wooden stairs, drawing the hems of her gown up above her knees so I was for the first time aware of her dazzling limpid form. She was barefoot, and her dirty feet left mud in her wake. The two orangutans bounded joyfully after. I swallowed hard and took to the stairs.<br />
<br />
We came to a landing, then another flight, then a second landing. We moved through a hallway, past a room that smelled of the sea, and into a narrow room with a thick knotted rope hanging in the center. Anna swiftly climbed up through a hole in the ceiling into the attic, or whatever it was, and the two orangutans swung effortlessly after. When I emerged into the sunlight, we were among a dozen or so characters on a veranda, quaffing drinks and spitting tobacco off the roof. We had an exalted view of the glade below, where Afanasy and Alnus were just beginning to square off amidst the teeming masses, the broken bagpipes, the hurdy gurdy, and the smell of charred elkmeat.<br />
<br />
Anna sat on a carved wooden bench of dense hard wood that I would have thought to be tropical, next to a brooding Arabic scholar and a passed-out Viking. I sat next to her, and she pulled an enormous fur around us. I recognized FVMMA talking agitatedly with some very filthy young boys in sweaters. Some of Afanasy's bees had joined the group as well.<br />
<br />
Afanasy lurched, swung Alnus around and crushed him into the mud. Alnus seemed to disappear altogether. Then a pair of muddy webbed feet emerged, encircled Afanasy's neck, and pulled him entirely into the mud as well. The crowd cheered, and jeered, and danced. For a minute or two there was nothing to watch save some bubbles. Then a nearby tree began to shake, and jerk to one side and then another, and then it caromed down into the mud. Momentarily it sprang back up with Afanasy trailing one side like a heraldic banner hanging from a coronet. He dropped to the ground, performing a neat handflip, and plunged a forearm into the earth like a magician feeling in his hat for... taa daah! Alnus was yanked thence and resolutely grabbed Afanasy by the neck (such as he had) and thrust him upside-down and backwards.<br />
<br />
Alnus' limbs are very elongated and thin, like pipe cleaners. There is no clear musculature or articulation to them. They're like cobras. Except they stretch a little bit too. His head, which resembles nothing so much as a great molar covered with club moss, features a pair of unlidded eyes which always seem pleasantly surprised at what he beholds, and a great satchel mouth with two fangs. He is shrouded in robes like a Turkoman. His nimble webbed feet, like folded umbrellas, slap hearteningly across the field of battle, like fish slapping against seaweed-covered rocks.<br />
<br />
The two heroes paused for a quick kvas and a puff from their respective pipes. Some jugglers and a trained wolf on a chain, the size of a horse, made the rounds. Children placed their heads in the wolf's mouth and pelted his loins with coins.<br />
<br />
Then the battle was enjoined again. They both executed a neat pas-de-deux and collided with a bone-rending crunch and slap. A roundhouse kick to the face! Jiu jitsu! A neat escape from a double nelson by the beyond-double-jointed Alnus! Alnus thrown like a discus into the woods!<br />
<br />
And then the screaming began. A belch of acid from the great cirro-cumulus clouds, which burnt off the beard of an elder. Then the pointing at the clouds, and the bagpipe guy ran, and the kids ran, and the wolf. Because there was a great castle-sized wooden beast in the sky, with great horrible wooden wings and three goggling heads coughing out acid and sulfur. And screaming.<br />
<br />
Then it was gone.<br />
<br />
Then some trees were on fire, just over the horizon. Then it was back. Low, now, blocking out the sky.<br />
<br />
"Why's the Ghugguk here? It's spring!" quoth Alnus, still winding his pipe cleaners around Afanasy's neck.<br />
<br />
"GHUGGUK!!" screamed a couple of the goggling heads. Some acid hissed diabolically in the mud next to the wrestlers.<br />
<br />
The benches and furs and such were getting dragged into a roll-up shelter on the roof next to us. "We should get inside. This is going to get worse," said Anna. The orangutans rolled the cover down and bounded back down the rope ladder.</span></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-40281316013118140752011-04-11T00:15:00.007-04:002011-04-11T11:57:09.777-04:00Svetok is Found, Under a Linden Tree<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Under a linden tree, only 45 minutes away from the bee hives, we found a wicker basket. Foma went clear past it, but Afanasy was alert to the need of a tiny toddler in a wicker basket and always ready to provide aid and love (as he did for me).<br />
<br />
"Wot is this?" he cried, cradling the wicker basket in his arms as Foma dragged the sledge imperceptibly past. After seven hours, we were only a few hundred feet from the birch stand.<br />
<br />
"O Ho! A babe!" he cried, and truly there was an adorable little dark-haired child asleep in the basket, nursing on its thumb.<br />
<br />
"Das, what does this note say?"<br />
<br />
"S-V-E-T-O-K? I don't know."<br />
<br />
"That means flower. She is a flower."<br />
<br />
"How beautiful" quoth Foma, the idiot.</span> <br />
</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Well, let's bring the child to the Kreml. Through the gates, to the most secret and innermost parts."</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"Yes, let's." quoth Foma, the idiot. I pursed my lips.</div></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-77270380968473763172011-04-11T00:15:00.006-04:002011-04-11T11:55:46.793-04:00Das Brick and Carl, the Orangutang<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b; font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18px;">I was about ready to spend some time outside Afanasy's bag and see where we were. I could hear voices, more and more of them, lots of kids and livestock, even some music. Some kind of hurdy-gurdy and cymbals. The rain has stopped. Afanasy stopped walking and dropped me abruptly as he took up conversation with what sounded like a flirtatious girl. I heard bees hovering around expectantly.<br />
<br />
"Seen any highwaymen yet? I'm looking for some hose and doublet."<br />
<br />
"Hardly yet, Fana. I heard that Cherny took everything they had from that legate from Burgundy. He was dressed nice... I expect Cherny will be here at lunch break to sell the clothes. You don't wear hose and doublet though - let alone French. What're you up to?"<br />
<br />
"Ahh spring! A young man fills his pate with wet earth, and budding grasses and wants to take up some stolen French gabardines. For the ladies, if you will."<br />
<br />
"I'd suppose rather that you need clothing for the poor will-o' you got in there sack. He naked?"<br />
<br />
I suddenly was gazing up from the leather satchel at the prettiest face I'd ever laid eyes on.<br />
<br />
"O he's not bad, Fana? I'd say you let him out for some air. He does need clothes tho. Wot do you call that ye've got on?"<br />
<br />
"It's... it's from Sarai..." I lied. I still had on my red t-shirt from El Pelon, and some green Levi's. Foma had loaned me a few pairs of lice-ridden wool socks, and I still had the squirrel-fur cloak from the Pine Cone.<br />
<br />
"Of yes you're from Sarai: all right. And I'm from St. Brennan's Isle. What a cute one! Can I keep 'im?" She had taken my doughy face in both hands and was sniffing my forehead. How dearly I wanted to get out of the sack!<br />
<br />
"Found that one in the woods. Bees found him first. He's from some nemets town out west, apparently."<br />
<br />
"He's an angel from God's heaven."<br />
<br />
"Could be. He sure can't fight for nothing. I'm keeping him hid til we can get him to look like he ain't a spy. I hear there are spies avaunt."<br />
<br />
"Spies are all around, indeed. Ivan's been dunking everyone at the Kreml to see what they know."<br />
<br />
"Great. I'm in need of a good thrashing and a bath."<br />
<br />
"That you are. Can I help him change?"<br />
<br />
"You're a friendly one alright. Das, this is Anna. She'll be your best mate until she spies someone else wot interests her. Speaking of..."<br />
<br />
He quickly yanked the tarred bowline that closed the top of the sack, and I was surrounded again by darkness. I heard a sound like a washerwoman beating a wet quilt with a pair of swim fins. Even through the walls of the sack I picked up an agreeable scent of herring.<br />
<br />
"Yer here to fight at last!" bellowed a very wet, boisterous voice in a strange accent like French and Hindi. It was a magnificent, booming voice like a great wooden instrument, with ringing laughter hanging from it like golden tassels. It reminded me of hearing Louis Armstrong's solos from the 1920s.<br />
<br />
A throng of children seemed to come running at those words. "Alnus is gonna fight Afanasy! Get your sausage and elk meat!" "Kvas!" "Kvas!" they shouted.<br />
<br />
"I'll take 1/3, you take 1/3. Winner gets 1/3. I get sole distribution rights for kvas, elk meat, and stimulants. You get sole distribution rights for wax, honey, hand-carved tchotchkes. We kick Foma for rights to Anna at the end. Ne ves?"<br />
<br />
"I have forever wanted to wrestle the great Alnus Rugosa! No, I say! No! No rights and no money! Only fight for to see whom God favors and who is wrestling rex imperator!!" Afanasy shouted, beating his chest thunderously. The crowd, which sounded like it was growing rapidly, cheered rapturously.<br />
<br />
"Kvas! Kvas! Elk meat! Get your elk meat!"<br />
<br />
The cymbals and broken bagpipe swelled to an enthusiastic horrible din. The sack was suddenly being pulled over many pointy objects that bedevilled my lower ends. I puzzled over this, and wondered if it was wise to spring from the sack to escape my captor, or feign being a pile of laundry. Just as I was remembering that escape was utterly futile, I felt a hand kneading my buttocks through the sack.<br />
<br />
"Anna?"<br />
<br />
"Don't try to escape. I'll let you out in a minute." and the dragging continued, through what sounded like deep mud and an array of feral pigs.<br />
<br />
"The hetmen are now accepting bids for Alnus at 13 to 1, and for Afanasy Nikitin against. Please place your bets at this time. Are there any bets from the stinking pit?"<br />
<br />
"NO!" shouted a chorus of voices from some sort of stinking pit.<br />
<br />
"Doris! Carl! Open up!" hissed Anna. After a moment there was a heavy rattle of chains and the sound of well-joined wood squeaking. I was dragged up several stairs that seemed to break my bones. I heard heavy agitated sounds of primates.<br />
<br />
"Oh yes, Carl, we loves you too! Doris! Yes! We loves you! Mmmm." said Anna. "Open the bag, won't you Carl?"<br />
<br />
And a kind, reflective orangutan peered into the sack at me. He had a wide face with a tasseled velvet cap and a brocaded jacket that looked immaculately tailored, or Italian or both. He grabbed my head and we touched foreheads.<br />
<br />
"Carl, this is Das. Das, Carl."</span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #29303b; font-family: Cambria; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></div></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-30548560057679703822011-04-11T00:14:00.006-04:002011-04-11T11:58:45.614-04:00Das Brick Chews a Piece of Cinnamon Gum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18px;">"Bees!" quoth Afanasy. It was obvious from his entire face and physique that he was in love with the colony of bees here in the depths of the birch stand. They swarmed around him and he gestured, slowly, allowing the bees to coagulate around him. When a Queen approached, he knelt and prayed for her fecundity.<br />
<br />
I was less enthusiastic. I felt around for a window control, so as to roll up the windows. Barring that, I tried to seem as unlike a flower or a hive as possible. The air was thick with vigorous bees. I saw Foma burying himself in the mud, which I had seen him do at various points in our voyages. Now, at last, it did make sense. I remembered a disc of cinnamon gum in my pocket from before I fell into Tver, and I tossed it into the middle of the sledge. Afanasy turned to me and signalled his gratitude. He was in the bee network.<br />
<br />
A raven descended from the treetops and alighted on the post at the head of the sledge. It groomed its wings and waited for acknowledgment. Afanasy moved to the head, standing in the mud, and crooked his head as the raven crooked his. There was a brief, forgettable exchange of verbal sounds, but Afanasy's demeanor changed immediately.<br />
<br />
"We must to the Kreml! Post haste!"<br />
<br />
He seized upon a canvas sack of honey and drew a ceramic urn of pollen from his sledge, which he shattered on a stone and left for the bees to enjoy. They all quieted to a clear "bow" to him, then we shipped off to the Kreml.<br />
<br />
He reached into the canvas sack of honey and drew out a handful of amber wax, which he tossed at Plyed. For the first time, I saw both eyes open, and Plyed's generous tongue extended to drain the honey from the wax.<br />
<br />
Foma, who had disappeared into the birch stand, appeared when Afanasy rubbed two coins together. He took up the reins and dragged the sledge, honey, bear, raven and all, Kremlward.<br />
<br />
Until we reached the sad orphan beneath a tree.</span></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-61946631989802120562011-04-11T00:13:00.005-04:002011-04-11T12:01:43.499-04:00The Man with No Face<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18px;">At which the sandals of FVMMA began to pedal feverishly up the walls of the serene garden, as he grasped a terra-cotta shingle atop the wall, which crashed to the ground, and then another. At long last he scrambled over the top of the wall and disappeared.<br />
<br />
"What's wong wif that man?"<br />
<br />
"Nothing, Bella. He's a godly fellow and an earnest friend. Pray for his safety."<br />
<br />
Olga and Bella prayed for Fivim's safety, then Olga arranged Bella's curls behind her ear and they moved back into the Kreml proper. Past a mound of brass artillery shells, stacks of cordwood, and sacks of flour they moved, enjoying the smells of the stone halls of the Kreml.<br />
<br />
"Miss Olga?"<br />
<br />
"Yes Princess Isabella."<br />
<br />
"What is a spy?"<br />
<br />
"A spy is someone who needs to find out all about what goes on here in the Kreml, and then tells all about us to people who want to take the Kreml away from us. Do you know Dmitri Shemyaka?"<br />
<br />
"Is he the guy in the woods with the wolf eyes and the claws?"<br />
<br />
"No, love, that's Prince Vseslav. He's a good and godly man, when his claws are gone. Dmitri Shemyaka is a man with no face."<br />
<br />
"I'm scared of that."<br />
<br />
"Yes, well we're all a bit put off by him. He has a face, of course, but it's made of bass-wood, and his eyes are pewter."<br />
<br />
"What's pewter?"<br />
<br />
""Shiny metal, like a coin." They were passing a kitchen, where heavy women labored over a stove the size of a large plot of land. The air rang with the smell of potatoes and onions, butter and meat.<br />
<br />
"What does the coin eyes man want?"<br />
<br />
"He is Grand Prince Ivan's cousin, and he thinks the Kreml should be his. If he takes the Kreml, he'll probably feed us to the Ghugguk."<br />
<br />
"I don't like vat. What's the Ghugguk?"<br />
<br />
"The three-headed dragon. Baba Yaga's. Don't worry about Baba Yaga. She doesn't eat children so much anymore."<br />
<br />
"I want to go back to Castile. Nobody eats children in Castile."<br />
<br />
"You'll only be here until the end of summer, sweetheart. Probably nobody will eat you before then."</span></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5369468.post-3104227550221150172011-04-11T00:13:00.004-04:002011-04-11T12:00:58.033-04:00There is a Spy at Large, Somewhere.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Cambria; line-height: 18px;">Isabella cried. Olga gave her comfort and a ball of sticky sweet rice.<br />
<br />
They swept into a large stove room with tapestries and a very animated lur player laboring in the corner. Ravens were croaking and drying their wings next to a healthy warm fire in the center of the broadest wall. A woman was giving orders to a lady-in-waiting next to the fire.<br />
<br />
"Maria!"<br />
<br />
"Olga! Why aren't you at the monastery?"<br />
<br />
"I spoke with Fivim a few moments ago. There is a spy from Dmitri abroad."<br />
<br />
Maria rolled her eyes and tugged at her queue with both hands, behind her neck.<br />
<br />
"Olga, when has there not been a spy at the Kreml? Everything we do here is known at the courts of the Sultan, and Poland, and the Horde. Nothing is private!"<br />
<br />
"Fivim got word from Boris and Gleb themselves. This spy is working for Dmitri and Baba Yaga and is part of a plan to open our gates to them."<br />
<br />
"I don't like vem. Vey want to eat me." quoth Isabella. "Spain, please? Anyone?"<br />
<br />
"Where is Boston, ma'am?"<br />
<br />
"Where?"<br />
<br />
"Boston? East of England? Apparently Afanasy is travelling with a fat bald man from Boston. He could be the spy."<br />
<br />
"Why would Fana travel with a spy of Dmitri and Baba's? He's not recently bounced from the turnip wagon."<br />
<br />
"No one ever knows where Boston is. I encourage you to have one of Ivan's generals go kill him forthright."<br />
<br />
"Olga! We welcome envoys from away. Boston may well be arrayed against Poland and Lithuania, and the Horde."<br />
<br />
"El Pelon means 'the bald guy'" quoth Isabella.<br />
<br />
"Well there you have it. He represents himself."<br />
<br />
"Ask Afanasy to bring him hence. I would Ivan meet this Das Brick and form his own opinion."<br />
<br />
"And we will be mindful of spies."<br />
<br />
"As always, lovely sister. How is Isabella prospering here in Rus?"<br />
<br />
"I wov it" quoth Isabella of Castile.<br />
<br />
Maria gestured to a raven, and whispered to it. It flew from the window out into the spring sunshine, away from the ringing notes of the lur player.</span></div>Das Brickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09963466492945070104noreply@blogger.com0