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4. The Legends of Aerwiar are a collection of stories about the Maker and the Beginnings of Things. The greeting of Dwayne and Gladys, the First Fellows, for example, is well known in all the lands of Aerwiar. The legends also include the tragedy of “Will and the Lost Recipe,” “The Deep Holoré” (healing stones the Maker buried in the earth), and an early version of “The Fall of Yurgen.” The legends were once contained in old books said to have been written by the Maker himself and given to Dwayne for safekeeping, but the old books—along with the Holoré, Will’s famous cream of hen soup recipe, and Yurgen’s mountains—are lost.
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5. It is unclear where the whistleharp originated. Each culture on Aerwiar claims to have invented the instrument, and each culture has good evidence to support its claims. Whistleharp tunes are referenced in the writings of Hzyknah, which date to the end of the First Epoch.
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1. The Glipper Trail had been there since long before Podo was born. Edd Helmer, Podo’s great-great-great-great-grandfather had planned to take advantage of the cottage’s nearness to the cliffs by doing his fishing from there. After carving out a path, he purchased a crate of fishing line from a merchant in Lamendron (later to become Fort Lamendron), tied a hook to the line, placed a horrified worm on the hook, and lowered the string down into the Dark Sea of Darkness. Just getting the hook down to the water took the better part of the morning, and, of course, Edd had no way of knowing from that great height whether or not the bait and hook were indeed submerged. Near dusk that evening, Edd felt a tug on his line and began hauling in his catch. Sometime after midnight Edd finally reeled in a small glipper fish. Yamsa wasn’t happy about being awakened by Edd’s cry of victory, or that in the dead of night he cleaned, cooked, and ate his little fish. Edd decided the next day that for all the trouble he had gone through for that one fish, he may as well have caught several. So he purchased a spool of rope from the same merchant in Lamendron, fastened it to a net, and once again spent all morning lowering the net into the sea. This time he fastened the line to a team of oxen and had them haul in the catch. By sundown the oxen were exhausted and the catch was only halfway up the face of the cliff. Edd tied off the rope and let it hang for the night. Early the next morning he set the oxen to work again. By noon, the net full of glippers, small sharks, pinchers, and squid was pulled over the edge and onto solid ground. Even Yamsa had to admit that it was a good catch, and they ate nothing but fish for the next three weeks. Fish and biscuits for breakfast, fish sandwiches for lunch, fried fish for dinner. They ate so many fish, in fact, that both Edd and Yamsa got sick, and they were never again able to eat fish without gagging. Edd never again fished from the cliffs, but the path by which his oxen pulled the heavy net remains.
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1. Mayor Blaggus broke his vow on the walk back to town.
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2. Though it is impossible to be sure, most scholars agree that this is likely the song that Leeli Igiby sang at the cliffs that evening. Holoré is an ancient word with several meanings. Its most common definition is “the feeling of forgetting to do something without knowing what that thing is.” For example: Foom was overcome with holoré for the whole journey, but when he returned home to find his wife still waiting on the front steps, he realized what he had forgotten. The word holoré is also used to describe the scent of burned cookies, and is often applied to any potentially good thing that has turned unexpectedly sour. For example: When Foom realized he had forgotten to bring his wife on the three-day vacation, the holiday was holoré. The ancient meaning of the word, which is how it is likely being used in the song, refers to the stones laid deep within the earth by the Maker at the creation of Aerwiar. The stones, according to The Legends of Aerwiar, are imbued with power to keep the world alive and growing, functioning much the same, it is assumed, as Water from the First Well. The meaning of holoél is uncertain, but very likely has to do with cookies as well.
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1. When townspeople broke the law or were singled out for no reason by the Fangs, they were sometimes brought to jail where they were beaten by Gnorm and his soldiers. If this happened, it was considered by the Glipfolk to be a wonderful fortune, and upon a prisoner’s release (if he was conscious), his family and friends congratulated him and carried on as if he’d just won a major award. If one wasn’t lucky enough to receive jail and torture, Gnorm sent a messenger crow to summon the Black Carriage.
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1. Ships and Sharks is a yard game introduced to Skreeans by merchants from the Green Hollows. Typically, the children play the role of Ships, and the adults are the Sharks. The game begins when the Shark says to the Ships, “Gwaaaaah!” which is generally agreed to be the sound a shark would make if it weren’t a Sea Creature. The Ships then run like mad to escape the Shark. If a Ship is overcome by a Shark, the Ship is rolled in the dirt and tickled severely. This brutal simplicity is typical of games invented by the Hollowsfolk. Another popular game from the Green Hollows is called simply Trounce.
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1. The women of Skree had a similar weakness for jewelry, but they were less inclined to kill one another for it.
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2. Of the Torrboro Baimingtons, who prided themselves on having an ancestor who coined the phrase “Jouncey as a two-ton bog pie.” The Baimingtons were careful to insert the phrase into every conversation of which they were a part.
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1. Three Honored and Great Subjects: Word, Form, and Song. Some silly people believe that there’s a fourth Honored and Great Subject, but those mathematicians are woefully mistaken.
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2. By Jonathid Choonch Brownman, the explorer known to have been the first to find passage through the Jungles of Plontst. Though no one contested that the expedition itself was successful, people questioned the truth of many of Brownman’s claims about his discoveries. When his memoir of the journey was published in 421, most of it was believed to be a fabrication. This was due in part to Brownman’s insistence that while in the jungle he had lived for a time among a community of flabbits. Brownman insisted that they were docile, unlike flesh-eating flabbits in Skree. Scandalized, his readers challenged him to go and fetch one of the so-called tame flabbits back from Plontst, and Brownman agreed. It was the last anyone ever saw of Jonathid Choonch Brownman, though people still enjoy saying his middle name.
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3. This was done with a shovel Podo had checked out from Mayor Blaggus early that morning by filling out the Permission to Shovel Hogpig Droppings Form. In Appendices.
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1. Snot wax is too repulsive a thing about which to write a proper footnote.
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1. According to Padovan A’Mally’s The Scourge of the Hollows (Ban Rona, Green Hollows: The Iphreny Group, 3/111), “Ridgerunners are particularly fond of artful verse, though their subject matter is almost exclusively fruit. A free-thinking ridgerunner named Tizrak Rzt scandalized the ridgerunner culture when he composed a poem entitled ‘Love, Love, Love Hath No Endingness’ and famously made no mention of fruit.”
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2. See Appendices for a sampling of Pembrick’s seminal work. Bahbert Pembrick, Pembrick’s Creaturepedia (Ban Rona, Green Hollows: Graff Publishing, 3/221).
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3. Chorkneys are large flightless birds that live mainly in cold climates. The settlement of Kimera in the Ice Prairies boasts a chorkney ranch where the large birds are saddled, bridled, and trained to function much the way of horses in southern Skree. The webbed feet of a chorkney bear a cluster of retractable barbs which allow the bird to keep its footing in ice and deep snow. On rare occasions, male
chorkneys are born with wings large enough to sustain short flights, though it isn’t considered prudent to be riding one when this happens.
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1. See Oskar’s map.
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1. Janner is probably referring to Between the Blapp and the Bay: A Town Called Glipwood, by Randolt Mynerqua (Dugtown, Skree: BrookWater Press, 16/404). It was a popular read for the Glipwood Township, partly because it boasted only seventeen pages.
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1. Thorn the Torr, the warrior king who built the palace at the beginning of the Third Epoch, was fond of kittens. On every spire of the Palace Torr were statues of kittens in varied posture. From a bluff on the north bank of the Blapp it was plain that the palace itself was built to resemble a happy, crouching kitty. The uppermost spire was the tail, the portcullis resembled teeth, and the drawbridge was undeniably tonguelike. For ages the Torr Dynasty nursed a disturbing fondness of all things kitten. Then came the Great War, when Fangs captured King Oliman the Torr and forced him to watch as the kitten statues were pulled down and shattered, one by one. When all the kitties in the kingdom were placed on a raft and set adrift on the River Blapp, Oliman the Torr dropped dead with grief. To the citizens of Torrboro, however, it was the one good thing the Fangs ever did.
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1. Yakev Brrz abhorred all manner of animal abuse, most of all the habit of referring to pets as “baby” and attributing to them human characteristics. Yakev’s first wife, Zaga, esteemed her two Beckitt Terriers so much that she insisted they sit at the table with them at dinner and that they sleep at the foot of their bed. Yakev, whose communication skills with all manner of animals was unmatched, failed to convince Zaga that her “babies” detested the eating practices of humans and would much rather have not worn the matching lavender lace pajamas to sleep in their human bed. Late one fateful night when Zaga was fast asleep, Yakev tiptoed to the foot of the bed, gathered Schpoontzy and Kiki carefully in his arms, carried them outside, drew from his sleeve a sharp knife, and put them out of their misery. Which is to say that he cut the lavender lace pajamas from the oppressed dogs and set them running free in the moonlight, never to return. It’s said that once word of the dogs’ deliverance at the hands of the mighty Yakev Brrz spread among dog-kind, wherever Yakev passed, all breeds of dogs yowled and respectfully rolled onto their backs. Nothing more is known of Zaga.
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1. From Stawburn’s The Wide Terrain: “The Dark Sea of Darkness was no darker than any other ocean I ever sailed over. So I’m not sure where it got its name, unless maybe it’s because of the feeling you get when you’re out there in the middle of it. You feel like you might be guzzled up by any one of giant critters what live beneath the surface. It could get its name from all the storms that whirl up out of it and kick you and your ship around like a kid with a ball. Every night there’s a fog that swallows up the stars and leaves you floating blind out there in the darkness. You get to feeling like you’ll never make it home and that even your best mates on the ship don’t really know you or want to, like they’d never notice if you toppled over the gunnel and plopped right in. Come to think of it, maybe the water was darker than normal.”
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1. The presence of cave blats in Glipwood Forest may come as a surprise to the diligent reader, because of the usual lack of caves in a proper forest. Cave blats received their names because their large gray eyes and jowly countenances are so unpleasant to behold that it is common, upon seeing one, to think, “I wish that blat were in a cave somewhere, so that I might not have to look at it.”
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2. Though the Skreeans weren’t sure why, the Fang soldiers were rotated from town to town regularly, and each regiment sailed from Fort Lamendron back to Dang for a few weeks each year. Fangs returning to Skree would boast of having been “rested up plenty” and were meaner than usual for the first few months.
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1. The recipe for booger gruel, according to sources in Dugtown, is simple: two cups of flour, a teaspoon of crushed basil, and one gallon of viscous nasal matter from any animal on hand. Stir over low heat until thickened. (The method of collecting said mucus is unclear.)
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1. Dougan dol Rona of the Green Hollows. The Hollowsfolk are known primarily for two things: fruit and fighting. The Green Hollows is a country of rolling vales and vineyards, tended to with affection by its citizens. The fruit of the Hollows is fatter, juicier, and tastier than any in all of Aerwiar, partly because the ground is so fertile and partly because of thousands of years of fruiting lore known only by the Hollowsfolk. The Green Hollows is also known for its annual festival of games, called the Fynneg Durga. The men of the Hollows are notoriously boisterous, willing to wrestle as soon as laugh, and they consider a punching contest entertainment of the highest order, especially if it means a lost tooth or a broken nose. The women of the Hollows are famously beautiful and wise, which is probably the ancient cause for the culture of fighting among the men. Any outsider wishing to marry a woman of the Green Hollows was subjected to violent (but good-natured) ridicule and was obligated to participate in an especially brutal version of the games, the Banick Durga, to win the woman’s hand. Whether or not the contender passed the trial, he was awarded with copious fruit. Dougan dol Rona of Dorminey asked for the hand of Meirabel Lannerty of the Hollows and was forced to compete in the Banick Durga for her hand. Amazingly, he bested the men of the Hollows in all the ten bouts, but quite accidentally killed Meirabel’s brother in a boxing match with an ill-placed blow to the temple. The tune “Dougan’s Reel” (composer unknown) captures in song both Dougan’s sorrow that he would never marry Meirabel and the speed with which he ran for his life from the Hollows men.
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1. Rumpole Bloge’s Taming the Creepiful Wood (Torrboro, Skree: Phute & Phute & Co., 3/112), a riveting autobiography detailing his years of ranging Glipwood Forest in the early days of the Third Epoch. In it, Bloge describes the cows as being “squarish in frame, with a moist snout and eyes that at first appear dull as a bowl of mud. But woe to that man who considers not the lethal potential in that bovinial thrump! In those yellowish sabers that protrude from its lippy mouth! How I wish my dear Molly had not spurned my warnings of the toothy cow’s cunning and thew, ere that toothéd brute devoured her!” In Appendices.
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1. During the Second Epoch, Tombilly, Chief of Ban Rona in the Green Hollows, fell ill to a malady for which the medicians of the Hollows could find no cure. Their chief was wasting away and could eat no food, though his wife cooked for him a new meal daily. The wise men searched the land over for a meal that might cure his sickness. When old Ma Vorba, the seed catcher, suggested stewing a snapping diggle, she was ridiculed for a fooless, but she cooked the diggle with greenions and totatoes and served it to Chief Tombilly when his wife was away. The chief’s health returned. For years the diggle was believed to have healing powers, until it was discovered that the chief ’s poor wife was but the most dreadful cook Aerwiar had ever known, and Tombilly was starving himself rather than eat another bite of her food. To this day, a traveler eating a fine meal in the Green Hollows might still hear someone exclaim, “Ma Vorba, that was tasty!”
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2. The bumpy digtoad has been known to attack humans, though never yet fatally. Victims of a digtoad attack complain of the “squishy, flootchy feeling” of having a sticky tongue violently flapped upon them. Since the bumpy digtoad has no teeth, its bites are said to feel to the victim like being “gummed like a dumpling in an old man’s mouth.”
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3. The ratbadger is dangerous not just because of its long claws o
r jagged teeth or because of its feisty disposition. The ratbadger’s greatest weapon is its eggish flatulence.
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1. This was true. Before the Great War, the Skreeans had heard rumors of Gnag the Nameless, rumors that snakelike creatures and trolls and other imaginary monsters from children’s scary-tales had conquered the lands of Dang, across the sea, but they couldn’t believe that Skree itself was in any danger. In the 442nd year of the Third Epoch, a thousand ships laden with such creatures infested the Dark Sea of Darkness off the coast of Skree. It was said that the war cry of the invading Fangs could be heard as far inland as Torrboro. With few exceptions, the Skreeans surrendered without a fight.
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1. The Ice Prairies lie north of the Stony Mountains. Few humans have settled there, and what villages do exist are notoriously difficult to find because there are no roads. In fact, some who dwelt in the Ice Prairies visited the warm climes of lower Skree on holiday and were never able to discover their homes again. See map
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2. The road to Torrboro was well traveled, both by menfolk and Fangs. Fang troops traveling to and from Fort Lamendron marched north and west from the coast, through Glipwood, and followed the road along the edge of Glipwood Forest until it met with the River Blapp. The evening curfew was well enforced, so the Fangs did little to patrol the road at night. Glipfolk traveling through the night to Torrboro had little to worry about until they reached the city itself, and by then the morning would have come anyway, so they wouldn’t have raised suspicion. Of course, the road’s adjacency to the forest presented difficulties of its own, and several of the travelers were likely to be set upon by Skree’s usual array of night creatures. See map.
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1. According to Frobentine the Mumn’s The Fall of the First Epoch, the First Well was hidden near the unwalled city of Ulambria, where Dwayne and Gladys ruled their people with peace, wisdom, and an abundance of cheesy foods. Frobentine places the location of Ulambria somewhere north and east of the Killridge Mountains, in the heart of what is now the Byg’oal Forest. Other sources disagree, claiming that Ulambria lay in the Jungles of Plonst, in the troll kingdom. All scholars agree, however, that Ulambria is a good sounding name for a city.
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness Page 26
