The wolf is coming to eat the world.<\/p>\n
There are armies marshalling. There are missiles coming, bombs being loaded, hard men prepping their weaponry for a fight.<\/p>\n
The wolf is coming to eat the world.<\/p>\n
There are children being born. There are children playing. There are children who have grown old and grey.<\/p>\n
The wolf is coming to eat the world.<\/p>\n
Starlight falls on the world, from Sirius, from Barnard\u2019s Star, from Wolf 359, and most certainly from the sun. Plants grow. The ocean surges, rises, falls. Birds sing. Animals rustle in the brush.<\/p>\n
The wolf is coming to eat the world.<\/p>\n
And because the wolf is coming; because the wolf is free \u2014<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Clean gets on a plane.<\/p>\n
He obtains a passport. He buys a ticket. He attempts to board a flight to England. He is detained by the TSA. They wish to ask him certain questions. They wish to interfere in the matters of Jeremiah Clean.<\/p>\n
After a while they cease to have such desires and Jeremiah flies.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Clean cannot help noticing, over the course of the flight, how very messy<\/em> the process is. He wants to adjust the flow of air over the wings. He reminds himself, repeatedly, that by doing so he will cause the gigantic metal box he is contained in to plummet helplessly into the sea.<\/p>\n \u201cI would survive, but \u2014<\/p>\n \u201cIt would not be so very cleanly,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n There is a baby crying two seats behind him. He silences it.<\/p>\n There is a woman a couple rows ahead of him whom he thinks might be a Muslim terrorist. There is a man sitting next to her whom Jeremiah is pretty sure is a merman who, doubtless as the result of some tawdry affair with said Muslim terrorist, has been given legs.<\/p>\n He explains these matters to the stewardess, who is dismissive.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s ridiculous,\u201d she says. \u201cSomeone has mis-explained the plot of the movie to you, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n He sighs.<\/p>\n Now there\u2019s no point in even watching<\/em> Citizen Kane.<\/p>\n He eats peanuts that have been made at a factory that also processes peanuts. He allows the clean redundancy of that to reassure him, even when it seems like the creature on the wing of the airplane might be considering tearing it apart.<\/p>\n He watches a movie. He watches another movie. He plays games. He watches the merman slip off to the bathroom to pour water over himself to keep from drying out on the long plane flight. It\u2019ll probably serve the merman right, he thinks, vaguely, when he discovers just how haunted the airplane bathroom is.<\/p>\n Jeremiah Clean is not very good at traveling. It is unnerving him. He cannot properly balance the pressure in his ears, because his heart is pure.<\/p>\n Finally he lands. He steps down onto solid ground again. His gravitas returns to him.<\/p>\n He walks through the British Isles.<\/p>\n He reaches the ruined Gulley mansion.<\/p>\n He turns his eyes towards the horizon, where he expects he\u2019ll see the wolf.<\/p>\n Instead there is an Ed.<\/p>\n Edmund is staggering across the ruins. Edmund stops in front of him. Edmund looks him up and down.<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is cleaner,\u201d says Jeremiah Clean, \u201cto say \u2018hello.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHello,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n \u201cI am looking,\u201d says Jeremiah Clean, \u201cfor a wolf.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe is,\u201d Jeremiah says, \u201cUnclean.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmund half-smiles. \u201cHe was always a very . . . furry . . . wolf. This one time, I went to put on shoes, you know, and they were completely full of loose Fenris fur.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d says Jeremiah Clean.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was exceedingly squishy.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a pause. Jeremiah Clean starts to say something.<\/p>\n \u201cSo. Squishy,\u201d<\/em> emphasizes Edmund Gulley. His eyes are white with horrified reminiscence: there is no pupil and no iris in them. Then after a while he comes back to himself, orients on Jeremiah Clean, and he shrugs.<\/p>\n Jeremiah Clean is looking at him.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have bits,\u201d Jeremiah says, \u201cof flesh and blood, a little.\u201d He gestures towards his lip. \u201cHere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLots of corpses,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cSeemed kind of, you know, a waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeremiah Clean isn\u2019t sure whether disposing of corpses by eating them is cleanly or uncleanly. So he starts to walk past Edmund. But Edmund takes his arm.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to fight the wolf?\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n \u201cSuch things as giant wolves,\u201d says Jeremiah Clean, \u201cthey oughtn\u2019t be. They make the world too brutal. Too messy. Too . . . wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI see,\u201d Edmund says, because he does.<\/p>\n And listen. Listen. This is important. He was free \u2014 ish. He\u2019d turned his back, you know. He\u2019d walked away. He\u2019d abandoned Fenris Wolf. But he doesn\u2019t let the janitor\u2019s judgment stand.<\/p>\n Edmund attacks.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean that it\u2019s good to try to eat people just because they say mean things about your wolf. You shouldn\u2019t do that. I don\u2019t mean that he has a chance or anything. He doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s Jeremiah Clean.<\/p>\n I just kind of like that he did that anyway.<\/p>\n And Jeremiah Clean pulls it from him, dusts him off, and sets him down. He leaves Edmund there, fresh and clean and smelling vaguely of a pine tree; no cannibalism in this<\/em> boy, no wolf-gold, not even the nithrid arts. Not even especially good or bad, not any longer: just Edmund Gulley, a British boy.<\/p>\n Edmund looks after him, dazed, as he walks away.<\/p>\n Edmund Gulley\u2019s heart beats a few more times.<\/p>\n It\u2019s in a box in his pocket.<\/p>\n Then it stops, pretty much for that reason, and so does he.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wolf is coming to eat the world. There are armies marshalling. There are missiles coming, bombs being loaded, hard men prepping their weaponry for a fight. The wolf is coming to eat the world. There are children being born. There are children playing. There are children who have grown old and grey. The wolf […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-6854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-21","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Icon_Wolf_v2b_noBG.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6855,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6854\/revisions\/6855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6854"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=6854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}