The Doom of Darkendown: Rage * Revelry * Redemption

By Rose Wolf

YO-HO-WHO?

Dispatched by a dying professor to the world of Darkendown, writer Robin Adam has to assume control of its afterlife prison colony. She must also rule over a country inhabited by pig-and pterodactyl-folk, literary characters, and--most feared of all--the infamous “Christmas Pirates.” Robin will need all these strange (but staunch) allies as she faces her Great Test:
the redemption of her own brother. To be a true Judge, she must first take
a seat in her own dock--and not the most wonderful people
or the wildest powers can stand between her and her Doom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664132016

Rose Wolf

Spoiled for a career in reality by her mother, who made her witch hats out of grocery bags and took her on supernatural walks to look for fairies under toadstools, Rose Wolf decided to become a writer of fantasy prose and poetry. After taking a Ph.D. in that field from Binghamton University, she worked for a Fantasy Grand Master, married a wizard, and lived in Scotland. She now makes her home in Salem, Massachusetts, where she sells magic wands, teaches imaginative literature, and draws inspiration for her writing from her Manx cat familiar, Golden Moon Bear.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Rose Wolf.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/12/2020

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

819754

TABLE OF CONTENTS

No-Diss-Claimer

Epigraph

Dedication

To The Hesitating Reader from the New CoWardenator of Darkendown:

Prologue

Introduction: The Fiery Cup

Inner-Lude (I): The Coloring Book

Inner-Lude II: The Duskanddawn Dream

(1) The Black Mirror

(2) The Green Nun

(3) The White Ship

(4) The Pearl: Core

(5) The Blue Sea

(6) The Blood Rose

(7) The Bright Apple

(8) The Jeweltide Treasure (I)

(9) The Diamond Tears

(10) Infix: The Luna Moth

(11) Fin: The Jeweltide Treasure (II)

(12) The Amber Crock

(13) The Sande Claw

(14) The Opearl Fishers

(15) The Marble-ous Horde

Epilogue

NO-DISS-CLAIMER

This is a work of fixin’. The actual names of its

Earth-born characters, as well as that of the narrator,

have been retained and remain unchanged in the

story. Far from intending insult or injury to any

still-living person[s], this practice was chosen to

emphasize the common quest for spiritual growth

on which the Doomster and those who receive the

Dooms-of-Her are bound. The author fervently

desires for all who figure in it in life, and those

who follow it in literature, that the end result of a

Darkening-Down will be–as it was for the teller

of the tale–a Lightening- (or Enlightening-) Up.

*     *     *

EPIGRAPH

*

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

All I could never be,

All men ignored in me–

This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

–BROWNING, Rabbi ben Ezra

DEDICATION

"Life being of the nature both of a treasure-hunt

and a piratical expedition, I dedicate this narrative

to the following sailing companions of mine

on this entertaining old craft we call the Earth,

in the hope that each may find his or her treasure,

and, at least, escape hanging at the end of the trip."

–Richard Le Gallienne, Pieces of Eight

To wit:

My real-life Mad Scotsman, shaman

and soul doctor Ronnie McPhail

from Edinburgh; Sande Claw from Orlando,

whose fondness for pirate tales and excellent

sewing skills made her a perfect She-Smee; and

to Fred Wolf, brother, bother, and catalyst for

the whole saga. I wish it could be like this

for both of us. My first critics, Jimmy, Jill, and

Stasia, who, like the Harp Weaver’s son in Millay,

saw the web grow/And the pattern expand

and followed each exploit eagerly as my

characters told me their story.

And especially:

My Angels of Robinson Street, Eric and Michael, who

told me when my first story was published that they

liked it and wanted to see more. You poor guys had

to wait half my lifetime for this, but I think it was

worth it–and, anyway, what’re a few years in Heaven?

If buccaneers and buried gold

And all the old romance retold

Can thrill, as me they thrilled of old,

So be it–and fall on!

–Stevenson, Treasure Island

TO THE HESITATING READER

FROM THE NEW COWARDENATOR

OF DARKENDOWN:

I’ve always loved Robert Louis Stevenson’s deceptively-humble dedication to his blindingly-brilliant Louis d’or of literature, Treasure Island. With no delusion about any comparison between our respective tales, but rather being aware of the sheer weirdness of my own story, I respectfully borrow it here.

I had to write this book myself.

Deep-delved, high-wrought, in style of old–

I found not such on any shelf.

I had to write this book. Myself,

I love a tale of pirate pelf,

Dark lord, white mage, soul-questing bold:

Romance–and necromance–retold!

I had to write this book: myself.

As I thought of the way I might best tell you my experiences on this planet, I decided to use the third person so as to disappear behind my narrative.

This viewpoint also allowed me to give free rein to the wild philosophy and wacky wordplay that characterize the way its author’s mind actually works: Doom was written as an actual stream (sometimes scream!) of consciousness.

You’ll also hear some self-doubt. Back on Earth, I always disliked those tales in which people are transported to a fantastic universe and immediately begin wielding, with complete confidence, Power-capital-P that even the gods would hesitate to use. Not likely–and not only unbelievable but unlikable.

Why I, of all possible persons, was brought here I may never know, though the Ones in the White City may someday reveal that secret. But if, in this New World, I can be Brave with my three Quarter-Nators (the [none-] such people in it!), we may prove a Tempest that can all crookedness redress. Brave we were striving to be, and kind and just too; and we and my Black (or Green) Guardsman from Oz were discharging our duties well, until–earlier than had ever happened before–my Great Test came. Did I pass it?

You be the Judge.

PROLOGUE

While it is quite true that there are many mansions in the Kingdom of Heaven, such a description fits only the properties located, as it were, Up-Town. Out toward the Borders, the sur-real estate is neither mansion-ish nor heavenly. It consists, in fact, of thirteen prison colonies, of any one of which it may be said–as a dead mountain man once observed when questioned by Ouija board as to his exact location in the afterlife–Wal, if it ain’t Hell, I reckon it’d do fer that in a pinch.

These are the Ways, and their wardens, called Coordinators, are the Way-Wards.

The baker’s dozen of former mortals chosen to oversee the colonies use different techniques for rehabilitating the troubled souls in their charge, but all of them have this in common: each has undergone the same methods of behavior modification he or she employs. And because this is Heaven, the Ways lead at last–albeit, in Poe’s words, by a route obscure and lonely–to both Truth and Life.

Given that the Ways lie where they do, the influence of the Way-Wards extends both up, into the White City, and down, through the encircling Mnemonic Ocean, or Sea of Memory, and back to Earth. For the Celestial City is a vast jellyfish, sailing bright and buoyant over the fathomless depths of Space, and the Thirteen RehabOriginal Colonies are the points from which its tentacles descend into the Dark. The purpose of these feelers–or feeders–is to draw in the fish of that Sea for the City; a reverent pun runs that the most desirable is soul.

Yet lines that pull in can also pay out, eventually returning what has been taken to our world. However, the human spirits subjected to this benthic baptism do indeed suffer a sea change, and that into something internally rich–and eternally unestranged . . .

*     *     *

INTRODUCTION: THE FIERY CUP

Friday afternoon—the best time of the week anywhere, but especially on a college campus during a private lesson with a congenial professor. Make the setting a high-ceilinged office in an old building that creaked with every gust; place it at an institution with the deliciously-Gothic name of Corbiel, Place of the Raven; add the sound effects of a torrential spring storm in progress; and the atmosphere was prime for a reading of the dark fantasy poetry of Romalie de la Loup. My own last name was actually Wolf, though due to many negative associations with it from childhood, I preferred to use Adam, my middle moniker, as the end. Since discovering the work of de la Loup, though, I’d felt a secret kinship with that author. Or perhaps it would be a skin-ship, if my own tale-tellings in verse should someday prove as fell.

Well, Mistress Robin, said Doctor Sangules, steepling her long fingers beneath her chin and cocking her head to the side with that what-have-you-got-for-me look I had come to dread, what do you think of de la Loup’s ‘Dark Lord’ characters—or should I say, of their character? I mean—she shrugged and gestured with a large-ringed hand—"Dr. Jekyll; the Captain of the Wicked Witch’s Guard in The Wizard of Oz; no wonder she called her last collection Rogues’ Gallery! But are these guys really evil or not?"

I took the lid off the coffee cup I’d brought with me from the Raven’s Roost and poked my still-chilled nose into its warmth to buy a little time. But through the rising steam I could see the professor watching me with such oddly intense anticipation that, after a sip, I stopped dithering.

No, I replied carefully, I don’t think so—or if they are, they aren’t having much fun being that way. Jekyll is horrified when he realizes he’s killed a man, and the captain of the guard is just sadly nostalgic about the ‘bad old days’ when he served the Witch. So if you go by Saint Bernadette’s definition of a sinner as ‘one who loves evil,’ de la Loup’s characters don’t fit the bill.

"Or the bale?" my tutor finished with a smile. Nodding, I grinned in response. The woman punned constantly—almost as often (and as badly) as the poet we were discussing. Maybe, I thought, that was one reason why my instructor was willing to oversee my paper on that highly-regarded writer of imaginative verse.

You make a convincing case, Doctor Sangules said approvingly, and I agree with you. The theme of evil-that-isn’t is the most important one in the work of ‘The Wolf,’ but it’s never had the treatment it deserves. The professor paused for a moment; then she drew a deep breath and, as though arriving at a decision, reached into a drawer in her desk.

A moment later she laid on its top a folder—a cheap student report keeper, decorated with a picture of a howling wolf and much the worse for wear. From the back of the papers that filled this humble receptacle she drew a thin sheaf secured at one corner with a crimson clip. Even from where I sat I could see that what it held was a poem—a long one—and that the typewritten text was overscored in places by changes in a feminine hand added in red ink. An original, then, by some Ms. Wolf-in-the-Fold-er—

Wait a minute. "Of the wolf—de la Loup? An original? No.

Yes.

My tutor riffled through the poem-papers, scanning them. I noticed that her hand was trembling, but somehow I doubted that the cause was weakness from the pernicious anemia from which she had suffered for several years. When she spoke at last, it was with a studied casualness, and she did not meet my eyes.

I knew Romalie de la Loup, she began, knew her long and well—better, I may say without boasting, than anyone. The kind of thing she did in fantasy poetry—formalistic verse, with rhyme, meter, imagery, and a story line—was out of fashion before she was born, and her use of antiquated style meant she seldom got published and never earned any of the major awards in the field. Romalie had a vision, though, and no matter what it cost her— the professor smiled sadly at the recollection of her friend’s stubbornness—"she did what she felt she had to do—and that, I think, is the surest indication of the true poet.

"Fortunately, though, formal verse has come back into vogue, so her writing is finally being recognized. And a good thing, too, because her best works—the ‘Dark Lord’ portraits you’ve been examining in Rogues’ Gallery—are the equal of anything done by Smith, or Sterling, or Lovecraft. What a pity she never finished this—Doctor Sangules tapped the manuscript she held. It would have been her masterpiece."

With a flick of her wrist, she swung the packet of papers across the desk to me. I had only time to glimpse the title in boldface at the top of the first page—something about a tyrant—when the professor stood up. Reaching into her purse, she drew out a small flat box stamped with an ornate crest and from this receptacle in turn extracted a lighter and a single black-wrapped, gold-tipped cigarette. This, I knew, was a Sobranie Black Russian—a vice in which the doctor indulged with sensuous asceticism once each day, and one of the eccentricities that had made her a campus character.

"I’m going down the hall to the faculty room so I can smoke this"—she waved the cigarette—"and you can put that"—she indicated the manuscript—"into your metaphorical pipe. I think you’ll prefer privacy for reading that poem; its speaker is so shamelessly exultant about wielding his sorcery and seizing his power that I always feel. . .well. . .naked if I even look at it with anyone else in the room. And I wouldn’t read it out loud—at least not yet. Now, young Adam (or Eve), enjoy your temptation. With these cryptic instructions, my tutor swept me a sardonic bow and left the office. I couldn’t help but notice, as she moved in the long black dress that was as much her trademark as Emily Dickinson’s bridal white," how thin she’d become—she looked more than ever like one of the ravens whose numerous nests in the area had given the college its name. She must be sicker than she’s told me, I thought. Is that why she wants me to hurry my project—because she’s going to—?

Resolutely I fixed my gaze on the manuscript lying on my knee. An instant later, though, I had forgotten not only the morbid state of my advisor’s health but my surroundings and even myself. The only reality to intrude was the storm whose thunderclaps still shook the old building, and that was welcome.

The word tyrant I had noticed turned out to be part of a phrase—The Tyrant of TerraTorre was the full title of the poem, branded blackly in boldface at the head of the first page. Under it as epigraph was a quote from Byron:

That tyrant . . . was Freedom’s best and bravest friend. Below that phrase (which seemed unlikely, even given de la Loup’s fondness for villains), appeared the first manual correction. This was a quatrain, printed in a rounded, Celtic-uncial hand, and it was headed The Incantation:

Compunction, hence—Remorse, away—

The Dark must have its holiday—

Give me the face the mirrors flee—

Come, fiery Cup, and set me free!

The hair on my neck stood up. What in God’s name was this? All I could think of was the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Frodo is shown the heated Ring by Gandalf and quavers, I cannot read the fiery letters. Well, these letters were fiery, too, but instead of binding they were apparently intended to let something—loose . . .

Then Part First appeared, again in black; I read the opening line, and the spell was activated.

Part First

Hot to the heart with wrath against the Wrong

(O, it will pay this time, my Enemy!),

I seek the Tower long hid within my mind

To seize the power all dread that I possess.

Shaking with rage—and trembling with desire—

I race the stair as secret as an ear

Clear to the storm-wreathed chamber. In a trice

The age-black door is slammed, the bolts shot home,

And I pause, panting, to survey the room:

Dim, damp, and shadowed, bare but for a plinth

And thereupon a goblet filled brimful.

All is prepared, for here my will is done!

Smiling with little mirth, I reach my hands

Forth to the massy vessel, lift it high

In blasphemous communion, and intone

The morphic rune incised about its base.

Wild thunder shakes the tower, and from above

A lance of lightning pierces through the roof

To smite the unholiest Grail, which bursts to flame.

Plunging my face within the sorcerous fire,

I gulp the contents: lurid, gelid, cold.

The potion crawls down, sliming like a snail,

Strikes bottom, torches, and I shriek aloud.

My body writhes and arcs, a gale-wrenched tree,

Then straightens as the longed-for change completes.

Now I stand tall, cadaverously thin,

Hair madman long and lank, hands vulture-clawed,

Mouth viper-lipless, nose a beak, and eyes

Lit by the flames that fume from Phlegethon.

Then one last gift the goblet grants me: garb

Dead black unbroken, boots and gown and cape

And iron-nailed gauntlets, sheathing half the arm.

On one forefinger glows a ruby clot

In curious setting, like a root half-gnawed—

Jack-o’-the-Lantern’s coal that Satan gave

For light when Heaven and Hell had cast him out.

The transformation done, I seek the glass,

And, well pleased, pose and preen and stroke my robes;

But when I smile at this grim image, then

The quatrain’s curse fulfills: the pane outwarps,

Inbuckles, smokes, and melts, to strike the flags

And seek their cracks in shivering silver beads.

I am amused: I have made something fear!

My poisoned blood intoxicates like wine,

And I throw back my head in pride of power

And laugh until the stones wince in the walls.

What mad, melodramatic, magnificent wrath! As I finished the first part of the poem, I had to fight a sudden desire to burst into maniacal laughter myself. I, too, felt both poisoned and intoxicated—a hot hand seemed to be squeezing the blood from my heart into my fingertips, and they tingled as though, in another instant, they would begin to throw off sparks. Brr-r-r! I muttered, rubbing my arms briskly to restore some normalcy of sensation. Dr. S. was right—I did feel naked, but I realized it was a good naked—a sensation not merely of removing an unwanted garment but of tearing away a suffocating mask.

And I wanted more.

Part Second

Thence to the turret’s roof, the task at hand.

The storm still rages, and its ‘wildering winds

Send my cape streaming like the tempest-wrack;

And when I crook my steel-tipped talons high,

Exultingly, to call the lightnings down,

I find an anger worthy of my own.

The levin teased to tag my fingertips

Kindles the gloves in hand-of-glory flames

Wherewith I wash, like that false-gilded king

Of Serpent Mountain in Eternia.

My hands aglow with stol’n Promethean fire

I feel a god and, wanting worshipers,

Turn me to where my dwarfish servant Min

Now casts him prone upon the stony floor

(He has not far to fall, but the effect

Is gratifying to my swollen pride.)

Hail, Lord! he cries, arising, "would ye ride?

Moonshadow waits, but her impatience grows;

Best be a-faring, sir. Dark Wind—Wing—Way!"

He bows and vanishes, and where he stood

There ramps a beast that looks the Night-Mare’s dam,

Bridling and sidling hard against her chain.

Bird beak, snake head, bat wings the creature wears;

Such was the steed that bore Lord Angore

And Angmar’s Witch-king, of the Nazgul chief;

Shrowk, shantak, dragon, or pteranodon—

All these and none, but dractyl—mine alone!

Graciously, as one greets a hippogriff,

I bend my head (and even that nod comes hard),

With, "Living eclipse and troubler of men’s dreams,

Minion and mate, Moonshadow, shall we fly?"

She kneels, assenting, and I mount, my seat

Above the membranous vanes, which now unfold;

A casual gesture, and her chain is naught—

Then with a step she lifts, and we are free!

Clearing the turret’s lip in one great sweep,

She spirals upward in a widening gyre—

This falcon hears her falconer; we grow

One as a centaur. When we pass the moon,

Full, freshly washed, and brilliant with the hour,

We ‘grave a hideous scrimshaw. Scrimshaw? Nay—

Say grimshaw—ha! My laugh bursts forth again,

Moonshadow answers with a cackling cry;

Then like a thunderclap she shuts her wings—

And down we plunge to reach the night’s fell goal,

Arrowing earthward like a bolt of doom.

By now I was sweating. This whole weird saga was so close to my own darkest and most deeply-hidden fantasies that it was positively uncanny. Guiltily,

I glanced around the room, the sensation of being looked at, pinned like an insect to a specimen board by a relentless and horribly knowing gaze, coming ever stronger. I began to wonder whether de la Loup had left the poem unfinished simply because she had been unable to sustain the high burn of its intensity. But where had she gone from here?

Part Third

You who have thought me evil by this tale—

Surprise! I have fooled you, and I do that well.

I am a Murgatroyd of Ruddigore,

Kentigern called, but nicknamed Mungo, friend—

One of that witch-damned race compelled to do

A crime a day or die in agony.

So nigh to Hatheg-Kla lies TerraTorre

That Chaos gnaws its shores incessantly;

For its defense, I needs must bless my curse:

Dark fortress, dread transforming, direful flight.

Each of my people keeps a votive-lamp,

An oratorre, in image of my tower,

By kindling which they summon me at need,

And any may, of whatso rank or age.

This night the call sounds from a garth far-flung

Ultramontane to Ulthar of the Cats,

And cats are all the tale

—a tale now told, for the manuscript ended abruptly here. The breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding went out of my lungs in a rush, and I felt a mixture of annoyance and bewilderment at the unexpected turn the piece had taken. Whatever could the poet have been planning to do, after revealing the most grimly-glorious Dark Lord she’d ever created as a little man behind the curtain, another Oz-the-Humbug, frantically working a panelful of gadgets to create thunder and lightning?

The door-latch clicked, and Professor Sangules reentered the office.

Seating herself once more at her desk, she resumed the pose she had worn at the beginning of our meeting and spoke one word:

Well?

Wow! I managed lamely. But—why?

My tutor seemed amused. Why did de la Loup start what she did, or why didn’t she finish the thing?

Uh— I stammered. If this is multiple choice, I guess ‘B’.

Ill health, the doctor replied. My friend had the same disease I’ve got, did you know that? Pernicious anemia—it saps the strength like a vampire. She smiled ruefully. "I’ve always thought it ironic—or maybe that should be iron-less—that that particular sickness should strike someone whose name is the heraldic term for ‘red blood.’"

I’m sorry—I didn’t know, I responded, though without really paying attention, for my mind was still on the poem. But if I can have the answer to choice ‘A,’ I’d like that, too.

Doctor Sangules straightened in her chair, and her chin lifted proudly; she might have been preparing to deliver a verdict of grave import.

"The Tyrant of TerraTorre was to be the great statement of de la Loup’s artistic creed, that poet’s friend declared, and her most telling slap in the face of Chaos. At my puzzled look, she explained, Romalie disliked disorder in life, but she absolutely despised it in art of any kind, and especially in poetry; that’s why her own work was so highly formalistic. The professor gave a reminiscent smile. When she’d finish a sonnet, she’d arrive at my house, brandish her notebook like a grimoire, and shout her favorite quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay: ‘I will put Chaos into fourteen lines’! She felt that the act of writing engaged the forces that work to unmake our world on a personal level, and that every creative person has a duty to the universe to, as it were, stick a finger into the dike wherever a leak opens up."

What a perfect place to use her not-so-Dark-Lord, then, I commented. "No weakling could handle a job like that, but the character couldn’t be really evil, either, because Evil is Chaos—so she created this incredible fellow who looks like Sauron but acts like, well, Sarastro—"

Excellent! cried the professor, actually clapping her hands in delight at my naming of Mozart’s mystic Mason. "You really do understand this, don’t you!" she finished, and it was not a question.

In a motion nearly a leap, she rose from her chair and quickly pulled down several items from the shelves behind her desk. Within seconds, she had laid a DVD and two books on its surface facing me.

What—?

—you’ll need for your project, my tutor interrupted smoothly, then leaned forward and fixed me with a challenging stare. "Finish ‘The Tyrant.’"

But—!

—you’ll need one of those, too, though with two ‘t’s,’ to tack that cat ‘tale’ onto in Part Third, Professor Sangules finished in a tone that conveyed a serene though (I feared) dreadfully misplaced, confidence in my abilities. Then, seeing my woebegone expression, she exclaimed, Oh, great gugs and ghasts, Robin, don’t look so hopeless! I know you can do good fantasy poetry in forms, so I’d bet you started with blank verse, the way we all did—

‘We’? I was momentarily distracted from my death sentence by this odd choice of pronoun. You mean you write poetry, too?

I did—once, she answered lightly, not meeting my eyes as she aligned the materials on her desk to geometric perfection. But listen, my girl—you’ve got nothing to worry about. Now Professor Sangules leaned conspiratorially toward me, and, laying a hand on my arm, whispered, "Just get back aboard Moonshadow, take notes, and enjoy."

*     *     *

When I tumbled the contents of my backpack out onto the bed that evening, I was immediately intrigued by the DVD and the books the doctor had loaned me. The DVD was of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Ruddigore, which, I remembered, was the house-name claimed by Lord Mungo in Tyrant. Turning over its case, I began to read the plot synopsis:

"Ruddigore (‘red blood’)—like Sangules, I thought, what a coincidence—or, The Witch’s Curse," opened in 1887. This spoof on the Gothic melodramas popular at the time, with its hand-me-down hex on the unfortunate House of Murgatroyd, whose heir is doomed to commit a crime per day, remains as cheerfully chilling today as when it was first produced…"

Here, then, was one of the poet’s chief sources. Setting the DVD aside, I picked up a paperback book whose cover bore a lapidescent Faberge-egg landscape in which watchful cats ascended a stair set into the trunk of a tree. This proved to be The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft; I had been instructed to read not only the title story but also the tale called The Cats of Ulthar.

The third item, a Lovecraft tie-in, was a gaming manual containing scenarios set in a universe of that author’s called The Dreamlands. I wondered what good a role-playing guide could possibly be for my purpose; so when I bounced back onto the bed after loading the Ruddigore recording into my DVD player, and the gamer’s book slid down between the mattress and the wall, I thought no more of it at the time.

For the next few days, I subjected myself to The Witch’s Curse and sought the perilous peak of Kadath and the feline-friendly city of Ulthar. I exulted with the spectral Baronet of Ruddigore in his merrily-macabre depiction of a ghouls’ night out, mourned the disappearance of his kitten with young Menes of Ulthar, and longed with the Dreamer for the golden city denied him by the nightmarish ambassador of the Unnamable God. But how on Earth—or in Ulthar—could cursed noblemen, cats, and Chaos add up to an ending for The Tyrant of TerraTorre? At last, with my first deadline approaching, I sent a panicky message to this effect to the professor.

The next day’s email brought this reply: Robin—be sure to use all your resource materials. –M.K.S. Below this single line was a chilling postscript of one word: Hurry.

Of course—the gaming manual! Mentally belaboring myself, I reached behind the bed and pulled the book up. At random, I turned to the section headed Creatures of the Dreamlands and found the entry on cats.

Dreamlands cats, it read, come in all varieties and colors known on Earth: Manx, Siamese, Persian, etc.

How odd, I thought. Why should the strangest type of cat, the one with no tail, be listed first? Granted, I felt gratified because the Manx had always been my favorite breed, but few people shared that sentiment; and I wondered if even the cat-crazy folk of Ulthar did not think such creatures a bit unnatural.

Unnatural . . . Hold on, now. Suppose—

With rising excitement, I groped for a pen and began to scribble a rough outline on a scrap of paper.

Some Manx leave Ulthar, make way through mountains to TerraTorre, arrive at far-flung garth. This is hardscrabble farm owned by no-nonsense man, who won’t keep around animals he thinks are deformed. Farmer has daughter (c. 10 yrs. old) who loves cats. He orders her to leave them to Chaos (which is drawn by birth-blood and comes up through the ground like corrosive jelly), but she rebels and uses oratorre to call the D.L. for rescue.

Shift—align—click, like tumblers engaging in sequence, teased by the deft manipulations of a safecracker until the door to the treasure swings open!

My way was clear; now came the fun. Closing my eyes, I swung myself up before Lord Mungo onto the flying-beast—one specter haunting another—took out (figurative) parchment and quill, and, picking up where the poem left off, began to record what I saw.

This night, the call sounds from a garth far-flung,

Ultramontane to Ulthar of the Cats,

And cats are all the tale (or tailless). "Help,

Sir, help!" –the speaker is a maid of ten—

"We had some kits born in our barn yestre’en;

They’ve got no tails, and Da says they are ‘witched

And made me leave them to the Chaos-crawl;

But I crept back, and then the stuff came up,

And now I’m trapped and can’t get out! Oh, please,

Save me, Lord Friend!" Well, such a pretty plea

Seldom has stroked my ears, and then I hate

Cruelty to little ones of beast or man.

Besides, I knew the nature of the kits

The girl defended; said I beast or man?

No, rather "beast of Man," for Manx they were,

Of all felines most ancient, brave, and wise.

Her boorish sire must have a lesson—and

Here comes the tutor now. A, B, C—cat!

Gleefully, I threw down my pen (I always wrote poetry in longhand) and rubbed my hands together. Oh, this was going better than I could have hoped!

I felt sure that my instructor would agree, but I decided to err on the side of discretion and send her what I had done so far. Switching on my computer, I opened the file into which I had already typed the two-and-a-half existing sections of Tyrant and appended my own conclusion to the unfinished segment.

When I re-read the third section, the melding of old and new looked seamless–but would a certain surgeon-of-words approve my graft—or craft?

As before, my tutor’s reply arrived swiftly, in the form of a joke we shared about the similarity between the name of one of the