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TigerTails Radio Season 17 Episode 04 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf Join the Telegram Chat: https://t.me/+yold2C77m0I1MmM0 Visit the website at http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of any song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Credits: Opening music: He Said She Said by Hedge Haiden (Double Hedge Studios) Character art: Fitzroy Fox - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lunara-toons / https://bsky.app/profile/fitzroyfox.bsky.social Background art: Charleston Rat - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/charlestonrat / https://bsky.app/profile/charlestonrat.bsky.social If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

TigerTails Radio Season 17 Episode 05 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf Join the Telegram Chat: https://t.me/+yold2C77m0I1MmM0 Visit the website at http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of any song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Credits: Opening music: He Said She Said by Hedge Haiden (Double Hedge Studios) Character art: Fitzroy Fox - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lunara-toons / https://bsky.app/profile/fitzroyfox.bsky.social Background art: Charleston Rat - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/charlestonrat / https://bsky.app/profile/charlestonrat.bsky.social If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Arrkay has so many zines to catalogue! Keep him company while he and Tempe O'kun chat about vintage furry art and writing and the furries we meet along the way. Merch, Sweet Tees and stuff: https://culturally-fd-merchandise.creator-spring.com/ Support Culturally F'd: https://www.patreon.com/culturallyfd Listen in on TEMPO TALKS with Tempe O'Kun https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPyIK2c7mK-LpbvfDNqfcSW Check out Tempe O'Kun's books "Sixes Wild" and "Windfall" here: http://furplanet.com/shop/?affillink=YOUTU2907 Here's a playlist of his other Culturally F'd videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPS7tnT4hdJwBI-CeLF8Kb_

The folks at Furry Puppet Studio got in touch with us — and they were kind enough to send us the following: “Located in SoHo, New York, the studio designs and builds custom puppets and creatures, the soulful, hand-made kind you want to reach out and talk to. Founder and Creative Director Zack Buchman is entirely self-taught, and the work runs the full anthropomorphic spectrum: Shaggy monsters, animals of every temperament, oddball mascots, and one very memorable talking refrigerator. Clients have included Apple, Nike, Casper, and Nintendo, plus a parade of famous faces and likenesses from Jon Hamm to Missy Elliott  to Andy Cohen. Every character begins as a block of foam, carved by hand, then dressed in fabric the team sometimes produces themselves. Buchman grew up on Sesame Street, The Moomins, and old LucasArts adventure games, and you can feel that love of character in how alive these things turn out. Take a look at the menagerie at furrypuppet.com.” You heard ’em, people!

image c. 2026 Furry Puppet Studio

Witchspire is many things, but I believe it’s best summed up as a creature collecting survival adventure game, at its core. You’ll scavenge materials, craft and find equipable weapons and equipment to upgrade your character (and familiars), and level up everything along the way as you expand your exploration opportunities to nearby lands, fighting enemies and “bondable” creatures that you can recruit to your team (if you’re lucky!) Additionally, though I didn’t explore this side of the game as much, you’re able to design, construct, and decorate nearly wherever you want within the game through its building system. Through “Hearths” that you find and place within the lands, you’re able to move quickly around your chosen homes with fast travel, allowing for an impressive amount of customization when it comes to coming up with and creating your own witchy world in a functional or fantastic way. There’s also a story you discover through magical books dotted around the landscape that give you some history on what has befallen this land you magically find yourself in. The “end goal” of the campaign currently is to gather enough keys to try and enter the towering Witchspire that rises triumphantly into the sky and discover what dangers befell your friends and this universe.

A quiet lake. A coyote searching for meaning. A mysterious fox with a timeless smile. In a town that remembers what others forget, two strangers meet under summer’s fading light—and nothing will ever be the same. It is with great pleasure, and indeed Pride, that we welcome you, friends of every shape, ability, gender, and species, once again to Pride Month. Today’s story is “Jumping to Conclusions,” a story about growth and choice by Tiberius Rings and Fruitz of Fruitzberg Press, co authors of the trilogy series, Come to Dust. Read by Solomon Harries, Cuddly Badger Dad. Find more free furry audio short stories on The Voice of Dog website or a podcast service near you. https://thevoice.dog/ Merch, Sweet Tees and stuff: https://culturally-fd-merchandise.creator-spring.com/ Support Culturally F'd: https://www.patreon.com/culturallyfd Listen in on TEMPO TALKS with Tempe O'Kun https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPyIK2c7mK-LpbvfDNqfcSW Check out Tempe O'Kun's books "Sixes Wild" and "Windfall" here: http://furplanet.com/shop/?affillink=YOUTU2907 Here's a playlist of his other Culturally F'd videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIPk-itLl1jPS7tnT4hdJwBI-CeLF8Kb_

Welcome to the tri-annual Steam Next Fest list of ALL furry & animal games we could find this time around! Play as a sheep hunting, or hunt sheep! Fish to your heart's content! Run bars, be jumpscared, or try every conceivable way to jump as a frog (again!) Our staff goes through the entire list of games published in the Fest to find and list each and every one that features anthropomorphic character(s), or features animals as a focus. This time, we scoured through all 4350+ games to get to this list of 370+ games. We could've missed a couple, but we hope this is an all-encompasing list for this season's available games! Almost every one has a demo, so go have fun and wishlist the ones that pique your interest!

We have also an actively updated Furry & Animal Games List over at @GamingFurever on Twitter and  another List on @GamingFurever on Bluesky that you can follow and get constant updates for lots of indie titles with TONS of lovely furry characters! If you're a developer of any of these games, feel free to hit us up on email over on our Contact Us page! We'd love to talk to you about your development!

Previous Steam Next Fest Articles: February 2026 | October 2025 | June 2025 | February 2025 | October 2024 | June 2024 

Here's your June 2026 Steam Next Fest list (in alphabetical order):

TigerTails Radio Season 17 Episode 03 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf Join the Telegram Chat: https://t.me/+yold2C77m0I1MmM0 Visit the website at http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of any song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Credits: Opening music: He Said She Said by Hedge Haiden (Double Hedge Studios) Character art: Fitzroy Fox - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/lunara-toons / https://bsky.app/profile/fitzroyfox.bsky.social Background art: Charleston Rat - https://www.furaffinity.net/user/charlestonrat / https://bsky.app/profile/charlestonrat.bsky.social If you like what we do and wish to throw some pennies our way to support us, please consider sending a little tip our way. https://streamlabs.com/tigertailsradio/tip * Please note, tips are made to support TigerTails Radio and are assumed as made with good faith, so are therefore non-refundable. Thank you for your support and understanding.

This is a correction to statements by Tanta, volunteer handler at Mephit Furmeet and Vice Chair of forthcoming convention Anthroverse. This report presents evidence to help the community beware of leaders who abuse their positions to lie for PR.

A source for raising animal charity for PR, while looking the other way for animal abusers. (Image updated due to inaccurate tag in linked photo.)

Background of problems at Mephit Furmeet.

Furries close to Mephit Furmeet, the Tennessee convention founded in 1997, were fed up with animal sex abusers being welcome while management ignored complaints. Requests for help led to Dogpatch Press contacting the con, then reporting in October 2025 on behalf of the community and those who were ignored:

Mephit Furmeet put one of the world’s most infamous zoophiles on stage to represent the fandom.

The 2025 report features evidence of 13 years of attendance at Mephit Furmeet by animal sex abuser Charles Alexander Berry — who goes by Buck, Clunk, or Toggle for hosting a podcast called Zooier Than Thou. Toggle attended the con over 4 years after his real identity was tied to his aliases in 2021, despite an organized effort to remove his influence. Local groups took action, but Mephit Furmeet stonewalled this effort, according to sources close to the con.

Toggle was not just a random attendee. This zoophile spokesperson was a long-featured musician in official Mephit Furmeet promotion with his band Exit Mouse. He interacted face-to-face with management at many panels they ran; panels with as few as 5 attendees. His 13-year attendance was under one director with 25 years of tenure, Tyger Cowboy, who started as con chair in 2001.

Here’s where pulling threads starts to unravel a wider network across the history of the con.

September 2025 questions about Toggle sent to the con. Do you trust their answer?

Newly uncovered corruption, where open zoophiles like Toggle didn’t just attend — they were staff and directors of the con.

Investigation found a pattern under Tyger Cowboy going back to at least 2003, when public complaints emerged about his Co-Assistant Con Chair/ Programming Director, Delphinios, who openly displayed a Zeta symbol on his Livejournal profile. (Since the 1990’s zoophiles have signaled each other with the Zeta symbol.) A defense shown below now claims that this was just one old problem that was solved as soon as “proof surfaced”.

In fact, archives of the Mephit Furmeet staff page show that after Delphinios, the con kept other open zoophiles on staff for years.

This pattern has been protested since at least 2003.

Tyger Cowboy is named as a zoophile himself on a 2017 list that zoophile forum members told each other with fond familiarity.

Read the archived list to see their appreciation for Tyger Cowboy, who they said is still active and hiding it — right next to repeat child sex offender Tuskyn, the outed necro-zoosadist Gatorvent, and one named Raczoon.

Raczoon hasn’t been named until now. He was welcome on Mephit Furmeet staff for years after Delphinios, and he’s one of the reasons that this pattern can not be plausibly denied. More on this below.

DAMAGE CONTROL

Before we go deeper, let’s look at the incident that caused this new digging in June 2026.

The 2025 report about Toggle got no public response for 8 months, until criticism about Mephit Furmeet spread to a new convention, Anthroverse (whose launch date in Ohio is yet to be announced at this time.) Anthroverse shares many of the same staff, and Tanta is one of them with influence across multiple cons.

Tanta handled volunteers for Mephit Furmeet since 2021, during the years when Toggle was protested while con management ignored his face-to-face presence at their panels. Now in June 2026, Tanta is spreading a damage control defense as Vice Chair of Anthroverse.

Tanta abused her influence with 8 lies to 120 members of an Anthroverse chat.

Remember that Dogpatch Press contacted Mephit Furmeet before reporting. They had their chance to explain instead of lie:

1. Dogpatch Press didn’t publish “multiple stories” about Mephit Furmeet before now. The single prior story was part of widely investigating zoophile corruption in many places, in a 5-part series that can not be called targeted at one con.
2. After a supposed ban by Mephit Furmeet in “the early 2000’s”, they kept open zoophiles on staff like Raczoon.
3. Tanta misled about which zoophiles were supposedly banned (Toggle wasn’t there in the early 2000’s), and what they represented — Tanta failed to even read information before denying it.
4. Dogpatch Press never approached Mephit Furmeet to appear in a docuseries, and had zero interaction with Mephit Furmeet before the 2025 story.
5. A 2024 docuseries that Dogpatch Press was interviewed for, The Furry Detectives, was by AMC, not Dogpatch Press, who had no part in paying for background footage and doesn’t work for AMC. The show is not based on “an incident that was well over 10 years old”, and features international zoophile activity up to 2024 that impacts the community today.
6. Tanta lied that AMC pulled The Furry Detectives docuseries; you can go watch it now.
7. Dogpatch Press does not purchase footage or report in video form, and neither paid or received pay for agreeing to be interviewed by others (which is good journalist practice). There are zero “financial repercussions”, and the benefit of reporting goes to the community.
8. Reporting did not doxx any con directors, they put their own faces on official con media. Leaders and public figures are fair game to report.

Of all of these lies, Tanta’s creation of a supposed vendetta may be the most disturbing. That’s a DARVO tactic. Tanta is abusing public trust in her position to cover up corrupt friends and animal victims generated by zoophile networks, and point the finger back to mislead you. Tanta’s backlash is similar to the Catholic church trying to smear reporters to hide molester priests, and throw victims under the bus.

How Tanta weaponized PR

Let’s be clear about the influence and interests involved.

Tanta has zero prior personal interaction with Dogpatch Press. She doesn’t know what this news site does, where the hard work of reporting for public interest doesn’t pay or make profit for news. While Tanta accuses a personal vendetta, remember that she isn’t featured as an individual, but someone who chose a position to represent your trust in community. Tanta’s abuse of that position isn’t to protect you, it’s to protect corrupt management who don’t want accountability. This update is with love for everyone who felt injustice from the top. Your concerns won’t go unheard.

Correcting Tanta’s lies one by one — Longer version of the above.

“Dog Patch Press has been posting multiple stories about Mephit Fur Meet (MFM) and the people who run it. The information in those stories is a combination of completely incorrect, libel, partial information, and information over a decade old. To say the least, it is not credible. “

If the ONE story about activity under the SAME director from 2001-2026 is “not credible”, why lie to defend from it?

Old Information:
In the early 2000s, MFM had a staff member that was found to be visiting heinous acts upon animals. That individual was banned as soon as proof surfaced.

Mephit Furmeet’s own page shows there was no ban against zoophile staff in the early 2000’s. Delphinios, who was second-in-command to Tyger Cowboy, appears on the con staff page in 2003 and 2004. If you buy what Tanta is selling, the lack of his name on a 2005 staff list could have been some kind of ban (that they haven’t shown proof of)…

Now look at the same staff list in 2004 and 2005, during and right after the alleged removal of Delphinios (assuming he didn’t just feel like leaving.) From then to years later, they kept the open zoophile Raczoon.

Raczoon was so open since the 1990’s, that he ran a zoophile website that he frequently posted to usenet groups like alt.sex zoophilia, while his trolling raised protest across groups like alt.animals.racoons.

Raczoon ran gaming at multiple cons in the 2000’s. Furry fandom was a fraction of the size it is now. There were less than 10 American cons at the time. The staff connected closely. It was far less credible than even now to pretend he wasn’t a known zoophile.

Look again at the Mephit Furmeet staff list where Raczoon’s bio says he “founded Clan ZETA” (an online game group with records lost to time, but with similar examples existing). A Zeta reference from this source means one thing. 1+1=2: it was a group for fellow zoophiles.

The Mephit Furmeet staff list shows other members of Raczoon’s Clan ZETA as co-staff, like “Chestnut Stallion”.

Organized zoophiles infiltrated Mephit Furmeet beyond what was previously reported. This is just the first thread-pull after looking at Tyger Cowboy and Delphinios. How many more did?

Raczoon and his Clan ZETA members were on staff through 2008 until Mephit Furmeet stopped listing staff for some reason. A few years later Toggle shows up…

Risk of being open can make zoophiles go quiet, but signal each other. Remember the 2017 forum list where they named Tyger Cowboy and Raczoon?

This didn’t get old, because Raczoon posted about bestiality to Furaffinity until they took action to ban him in the 2020’s, and this all happened under Tyger Cowboy, who directs Mephit Furmeet in 2026.

Now judge the credibility of Tanta’s claim that the only problem was old, and taken care of by a ban “in the early 2000’s”.

The excuses continue:

Partially correct:

1) Due to a legal name change, that person slipped past the ban list sensor.
2) They did perform in the masquerade
3) As soon as their presence was brought to the directors, they were escorted off site and re-banned.

Tanta conflates a link to Delphinios in 2003, with separate attendance by Toggle in 2013-2025. Failing to know these were separate people undermines credibility of claiming any historical ban, AND that Toggle was banned and just slipped past. This is what it looks like when someone is making it up as she goes.

Don’t judge from denial alone. Tanta ran 8 panels at MFM 2025, and had Toggle at 4 of them face to face! Do you believe she didn’t know one who attended HALF of her panels, with 13 years of attendance and protest across the community?

Incorrect Information:
This person was not in any way a “representative” of MFM for participating in a panel event that is open to all attendees.

Tanta’s reading comprehension failed again. The 2025 Dogpatch Press headline says represented the fandom. Like Tanta is doing while abusing her position to excuse corruption. Do you think someone put on stage after featuring as a guest draw in official con media is not representing anything?

Now for the libel part:
The directors of MFM were approached by Dog Patch Press to participate in a docu-series film.

Ask Tanta to show records of any such approach by Dogpatch Press for a docuseries made in 2024. Dogpatch Press didn’t approach any convention to participate in AMC’s The Furry Detectives — and didn’t contact Mephit Furmeet for any reason until the 2025 report was caused by protest about Toggle being ignored.

Dogpatch Press was an interview subject, not a show producer. Mephit Furmeet may have been approached by independent people in 2024, but remember that TV producers don’t share inside production choices with people they interview, like journalists don’t give out sources.

Tanta has posted claims about a person named Ash who was also interviewed by AMC. Dogpatch Press has no personal affiliation to Ash, no part in Ash’s interview, no part of interaction between Ash and others, and wasn’t even informed that Ash was interviewed for The Furry Detectives until 2025. Anyone who thinks they can show otherwise is in for disappointment.

The request was denied for two reasons.
1) MFM protects the rights and identities of its attendees. Many people do not wish their families or employers to know they are furries.
2) The docu-series was based on an incident that was well over 10 years old. (See incident above)

People “do not wish their families or employers to know they are furries” when corrupt management welcomes zoophiles to represent the fandom.

The AMC docuseries doesn’t mention Toggle, Delphinios, or any incident from Mephit Furmeet reported here. It does feature a zoosadist sentenced in 2024, not 10 years ago. Tanta doesn’t even know what the show is about, and is committing rumor-mongering.

Prior to the debut of the film, MFM was notified of illegally purchased footage from MFM. Lawyers were contacted and AMC pulled the series.

AMC hasn’t pulled the series, and you can go watch it right now. Dogpatch Press had zero interaction about purchasing footage, or even knowing what footage was used until it was released.

This created a snowball effect that now has Dog Patch/Dog Patch Press seeking to cause MFM significant harm due to the financial repercussions that Dog Patch has had to face over the illegally purchased footage.

Again, Dogpatch Press had NO contact with Mephit Furmeet in 2024, NO involvement in purchasing any footage, was simply an unpaid interview subject not associated to anyone Tanta names, and has zero “financial repercussions” in the way of reporting for the community.

Dog Patch has also doxxed all 5 directors of MFM.

If anyone has questions, they may DM me or email me tanta@anthroverse.org

The 2025 Dogpatch Press report shares an image that the directors posted on the Mephit Furmeet official website. They doxxed themselves?

When Tanta accuses doxxing or libel, that’s unlawful activity. Since everything Dogpatch Press posted is backed by evidence, with first amendment journalist privilege, Tanta’s claim is itself a false and libelous accusation. A valid claim of libel could have this reporting taken down, but Tanta and those reported will not be doing that for any reason.

Anyone making libel claims is warned to beware of trying to defend them in court. The last time someone tried to sue Dogpatch Press for libel/defamation, they were sued back for lying, and lost their case and entire career with vindication for the reporting.

People who cover up should beware when there’s much more to find. Wait for it.

Update – Anthroverse Vice Chair Tanta has deleted her damage control statement after being sent the corrections. It was a dirty-delete without comment or retraction, after misleading a large amount of people waiting for the Anthroverse launch announcement.

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) June 16, 2026 at 9:45 AM

Follow the #MephitZooGate thread on Bluesky, above. This is just scratching the surface of what isn’t public yet.

For completion, here’s an example of why the community asked for independent eyes on this.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/epiqk

UPDATE: Abuse of Furry PR is a major problem in the community.

This story exists because when they can’t refute the allegations, they attack the messenger instead. Normally that kind of attack is on someone like you, a small member of the public, who has a sense of right and wrong and dares to express it, so they bully or freeze you out of the community to silence it.

The messenger isn’t usually a dedicated reporter like Dogpatch Press, who can back it up all the way to proving it in court if necessary. That doesn’t fit assumptions by leaders that community loyalty can deflect criticism about bad leadership. This type of deflection has happened over and over while investigating community corruption, with increasing reporting of it that gets results you see here.

Attacking the messenger isn’t just to manipulate loyalty. It’s also part of a long-trained reaction to bad media from decades ago, with a cultivated sense of Us Against Them. Furry fans are used to blaming “the media” before reading the facts. Even if those facts all came from inside. Remember that PR-abusers inside the community are not old, outside problems, and beware of inside leaders who you trust, who can exploit you more than media who they teach you to distrust.

Notice something different on the Anthroverse Board page?

So far reporting about #mephitzoogate resulted in deletion of false statements, but no retraction to repair the harm of the @anthroverse.org Vice Chair misleading 120+ people. The Vice Chair is removed from their Board page, but still helps run the group she misled. dogpatch.press/2026/06/16/t…

[image or embed]

— Dogpatch Press (@dogpatch.press) June 25, 2026 at 9:32 AM

Watch out for “musical chairs” games, where only titles change around to let problems blow over. When bad management is liable to abuse PR to get their way, while only giving an image of changing, it makes a minefield for trusting anyone at all, even when others do sincere action.

This could be an opportunity for unaware people at Anthroverse to dissociate from others at Mephit Furmeet, but there’s one more important point.

Tanta didn’t do PR-abuse by herself, no matter how much anyone asks you to believe it was one person’s mistake.

Tanta’s now-deleted statement alleged an attempt to purchase footage from Mephit Furmeet. That wouldn’t have been a matter for a volunteer coordinator. That claim would come from higher up. Tanta lied out of loyalty to management while relaying what she was told. This was a planned strategy to hide corruption, and it doesn’t go away by superficially removing one person’s name from a website.

Deletion of false statements and a name can be taken as a tactit admission of wrongdoing, but there has still been no full retraction to repair the damage done by collusion to mislead followers. Dogpatch Press will pursue correction until false statements are fully retracted.

There have been contacts to multiple hotels so they are informed about ongoing investigation of convention management corruption. Keep in mind there are private sources for information that goes beyond what anyone has seen yet, that can back up everything reported here and more. Those with more information are invited to get in confidential contact.

For everyone in the community who can see the evidence of PR-abuse by leaders, please demand better until it never happens again.

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, follow on Bluesky or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon. Want to get involved? Try these subreddits: r/furrydiscuss for news or r/waginheaven for the best of the community. Or send guest writing here. (Content Policy.)

Welcome to Issue 27:  Shells, Wings, and Forces of Nature

Whether protected by a hard shell or freed by flapping wings, we’re all subject to the whims of nature.  Sometimes nature fights us; sometimes it invites us to slow down and enjoy a rainy morning.  Follow these birds, crabs, and scientists as they find their way through the twisting, spiraling paths of fate.

* * *

Consuela by Anne Larsen

Singing Over Sour Remains by R.J.K. Lee

Csigák by Zary Fekete

A Siren’s Regret by E.J. LeRoy

Quantum Hermit by M. McNamara

The Girl Who Wouldn’t Be Empress by Kathryn Reilly

On the Origin of Seasons by Cailín Frankland

* * *

See you again in two months!  And as always, if you want to support Zooscape, check out our Patreon.  Also, you can pick up e-book or paperback volumes of our earlier issues, complete with an illustration for every story.

by Cailín Frankland

“As much as he hated to admit it, the cuckoo was right—he would be man-brained not to seize Summer while he had the chance, not to mention improving his chances for years to come.”

Sir Solomon Swallow wore his finest suit to the Convention—a two-tailed slate grey number that accentuated the darker tones of his feathers, with a matching top hat to mark the occasion. Slipping a delicate pair of black dress shoes over his clawed feet, he checked his reflection in the mirror of the creek. Perfect, he thought to himself smugly. Now that puffed-up Cuckoo will know I mean business.

It was not Curtis Cuckoo whom Solomon saw first when he reached the clearing, however, but the Duchess Gertrude of Nest Goose. She roosted heavily on a wooden bench seemingly constructed for the purpose, her greying feathers tucked neatly under a white linen dress and crown shielded from the midday sun with a pale pink bonnet. Her drooping eyes brightened with recognition as Solomon landed—a respectful few feet away, but well within chirping distance.

Solomon cleared his throat and called out: “Your Grace, a fine noontime, is it not? And you are looking well.”

Shuffling to her feet, Gertrude let out a chuckling honk. “I most certainly do not look well, Sir Swallow, and you know better than to say as much. I am not long for the flock, I fear, and my gaggle know it as well as I do. There have already been a fair few spats among the gander over my succession.”

“The disrespect!” Solomon squawked in indignation, trying not to let his mind flit to the ugliness that followed his own father’s death. Titles were not easily won among well-to-do gentlebirds, least of all by second broods—Solomon had never fully disclosed his path to power to the other delegates, and mercifully none had ever inquired.

“Speaking of disrespect…” Gertrude clucked disapprovingly, her gaze fixed over Solomon’s shoulder.

“Sir Swallow! Your Grace! How positively featherful you both look on this most unprecedented Convention!” Curtis Cuckoo’s cloying call echoed across the clearing, its volume ever-increasing as he hopped closer to the group. “Or have you not heard the news?”

Solomon pivoted to face the Cuckoo, finding him dressed in a deep tan trench coat and leather riding boots. A black top hat perched on his head, slightly taller than Solomon’s own. As if his presence was not insult enough!

“Count Cuckoo! Always a pleasure,” Gertrude called in response, ever the actress, “And you bring news? Glad tidings, I hope!”

Finally close enough to his colleagues to twitter, Curtis practically whistled in self-satisfaction. “I just found out the news myself, so worry not about its delay in reaching you. I suppose the pigeons just thought I ought to be the first to know!”

Solomon and Gertrude exchanged a knowing glance as Curtis continued, “Well here it is: the Robins will be represented by a new Delegate at this Convention!”

Solomon’s beak dropped wide open. “Do you mean to say,” he managed to croak in reply, “that the Reverend is no longer among his Round?”

“May he fly in open skies,” Gertrude gasped, crossing herself with weathered wingtips.

Noticing the shock on his colleagues’ faces, Curtis slightly changed his tune. “Such a tragedy, is it not? And so young too! The poor Reverend was practically a fledgling. Fortunately, his dear Rosalind hatched an egg before his passing, and the youngster has taken on his titles, including that of Delegate. He should be arriving imminently.”

“A chick?” Solomon squawked incredulously, “How could he possibly manage to—”

A loud crash interrupted his thought, making all three birds shriek in surprise. They watched in stunned silence as a thin wooden hoop rolled out of the thicket behind Solomon, slowing to stop before falling over on the grass. A young robin tumbled out of the thicket after it, tuk-tuking in excitement.

Regaining his composure, Curtis twisted his beak into a smile. “And here he comes now! My esteemed colleagues, may I introduce the new Delegate Robin, who no doubt will earn the Reverend honorific soon enough. Tell us, Master Robin, what is your given name?”

The hatchling craned his little neck to look up at the group—Curtis grinning under the brim of his top hat, Gertude peering down at him with pity in her eyes, Solomon staring in disbelief at the sheer smallness of the so-called Delegate before him—and promptly began to cry.

“Oh no, the poor chick is overwhelmed! Come here, sweetling, and sit on my bench for a moment.” Gertrude picked up the hoop and ushered the robin away from the others, cooing and coaxing with every step. Solomon whirled around to face Curtis, his coattails swishing behind him.

“What in the fresh Oven are you trying to pull here, Cuckoo? That child is not old enough for clothes, never mind a Convention.”

Curtis chortled in reply, “Oh, as if you were so attached to the Reverend and his precious reforms. Do you not see how we can use this situation to our advantage? The hatchling will go along with whatever we decide today, and the goose will do what the goose always does. With them out of the way, you and I can talk turkey. Unless you would prefer another Winter?”

Solomon shivered at the thought.

“Exactly,” Curtis trilled, then turned to address the group: “Shall we begin?”

* * *

“With the power vested in me by the Avian Administration, I call this Meeting to order,” Curtis began, pulling the Convention Bylaws from his left coat pocket. “I am Count Curtis Cuckoo, Junior Ranking Member. Delegates, please identify yourselves.”

“Sir Solomon Swallow, Delegate.”

“Duchess Gertrude of Nest Goose, Senior Ranking Member.”

The group turned to the young robin, visibly calmer and now perched on the right arm of Gertrude’s bench.

“My name is Rocky.”

Curtis jabbered on, “We are gathered here today at noontime on the Spring Equinox to conduct our Annual Draft of Nature’s Seasons, over each of which exactly one of us will preside. In accordance with tradition, our Senior Ranking Member will make the first selection, after which the order of selection will be determined by random draw. Your Grace, which Season do you select on behalf of Goosekind?”

Gertrude shuffled forward, lifting the hem of her dress to avoid tripping. Solomon caught a flash of her copper feet, gnarled under the weight of her years. She must truly not be long for the flock, Solomon thought to himself, if she can no longer wear shoes for a single day once a year.

“I, Duchess Gertrude of Nest Goose, select the Season of Autumn on behalf of Goosekind,” Gertrude announced, then added, “And quite frankly, I cannot bring myself to stand through the rest of these proceedings. I trust that you gentlebirds have things well in wingtip, so I shall take my leave.” She fixed her wizened gaze directly on Solomon, “I expect Convention Bylaws to be respected to the letter under the close supervision of Sir Swallow, in whom I place my greatest confidence.”

With that, the old goose tottered pondward, her bonneted silhouette shrinking until a particularly large tree eclipsed it entirely. Solomon stole a wary glance at Rocky Robin, now happily engaged in a game of throwing his hoop across the clearing and chasing it down before it landed.

Curtis flipped through the Bylaws to one of the Appendices, tittering to himself as he skimmed through the text, “Four-point-three, four-point-four… Here it is! Appendix C, Amendment Four-Point-Five: Any Delegate who is not in attendance for the entirety of Convention proceedings may have their rights and responsibilities rescinded by Delegation leadership. As the most senior Delegate in attendance I hereby release the Duchess and all descendants of her post as Senior Ranking Member, and assume the position in her stead.”

Solomon could not believe his ears. “Cuckoo!” he squawked, his hackles rising in indignation, “This is beyond the pale, even for you! The Duchess has done nothing but serve her gaggle with the utmost respect for all Goosekind—nay, birdkind! She is infirm, and you know as well as I do that those old Bylaws are outdated—”

“Ha!” Curtis slammed his copy of the Bylaws shut with a self-satisfied snap, “If the Bylaws are so outdated, somebirdy should have revised them. The old Goose told us herself to follow them to the letter. And quite frankly, I could not give the slightest hoot about her physical condition. If she cannot meet the basic requirement to attend the entirety of the Convention, she is unfit to serve and should have retired several Seasons ago.”

“But you cannot possibly—”

“I can, and I just did. You would do well to stop spitting feathers about it, Solomon, and accept my congratulations. You are the new Junior Ranking Member. Or would you rather the post go to…”

Both birds looked over to Rocky, now making a tightrope of the narrow back of Gertrude’s wooden bench.

“Yes, I thought not,” Curtis cawed, “And now that you and I are the Ranking Members of this Delegation, I have a proposition for you.”

“There is no way in Oven that I would be man-brained enough to endorse a proposition of yours, Cuckoo.”

“On the contrary, Solomon. You would be man-brained not to endorse it. As Senior Ranking Member, I hereby move to amend the Season selection order such that all selections are made in order of seniority. And in a show of good faith, I shall make my intentions clear. Should the Junior Ranking Member second my proposition, I plan to select the Season of Spring on behalf of Cuckookind.”

For the third time in a matter of minutes, Solomon felt his bill gape wide open. “You would give me Summer?” Solomon’s memory of his last Summer fluttered before him—sun-kissed feathers floating on the June breeze, long July days dissolving in the slow simmer of August. How long had it been? His bones hardly remembered the warmth of an evening sun—his beak ached for the crunch of a damselfly against the snap of his jaw. Why would the cuckoo offer him such a prize?

“Summer is of no interest to me, Swallow,” Curtis warbled on, as if reading Solomon’s mind, “Our kind can only take so much heat. And the humidity! The air practically sticks to my feathers—I can hardly get anything done. I far prefer Spring.”

“But you chose Summer last year!”

“Only to ensure that upstart robin would not have it. Now with him out of the way and no Goose grousing on about tradition, I see no need to act like Summer is a three-horse race when I can guarantee myself Spring and secure an alliance with you, Sir Swallow. So, the question remains,” Curtis cawed, “Will you second my motion?”

Solomon gulped. As much as he hated to admit it, the cuckoo was right—he would be man-brained not to seize Summer while he had the chance, not to mention improving his chances for years to come. Shaking the seeds of doubt from his wings, he cleared his throat.

“I second your motion, Count Cuckoo.”

Curtis let out a trill of sheer glee. “Well, there is hardly a need to vote with a Delegation of three. Motion carried!”

* * *

With the formalities concluded, Solomon began fanning out his wings for the flight home—they always ended up crushed under the silk of his suit, making him slightly less aerodynamic and much less comfortable in transit. His dress shoes were starting to pinch now, his three front-facing toes forced together at unnatural angles and the back-facing one bent upside-down and tucked underneath just to fit. He looked across the clearing at Rocky Robin, now attempting to wrench his precious wooden hoop out of a nearby tree branch, and felt a pang of jealousy at his nakedness, his indifference to the outcome of proceedings.

Adjusting his top hat, he called in Curtis’s general direction, “Are we adjourned?”

“Almost,” Curtis replied, “I just have one last motion to propose if you would care to second it. A matter of procedure, more than anything else.”

“Fine,” Solomon chirped back absentmindedly, his mind already on the boiled beetle broth waiting for him back at his nest, “Propose away.”

Curtis pulled out his copy of the Convention Bylaws again, opening it to the very last page. “Appendix F. Amendment Two-Point-Five. Following the first Draft under new leadership, the Senior Ranking Member may call a vote to abolish the Annual Draft of Nature’s Seasons, disband the Convention of Delegates, and make the newly selected Season allocations permanent.”

“You want to WHAT?” Solomon squawked, all thoughts of beetle broth banished from his mind in a flurry of pure panic. “There is no way the Bylaws permit such a thing.”

“Read it for yourself, if you wish.” Curtis feathered the papers over to Solomon. The pages were well-worn, folded at the corners with passages underlined and circled. Finding Appendix F, Solomon let his eyes drift down the page, hoping that he would not find—

There it was. Amendment 2.5: Following the first Draft under new leadership, the Senior Ranking Member may call a vote to abolish the Annual Draft of Nature’s Seasons, disband the Convention of Delegates, and make the newly selected Season allocations permanent.

Solomon shoved the Bylaws back into Curtis’s wingtips, trying to ignore the way his beak quivered as he piped back up, “Well, there is no way in Oven I will second your motion.”

Curtis widened his eyes in a mockery of surprise, “And why is that, pray tell?”

“Because the Draft is about fairness,” Solomon cried back, puffing up his chest in rage, “To give all birdkind a chance at all four Seasons, to promote balance and harmony across species! As much as I personally would love to preside over Summer every year, and never face another Winter, that would simply be unfair to any other flock who covets it. I, unlike you and your power-hungry Cuckoos, am a bird of principles, so you can consider your little coup a dead duck.”

Curtis smirked, “I thought as much. Fortunately for me, you are not the only Delegate in attendance with the power to second my motion.”

He hopped across the clearing to young Rocky Robin, still chirruping to himself at the foot of the tree where his hoop remained suspended among the branches. In one fell swoop, he dislodged the toy from its resting place and let it fall to the ground, much to the chick’s delight.

“There we are, young Rocky,” Curtis cooed softly, “What a beautiful hoop it is too. You must be a very good birdy.”

Rocky nodded his bill up and down emphatically.

Curtis continued, “Let me ask you a question, son. Do you like berries?”

The chick’s beak broke into a grin, “I love berries!”

“Well, your Uncle Curtis is trying to get more berries for you and your Robin friends. Would you like to help Uncle Curtis?”

* * *

Solomon, mad as a wet hen and chattering furiously to himself under his breath, was once again dusting off his coat in preparation to fly home when he felt Curtis’s wing on his back.

“Cheer up, Sir Swallow,” Curtis warbled in his ear, the stench of caterpillar guts heavy on his breath, “Thanks to me, you are a hero for your kind today. And you never know—this whole endless Summer situation could smooth some ruffled feathers back home.”

With a wink and flutter of feathers, the Cuckoo was gone.

Solomon shook his whole body, stretching out his full wingspan in preparation for flight. That sorry excuse for a bird, he thought to himself, gradually lifting his dress shoes off the grass with each beat of his feathers. Thankfully I can tell the stand that I had no part in his machinations, even opposed them on the record. And the Cuckoo was right about one thing, after all. For securing Summer permanently on behalf of his species, Sir Solomon Swallow certainly was flying home a hero.

Solomon did not look back down as he left the clearing—not at old Gertrude’s bench shrinking beneath his growing height, nor at the flowering trees carpeting the forest floor. He certainly did not look at young Rocky Robin, still chirruping merrily as he played alone in the clearing. The young bird’s song rang clear through the early afternoon breeze—its notes sweet with hope for berries, its singer blissfully unaware of his whole world undone.

 

* * *

About the Author

Cailín Frankland (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their literary criticism has appeared in The First Line Literary Magazine, their poetry has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, and their flash fiction has appeared in Flash Frog Magazine (nominated for Best Microfiction), Black Hare Press’s Dark Moments series, and My Galvanized Friend. They live with their spouse, two old lady cats, a rotating cast of foster animals, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on X as @cailin_sm.

by Kathryn Reilly

“Possibility lit every nerve in Min’s body as she left her village’s boundaries and really looked at the vast country streaming by them.”

Two ancient eyes watched the girl from deep beneath the watery depths. Being an immortal creature came with some benefits including absolutely perfect eyesight, but that didn’t alleviate boredom. It watched as she came to the river, sometimes bringing scraps for the fish and turtles, sometimes bringing flowers and releasing them to gently float away from the shore, sometimes planting native plants helping the insects and birds and mammals thrive, sometimes just bringing a book and dipping her feet as she turned the page. Those were his favorite days because her toes were painted in the colors of his scales and they sparkled when the sun shone just so through the slowly moving waters. Once, he moved close enough that the bare pad of her foot rubbed against the top of his smooth, rock-like nose and it tickled. But she was always alone. Most days she visited the river for hours.

It’s her, the magic sang, swirling through his blood, she’s the one.

There hasn’t been one in centuries, he thought back. And never a girl. A girl cannot be an emperor. I’ve waited hundreds and hundreds of years. She’s young and female and you have never chosen such a youngling.

The world is changing, the magic whispered back. It’s her. She’s the one.

So the longma trusted, and watched, and waited.

It rained for the next week, and the girl stayed away. He missed her and her rainbow toes and in passing wondered what evolutionary function brightly-colored toes served. The magic buzzed throughout the longma’s being, dragon scales vibrating, anxious to anoint the girl and spark the greatness she would wield. Anything that possesses magic knows better than to argue with it. So the longma waited until the girl appeared again.

On a Wednesday afternoon, the clouds cleared and the sun shone brightly, illuminating the rich variegated grasses near the water’s edge. Wildflowers bloomed profusely after the rains, stretching towards the sky, scenting the air. Finally she appeared, walking slowly, selecting a path among the flowers, carefully placing her steps among the plants to avoid harming them. Her hands brushed the grasses and she bent to smell the hip-height flowers, smiling. Reaching the river’s edge, she opened her backpack, removing bits of food, and tossed them into the river to feed the hungry fish. The longma shook out his body under the water and took a deep breath.

Then he ascended from the Yellow River’s depths as he had centuries ago to stand before the greatest of Chinese emperors including Fu Xi, Shun, Yao, and Yu. Fu Xi was so old history dubbed him as a mythical emperor, but he had been real and worked hard to shepherd his young civilization into being. The longma appeared only before the most worthy, the most virtuous, the most dedicated to their people. He appeared before humans that revered the land and could help their people create and innovate and honor their ancestry. It had been so long since the longma had appeared that he knew he’d faded into myth. But as humans took to building and inventing they’d forgotten about the magic in the world and relegated it to imagination instead of reality, sidestepping their history and roots. The water began to shimmer and roll outward as his head broke the surface, and he inhaled noisily. It had been a while after all since he’d breathed the oxygen of the world above; it was dirtier than he remembered.

The Yellow River parted for him and he stood, shimmering in the afternoon light, red and yellow dragon scales, absorbing and reflecting the sun making him glow. Hooves stood still atop the water as he shook off, droplets cascading and catching the sunlight, creating millions of tiny rainbows as they fell from his scaled sides. His dragon’s head arched strongly, and he stretched his jaw wide, showing sharp, pearl-white teeth. His eyes centered on the girl standing at the water’s edge in soaked sneakers. The river’s creatures swarmed beneath him, gathering and undulating the water so it lapped at his crystalline hooves. Northern bronze gudgeon and yellow river catfish whose fanlike fins sliced through the silt-rich waters swam in schools beneath him. For a moment, sadness descended upon the longma as he looked for fish no longer living in his river. Absent were the long silvery-gray paddlefish which once turned lazy circles, sliding their twenty-foot bodies seamlessly among the smaller fish. Two hundred million years they’d lived in this river, yet couldn’t survive its growing pollution. Being immortal meant burying nearly every friend he’d ever made, and after so many millennia, carrying their memories and their names with him was a boundless burden. He was tired of saying goodbye not just to his friends, but entire species he’d known since he’d come into being.

Shaking his mane again, he realized he’d been rudely staring at the girl, erroneously placing her species’ failings at her feet. So he smiled a toothy grin, took a step forward on the water and simply said, “Hello” (he’d learned it was best to begin simply when appearing to humans).

“Hello,” she returned, eyes roaming over his glowing, scaled form and taking a step backwards. “What are you?”

Snorting, he replied, “I’m a longma. My appearance is quite auspicious, you know. I come before the worthy, those meant to rule and bring prosperity upon the land. The Yellow River is the cradle of our culture and civilization; the ancient emperors and I worked together to make it so. Confucius used to come to the water and ask me to come up, but I never did help him. He did okay in the end though. He wasn’t as worthy as you, according to the magic. I’m here to make you Empress of all China.”

“Oh! Well, thank you, but no thank you then. I’m not sure I’d like to be an Empress of all China. I’m just focused on doing well in school right now so in two years I can attend university; I want to graduate in four years with dual degrees in microbiology and ecology. I’d like to be an environmental scientist and save the rivers, starting with this one. There are entire worlds we can’t see with the naked eye you know.”

“A surely noble pursuit. But think of what you could accomplish as Empress.”

“I don’t wish to be rude, but we don’t have emperors or empresses anymore. Puyi was the last emperor of China, and I learned in school he wasn’t a very good one. He ended up in prison as a war criminal for ten years before he was released. We read excerpts from his book. He seemed a little sorry for what he did. He died in 1967. China abolished its monarchy in the early 1900s, so, technically, I don’t think I can be an Empress,” the girl stated softly and smiled to ease the blow.

Roles reversed, the longma now stared at her silently considering this information, feeling quite lost; how could China not have a royal leader? He stamped his foot and looked inward, seeking the magic. She can’t be an Empress, he thought to the magic, the world doesn’t have them anymore.

She may not be an Empress in title, the magic returned, but she will lead the people and heal the world and be magnificent. She will be a scientist and solve problems and magic will show her the way. She will be the bridge of our worlds; she will believe and others will believe. Show her the map.

The longma walked slowly towards her, watching her closely. By this point, the emperors he’d appeared to had fallen to their knees, arms outstretched reverently, and he would lower his head and offer a blessing over them. But the girl stood, clearly in thought but not afraid.

“I’m Min,” she shared.

“I’m a longma.”

“But don’t you have a name?”

“No. I’ve always appeared and people called me Great Longma or The Auspicious One.”

“Would you like one?”

“A name? I’m not sure. Do you think I need one?”

“Only if you’d like one.” He considered that a moment and filed it away for contemplation later.

“I’d like to show you the map. It’s on my back. If you touch it, it will reveal where you need to go in order to discover your destiny, how to help the land and its people. I will take you to each place the map requests as long as it lays along the river and its tributaries. For those places beyond the river, I will gift you a scale that will guide you to them. It is different for all who see it. It’s not so much a quest but a guide. Each destination will offer you something: tools, wisdom, a skill, a lesson, a truth.”

Stepping forward, Min brushed along the smooth scales on his back. Her hands left trails of warmth over each one and he felt the map materialize, rearranging the atoms above his flank. A shimmering, richly colored, 3-D map appeared; while Min looked at it, he saw it through his mind’s eye and let out a surprised snort, complete with mini fire streams.

“What is it?” Min asked.

After a long pause, the longma replied. “It’s not a map of your world. It’s a map more so of mine. It’s not recommending places in your world to visit to recover ore or find scrolls or discover ruins or create or do new things. See the purple mark? That’s the home of the longgui, the dragon turtle, way at the top of the Bayan Har mountains; they love the way the clouds up there tickle their shell. And the green mark? That’s where the last of the Qilin reside in what remains of the Huang He forests; nearly all forests are gone, cut down for agriculture, but the Qilin reside in a small, magical forested part that remains. The red dot marks the home of the Tianma; he hides in a tributary off the Yellow River nestled in a copse of trees. The heavenly horse followed a wandering star down and carved out this river and its tributaries at the dawn of time. The waters flowed down from heaven to bless the land. And the orange mark is the sacred pool of the Yulong, the white dragon horse; she can tolerate more brackish water than I and makes her home at the southernmost part of the river, at the mouth of the Bohai Sea. She most enjoys riding the sea foam in the early mornings.”

Min listened attentively and caressed the edges of the map with her fingers; the edges shimmered and seemed to simultaneously recede and expand suggesting the map lacked any boundaries. A mountain range as far off as Italy rose before her with a pulsing white light buried deep within the Umbrian region. The longma inhaled a sharp breath.

“Who is it?” Min asked.

“It’s Thyrus, the dragon of Terni. We all thought he perished at the hands of a knight of the House of Cittadini. Word reached us that the knight killed him, and carved his likeness into Terni’s coat of arms. Stars. He’s alive! And must be lonely.”

“Well, can you go and visit him?” Min asked.

“I cannot; I am tied to this river. I can travel the river and its streams, but that’s all. Magic has rules like anything else. I can whisk you to the top of the mountains and to the mouth of the sea but I am bound by the Yellow River’s waters. I can take you to the longgui if you’d like to go? All you need to do is climb upon my back.”

Min considered this for a second and climbed up, sneakers sliding along the longma’s beautiful scales. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she leaned down and nestled close. Her hands could feel the swirl of magic pulsing just beneath his skin. Comfortable, she set her mind to their unfolding adventure.

The longma soared over the water, the wind seemingly moving through them. Possibility lit every nerve in Min’s body as she left her village’s boundaries and really looked at the vast country streaming by them. He called upon the past and shared with her what had been: the once lush forests and plains and rivers teeming with fish. We could heal the land through science and magic, he thought. What could we do if we worked together? Lost in thought, the longma abruptly halted and turned, finally stopping to tap a rather large, round stone in a lake nestled at the top of the Bayan Har mountains. The stone shivered, rolled to its side and a head the size of several large dragonfruits broke the water’s smooth surface, gaze piercing the newcomers.

“Longgui, this is Min. Min, this is Longgui, the dragon turtle.”

“Hungry are you both? That must have been quite the trip,” the longgui replied.

“Quite,” Min shared, “it is a most unexpected adventure.” She reached into her pocket and took out a small lunch she’d packed for herself and divided it into three tiny portions, and offered it to the dragon horse and dragon turtle.

“Very kind, young one, thank you. And I will add fish and seaweed to the feast.” The longgui dove down, reappearing with a maw full of fish and seaweed, leading the way to the shore. “And what brings you here, to the beginning of the river?”

Min shrugged, taking off her shoes and sitting comfortably along the edge of the lake between the two until-now legendary beings. “The map,” she shared, “it brought us to you. I think that maybe I can help you.”

“Help us?” The longgui questioned, “What do we need help with?”

“Well, you’re bound to the river just as Longma is, correct? You exist within the boundaries of your protectoral area? And you care for it as best you can. Longma said he couldn’t travel to see Thyrus. Do you want to travel? Do you want to see the world beyond the river? Beyond China?”

“Is such magic possible? How can you carry a river youngling?”

“With science. But, I’d need some money. They move marine animals all the time: whales and dolphins and sharks. I’d need to buy a specialized truck. And I’d need a pump to move the water and then technically you could travel, right? Does it work like, as long as you’re touching the water you’re good? Does the water ever get old and lose its tether to you? How long can you be out of the water?”

“We’ve never left the water just as the Huli Jing never wanders far from its den. We have no way of knowing the answers to your questions. But this may help,” and the dragon turtle ambled into the water, dove, and took their time–so much time Min began to worry.

“Could you really take our river with us?” Longma wistfully asked.

“I think so. I–”

Longgui popped their head up, cheeks puffed out. Lumbering to shore, they opened their mouth, and a cascade of gold coins tumbled to the soft green grass below. “You can have as many as you need, Min. I have no need for such things but a very thankful Emperor once insisted that these gifts were valuable. I much prefer the gold of the sun to the gold of these discs.”

“Longgui, are you up for a trip? Can you meet us down the Yellow River where Longma resides? I will find a truck and a pump, and I would very much like to take you on an adventure. We will visit Thyrus first; it sounds as though he may need to see his friends,” Min smiled.

“Yes, yes. I travel slower than the longma. One week’s time and I will meet you on the plateau.”

Min climbed astride Longma, and wove her hands through his fire-colored mane. He tried to remember the last time he’d allowed someone on his back and couldn’t; it was nice. Why? he thought, why do I think it’s nice?

She trusts you, the magic whispered; she harbors no fear of you.

“Take us home,” she whispered. When they arrived, Longma stood atop the water as close to the river bank as possible.

“May I ask a question of you?”

Min nodded.

“Were you never scared or uncertain of me?”

“No!” Min laughed. “Scientists aren’t afraid of anything. They are open to all possibilities and discoveries. They may be cautious, but ultimately, they seek and protect the truth of things. I was never scared or uncertain of you. I was curious and full of wonder. Good night, Longma.” And with that, she walked home, sneakers squelching.

That night beneath the darkened waters, thanking the stars for their light, Longma lay thinking with the magic. Can I really leave the river? Can I see the world?

Perhaps, the magic replied.

What if it’s not what I expected? Longma worried.

What if it isn’t? the magic replied.

I am forgotten to them, Longma thought.

So am I, magic echoed, but perhaps not forever.

Exactly one week later, Min arrived with an enormous vehicle that the dragon horse had never seen before. He stood amid the swirling waters thinking so much metal and glass would be cold, dangerous. He stood unsure of Min’s plan and watched, as if by magic, how Min moved a lever and the device, called ‘hose,’ sucked up the river, depositing it into the truck. Then Min clambered into the water itself, and used the hose to arc the water she’d pumped into the truck back into the river so the dragon horse and dragon turtle could move themselves from the river to the truck. Once inside, the glass walls allowed them to see everything. Longma found he could stand atop this water and stand still as the truck moved; he was moving but not, which was quite a new and grand experience. Min decided the best course of action was to drive at night to avoid people. She explained that people weren’t the same as they used to be and that it was better to be undetected for a bit. So occasionally the magic kept them invisible. That didn’t matter to the beings in the movable river; with perfect eyesight they saw everything: the metal cities, the underground carriages: everything. And they shared their awe at the inventions. But they shared their sadness at the loss of the natural world and the places where so many of their kind lay hidden, sometimes buried and forgotten.

It was a long journey among winding roads and ferry boats. Min asked as many questions as she could think about the nature of magic and its workings in the natural world. Before sleeping, Min wrote everything in her notebook, puzzling out how magic and science could work together to help the world. After long conversations with her new friends, she realized that magic and science shared much in common, such as Newton’s laws.

She also added heavy vehicle mechanics to her skillset. A few times when the truck broke down, they were discovered and the humans stood in awe and humility. They recalled the stories of their people and the power of possibility. The people pledged their silence as well as their belief in a better future; embracing a new purpose, they rose each day with determination. Longma watched Min, thinking the magic rightly chose her; though she didn’t understand magic, she accepted it as he had long ago. She is the best never-empress that will ever be, Longma thought to himself.

They found Thyrus in Italy.

Over a shared meal of pasta and delectable vegetables and poached fish for Longgui, Min confided in her friends: “People,” Min shared, “really most people, have forgotten that worlds exist within worlds; they just see the world in front of them. But just as there are ecosystems on our skin, and among the leaves and roots of a tree, and flung far out into space, there are things in the world which we cannot always see yet exist. Magic, after all, is just another kind of science I think. I think you came to me because we can help the world together, if you’re ready. It won’t be quiet. It will be loud and messy and we’ll need to stand together. And some people will be scared and act poorly. But I think more will rejoice and wonder and want to atone and cherish and learn, remembering.”

Longma, Longgui, and Thyrus smiled.

Min showed the world real magic.

And the world rose up to protect it.

 

* * *

About the Author

By day, Kathryn Reilly helps students investigate words’ power; by night, she resurrects goddesses and ghosts, spinning new speculative tales. Sometimes she even tells the truth. Enjoy poetry in Shadow Atlas, A Flight of Dragons, Last Girls Club and fiction in Seaside Gothic, Bikes, the Universe, and Everything, Fish Gather to Listen, and Chthonic Matter Quarterly. Her rescue mutts hear all the stories first. When she’s not working or writing, you can find her rewilding suburban spaces. Follow at @writingkate.bsky.social

by M. McNamara

“There is a prophecy that one day, a hermit will find a shell containing the Omega Point…and he can travel to a place beyond space and time…some call it heaven, others call it the union of all things.”

I walk along the beach, on the hunt for a new shell.

The one I have now is quite acceptable, sturdy and round and adorned with attractive whorls, but it’s getting a bit small. “Time for an upgrade,” Merv had said, so here I am, wandering about at low tide. Normally I like to stay submerged in the shallows, but I’ve braved the exposed sand this afternoon in the hope of a lucky find. This is one of the perils of being a hermit crab: you must wear armour that you don’t craft yourself.

“Lucky snails,” I mutter as I trundle along. “They might be soft and shapeless, but they make good shells.”

Then I stop, because I catch sight of something nearby, a spire that juts upward from the sand like the tip of a castle tower. Right away I can tell it’s a good size, and my single-chambered heart flutters. Is it empty? Or perhaps about to be emptied, in the fading possession of a snail in its death throes? I pick up my pace, hardly noticing the nearby tide pool, until a dark shadow flits across my vision.

I go still, my eyes rotating on their stalks, searching for the source.

Then I spot it.

There, hiding behind a rock, is a bulky shadow, and my hemolymph runs cold—well, colder than normal, anyway—at the sight, because it belongs to a creature of robust carapace and massive claws, a thug of the crustacean world: a shore crab. Here is a being that can crush my house with one pinch of its claw and grind my body into goo.

Crap on a crabcake.

I hesitate then, torn between greed for the shell and fear of a one-way trip through a gastric mill, and I’m still wondering what to do when the brute scuttles out of his hiding spot. He moves so quickly, I barely have time to react before he picks me up with one powerful movement. Goodbye Merv, I think as I feel his mighty pincer break my shell, exposing my soft fleshy abdomen.

I’m about to be eaten.

I think for one moment of my happy place, the pretty beach I saw in a magazine that some careless human left behind, then I prepare for oblivion.

But today must be my lucky day, because the crab goes still. It takes me a moment to see why, because I’ve lost control of my bodily functions and I’m peeing (which comes out underneath my eyestalk and trickles down my face). But after a moment, I see it: an even bigger shadow. A human is walking down the beach, all vertebrate and bipedal and upright. This lifeform is even scarier than the crab, and my attacker panics and releases me. I fall down to the sand and lie dazed.

“Ginger! Where are you, girl?”

The human passes by, whistling, utterly oblivious to my presence, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

But it’s short-lived, because I’m in a very precarious situation.

The shore crab destroyed my shell, and I’m helpless now, vulnerable not just to predators but also to drying out. I get up as quickly as I can, heading for the spire I saw earlier. Please be empty, I think as I drag my naked abdomen along the sand. At any moment I expect the shore crab to return, but no shadow crosses my path, and then I’ve reached the shell, and I throw my body into its aperture before I can even determine if it’s empty.

But it is empty, and it’s a perfect size, and I experience a moment of giddy joy as I fit myself into its vacant chambers. Yes, I think, stretching out and hooking the little projections on the end of my tail fan into the shell’s interior. Then I take a moment to settle in, to feel the texture and weight of my new home.

And that’s when I notice something odd.

An irregularity on the exterior of the shell, a set of grooves near the aperture that were not put there by nature…I run my claws over them, wondering what they are. Human letters, I think; the hairless apes are always carving runes into the sand. Merv would know, and I’m just wondering where to find him—did he go to the boardwalk to scavenge human scraps?—when I notice something else that’s a bit odd.

There, just on the end of my tail fan, I detect the presence of cool liquid, as if a few drops of seawater have pooled inside the shell. I wiggle about, trying to shift them around, but they don’t move.

Instead, they begin to fizz.

It’s a very weird sensation—like I’m sitting in the froth that hisses on the sand after a wave crashes. I go still, wondering if I’m imagining it, but the fizzing grows more intense, to the point where I think some prankster poured soda into my shell. I look nervously back at my house, expecting something to explode—but that’s not what happens.

Instead, a single black bubble emerges from the tip of my shell.

I stare at the floating sphere in dismay—nobody wants bubbles coming out of their butt—but to make things worse, the blob is utterly dark; like it’s not a bubble of something, but a bubble of nothing. One by one, more bubbles appear, and now my rear end is really going to town, and I’m so distracted that I don’t notice the shore crab until it’s right behind me. Once again I am gripped by a powerful claw and lifted from the ground, and I feel the same sense of imminent doom as I behold the hungry eyes of the crab, and then a particularly large bubble emerges from my shell, so big that it envelops me, and it’s like I walked into a sea cave at midnight, and everything goes dark, and disappears.

* * *

I wake to the sound of water lapping against me.

I open my eyes. A long beach stretches before me, much different than the one I came from. For one thing, the sand here is smooth and fine, not coarse and brown, and I can’t see a rock or a clump of seaweed anywhere. The landscape above the waterline is different, too—flatter and greener, with different vegetation. As I take a breath, I realise it’s much warmer, the air heavy with the perfume of some flower wafting on the breeze.

I stand up, try to get my bearings. The sun has only recently crested the horizon, and it shines over a tranquil stretch of clear blue water, and I have a weird sense I’ve been here before.

Then I know why—I’m in my happy place! This beach looks just like the picture in the magazine. “A tropical resort,” Merv had said when I showed him, “a place far away from here.”

I’d stared at the scrap of glossy paper with surprise. “How do you know it’s far away?”

“The palm trees. Those don’t grow here. And no,” he’d added, “it’s too far away to walk there.”

So, I had resigned myself to never seeing the place, but somehow here I am. Merv said humans got there by taking planes that flew like birds, so how had I done it?

The bubbles.

It seems odd, but the more I consider it, the more convinced I become—I’d thought of this place as the crab was about to eat me, so the bubble took me here. Either that, I think, or I’m dreaming. Or maybe dead.

But whatever the reason, I’m here now, and I decide to enjoy myself. I stroll along, savouring the sweet air, the open horizon. No shore crabs can sneak up on me here! I wave my antennae, sniffing the breeze, trying to detect the odour of something I might be able to eat, but the only things I can smell are the tropical flowers.

Then I get a strange feeling.

Something is watching me.

I spin about. The beach stretches to either side, a sparkling white expanse without a creature in sight—the picture of serenity. But the sense persists, and I’m just about to groom my eyes with my maxillipeds when I hear it: the whoosh of wings, the whistling of feathered death from above. In sudden fear I tuck myself away and roll down the beach, narrowly missing the gull that was about to snatch me in its beak. It squawks in rage, its downdraft sending me sideways, and I decide that the exposed sand doesn’t seem so idyllic after all. Better to hang in the shallows, I think as I let myself roll faster and faster. When I hit the water, the incoming tide slows me down, and I emerge from my shell and scuttle away. I don’t stop until I am several feet deep, completely immersed in the cool embrace of the tropical sea.

“Hello, little hermit!”

I turn at the sound of the greeting. A few small fish are darting about near the surface, and they call out a message with their high-pitched voices, but the dialect here is strange and I can’t decipher it. Something about welcoming me with open arms, perhaps? They are gone before I can reply, flashing like jewels, and I wonder what they meant as they disappear. I can still detect their scales from a long way off—the water here is much clearer than the turbid shallows at home, unsullied by scraps of seaweed or floating debris. The only things I can see are the dancing shadows of the waves reflected on the clear sandy bottom.

I trundle along then, on the lookout for other hermits, wondering what my tropical brethren would look like, lost in a reverie until something floats past. I glance up, but it’s gone, too quick for me to see it. No matter, I think, but then I see another object float past, and this time I get a good look. It’s thin and pale, almost like a broken piece of a crab carapace…

Suddenly I stumble. I’ve tripped over a fragment of coral, and I slow down for a moment, observing my surroundings. The sandy bottom has been replaced by the edge of a rocky reef, and here, for the first time, is a multitude of life. A nearby scallop watches me with its many eyes before snapping shut; a shrimp dances over a hovering wrasse, cleaning it of parasites; a school of parrotfish swims over the crest and begins munching on coral heads.

Time to find a place to hide.

I examine a set of rocks to my left, which seems promising, but reject them a moment later; the black crevice at their base gives me a bad feeling. No, thank you, I think, hurrying forward, because I have a sense that the crevice isn’t empty, and I don’t want to know what’s inside. The other side of the pile isn’t much better, though—once I’ve rounded it, I find myself in a field of objects, strewn about like pieces of chips left on the boardwalk, and then I get a whiff of one, and I know what they are.

The remains of a large crab.

The smell is unmistakable, and then I get visual confirmation, because I spot a fragment of a claw, the pieces of a jointed leg. There’s another, and another…that’s when I realise this is not the remains of one crab, but many. I’m standing in a crustacean graveyard.

Crap on a crabcake.

I feel a creeping dread, because these crabs are much bigger than I am, and whatever ate them is a powerful predator. Suddenly I remember the fish calling out to me, and I wonder whose arms they were referring to…

The little hairs on my claws stand up then, because I have a sense that something is very wrong. I turn back towards the rocks, but see nothing. The sense persists though, and I stare at them anyway, and that is when I spot it: a barely perceptible movement, a change in the appearance of the coral rubble, as if a piece of it is moving. I look closer and perceive a creeping tendril winding its way along the base of the crevice.

The tentacle of an octopus.

My foregut drops, because here is a formidable foe, a predator that loves eating crabs, hermit or otherwise. I turn away and scuttle off at hyperspeed (my version of it, anyway), even though I know it’s no use—I can’t outrun this enemy. An octopus is far too agile to let a hermit crab escape. Don’t look back, I think, but I can’t help it, and sure enough, my frantic glance reveals that one of the rocks has detached from the pile and is sitting right behind me. A moment later I feel a powerful coil wrap itself around my shell.

Double crap.

I panic then, because Merv told me that octopuses have beaks—like underwater hawks, but worse—and I don’t want to encounter it, and that’s when a dark blob appears in the water. For a moment I think I’ve disgraced myself, but then another one appears, and another, and I know it’s the shell doing its thing again. I wish I knew what was happening—I wish I could talk to Merv—and just as the arm pulls me towards the cephalopod’s central orifice and the beak of death, darkness swallows me up, and I disappear once more.

* * *

This time, there’s no water gently lapping on a tropical beach. Instead I see four glass walls, a plastic plant, a tiny treasure chest, and a weird-looking rock.

Crap on a crabcake.

I’m in a tank of some kind, that much is clear, but where? I walk to the edge of the nearest glass wall; beyond it is an enclosed chamber full of unfamiliar structures. They have sharp angles, nothing like the soft shapes of water-sculpted objects, and they smell of chemicals and vertebrate pheromones, and then I remember something else Merv told me.

“Sometimes humans take hermit crabs as pets, and put them into glass tubs for the rest of their lives, and feed them lettuce.”

“What’s lettuce?” I’d asked, because he’d said this last bit with considerable disdain.

“Something meant for rabbits.”

I recall that conversation now, along with the fact that I didn’t ask what rabbits were, and I feel a bit of panic as I realise I’m trapped. There’s no way out—I’m stuck here with the sand and the rock and the plant and the treasure chest. But then I remember something else: my shell. Maybe I can use it to escape—after all, it worked twice so far. I close my eyes and think of bubbles, but nothing happens.

A shape at the far end of the room creaks—a door, I think—and a human enters the chamber.

“How’s my little hermie?”

It’s a female of the species, and she comes towards me and bends over the tank until her face looms overhead, terrifying and huge. I retract into my shell, but she only chuckles.

“Are you feeling shy today? I’ve got a cure for that!”

I feel her fingers grasp onto my shell, and then I am airborne, trapped in the palm of her hand, which is warm and fleshy and throbs with a peppy mammalian heartbeat. A moment later she sets me down onto a flat wooden surface.

“You can help me study,” she says. Then she sits back and begins to read.

I don’t move. Humans, in my experience, are strange and unpredictable, and I don’t trust them—I once saw a larval biped jab a lollipop into a hermit crab shell—but this one seems absorbed in her task, so gradually I emerge. At once I feel an odd substrate beneath me, thin and dry and flimsy. “You’re on my textbook,” the girl explains as I poke my eyestalks out cautiously. But she doesn’t try to relocate me, and I sense there’s no immediate danger, so I begin to walk around. Meanwhile the girl is sitting nearby, bent over some books, her non-stalked eyes squinted in concentration. I’m just wondering if she grooms them with maxillipeds when a shrill noise bursts forth. It’s jarring and terrible, like a seabird crying out in pain, but no bird appears; instead the girl picks up a glowing object and starts to talk.

“Oh! Hey, Jo. No, I can’t now, I’m studying for my physics exam. What’s that? No, it’s pretty weird stuff, black holes and string theory. The lecturer was going on about something called the Omega Point, where the whole universe….” The girl pauses and checks her notes. “The whole universe spirals towards a singularity… It’s like some weird metaphysical cone or something that exists on the edge of time. I think he was high. Anyway, maybe we can grab a coffee tomorrow?”

The girl hangs up a few moments later, and then I hear a voice calling from downstairs, something about pizza, and she springs from her chair and runs out of the room. A moment later she runs back in, picks me up, deposits me into the tank, and runs out again.

* * *

Alone in my prison, I sit back and think. I’m not sure what to make of all this, or why I’ve been transported here, and I’m wondering how I can get back home when a voice interrupts my thoughts.

“Hello, stranger. Welcome to the tank.”

I turn around in surprise, wondering who could possibly be with me, and find myself staring at…

“Merv!” I wave my antennae in pleasure and surprise, for here is my greatest friend. “What are you doing here?”

“Pardon?” Merv steps closer to me, and I realise he was hidden behind the rock. “I’m not sure what you mean. I’ve been here for years…and I am surprised you know my name, because we’ve never met.”

“What do you mean, we’ve never met?” I flick my eyestalks in confusion. “We were just hanging out yesterday, by the dead turtle that washed up. You know, by the boardwalk. Don’t you remember?”

Merv shakes his head. “No; I’ve been in this tank all my life. I’ve never been to the beach.”

At this odd statement, I go still. What was he talking about? This was Merv, my best friend, the wisest hermit on the coast. I sit back, trying to figure out what’s going on, and as I think, he begins to walk along the perimeter of the tank.

“I cannot say much about the boardwalk, but I feel like I have travelled to many places, because Megan—that is the name of the girl— is a great reader, and she often speaks to me about her interests. And sometimes I feel as if I have been to those places.”

At this paradox, I rumble the teeth in my gastric mill. “What do you mean? You just said you’ve never left this tank.”

Merv does not reply at first. Finally he says, “Did you know that Megan is taking a course in physics? I thought it would have little appeal to me, but it’s really quite interesting. For example, some researchers think there might be more than one universe, that every choice we make generates another potential world. Have you ever thought there might be another version of yourself out there, on another beach?”

“No.” I shake my head, because the idea is ridiculous, but then I pause. “Actually, now that I think of it…maybe I do. I’ve had a pretty weird day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I just found a new shell, and something odd is happening with it. It generates these black bubbles, and they seem to suck me into another place. That’s how I got here.”

“Really?” Merv comes close to me then, sniffing and combing my shell with his mouthparts; when he detects the markings near the aperture, he goes still.

“Oh, yeah,” I say as he inspects the grooves. “I was wondering what those were. I wanted to ask you, actually. Are they letters?”

Merv is quiet for some time. Then he murmurs, “Yes.”

“What do they say?”

“I am not sure…my human is a bit rusty…but I think they spell out ‘QH.’”

“QH? What does that stand for?”

Merv does not answer. Instead he walks away; when he speaks, his voice is shaky. “By the great crab in the sky, that’s it…you’re it…”

“I’m what?”

“The quantum hermit.” He turns back to me now, his eyes wide. “There is a prophecy that one day, a hermit will find a shell containing the Omega Point…and he can travel to a place beyond space and time…some call it heaven, others call it the union of all things.”

“Really?” I look at him in doubt. “The only place this has taken me is a beach full of predators, and here.”

“Then perhaps you aren’t using it correctly.” He sits back. “If the prophecy is true, your shell is generating tiny black holes…they operate according to the laws of quantum mechanics…so to use it, you must understand physics. Here, I’ll give you the basics.”

So Merv launches onto a long explanation then, discussing particles and symmetry and tidal forces, and I pretend to listen, but really I sit back and sigh. All I want is to be at home, with my friends, and the original version of Merv…even the shore crab wouldn’t be bad, as long as he didn’t eat me. I’m lost in thought until Merv says something that catches my attention.

I put up a claw. “Wait. Can you repeat that?”

Merv looks up. “Weren’t you listening?” He sighs. “I was discussing spirals in time. They

lead to the Omega Point…the idea is that space and time collapse until they transcend the boundaries of reality. The equations are difficult to calculate, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get there eventually.”

“Spirals in time…” I repeat the words, and then I feel it again, the fizzing inside my shell, but this time it’s much stronger, and then a bubble appears, as dark and mysterious as the night sky, or perhaps the beak of an octopus, and Merv goes still, and I can see the wonder in the hexagonal facets of his eyes.

“It’s happening,” he whispers, and the floor rumbles as the bubble grows larger. First it is the size of the rock, and then it is the size of the tank, and then it leaps outward until it’s absorbed Megan’s desk and all her textbooks, and then it’s taken up the whole room, and I can’t see anymore because Merv and I tumble into another place. I blink, because this is definitely the weirdest place of all.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“Outer space,” Merv replies in awe, and I look around and see that I’m floating in a sea of nothingness. Beyond me, far out in the distance, is an endless field of stars, sparkling like sunlight on a breaking wave, while below me spins a great orb as luminous as the eye of a crab.

“A planet,” Merv whispers, “and an asteroid belt.” He waves a claw at a multitude of objects forming a ring around the planet, a variety of shapes and sizes, and they remind me of rocks lying on a beach, but when I look closer I see that they aren’t just rocks, and then I can’t hear Merv anymore, because I know we’ve reached it—the Omega Point—and I realise that it’s a universe populated by spirals in time, and the humans are so silly, because the spirals aren’t some mathematical equation, they are hermit crabs nestled in their shells, and they float gracefully in the aether, as far as the eye can see.

 

* * *

About the Author

M. McNamara has written three books and many short stories, three of which have been accepted for publication; she also won a Halloween short story competition with her piece The Haunted Library. If you would like to know more about her and her work, please visit her website, mmcnamarabooks.com.

by E.J. LeRoy

“My circuits fizzle, and my claws freeze. Now I know why the crabs I lured have not arrived at the lab.”

“Siren Crab, state your purpose.”

My claws click in response to White Coat Samuel’s order. He is the White Coat I see most often during the day, but my answer would be the same no matter who issued the command. That is my job here, to answer questions and obey the commands of any White Coat who addresses me. In return, I answer and do as I am told. My programming does not allow for asking questions of the White Coats in response. This does not bother me. What would be the point of adding these parameters to my designated functions?

“I am a solar- and hydro-powered robotic version of a female Dungeness crab designed to guide male crabs into enclosures called ‘pots’ for transportation from the ocean to the land for research purposes.” Through a combination of programming and lectures, all of the White Coats have impressed upon me the importance of this work I barely understand. I know only that it is necessary for humanity’s benefit. To be of service in this way is an honor.

“Excellent.” White Coat Samuel stuffs me into a cardboard box. He is efficient in his movements, neither rough nor gentle. When he closes the lid, I see only beige. My bland surroundings jiggle as he carries me to an unseen location. Transportation soon becomes smoother but noisier. We must be in some sort of vehicle. This is my first ride, but my data banks respond to the whooshing of traffic outside with intimate knowledge as though I have already experienced the sensation of riding in a car or truck many times. I occasionally snap my claws while waiting, a programmed response to being confined in such a small, uninteresting space. Then, the vehicle halts. Someone, presumably White Coat Samuel, carries the box again.

I attempt to stop clicking my claws to listen for clues about my location. There is a gentle roar in the background interspersed with bird calls. My claws click again, processing the information. This must be the beach, where I will soon guide the male crabs into pots for research.

The box sways and dips, suggesting a change of transportation again. Is this the research boat the White Coats have told me about so many times before our first mission? When White Coat Samuel finally releases me, my data and predictions prove correct. We are indeed on a gently rocking boat, and my view has been replaced with nothing but water—the ocean. The lab is nowhere to be seen.

White Coat Samuel sets me down on the deck. Thanks to my programming, instructions are unnecessary. Without prompting, I immediately dive into the ocean in order to perform my function. One by one, male crabs follow me into the pot that has been lowered into the sea. They do not interact with me like any of the White Coats do. Obviously, the organic crabs cannot use human language. Still, I sense a form of unspoken communication between us. Each crab I guide into the pot is interested in my presence, but they express themselves in various ways. Some boldly chase me into the pot, most likely wanting to claim me as a mate. Others approach with a degree of trepidation. A few attempt to communicate with clicking claws and intense stares. Eventually, all of them follow me.

When the pot is full, we return to the surface, clacking our claws all the while. White Coat Samuel, other White Coats, and I repeat the experiment every day for three weeks. During each mission, I study the crabs. With every research dive, my efficiency gradually gives way to curiosity. What are these crabs’ lives like when they are not being hauled away to the lab for research? Do they have a community or a culture? Surprisingly, the White Coats have not provided me with this kind of data, either in my programming or simply through verbal explanation. Perhaps I will learn more when the experiments are complete.

After almost a month of daily expeditions to the sea, I sit in my cage and wonder where all the crabs are. The males I have procured for research purposes have not yet appeared in the lab. Maybe they are in a different room. And why have only male crabs been collected for this project? Hopefully, these answers will become clear to me soon. In the meantime, I await further dives while various White Coats go about their duties, peculiar tasks that they never explain to me and that I have no liberty to ask about.

One night in the lab, White Coat Julia watches her usual detective TV show. She often does this during her designated break times. From my cage, I can easily see the screen and follow along with the story. Other than the occasional involuntary clicking of my claws, White Coat Julia seems unaware of my presence. I doubt it occurs to her that I have been studying her favorite program for weeks. The episodes that air every night follow the same formula. Someone commits a horrible crime—usually a murder—police investigate, then solve the crime; a trial ensues, and then justice is served. Tonight, White Coat Julia falls asleep as the jury announces the expected “guilty” verdict. The perpetrator is taken to jail, and then a commercial begins.

“It’s Dungeness season!” says a smiling man standing in a boat tossed by rough waters. The picture changes to an orange crab lying on a white dinner plate, a lemon wedge stuffed into one of his lifeless claws as though the creature is holding the fruit of his own will. “So, sail on down to Scrappy’s today for whole cooked Dungeness crab served with lemon and butter. These wild-caught beauties have been sustainably and robotically harvested for your pleasure, so don’t wait.” A jingle cuts off the man’s speech: “Sail on down to Scrappy’s today!”

My circuits fizzle, and my claws freeze. Now I know why the crabs I lured have not arrived at the lab. And I suddenly understand why only the males were harvested: the females must remain in the ocean to lay their eggs. Then, when their offspring hatch and grow, the process will begin again in the next season. A new generation of male crabs will be served on dinner plates at Scrappy’s, thanks to my work for the White Coats.

White Coat Julia remains asleep. Unnoticed, I unlock my cage, pry open the laboratory window, and scuttle to the ocean. At the water’s edge, I pause. Will the crabs understand what I have done? They must be intelligent enough to know that I lured dozens of their brethren to their untimely deaths. My circuits make a calculation, and my claws click as I wade into the ocean. When the water is deep enough, I dive once more and await the judgment of the sea.

 

* * *

About the Author

E.J. LeRoy is a freelance writer, poet, and aspiring novelist whose work has appeared at Submittable Content for Creatives, Transmundane Press Blog, NonBinary Review, and in several speculative fiction anthologies. LeRoy has also published the standalone novelette Fusion. Visit the author’s website at http://ejleroy.weebly.com. And, for the record, Dungeness crabs are delicious!