. . .
The little wooden boy finds the jewel of all desiring. It’s the jewel that makes the world real, instead of fiction. Real, instead of just a tale.
He holds it in his hand for a moment. He smiles at it.
Then he shrugs and he packs it away.
“That’s enough stuff!” says the wooden boy. “Time for dancing!”
He goes down under the world to make a bargain with the smith-dwarf Hans.
. . .
The little wooden boy passes a great chained gorgon. It stares at him. It recognizes him as unreal. He burns away to nothing, in the light of those eyes; there’s just a single jewel that falls and tumbles across the floor — but then it looks at the way that he isn’t there and he burns right back into being alive!
“You poor thing,” he says.
He cuts the bonds that hold it. (He has a sword that can cut anything.) Then he hurries away before it looks at him or at not-him any more.
Do you ever wonder if a great chained gorgon isn’t looking at you? I mean, if it’s looking at the not-you that isn’t not there?
Sometimes I worry about that myself.
But he doesn’t worry. He just scurries! He scurries under the centipede’s domain.
. . .
The centipede does not like little wooden boys. It writhes. It lashes about angrily. It chases him. It steps on a great Weave-wid thorn. This makes it even more angry, until the wooden boy has an idea. It’s like a wooden light bulb goes off above his head!
He spins the sword around and he cuts the thorned foot off the centipede.
This fills the heart of the centipede with joy.
It swirls around, above the Weave-wid, and it makes mushrooms. It travels left and right. It returns to its own caverns, a forgotten Aesop, in the darkness below the world.
. . .
The little wooden boy encounters the Great Gate. He stares for a moment at his reflection.
Then, with a wretched gasp, he turns his face aside.
It is not actually very hard to get through that gate, even when you are not looking. He manages it, given time.
. . .
The soldiers surround the little wooden boy as he walks the bridge.
A captain holds a pike under the little wooden boy’s chin.
“You’re a little tin soldier,” the captain judges.
“I’m wood,” says the wooden boy. “And worse, it’s catching! Run away or you’ll be just like me!”
The soldiers run, but they don’t run fast enough. Several of them turn to wood. This discommodes the wooden boy, who had believed that he was bluffing. He is solemn and thoughtful as he travels on.
. . .
(The little wooden boy’s solemn and thoughtful face.)
(It is not very different from his usual face.)
(. . . he is made of wood.)
. . .
The little wooden boy stops for a moment by the subterranean lake of Pepsi. It’s on the path from the surface to Hans’ farm.
He bends down. He drinks deeply.
For a moment he sees, beneath the liquid, down to the eyes of the lake’s chthonic god.
. . .
In Hans’ house the little wooden boy takes off his pack.
He offers Hans a selection of great treasures.
“This is a sword that can cut anything,” he says. “This is an evil prophecy. Place this stone on your forehead and you can impersonate any farm animal, no matter how ungainly. Take up this shield and you can weather any storm. This jewel is the jewel of all—”
Hans sweeps them from his table.
(It’s made of turtles.)
“Such trinkets,” Hans says, “are not for me.”
. . .
The wooden boy sighs.
“I’ll keep looking,” he says.
He gathers up his treasures. He straightens. He starts to turn away.
“What do you want?” Hans asks.
“Oh,” says the little wooden boy. “I can’t dance. I have two left feet. Well, three now, but one of them has got a thorn.”
Hans makes a gruff face.
“Can you help me?” the wooden boy asks. “Can you teach me dancing?”
But Hans just shows him a mirror.
“You’re a wooden doll!”
. . .
After that, the boy stops moving. He’s just a wooden boy, after all. They don’t actually, you know, move, or do stuff. Hans picks him up. He plays with his hands and feet.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Brygmir says.
Oh, right! She was coming over.
Hans startles. He’d entirely forgot.
“I was just making sense of things!” Hans protests, embarrassed.
She sells him tape.
(She makes tape, for his emus.)
He throws the boy in his pantry, with the food and gold.
– 2 –
O n June 30, 1908, magical jaguars in a decaying orbit around the Earth use their powers to detonate a world-smashing asteroid before it hits Tunguska.
“I miss breathing,” mourns the jaguar, Bahlum.
“It was nice,” agrees the jaguar, Yohl.
Time passes. These jaguars are rather blue.
. . .
It is October 28, 1962. The world stands ready to destroy itself; only, there are jaguars. There are magical jaguars, spinning endlessly around the Earth. They work their jaguar magic to avert the Cuban Missile Crisis.
They become angry.
“This is unfair,” growls Ixchel. She’s a jaguar concerned with justice.
“I blame the Mayans,” sighs the jaguar, Chan, who is more concerned with blame.
“If we could only,” says Bahlum. “If we could only —”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Everyone knows. They experience a moment of solidarity as they spin around the world.
This was not the life the jaguars had expected when they were young and the world was new.
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