– 1 –

I will tell you the story of Peter now.

He hung in space above the world and the scissors were screaming. They didn’t want to fall, not any longer, not once Jeremiah Clean began his work.

They were no longer a drill-bit of the wicked god’s intentions, twisting and spinning and thrusting into the Earth. They were caught in a funnel, helpless in a storm, instead, dragged down by the vortex of them to be unmade by Jeremiah Clean.

They were like a bully that shoved someone, only to discover inside that person’s shirt was a furnace that burnt their hand away. They were like a person who was teasing a tiger, only to realize that the tiger wasn’t caged. And to a certain extent, that satisfies him, makes him happy, because Peter’s always considered scissors to be the worst.

But the screaming gets to him.

He can’t help it. It gets to him. He is floating in the nothingness amidst the sheer and awful panic of the scissors-swarm, caught in its thoughts as it faces an awful death. And finally in that moment he understands the reason he was born; and hates it; but he does it anyway.

He gathers them, them as he can. He saves them, pulls them back and out, those that he can. Ten thousand pairs of scissors, and two great scissor-ships of the Fan Hoeng.

He pulls them away from the nothingness. He drags them into space with him. He begins, with a baroque and jaguar-like futility, to rotate around the Earth.

<< Chapter 24: This, In Sum

– 2 – >>