The Alehouse at the End of the World
Page 40
Froelich’s Ladder
Jamie Yourdon
Froelich nurses a decades-old family grudge from his permanent perch atop a giant ladder in this nineteenth century madcap adventure novel. When he disappears suddenly, his nephew embarks on a rain-soaked adventure across the Pacific Northwest landscape to find him, accompanied by an ornery girl with a most unfortunate name. In their encounters with Confederate assassins, European expatriates, and a general store magnate, this fairytale twist on the American dream explores the conflicts between loyalty and ambition and our need for human connection, even at the highest rungs.
The Remnants
Robert Hill
The town of New Eden, peopled with hereditary oddities, has arrived at its last days. As two near-centenarian citizens prepare for their annual birthday tea, a third vows to interrupt the proceedings with a bold declaration. The Remnants cartwheels through the lives of wood-splitters, garment-menders, and chervil farmers, while exposing an electrical undercurrent of secrets, taboos, and unfulfilled longings. With his signature wit and wordplay, Robert Hill delivers a bittersweet gut-buster of an elegy to the collective memory of a community.
{1} The Turropsi, dear reader, who are called also the Spinners, the Morai, the mokosh, the Norns, the dísir, and many other names, are the weavers of fate. They are a kind of immortal jellyfish, their number uncountable, their origins so ancient as to be unknown, and they sort all that is out of all that might be. They are unknown in the land of the living, except by their many contradictory legends, but you may trust this account of them to be accurate in every detail.
{2} Stercutius, dear reader, is the Roman god of dung.
{3} Cariña, dear reader, is not proper Spanish, which would be cariño, but when it comes to love and the terms of endearment, let us not quibble over spelling. The fisherman’s Spanish is a sailor’s Spanish, and all he cares about is giving his beloved the love name that best suits his heart.
{4} ’Twas at this meeting that the Kiamah, dear reader, speaking almost as if he were looking over the shoulder of the author of this very chronicle, decreed that when the tale of the Kiamah was written, that only his name should be capitalized, and that the rest of them should all remain lowercase beings, raven not Raven, crow not Crow, cormorant not Cormorant, and pelican not Pelican. Then the cormorant spoke on Raven’s behalf, saying Raven was the last of the Old Gods, and that his name should also be capitalized, and the cormorant produced a copy of The Shikaakwa Manual of Style (Pre-Gutenberg Edition), and read out the relevant passage, so that the Kiamah was persuaded. Thus was Raven granted the privilege of having his name remain capitalized, as ever it had been.
{5} Leagues, miles, parsecs, or farsakhs, dear reader, it’s all about the distance from here to there. A farsakh is an ancient Persian measure of distance slightly longer than a league, and a league is the distance a person can walk in an hour. (Bear in mind that in ancient times an hour was defined as one twelfth of the time from sunrise to sunset, so the length of an hour varied according to the season.) The fisherman, being a sailor, thinks of a league as three nautical miles, but he’s not really sure how long a mile is, because in ancient times all measures of distance were locally defined. The Zoroastrians defined a farsakh as the distance at which a man with good eyesight could tell if a beast of burden was black or white—go figure. To the pelagic frigate bird a farsakh is half the distance he can fly in half a sailor’s watch, or about 6 miles.
{6}It is from that autodidact the cormorant, dear reader, that the auto-aggrandizing crow has heard the tale of Autolycus, son of Hermes and Chione, and grandfather to that autonomous voyager Odysseus. Autolycus was well-known in ancient times for his onslaught of assaults on the pr-aw-aw-operty of others, though, if truth be told, the crow remembers his name almost entirely for its authoritative sound.
{7} To the tune of “Evil,” by Muddy Waters.
{8}Abaci, dear reader, is the plural of abacus, just as cacti is for cactus, and radii for radius, though some, whose ears are less sensitive than ours, prefer to say abacuses, and octopuses, and hippopotamuses, ignoring the inelegance of all those unnecessarily sibilant extra syllables.
{9} A farzhoom, dear reader, is an ancient Persian measure of distance equal to one hundred forty-four farsakhs. The material world is thought by some to be 28 farzhooms around, and by others to be forty-four farzhooms around, and the Kiamah beast is big enough to swallow the material world. All of which is to say that his sphincter is a long, long way from his mouth. How far exactly? Opinions vary, and try as he might, the author of this chronicle is unable to say exactly how far, except to remind readers that the Kiamah swallowed the moon, and had plenty of room left over.
{10} To the tune of “O Tannenbaum.”
{11} Of the many sorrows that come from the untimely passing of the cormorant is the following: were he still with us, he would surely have said, in regard to the death of the Kiamah, “Edo, non ero.”1
1. “I ate, therefore I am not.”
{12} Until, dear reader, a stranger comes to town. As one always does.