Steam Submarine: Fully Annotated Edition

By Robert Denethon

A Welfing humanoid wolf, lost in a hostile universe, 1935 London. Will she ever get home to First Den? But the unthinkable happens: she impresses on Zev the werewolf in his wolf form on the docks. The whole Steam Submarine series in one edition. If you like Tolkien, CS Lewis, Fringe, Susanna Clarke, Naomi Novik then you will love this

• Language: English
• Publisher: Submarine Media Pty Ltd
• Release date: Aug 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9780992368166

Robert Denethon

Robert Denethon is a nom de plum and a character in his own footnotes. The real author lives in Lockridge, Western Australia with his naughty two year old puppy dog, a used piano, and a bunch of burgeoning bookcases. His books were written with you in mind if you like gripping fantasy and sci fi novels, some with strange footnotes, weird invented languages, unusual names, disturbing alternate realities, with a slightly realist bent. In other words, he has attempted to write the kinds of books he likes to read. Think somewhere between the extremes of Philip K Dick, Tolkien, Neal Stephenson, China Miéville. He wants people to read his books and would be extremely pleased if you enjoy them!OTHER BOOKSYou may also wish to view Robert Denethon's other books, written under the name Andrew P Partington https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AndrewPartington

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Gryphonomicon

Steam Submarine

Annotated Edition

Including all the Dedications, Prefaces, Proloups, Footnotes, Postloups, Postnotes, Annotations, Appendices & Gematriacal Analyses.

Copyright © 2014 Submariners Map Imprint

Submariners Map Imprint is a division of Submarine Media Pty Ltd

Malaga, Western Australia

ISBN 978-0-99-236816-6

Author Robert Denethon is just a nom de plum,

a fictional creation.

Denethon’s book is a fictional work, including all the hooey written about Robert Denethon in this work.

Twenty Seven by Seven tells P;

Who the author really might be.

R

Th e wolf will live with the lamb, the panther lie down

with the kid, calf, lion and fat-stock beast together, with a

little boy to lead them.

Isaiah 11:6

Dedication

This dedication is reproduced exactly as it occurs in the first edition. Spelling and punctuation mistakes were rare in Submariner’s Map Imprint publications, which makes Professor Baumgarter’s theory seem plausible, that these apparent printing mistakes were intentional on Denethon’s part, inserted for some unfathomable reason known only to his complicated brain. That the dedication (as printed in the first edition) might contain a secret code ought to (to split an infinitive) however be seen as the most ridiculous idea Baumgarter ever put forward and ought to be contemned as the non-sequitur it undoubtedly is.

Every passing day

I think of thee

Submariner and Wolf Lady

The one true hearted wolf Ive ever known

Every passing day

I think of thee

Lest you think I could forget

But let this book tell you

I still do remember you

My sage

My mage

Singer of my God songs

The only realm I found where I belong

This Welfing song

is yours alone

To you I dedicate this tome

Sixteen the chapters

This the first in Steam Submarine

Read well and secrets will of other worlds appear

That tell of Zelf in realms not here

a clever delfyc cryptogryphonical

signd

Book One

Steam Submarine Zelf

Preface - The Troubling Fountain of All Mythology

That Robert Denethon in this book has perhaps written an unintentional allegory of his own life, his love, in artistic form - this, at least, is the thesis advanced by the editor and annotator of this first edition, P________, and it is an hypothesis that bears further examination.

There exists an essay that Robert Denethon wrote upon the subject of the anima and the animus, those ancient alchemical symbols of the self, often expressed in mediaeval texts as an hermaphroditic angel, half male, half female. In it, Denethon seems to be hinting at some sort of basic disillusionment, but it seems, not a fatal disillusionment - a sort of confrontation with the reality of this mythical other half in person. As the Indian philosophy of Ardhanårœƒvara says:

‘Wife is, in fact, one half of the man. As long a man is not married, he can not regenerate himself and remains incomplete. He becomes complete when he gets a wife and produces progeny...’

Throughout a life, a person seeks their other half. But at some point one finds this person - and here is what Denethon says about the result:

What if a man’s anima was not just a myth, but a living person, flesh and blood, who sweats, weeps, laughs, and speaks in riddles or in truth, one who is capable of wisdom and folly, reverence and mockery, angelic and demonic in the same measure as any of us, but most of all, a person fully human and fully alive? What a strange, terrible thing, to be confronted with the shadow of one’s own follies and shortfallings, in the mirror image, as it were.

But this strange alchemy hints at something more than this: at the bottom of all our dreams, all our mythology, all the stories we tell each other by the light of the campfire, perhaps, is the deepest fountain of all, the most hidden place, as they called it at the Areopagus, the altar of the unknown god.

And the Indian idea of the other half is perhaps a faint echo of this reality.

In other words, what troubles us even more than encountering our anima is when this first of all alphas, this unknown God, becomes real, and speaks to us, when this unknown God walks amongs us and does miracles, and calls us to follow him, or speaks his own mysteries in terms plainer and simpler than we would like to believe they are, more absolute than we wish to hear or accept.

And when someone calls upon him for a miracle and says, ‘I believe, Ellulianæn, help my unbelief,’ and he answers.

So when this God brings forth out of the realm of dreams and visions, one who is a person’s other half, yet is no dream but flesh and blood, an imperfect, excruciating, discomfiting human being: then perhaps marriage is a matter of being shocked by one’s own image reflected back - the sound of one’s own imperfect voice speaks in answer to the call, in a troubling echo - I, as broken as I am, see myself in you, as broken as you are, and yet I love you.

When one can no longer worship one’s anima (or animus, in the opposite case) one can no longer worship oneself.

Then, perhaps, the soul becomes a place wherein God can dwell.

Denethon: the Anima and the Animus in Art, 1968

Such a speech hints at a difficult ordeal in Denethon’s life. Clearly the path of true love was not smooth. Did he really marry this woman? Even the answer to this fundamental question is not known - Denethon was a recluse - so little is known of the facts of his life, his biography is a surd, an unknown quantity, a strange attractor.

It might, therefore, be stretching the point to see every single fact in this book as an allegory, since so little is known of the fellow¹.

Even Denethon’s birthplace is obscure - some conspiracists say that this is because he was born in Ultima Thule, others say that it is because he never existed at all. The name ‘Denethon’ may indeed be as fictitious as his works², although the anecdote rings true that when Robert’s father first read Lord of the Rings and found a villain named Denethor in there he was so upset about the slur to the family name that he threatened to sue Tolkien for libel, and it was only lack of funds (in terms of English pounds - he had some wealth in Ultima Thulean currency, apparently) that prevented him from taking this lawsuit to a successful conclusion.

But to find out whether the son Robert married this female person whom he believed to be his anima (or animus), or whether he simply loved her from afar - and the answer to this is perhaps hidden in the many papers and archive boxes that Denethon left behind - speaking simply, more research is needed. Perhaps someone will need to look into such things as marriage registers, voting records, the census and the like, before an answer is definitively known.

That P________, occupied with sorting out Denethon’s literary papers, has not discovered the facts yet is indubitably ascribable to the general disorder in which these papers were found, and the necessity of putting first things first. Without the literature, the life is worthless - it is Robert Denethon’s literary output that makes the facts of his life worth knowing, and not the other way around - thus P________ has begun with the literature, only hinting at points where life seems to impact art. He is making connexions, pointing the way forwards, making a scratch map of the places, as it were, that a later biographer of Denethon may wish to explore.

Anyhow, in this first English edition of the Griffonomiconus Steamus Submarinus, P________ has given us annotations gleaned from Denethon’s poetry about his love affair with this mysterious ‘lady of the stars,’ his ‘beautiful dark-haired girl, head among the stars, heart full of wisdom.’ It seems from everything gleaned so far that this was a completely platonic relationship, as much as any mediaeval love affair, as chaste as the love Spencer’s knight had for his Faerie Queen, and perhaps as mysterious and mortally incomplete as Dante’s love for his Beatrice, and yet, there is no doubt that she made a very strong impression on him; that fact is attested by the 373 poems and fragments that he wrote for her³.

Yet when we look at this book, what a strange figure Denethon uses as an allegory for his love (if indeed she is allegorical) - the figure of the wolf-lady, an otherwordly character, a strangely self-contradictory, paradoxical figure - both innocent and predator, victim and victor, lamb and lamb-eater. What can be meant by this? We can only hope that later scholarship will tease out the symbolism and find the peculiar truths that may lay behind the particular image. At this moment, we have only Denethon’s work to rely on and little more. P________ has done his best to give us the few other facts that can be teased out to complete the partial image and for this much we must be very grateful, as it is the culmination of a lifetime’s work.

Indeed, P________ himself has expressed the thought privately to me that he feels this work is his ‘dim mirror’, quoting in I Corinthians 13:12, ‘for now we see in a mirror dimly, then we shall see face to face⁴.’

As a friend, and a confidant, I have often put my confidence in his truthfulness and honesty, although his personal mental stability and sanity is not always unquestionable⁵.

Be that as it may, this work is one that I believe will stand the test of time - P________’s annotated transposition of Denethon’s Steam Submarine - and I truly hope that you will enjoy it as much as I have.

Proloup - Reflexion of a Wolf

Wolf Lady

There was no sound but for the steady murmuring of the drizzling rain pelting the submarine’s hull.

In the shiny brass dashboard she caught a glimpse of her own reflexion. Bright golden eyes stared back at her, and in the shadow of her grey cape she glimpsed the grey and white fur on her muzzle and ears, and the wet black nose of a wolf⁶.

She bared her teeth at her own visual echo and growled a deeply satisfying growl.

In this realm, she was the monster.

If she was caught they would surely kill her, or even worse, in this strange world of vivisection and animal experimentation, she would end up in a laboratory somewhere, being prodded by sticks and pricked with needles and cut apart by knives, so that human scientists could see what it was that made her different from everything else⁷.

In her home, in her cubhood the monsters in the fairytales and stories were all humans: evil hunters with their guns and bombs and bad knights slashing and killing with swords and pikestaffs; crazed, savage, barbaric men.

In the Red Riding Hood story in her world, the heroine was a wolf cub, and her grandmother was killed by a woodsman who lay in wait in Red Riding Hood’s bed for her to return, lying there inside her grandmother’s skin that had been flayed from the poor unfortunate old wolf matriarch⁸. It was not a comforting story, and it did not end nicely, not in the version she knew. She did not like to think of the end of it - that one was not a story for cubs. But she had to admit that, despite its gruesomeness, there was a grain of truth in it.

Hmph.

In the Fallen Realms⁹, she thought to herself, something is broken in the very fabric of the world - fruit and vegetables are no longer nutritious enough to sustain life - Zelf had almost died of malnutrition before she finally relented and ate meat¹⁰, and only because she would not have been able to fulfil her mission if she had died.

Hunting was not a pleasure for her; it was a sad necessity. She always killed her prey quickly and cleanly, and only took what she needed.

What strange perversion of the soul made the humans so indifferent to animal suffering? A swift death - is that so much to ask? Treat others as you would like to be treated - that was what one of their prophets said, wasn’t it?

It’s the Leviathan.

That usurper lurked in the very warp and weft of this world, like a stain of rottenness at its core. His nasty, El-forsaken servants sat on the humans’ shoulders and whispered in their ears all the time, nasty, evil words, told them to do bad things, or made them despair, or worse, caused them to become proud of themselves, when they tried to do good deeds.

It was time to try to get home again - if she could face the shame of it. She must leave the Fallen Realms. She would tell the head Alpha, Tharek, everything she had found out about the humans - perhaps then they would excuse her shame, forgive her for the terrible, unmentionable thing.

The Disgrace.

The real reason she had left.

The only problem was, the vital component in her submarine, the Ætheric Detector, was broken. Without it she could not leap the branches of the World Tree, for she would not be able to find out where the Ætheric tunnels were.

Without that component she was stuck in the Fallen Realms, prisoner in the land of humans, a place where she could trust no one.

But she had found out something that might help. She knew that these humans who called themselves English had made an Ætheric Detector. Perhaps she could get one from them.

She took the wheel and carefully guided the craft into the shelter of the dock.

She would have to make alliances, she had taken that fact for granted when she had come here, but even among her allies there were few, very few humans that she even half-trusted.

She would have to contact them soon. She sighed; it came out almost like a howl and it wasn’t even the full moon.

Alpha of Alphas, help me, Ellulianæ aiohiCwa¹¹, she whispered, not completely sure if it was a prayer or an oath. Help me.

Pah. Madgwint had been right - she ought not to have come here. She ought not to have even set foot in this world. It was a bad, bad place¹².

Interloup One- Amnesiac, Past Unknown.

The Amnesiac Young Man.

My dear boy, it is Nineteen hundred and thirty five. And what would you be? Thirteen years old? Fourteen, fifteen, perhaps? It sounds as though you have missed out on eighty years. Or perhaps you are wondering if you might be slightly... delusional?

The gentleman was stroking his chin and looked at me as though he thought the second alternative more likely. We were in a coffee shop in the Strand.

For a moment I had hesitated, for I hadn’t understood the word ‘delusional’. But when I realized what it must mean - someone in the grip of a delusion, a fancy, a false impression of the mind - I knew that I had to make my move.

He reached forward towards me as I leapt up from my seat, but I flinched backwards, out of his grasp.

He lurched forwards again and grabbed for my hand as he blurted, I might know some people who can help you! But I wasn’t standing there waiting for someone to lock me in the madhouse. I wrenched my hand out of his control and leaped away from his grasping, greedy fingers...

That’s how I had ended up where I was now...

* * *

I hadn’t had a clue of the straits I was in when it all began.

It was little less than a day ago. I had waked up with the worst headache I could have ever imagined - my head was thumping as though an unseen assailant was bashing upon the side of it with a large wooden sledgehammer, or a crowbar - thump, thump, thump, upon my right temple.

Cold, painful bricks lay beside me.

I was looking up at a wall standing at an impossibly oblique angle of inclination.

After a moment of complete disorientation I realised that it was I who was resting obliquely - lying on my side - looking up at the wall - I stood up unsteadily on my feet and tried to get my thoughts into order.

I was in a dark alley. Pale light brightened the space between the walls above me. Below me was what looked like the brickwork of a London street and there were tendrils of fog reaching along the alleyway.

The effort of trying to walk made my head swim so I leant upon the wall.

Where was I?

And more importantly, who was I?

I looked up. The sky was green, the pea-soup fog of London.

That was a place I had heard of.

London.

Was I in London?

A strangely disjointed memory drifted past and I grabbed at it with my mind before it could get away. I only caught half of the phrase: Ah, þües bij Mannisjkaes pahæ þü nikke? Mü’ mü mue ‘trilfamees îl’f rfœ Ing-Gland? Someone was grasping my jacket, jerking me forwards, breathing on me with breath that stank of garlic and chives – someone who didn’t look human… More than one of them. Perhaps they were gnomes or trolls.

Trogthen.

Then someone saying - You are the human? Or one of them? Something about the Eternal. And a harsh, inhuman voice, in a strange accent, "He says that some say you killed him."

These thoughts contrasted so sharply with the world I saw all around me - the dull, bleak, dismal reality of a London alleyway, the swirling fog, the commonplace brickwork on the street below - that I could not help wondering if these thoughts were the product of a mind that had become unhinged. For a moment I thought that perhaps I was remembering fanciful dreams of a foreign place; but I doubted that dreams would be the first memories to return to an amnesiac.

Then a voice cried out, There he is!

Three figures in black suits pointed at me from the far end of the shadowy alleyway. They chased me.

I sprinted down into another alley. I reached a high, whitewashed, wooden fence and climbed up onto a rubbish bin that was resting on it, then, clinging to the fence, kicked the rubbish bin away with my feet. In moments I had leaped over the fence and was sprinting into another alley.

I discovered a low doorway in which to hide.

I heard my pursuers calling to one another on the other side of the fence that I had jumped, Which way did he go? This one’s a dead end, must’ve gone the other way. Let’s go, and then the pattering of running feet and they were gone.

The day came and went, like a passing stranger vanishing into the pea-green fog.

I stayed hidden in the alcove for the whole time.

Gradually the fog cleared.

All I could see from my hiding place was the overcast sky, with dark grey clouds scurrying past below even darker clouds that set their own melancholy pace.

The last thing I noticed before falling asleep was the dark disc of the new moon hanging on the black felt sky like a strange medallion on the chest of a duergar guard.

Completely exhausted, I slept until the chill of early morning waked me up. A thin layer of ice had grown onto the windows beside me. From the rumbling of the city some blocks away and the position of the dim sun behind the clouds I judged it to be about nine o’clock in the morning.

I was very hungry and ran towards the noise of the street, thinking that if my enemies were still looking for me it would be safer to move quickly to where the crowds were.

I dashed out of the alleyway onto the rumbling street, expecting the usual spectacle of innumerable horses and wagons and carriages contending with one another that clatter along any usual London thoroughfare. Instead, an incomprehensible clamour greeted me! I saw a street full to the brim of puffing, roaring horseless carriages, inane mechanical contraptions, each self-propelled, as though it had become its own railway engine, but with smaller spoked wheels and no tracks to run on, some carrying a spare wheel on the side, some bearing a loose canopy on top, each with two strange upright lamps on the front of the smokebox like bright, unnaturally lit eyes, each contrivance pumping smoke from a single chimney beneath the rear instead of one atop the front like any normal steam engine! And there was such a great number of these peculiar conveyances, bumping along the street and jostling one another as horses and carriages do - or, rather, did! For with a start I realised that I must be in the future of London.

I was so surprised that I almost fall straight into the path of one of these racing metal monstrosities, but happily a man’s hand grasped my shoulder from behind and stayed my fall.

The gentleman steadied me and said, "Quick smart, lickety splat, to paraphrase what a sentimental American might say. There you are, young man, don’t go leaping into the path of the traffic. You still have your whole life ahead of you."

I looked at him - his suit was grey and well-tailored - those who had been following me were wearing black. He clearly wasn’t one of them.

Where am I? I said.

Why... London, of course. Where on earth did you think you were?

But I couldn’t think of any answer I could give to that strange question.

***

Five minutes later I was sitting in one of the coffee shops in the Strand, with a splendid breakfast before me: bacon and mushrooms with bubble and squeak, and a pot of fine, hot, steaming coffee. The gentleman was reading the morning newspaper.

He looked up at me gobbling down the meal he had bought me and said, You’re hungry indeed. Looks like you haven’t eaten for days. When was the last time you had a round meal?

As I shook my head I felt that the man understood that my memory had been misplaced. He hadn’t seemed particularly perturbed about the fact, anyhow.

We talked about the London weather for a little while - nondescript - As usual, he said, and I seemed to comprehend his meaning, so that seemed to imply that I was a Londoner.

He said, But that doesn’t solve the puzzle, does it?

What puzzle? I asked, fearing that he meant my puzzle. What could he know of me? I felt my pulse quicken.

To me it had seemed as though he was going to challenge me, but he leaned forward instead and showed me a page of the newspaper.

A Newpaper page with a puzzle on it, a crossword.

Here - feed your peepers on this - there is a puzzle on this page somewhere, or rather, the answer to a particular puzzle, actually, but I cannot for the life of my grandmother find it. Have a try at it; see if you have any better luck.

The crossword only

The style of the page was different from newspapers I had seen - there were more pictures and the lettering was more varied.

There was a very obvious puzzle, right there in the middle. A crossword right in the middle of the page and the answer to the previous day’s crossword directly below it!

I thought the man must be insane.

He noted my expression and said, "Yes, yes, I’m not talking about the crossword. No, it’s another puzzle, hidden somewhere among the various features of this page... Of course I’m not saying it isn’t the crossword - indeed, it would be just like them to put the answer in the crossword itself of course. But it might not be. Have a goose, have a gander. See if you can find it, lad, I’m at my wit’s final demise."

I examined the crossword.

He hadn’t even filled in any of the words yet.

How would he expect to find the clue without even doing the crossword? Needless to say, I hadn’t even any idea as to what sort of a clue he was looking for.

My headache was returning as I tried to figure out this puzzle, and a mood of despair gripped me. My mouth seemed to blurt out the truth without my consent or foreknowledge, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. How do you expect me to solve this when I can’t even remember who I am or where I came from?

His eyebrows lifted, but a veil came over his expression at the same time, and I felt as though some sort of chance or opportunity had passed me by, though what it might be I couldn’t guess.

The fellow addressed me again wearing a quizzical expression. Well, he said, If you can’t remember anything, you might want to be drawing on the latest news at least...

It appeared that he wanted to see if he might jog my memory! I nodded vociferously, it must have been a pitiful sight.

The man said, The Government of India act was passed - the longest act of Parliament ever - they’re going to reprint it, apparently, in two sections. Our monarch’s health hasn’t been two hundred percent lately - that old injury’s troubling the doctors somewhat - they can’t seem to do much. And in Germanischenland that nasty fellow Hister is on the rise... And that business about there being life on the moon, that they saw on the teleoscope - turns out it was all one dastardly hoax.

I shook my head again. What injury? I remember feeling a fondness for England’s Queen. I had heard stories about her, or knew of her, or some sort of thing like that.

What?... Surely you remember the silver jubilee celebrations? In May. Crowds in the streets, everybody waving flags about and singing maniacally, like those mechanical singing toy robots one can buy?And him saying, ‘I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow.’

I said, Silver jubilee? That’s twenty five years isn’t it? The Queen began to reign in 1827, did she not? Good grief. That would make it 1852. So it’s a whole year since... Since what I didn’t know. But something still seemed out of place.

"Queen? No, no, dear boy. King. King George the fifth. What, did you think Victoria’s in charge? Goodness grievous, lad. That was thirty years ago."

I dropped my fork and fell backwards in surprise, knocking my plate off the table so that it clattered onto the floor and stumbling to stop my chair from falling over. All the other guests began staring at our table. But that would mean it is... the turn of the century, at least... How can that be? The earliest it could possibly be is... nineteen hundred and one. And I’m still a child. Oh! And who is this George? Edward I know. But George?

My dear boy, it is Nineteen hundred and thirty five.... And what would you be? Thirteen? Fifteen years old?... I can see that it’s all Turkish to you. You don’t need to be afraid. Perhaps you are wondering if you are slightly... delusional. And then he reached forwards slightly, but I flinched backwards.

For a moment I hesitated, for I hadn’t understood the word ‘delusional’. But then I realized what it must mean - someone in the grip of a delusion, a fancy, a false impression of the mind.

And in a flash I realised that if this modern world was anything like the eighteen fifties, the place they would put delusional people - that is, those society judged to be insane - was not a very nice place. A sanatorium, or even worse, an asylum.

He lurched forwards again and grabbed for my hand as he blurted, I might know some people who can help you! Loss of memory is not uncommon when… But I wasn’t staying there waiting for a well-intentioned doctor of the psyche to put me in chains, I wasn’t standing there waiting for them to lock me up in a madhouse for the rest of my natural life.

I wrenched my hand out of his control and leapt away from his grasping, clutching fingers. I sprinted out from the coffee shop and into the streets. He leapt out after me clumsily, crying out, No, you have the wrong idea! It’s alright! I don’t want to hurt you! I won’t put you in Bedla-

But I was gone already.

* * *

I had no idea how long I had been running through streets and alleyways...

I had found another dark place in which to hide, an alcove that led to somebody’s basement. The door was covered in spiders’ webs (not splyders’ webs - wait - where on earth did I learn such a word? Splyder? Is that a real thing? Perhaps there really is something wrong with my mind) and the window was broken; it was a disused, abandoned cottage that would make the perfect hiding place.

My chest was heaving in and out and I had a stitch that made me double over. It took me some time to catch my breath. The sensation of having fled for my life seemed familiar to me - as though I had done this sort of thing before - but I had no clue as to when or why. A heaviness settled upon my spirit as tangible as a physical weight.

But there shone a small ray of light - the fellow had accepted me as a Londoner and an Englishman, so surely that was what I was. Wasn’t I? I believed that, I had found out one small piece of the puzzle, and that was a beginning. It wasn’t a greatly comforting insight, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I tried to think, to make a plan, but a great weariness consumed me and I couldn’t help but close my eyes. I crawled into a foetal position on the bricks, hugging myself against the cold, and slept.

* * *

Early in the evening I woke up and crawled out from my hiding place.

Jonathan, a voice said. I turned around. No-one was there.

Jonathan, the echo came again; it was in my mind, my imagination, not audible. A female voice, a child’s voice, a friend, or someone close to me. Amelia - that was the name that came to mind.

Who was Amelia? Who was Jonathan? Could I be Jonathan?

I looked around where I was.

Another spider’s web, lit by the light of the moon, caught my eye.

The sight awakened another fragmentary memory - in a bathroom; in the mirror - a fly hanging on a piece of spider web from the ceiling. I moved my head - from a certain angle, the fly was magnified by a strange bump in the mirror.

It wasn’t a fly. It had the compound eye and wings of a fly, but it had eight legs. Even more startling - the creature was looking back at me, with a disconcertingly intelligent gaze. It was a splyder; neither spider nor fly, but a combination of the two.

How did I know that? I couldn’t remember.

Then I saw my own reflection, in the mirror, in my memories. Rather accentuated eyebrows. A rough texture to my skin, large pores, though that could be an effect of the strange mirror’s magnification. Dark eyes. A stony gaze.

Young, twelve years old, perhaps.

Then I looked at the real spider’s web again, the London spider’s web - I realised it wasn’t lit by the moon - the moon wasn’t shining. It was something else.

I walked down the alley-way a short distance and saw a lit lamp-post for the first time.

It was not a gas lantern.

Awe-struck by the marvel, I stared at it for a while, and then returned to the dark shadows.

* * *

The lamp-post astonished me. It appeared that mankind had discovered the lightning element - the source of power mentioned in the ancient Hwellwellyn texts - though when I tried to think how I might have learned this fact or even what the Hwellwellyn texts were I could not for the life of me remember.

I began to panic, my breathing coming in short, sharp gasps. My mind was unhinged - these thoughts of elvish texts were not rational - the elves, that was who had written them - elves! Not rational! But then I questioned even this, for what did I, who could remember nothing of who I was or where I had come from, know of rationality? Perversely, the thought comforted me, and I descended into a kind of interior darkness, a dark night of the soul, with no moon or stars or planets.

Then I shivered. It was too cold and my clothes were very thin, so I began walking again to keep myself warm, keeping to dark, unlit alleyways, avoiding always the bright lamplight.

I walked for what must have been at least three or four hours in this strange, half-mesmerised state, trying to remember who I was.

Eventually I found myself standing next to the Thames on a bridge, looking down into dark waters that roiled and flowed in spirals and circles, gentle, insidious, hypnotic, and deep.

A mist hung over the surface, unnaturally still, floating like the ghost of a lost soul, a whisper.

The Thames... The river of forgetfulness and oblivion, the afterlife: the Lethe, the river of the underworld. The thought lulled me and I felt myself slipping, sliding, falling into a doom-laden melancholia that was clutching and clawing at me, trying to pull me further in, farther down.

Then I wondered how I knew about the river Lethe and tried to remember that but I could not. An unmediated distress gripped my heart, and I gasped.

I fought the slough of despond: I was not going to give up today. Suicide is not an option. Even though I could see no hope, I would put my hope in the things that I could not see. The things that I could not even remember, good times, good people, friendships, perhaps even a family.

I found a tunnel nearby, clearly some sort of drainage tunnel that led into the Thames, and curled myself up inside it in the darkest corner, but it was so cold that I could not sleep for a long while.

In the night I heard someone whimpering.

It was me¹³.

Interloup Two - Secret Agents & the Electric Telegraph.

Wolf Lady

She had contacted the agents by the electric telegraph several weeks before.

Madgwint the griffin had always been ferreting out helpful gadgets for her when he had been around. She didn’t know where he had gone and she hadn’t heard from him for many months. Perhaps he’d gone home to his own realm, or perhaps he had gone to a realm where the time travelled at a different pace. He might only have been gone for what seemed like a few minutes to him, but it could be years for her, decades, even millenia.

Madgwint had been a most helpful griffin. He had found a machine for her in one of the other worlds that could send telegraphic messages. The thing had a typewriter attached, but the almost magical thing about this contraption was that it didn’t need to be attached to the telegraph line at all. So long as you were close to the nearest telegraph line it would create vibrations in the magnetic æther that would cause an electric current to rise up and flow along the telegraph line. She didn’t understand the technical details, but the device worked on this particular day at least (it was a little temperamental and didn’t work all the time). In any case an agent of His Majesty’s government appeared on the wharves within twenty four hours of her sending the message.

She chose the darkest, most secluded, isolated place for the meeting, on the cusp of nightfall as the last gasp of twilight died. The moon, in his own last quarter, was hiding his pale face behind greying clouds.

She would have set the meeting on the night of the new moon, like a griffin, when she could be sure it would be dark, but that was when it affected her - the unmentionable, the shameful infirmity that she didn’t like to think about - and she did not feel safe leaving the submarine on such a night.

She saw them coming towards her in the shadows, walking in their clumsy way, feet flopping in those ridiculous things they called shoes like the fins of a sea-leopard, or the feet of a frog.

Humans. Hmph.

If these men knew what she was, what manner of beast she was, her days of cooperating with them would be over quickly.

She whispered so that the peculiarly wolfish quality in her voice would not be quite so obvious: I need to get someone a message.

Use the telegraph! said the man. "You got a message to us, didn’t you? Get one to your friend that way, the same way you got your message to us. Bit of a miracle wasn’t it? We know which stations are closest to the location the message was sent from... No telegraph for bloody miles and the wires all hidden away inside five feet of concrete, yet still you managed to tap into it somehow. Miraculous, it was."

Other people... are listening to your telegraphs. Someone undesirable might get a hold of it. No. I needed another way. A better way. A more hidden way.

In the half-light she saw the dissatisfied aspect of the man’s face. He leaned forward and his eyes gleamed at her.

Well, madam, the brigadier was more than halfway impressed with the last offering you brought us. He tells me he reckons that we owe you one, anyway. He said he didn’t think our new Babbage machine could have been built without those nifty little gadgets you gave us, but he didn’t want me to say much more than that about it - you know, Official Secrets Act and all that. Gives us an edge if Hister gets his campaign going - and he will. The Cambridge office in particular has identified him as a danger - he’s got his eye on Europe, mark my words; maybe even the world. And that’s not all we have to worry about either. There’re rumblings in Ultima Thule as well.

She shuffled nervously; he was getting off the topic.

He cleared his throat and continued.

"‘Yes,’ is the answer, we’ll do you a favour. And we have got a way to get messages out. Your fellow - he reads the newspaper, I hope? We can put something in there for him if you want. Just tell us what you want and we’ll get it done."

She scratched her muzzle, trying not to make it look too obvious that it was a muzzle, and cursed the gloves that simply did not fit her forepaws; more paws than hands even when she walked as a two-legs.

Well... Put it on the crossword page. I’ll tell you what to put in there.... And she told him, and he committed it to memory. He leaned forward to shake hands - such a quaint human custom - but she carefully kept her paws hidden and said primly, Thankyou.

He seemed to accept that.

He said, Pleasure doing business with you, Ma’am, and disappeared back into the shadows.

Interloup Three - In The Shadow Of The City.

The Amnesiac Young Man

I got some sleep at last and waked soon after daybreak to see the bright white glow of dawn light brushing the tops of buildings. An unsettled breeze had sprung up and was causing clanks and rattles to sound out in the distance and nearby, from every direction, each like a dot on a map, each clatter and clink a pointed reminder that there were no walls around me, no roof above me.

I stretched, yawned, and glimpsed the gleaming bulkheads of what I thought must be five or six very large ships, great, gargantuan, hulking metal things, looming above the taverns and warehouses to the west, on the river side. They had no sails, only vast chimneys for the smoke to belch out of. Smokestacks reaching up into the sky like long metal fingers beseeching an iron god.

As I gazed at the giant bulkheads my empty stomach growled and I realised that I’d have to do something about bodily necessities - my three choices seemed to be to find employment, or steal, or starve - and the last two options did not appeal to me.

I wondered whether cabin boys were still needed in this modern age.

Surely they were.

These sorts of things surely never change - and after all, I must be more than eight years old, and could therefore work to make my living. And on the boat I would be given the seaman’s equivalent of a factory education, and might therefore learn something about this strange futuristic world into which I had been deposited. And it would be an excellent way to stay anonymous.

I turned to the west and walked through dark, dank, deserted streets towards the looming bulkheads, sparkling now with the rising sun. The sounds of bustle were already beginning to ring out over the awakening city. I stayed in the shadows and the small alleyways, though, fearing I might be prey to those who haunt lonely places in the early hours; disreputable people, men of ill repute.

Then I froze.

I glimpsed something or someone in the shadows some twenty feet behind me, or at least I thought I did; perhaps it was merely my imagination. A cloud came over the sun and it seemed like an ill omen. Fear feeds on loneliness, hunger and isolation, as hyenas feed on corpses in the desert.

I wondered if it was the man I had met in the streets, who had given me breakfast the day before. Perhaps he still wanted to ‘help’ me; in other words, put me in Bedlam, the asylum for the insane.

Or perhaps he had set the police on me, or whatever authorities sought to bring into custody the mentally deranged and incompetent in this modern age.

Or perhaps it was one of the three men who had pursued me when I first awoke.

How could any of them have found me here, though? I must have walked for miles.

More likely it actually was one of the riff-raff, those suspicious characters that hang around wharves and dark alleys - perhaps a character like Bill Sykes or Fagin. Oliver Twist - suddenly I remembered reading it - Charles Dickens was the author!

A strange room came to mind, I saw the three of us in the mirror: three friends, two humans and a troll-cub, reading together by the light of a lamp.

The fairytale world and the banal reality of London seemed to be completely intertwined in my mind. Perhaps I was delusional. Surely I was - how could such things be?

A troll-cub? Who had ever heard of such a thing?

I seemed to wait there for a very long time, and I could hear my breathing rasping out, sounding something like a small bellows. Yet to me it was loud in comparison with the distant shouts of the wharf workers and the ships’ bells sounding, and I could not believe that whoever was following me could not hear it.

Finally the sound of footsteps walking away rang through the streets.

I waited a while then set off again through the shadows.

When I emerged into the dockyards there was a comforting crowd of wharf workers loading and unloading cartons and boxes from the ships and I glanced behind me again - anyone who had been following me might well be more reluctant about trying something in what was already a very public place, despite the early hour.

The workers were using lofty cranes of a size and complexity unknown in the eighteen fifties, and there were horseless carriages with large carts attached to them; they were like railway trains without tracks, chugging to and fro.

The eighteen fifties - there it is again - the time I knew, the time I was from.

Looking at the scene before me I tried to make some sense out of it, so that I might know who to talk to about procuring employment.

In earlier days on the wharves it had been easier to tell who the figures of authority were.

The captain would almost certainly be supervising the loading and unloading of the ship.

I had no clue as to how I knew this, but the fact was that on this wharf, the wharf of this future age, I had no idea who the figures of authority were, or who might be the right person to talk to about employment on one of the ships.

And even worse, most of the workers seemed like grown men.

I could not see a single child, not a single cabin boy, message boy, or newspaper boy anywhere.

I stood there for a while, my courage waning, and then my stomach grumbled again. There was a terrible, gaping, empty space inside me. I had to do something to earn money so that I could eat or I was certain I would fade away or starve.

I selected the wharf worker with the friendliest face, but it took me some minutes to work up the courage to approach him. He had just picked up a box and was hauling it towards a crate when I came up to him and said, Um... Excuse me...

He put the box down and straightened up a little.

Well - what have we here? he said, A boy, is it, about twelve years old, maybe even a little older? What’s up young master?

I said, Sir, if it please you I would like to earn my keep - I need a job so as I can eat, and I don’t want to be a burden on society, sir, I really don’t.

He doesn’t seem to know that children don’t have to work - must be neglected - no parents - no family? Run away from home did you, boy? Poor lad. Things can be bad in this modern age - and you’re all alone ain’t you? I must have shown my nerves by flinching, for he moved forwards towards me, reaching his hand out in a conciliatory gesture. His voice became lower, like the growl of a hungry dog. All alone in the world. Need a friend - that’s it, it is - you need a friend! Suddenly, in one swift movement he grabbed my arm in a vise-like grip and all at once I knew that I had made a terrible mistake.

He leered in my face with breath that smelled like rotten fish, and his expression went ugly all of a sudden, with something like greed showing in his eyes. I know a... little job that you could do, boy. I know some men that would be right pleased to have you... er... workin’ for ’em. Why they would just love a fresh young -

Allo, allo, said a voice. What have we here? Bill Henry Mullins, what ave you found - a stray lad again? Tut tut - what is it about you, Bill, that brings these vagrant children to you? Can’t they see what a kind of man you are? Or is it just that you pretend you aint?

I looked up. Two constables stood there in navy blue uniforms and hats that bore the shield of the Royal Marine Police, an official body I had never heard of. The one who had been talking tapped Bill ever-so-gently on the arm with his truncheon.

Bill Henry Mullins immediately let go of my arm and stepped back, growling softly through his teeth like a rabid dog, and the constable grabbed me and pulled me away from him rather roughly.

I didn’t mind his roughness at all. I felt completely safe in the company of these dockyard authorities, no matter that they had wrenched my arm half out of its socket.

The constable eyed Bill Henry Mullins and said to me, Lucky escape you had, lad. He’s not a very nice person, that Bill, not the sort any young men ought to be associatin’ with. Come on, you’re comin’ down to the station - we’ve got to find your parents or guardians, or whoever it is that’s supposed to be lookin’ after you. And you should be in school anyhow... Bill, just you keep in mind that we’re watchin’ you. You just keep that in mind.

It’s an abuse of my rights to freedom of association, growled Bill Henry Mullins as the policemen dragged their completely willing captive away, that is, me.

We were at the police station in less than ten minutes.

They sat me down and one of the bobbies gave me a cup of tea and a biscuit. They let me eat the biscuit before they asked me any questions.

Seeing how quickly and hungrily I ate, the other said, You had any breakfast, lad? I said, no, so he popped out for a minute and came back with a bag of roasted chestnuts.

I wolfed them down gratefully.

Now, said the first one, We need to find out where you really belong. Where do you live?

I had to think fast. I couldn’t remember any address - but strangely enough I did have a memory of visiting a piano manufacturer in Robert street. He had shown us the pianos and given us morning tea, and he showed us how we could see the top of the Crystal Palace from his window, on the upper floor of the shop. It was only a fragment, like a single tiny piece of an enormous jigsaw puzzle, but that was the best I could do.

That would have to do.

If I couldn’t tell them any address, I was sure they would send me to the madhouse, or some sort of reformatory for boys.

Robert Street, I said. My father makes pianos. Ummm... Thirty Robert Street.

They looked at each other. I don’t think I know Robert Street. Where is it then? Is it in London?

Near Hyde Park, I said. You can see the roof of the Crystal Palace from... father’s drawing room window.

They looked at each other again. You could, could you? Tall building, is it? Very old?

No, it’s not very tall. I was starting to get a bad feeling about their reactions. The conversation was not proceeding quite how I had expected.

So you can see all the way to South London and it’s not very tall?

Oh, no, I said, Only to Hyde Park, where the Crystal Palace is.

Oh, said the other constable. So they moved the Crystal Palace to Hyde Park did they? Funny thing I didn’t notice them doing that. And my grandpappy lives just up the road from Anerley.

Oh no, it’s still in Hyde Park where it always was.

They looked at each other again, and the nice one, the one who had brought me the chestnuts and the cup of tea said in a kindly, rather condescending tone of voice, Yes, of course it is, lad. Hmmph. Well it was there once, in Hyde Park, weren’t it? In the year of the Royal Exhibition? The Crystal Palace. Been reading some old books have we, boy? He tousled my hair, as though I was some sort of street scamp telling tall tales.

The other one shook his head and said, There ain’t no Robert Street anywhere near Hyde Park. I was on the Westminster beat for three years, mark you, I know those streets better than the back of my hand. There ain’t no Robert Street. Try again lad, and the truth this time. Don’t take us for fools, now - we’ve had to get information out of hardened criminals before and I hardly think you could qualify as one o’ them just yet.

I looked at them warily and decided not to say anything. The more that I revealed my ignorance of this modern age, the more likely they were to take me to the place I did not want to go to.

Bedlam.

The madhouse loomed in my thoughts; once incarcerated, how could I ever hope to prove myself sane?

They waited for me to speak, but I said nothing, so the nice one said, Come on, lad - after we’ve given you breakfast and been so good to you as to give you a cuppa tea, don’t clam up on us - the truth will do as well as anything else you might think to come up with.

But the truth wouldn’t do; it really wouldn’t do.

What do you think? said the nasty one. Has ’e committed some dreadful crime? Has ’e taken a knife to a feller or strangled someone?

Doesn’t look the sort, said the nice one. Mind you, they often don’t, do they?

Thinking this line of questioning had gone far enough, I confessed, I can’t remember where I’m from, which was true enough. Everything seems different and wrong, and whatever memories I come up with don’t seem to fit. I thought that was vague enough to avoid them carting me off like a madman, but that proved to be an erroneous belief.

Might need a doctor’s opinion on this one, said the nice one, raising his eyebrows.

I know what sort of doctor you mean. Might have to cart him off to Bedlam, you mean, said the nastier of the two constables, chuckling and flicking his fingers past his temple as if to imply loose hinges or something of the sort. That was how I knew that I had completely failed to avoid what I feared.

I leapt up to sprint away but they were too quick for me. I found myself held securely by the arm by the nice policeman, with the other standing over me and staring at me as though I was a puzzle to be worked out, rather than a living person.

Well - trying to do a runner! Maybe you were right - he certainly seems to know what’s in for ‘im. We’ll put him in one of the cells until the clinical workers can get here.

They hauled me up a narrow set of stairs, through a barred gate and into a chilly bricked cell with iron bars. The door clanged shut. The place stank of urine and vomit and there were faeces floating at the top of the toilet bowl in the corner.

I lay there on the hard, cold bunk-bed, trying not to breathe too hard, fearing the unhealthy fumes from the toilet bowl.

I decided to work out what I might have done differently in case I ever had another chance to escape, but I could think of nothing that I would have changed about what I did. Every step of my first escape and subsequent capture was as inevitable and logical as the fact that day follows night.

The cell was a dark and depressing place and I had begun to think that I had reached a dead end. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life in a mental asylum¹⁴, for I could never imagine my memories returning. I found myself saying, Üdvé, help me, and I dimly knew that these names were the names by which I knew the Creator, the Highest King who had made all of the universes. But I also knew, somehow, that those names did not belong to Him in this world.

The hours passed incredibly slowly. The slowness of time in that place seemed to be maliciously designed to torment me. Gradually darkness began to close in on me, like a trapdoor slowly being shut, and at some point I wept.

In the midst of these melancholy thoughts I heard footsteps and an efficient female voice saying, Ja, it could well be Amnesia.

That’s wonderful, Doctor, I just knew we did the right thing by calling you in.

The nice constable appeared, accompanied by a woman wearing a suit, a man’s suit. What a travesty! This female Doctor looked just as efficient as her voice sounded, with grey hair tied up into a tight bun, horn-rimmed glasses, wearing the type of grey and white suit that a man would wear, complete with a drab grey and white striped tie!

There was a silver fountain pen in her pocket and she wore no jewellery.

My first thought when I saw her was that her dress and demeanour was most uncharacteristic of this realm - but then I suddenly wondered what the thought meant - what realm? What could that thought possibly mean? To what was I comparing it?

The woman said, So this is... ze patient? She spoke with a slight German accent that wasn’t terribly noticeable after a while.

Yes, Doctor, said the constable. He remembers nothing about where ’e’s come from, who ’e is. And he’s extremely confused about the... pattern of streets in London, Ma’am - he seems to have the places where things are, completely confused in his mind.

He does not remember; retrograde Amnesia! She reached through the bars and placed a hand that felt like a cold, limp fish on my forehead - I flinched away.

Then she brought a small lamp out from her briefcase. I had never seen such a thing - it was a cylindrical object, made of shiny silver metal, with a bright light that shone out from the end of it when she pressed a button on top of the thing, like a magic wand. She waved the lamplight in my eyes. Hmmm. No sign of concussion. Tell me, pup, did you receive a knock on the head?

I was insulted by the impersonal tone she used when she was talking to me, and I certainly didn’t like being called ‘pup’ by someone I didn’t know. I said, I have a name, you know.

And that name is?...

For the life of me I couldn’t remember, so I stayed sullenly silent and stared at her, waiting for her to do or say something.

She waved the torch in my eyes again and then turned to the constable and whispered, soft enough that I think she thought I wouldn’t be able to hear them talking, "Yes, officer, it certainly resembles amnesia - but the great question is, what caused this ailment? Is it physical - a brain injury - but there are no signs - there should be an injury to the head or a fever or some sort of outward symptom - or is it psychological - a disease of the mind - an illness of the psyche - the soul of the boy? Yes, that appears to be ze case. It seems to be a disease of the mind. But zere is one problem - we don’t have any spare beds in the hospital."

The constable looked