Pale: 5.4 - Avery

Avery

Avery perched on top of a telephone pole, watching as a man made his way down the street, surrounded by a milling mass of blood-streaked pigs and bloody-muzzled dogs.

It wasn’t her choice to be up this high, especially considering how the skeptic could be around and then what would happen?

He was bloody, with a torn pig’s face stapled to his own.  He wore a butcher’s apron over a white dress shirt with the top button undone and the sleeves rolled up, carried a cleaver in one hand, and had a piglet skewered on a stick in the other, which he waved around and smacked other pigs and dogs with to get them moving.  Sometimes the ‘scepter’ twitched, legs kicking or moving through the air as if it were trying to swim or run.

He didn’t seem to have trouble walking, despite the 20 animals that moved as a crowd, pressing in against his legs and weaving between them.

“Shhh, Snowdrop,” Avery said.  “I agree, but shhh.”

Some dogs at the rear of the man’s group had spotted her, possibly because of their verbal exchange.  They barked, almost in unison, and Snowdrop jumped.  Avery had to steady her.

The man on the ground turned, looking up at her.  The eyes behind the stapled-on pig face were wet and bloodshot.

He said something, and between the fact it was foreign and his voice was badly muffled and slurred by the fact the pig lips had been stapled to his lips, she couldn’t even guess at the language, let alone make out the words.

He waved his baby-pig scepter, and a dog broke from the pack, awkwardly climbing the telephone pole.  It huffed, losing nearly as much ground as it gained as it slid down, awkwardly trying to ascend with legs on either side.  Others milled around the base of the pole, looking up at her.  Dogs and pigs.

She took Snowdrop’s hand, and Snowdrop became an opossum, which Avery moved to her shoulder.  She could feel the needle claws dig into her cape and shirt.  She tapped her heels together, then jumped, hockey stick in hand.  To the next telephone pole, which was far enough down the street there were two houses sitting side by side between the first pole and the second.

She met the edge of the top of the next pole with the middle of her foot, and shifted her weight, arms sweeping out as she found her balance on top.  She couldn’t do the black rope thing while there were this many eyes on her.

More dogs barked, shouting the alarm.

“Zurreisuh see en fetzen!” the man howled the words.

His swarm moved, heading in her direction.

She took a second, looking around.  For the connections- she couldn’t make out her friends.  For the thread that followed the watch.  For any sign of Clementine.

Animals were wedging themselves between the stone wall and the telephone pole, claws and hooves kicking and scraping for purchase.

She tapped her heels together, preparing to jump-

Snowdrop nipped her, making a high-pitched sound.

She twisted Snowdrop’s way, still teetering forward.  She could see how the man was poised, twisting on the spot.

She hit the pole with her hockey stick.  A violent impact cracked the wood and made the stick shake violently in her hands.  It knocked her back, down, and away.

She flipped through the air once before she ‘planted’ her feet on the air, wind brushing against bare calves and shins before her feet hit the ground.  The wind cushioned the landing.

The glint of metal flashed through the darkness.  A tossed cleaver.

If she’d jumped without changing course, that could have been a dead-on impact.

“Ehssenzeit!” the man howled.

The animals moved as a mass, the ones still wedged between the pole and the wall now struggling to push their way free.

It was a lot.  Avery hurried back, swiping her hockey stick through the air.  It made them pause.

The second time, they hesitated less.

The third time, they ignored the stick, snapping and biting.  She hit the gravel back-alley road with her stick, and it exploded into dust and a spray of gravel.  Animals yelped.

The stick wouldn’t hold up to a sustained beating like this.

She bolted, using the cloud of dust and gravel as cover while she ran.  They might have heard, though, because they barked.

She brought her stick around, and held it near the flat end, then held the length of it behind her.  She tapped the back of each shoe once with the stick as she ran.

She shifted orientation, leaning forward more, then began to bound forward.  Outrunning the pigs and even the dogs.

A dog barked, lunging in from a side street.  Pigs followed.  Snowdrop shifted position, looking back, and she chanced a look.

The man with the pig face collapsed, drowning in the midst of his charging swarm.

There was a ripping sound from Avery’s right.

As she looked, she could hear the footsteps.  She brought her stick around-

It was him.  The man with the face, only it was a different pig’s skin, now, and he was naked, wearing only blood and the tattered remains of the pig’s skin.  He carried the cleaver and scepter, swinging the cleaver at her stick.

The rusty blade stuck into the wood.  He tossed the scepter aside and grabbed the stick between where her hands held it.

Snowdrop pounced, turning human, and stabbed him around the eye with her fork, her arm slung around his neck.

Avery took quick steps, her shoes still catching the wind with her enchantment, found a moment’s purchase on the ground, and used it, kicking the grass to drive her foot off the ground with a gust of wind.  She placed it firmly between the man’s legs, her foot scraping between the mass of his thighs to strike home.

She could hear him grunt, and saw the skin of his stomach and chest ripple with the impact.

Holding onto the stick, forcing him to hold it, she twisted, kicked the ground again, at an angle this time, and kicked him in the leg.

He barely seemed to notice.  Even the kick between the legs didn’t make the impact she’d hoped for.

His hot, sour breath was heavy in her face.  Snowdrop’s fork dragged against his lower eyelid and he didn’t even flinch.

He lunged forward.  She couldn’t even begin to resist, and instead found herself caught halfway between trying to keep from being bowled over and trying to get away, if she could twist to one side or find footing-

He slammed her into a wooden fence, and put her straight through it.  Wood broke and the fence fell over.

It was a crappy fence that might have fallen over on its own soon enough, but it still hurt.

“Staples!” Avery grunted.

The fork’s tines dragged against the man’s face until they hit staple, and she wriggled it, working the fork through it, prying.

The staple came free.  The man let go of the stick to slap a hand to the side of his face.

While Snowdrop worked on another, kicking at his arm to avoid him getting a hand on her, Avery hauled back on the stick.  The damaged end with the knife in it broke off, but it came free of his blood-slick grip.

She clubbed him in the side with it, stepping back as he twisted, in case he was twisting to face her.  He was still focused on Snowdrop.

“Come an’ see!” the man barked out, guttural, except it kind of sounded like one word.

Pigs lurking in the alley hopped over the broken slats and onto the fallen fence, hooves scraping.  Behind Avery, a pair of near-identical dogs prowled forward through the gap between two dilapidated houses, heads low, hackles raised.

“I have places to be!” Avery raised her voice, trying to sound tough.

He reached for Snowdrop and nearly got her.  Avery leaped forward while his attention was gone, and this time she plunged the broken end of her stick into his bare, hairy, bloody belly.  It made a sickening, wet sound, and made the sound again as she pulled it free.

The dogs and pigs swarmed in.  She hopped up, onto the rooftop of the nearby house.  Not even a second later, she lunged back down, springing sideways and down from the gutter toward him, smacking at his hand before he could grab Snowdrop.  The stick’s rune flared, and the impact made a crunching sound.

Snowdrop pried off the third or fourth staple, kicking one foot to ward off a dog that was hopping up, nipping, and fending off the one reaching hand.

As the staple came free, he stumbled back, burying his face in his hands.  Snowdrop fell, maybe out of concerns he was reaching for her hand at his throat instead of his face, and Avery hopped forward, jabbing with the broken stick to fend off a dog that might have bit her.

A pair of pigs came charging through, and she had to hop out of the way to avoid them.

Holding his stomach wounds, the man with a pig’s snout stapled into place toppled, landing on one of his animals.  It squealed and fought its way free.

“Don’t move!” Snowdrop shouted.

It took a moment for Avery to make the mental translation.  She twisted around, and saw a dog swelling, the broad-shouldered naked man crawling out of its skin, tattered fur only attached around one hip and his groin.  He had a dog’s face stapled in around his face.

He came at her before she’d fully recovered.  She hopped back, hit the corner of the house’s backyard where the fence surrounded her on two sides, and the partially collapsed fence sat to her left, giving her no escape routes.

She wasn’t good at this.  She wasn’t a fighter.  Lucy wasn’t really a fighter either, not in mindset or even enjoying the fight, but she was good at it.  Verona had done that thing, carving into the cold tears guy, showing she could handle herself in a pinch.

Avery could barely think, let alone pull out something crazy in the way of inspired moves.

Snowdrop screamed, a long, continuous sound.

She hopped straight up, ready to plant her foot on the edge of the wobbly fence, then spring over, and the man with the stapled-on dog face lunged.

He managed to grab the toe of her running shoe.  She yanked it back out of the way, and summarily fucked up her landing in the process, touching the fence with one hand and one foot, and nearly folding over the top of it, as it swayed and threatened to topple.

She swiped out with her hockey stick, and slapped him across the face.  It crunched with the impact, and his head turned a full ninety degrees.

He backhanded the stick out of her hand, then bowled forward, through the fence and through her footing.  She leaped backward, and the landing was awkward, as she nearly walked into a pig. It gnashed very human-like teeth at her.

“I don’t eat pork anymore, guy,” she told the pig, while backing up away from the bloody, masked man.

Snowdrop’s scream was ongoing.  Avery had a glimpse of her through the hole in the fence, and saw her friend backed up against a garage wall, a half-circle of dogs approaching.

She heard the scream stop, and saw Snowdrop keel over.

Avery put two fingers to her mouth, and whistled, her other hand going to her pocket.  Slip of paper, folded in half.

It was crudely done, a circle with a dot inside it, set within another circle that was interrupted with a Venus sign.  The other side was the same.

She’d put glamour inside it.  She held it overhead, and struck it like she would a match still in the matchbook, papers rubbing against each other, and rubbing against glamour.

The circular rubbing motion was the glamour-movement for lighten, and this was a refinement of what she’d done on the Forest Ribbon Trail.  A bright white flash, while she had the attention of pig, dog, and pig-dog-man.

The big guy hadn’t reacted to a runed up kick to the gross male bits.  He’d taken a runed up hockey stick to the face.  She worried the light wouldn’t work either.

But, she exhaled a shaky breath, he didn’t seem to like light either.  He stumbled forward, swiping blindly for her with broad, bloody hands.

Black rope.  She touched it while everything was blind, and crossed to Snowdrop’s side.  She touched her friend’s face, and it was warm.  She pulled an eye open with a finger, and saw it was rolled up.

“Hey, come on teammate,” Avery whispered.

A dog nearby was shaking its head, and it kept stumbling, then turning to face her, like it could almost see her while blinded.

Snowdrop was out cold.  Fainted.

“Can you at least go small?” Avery asked.

The dog huffed, fixating on her.

Avery turned Snowdrop over, grabbed the girl by the belt and the armpit, and did her best to lift her up while putting herself under Snowdrop.  Her legs strained as she stood.  Human Snowdrop was not that light.

She grabbed the fork while she was at it.

She reached into her pocket for another slip of paper- she’d had three, but it felt like one had come apart in her pocket in one of her falls or something.  She pulled it out, trying to see if there was anything she could use, and it was scrap.  Third one.

She moved back toward the gap between houses, as fast as she was able, one hand holding the slip, the other gripping the fork, knuckles pressing against the wall of the house for balance as she moved as fast as she was able while carrying sixty pounds of opossum.

“That was some fantastic forking, back there.  I’m sorry we got split up,” Avery huffed.  “I’m sorry.  You did great.”

A pig covered in wiry hair with a bad scrape along the length of its body appeared at her exit, where the gap between houses fed into a driveway.  It wasn’t a boar, or it was because a male pig was a boar, but it was still a pig,

Avery held up the paper, and activated it.  Another flash.

She used the black rope, jumping, while she was sure nobody watching could see her.  Past the pig, across the street, and into another shadowy nook.

The boar twisted, wrenched, and then split open like a really bloody hotdog in the microwave too long.  The man stood from the remains, covered in red, wearing a hairy pig’s face stapled to his own face, lips stapled to his lips, edges of the eyes stapled to his.  He turned, looking directly at her, cleaver in one hand, and a dog came up to him, bearing the ‘scepter’.

He held the scepter high, and little legs kicked.

Dogs and pigs gathered in that little alley around him.

Avery looked back behind her.  But she was tired, dogs were fast, and there was no guarantee that there weren’t more animals out there, waiting around the corner.

She set Snowdrop against the wall, using her own body to keep her from toppling over, and then pulled off her bag, removing hat and mask.  She put the fork in her pocket.

One hand at Snowdrop’s wrist, the other at Snowdrop’s thigh, she leveraged her friend so Snowdrop was across her shoulders.

Every minute she’d spent with hockey and soccer mattered, in letting her manage this.

She went against every scared part of herself that was telling her to get as far away from that man as she could, as fast as she could.  Gritting her teeth, she marched toward him.

Out into the street and streetlights.

He waved the scepter, and it made a noise.

Three dogs broke from the pack, coming right for her.

“Help!”  Avery called out.  “Help me!”

She saw someone at the screen door of their house, peering at her.

“Help,” she said.  Because she couldn’t put up a fight and she couldn’t run, not without giving up her friend.

The man at the door pushed the door open, followed immediately by his wife, girlfriend, or sister.

The dogs paused, as the number of people they were up against doubled.

“What happened?  Was that you screaming?” the woman asked.

The guy was mostly focused on the dogs.

“It was her,” Avery said.  “My friend.”

“Oh!” the guy jumped a bit.  “Didn’t even realize you were carrying someone.”

“We did a look around after we heard,” the woman said.  “We thought about calling the cops, just in case, but…”

“Do you want to come in?” the woman asked.  “Those dogs don’t look well.”

The guy helped her with Snowdrop, and they went inside the house.  It looked like other neighbors were peering around and paying attention to the dogs that were out in the street.

They deposited Snowdrop on the couch.

“Is she a homeless kid?” the man asked, standing at the screen door, watching things outside.

“She’s my friend, and she has a home,” Avery said, kneeling by the couch, checking Snowdrop.  No injuries, aside from a big bruise at one arm.

“What happened?” the woman asked.

“I was trying to catch up with someone, and they got in the way.  Feral, or dangerous or something.  Then Snowdrop and I got split up for a moment, and she screamed and passed out.”

Avery straightened, checking out the window.  The dogs were still out in the street.  A few brave souls had ventured out.  She could see a pig in the shadows by someone’s porch, burlier than she’d thought pigs could be, with teats suggesting it had been pregnant.

“Should we call someone?” the woman asked.

The guy answered, “We could wait until they move on.  What are they, hungry coyotes?  Dogs?”

“Dogs,” Avery confirmed.  “They look like strays.”

“Do you want us to call your family?” the woman asked.

The fleeting thought that she didn’t know what was up with her dad getting mad at his coworker crossed her mind.

Verona and Lucy were doing their own things.  Snowdrop was out.  Her family was… she couldn’t call her family.

It felt very, very lonely, in the moment.

“Thank you for coming to help me,” she said, her eyes fixed on Snowdrop’s unconscious face.

“Of course.  Anyone would, wouldn’t they?” the woman asked.

“I’m not sure everyone would,” Avery said, turning, and blinking a few times in quick succession.  “Thanks.”

“People are good,” the woman said, touching the cross at her throat.

The smile fell from her face.

In the other room, about five paces behind the woman, the man stood in the unlit kitchen.  Big, broad shouldered, glistening with gore, a pig’s face stapled over his own, except where staples had been pulled out at his upper left brow.  The sagging skin made one eye squint closed.  He held a rusty cleaver in one hand, and a knife he’d probably grabbed from the kitchen.

He made no noise as he stepped closer to the woman’s back, easing forward so he wouldn’t make the floor creak.

Avery chanced a peek out the window, and saw that the dogs were gathered outside.  Forming a loose ring around the place.

“Can you, um… is it possible you could give me a minute with my friend?”

“Okay,” the woman said.

“Wait, uh…” the guy said.  He leaned in close.  Avery could hear his murmur.  “Kids steal.”

“People are good,” the woman said.

“It’ll be just a few seconds,” the guy added.

Avery nodded, very quickly.

The big guy with the pig face was in the middle of another slow, noiseless step when the woman walked away, heading for the stairs.

In retrospect, she wasn’t sure what she’d have done if they’d wanted to go into the kitchen or backyard.  She wasn’t good at considering the more far-out variables like that.

And she had other concerns.

The big guy stepped into the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room.  Naked but for congealed blood and tattered skins.  The tattered skins didn’t really protect his modesty, but they were grisly and dangly in a way that made it hard to tell what was pigflesh and what was his.  That scepter was tucked into the ragged skins at his hip.  His hair was caveman-like, long and greasy and messy, and his beard leaked out around the bottom and neck of the mask.

Avery tapped her heels together, carefully stepping between him and Snowdrop.

“Ick bin nicked gut,” he said, voice soft.

She had a bit of the glamour from the leaked packet in her pocket.  Which reminded her of everything she’d been working on.

With her hockey stick gone, she didn’t have weapons.  She gripped the glamour in one hand, and with her other hand, thumbed away a bit of sweat at her temple and cheekbone.  Touching a spot where she’d given herself a checkmark.

Little marks of gold stood out against her skin.  Bullseyes and checkmarks, stamps of approval, of herself, by herself.  Smudgy signatures, to commemorate occasions.

Lucy had grumbled about the habit, some.  Verona hadn’t really ‘got’ it.  But that was okay.

Right now, it was a reminder, that she could kick ass when she needed to.  She could be a good friend.  She could make those shots she kept telling herself she was bad at.  She could be noble, and brave, and cool.

She stood straighter, facing him.  The glowing gold marks faded slowly.

He smiled, and extended his tongue as far as it could go so he could lick both his lips and the pig lips that were stapled around there.

Something hit his head with enough force that he bit his tongue.

He held something that looked like a crumpled up newspaper, except that newspaper pulsed like it was wrapped around a heart… but it was too flat and broad to be a heart.  He jammed it into the gap between pigflesh and manflesh.

There were others.  Doglick took a big bite out of the thing’s ankle.  Nat pounced onto him and tore into flesh with her piercing-riddled hand, using the grip she got from that to pounce for and grab the cleaver out of his hand.  She tumbled to the ground with a thump, then held up her trophy with a toothy grin.

“What was that?” the man called down.

Gashwad bit into the monster’s neck.  Back behind the monster, Butty, glistening with sweat, threw himself onto the floor, coasting along the floor on his own sweat like it was a slippy slide.

The monster took a step back, trying to wrench Gashwad free, and stepped onto the sweat.  He slipped, falling with a crash, and all four goblins were on him in moments.

“Stay upstairs!” Avery shouted.

“Bark,” she told Doglick.  Snowdrop had told her.

Doglick barked, and Avery gestured for him to escalate.  He took a deep breath, then uttered overlapping barks and growls, like two or more dogs were fighting.

“I’m okay, I think, but stay upstairs!” Avery called out, before launching forward.

She wasn’t the center position in soccer or hockey.  But she could assist.

She leaped in, bending down, and swiped the scepter.  With her foot, she kicked the fallen kitchen knife across the floor, out of his reach, aiming for the handle.  She skidded on Butty’s sweat until she hit the back wall of the kitchen.  The knife clattered to her right.

“Outta the way, don’t get hurt!” Gashwad growled.

“We swore!  We swore, we’d help keep you safe.”

She backed away, picking up the knife, and then slapped the scepter down on the floor.

She plunged the knife into it.  It squealed, kicking and vomiting maggots.  The man reacted, almost like he had a surge of strength, twisting his head around.  Whatever Gashwad had put in beneath his mask, it was writhing and tearing at what was beneath.  It swelled, and staples pulled free.

“Come an’ see!” he hollered.

There were dogs at the screen door of the kitchen.  Avery went to close it, but they were faster, barging their way in.  Doglick escalated the barking.

Avery backed off, then backed off more as Gashwad motioned for her to go.  He growled something at Butty, who was at the fridge, holding mayonnaise and soda.

She had help.  They had help.

It wasn’t necessarily nice, clean help, but… she didn’t feel as cornered or alone.

She tried to think, trusting them to handle this.  She needed Snowdrop small.  She had… she had the black rope, that didn’t help.  She had the enter key from Zed, which she could jam in a light socket, she had the fancy glasses that could read crowds, no help here, and she had the glamour in her pocket.

She pulled out glamour, as much as she was able to scrape it free, and gripped it in her closed fist.

Turning her head, she saw some stray, coarse white hairs.

Same trick as turning into an animal.  She bent down over Snowdrop.

Gestures for shrinking, texture, spreading out the texture once it was established.

It was easy, because this was a form Snowdrop was meant to take and had taken any number of times.

She cupped the now opossum-sized Snowdrop in her hands, and then grabbed her bag.

The man rose to his feet.  Nat and Doglick were fighting a dog and pig outside the screen door, and it meant they didn’t have much in the way of manpower.  Or goblinpower.

Just Gashwad, crawling over the man, and Butty, who held a plastic container of mayonnaise that was throbbing, frothing at the gap where lid met plastic jar.

Butty tossed the jar to Gashwad, who caught it and slammed it into the man’s mouth, giving the base of the jar a quick pat.

Which apparently set it off.  The contents detonated with an audible bang, and a froth of blood, mayonnaise, and other fluids geysered from his nose and the gap around his mouth where it didn’t form a seal around the bottle.  There was a shotgun geyser from his rear end too, but that was mostly blood, and so violent he didn’t really have a complete pelvis anymore.

Dogs and pigs made noises and dashed away, ceasing the fight.

“Go go go,” Gashwad urged.

“No no no!” Avery hissed.  “Clean that up!  These people are nice!”

“I was promised things at awakening and if you don’t clean this up they will look up the girl who’s associated with this-”

“What happened!?” the woman called down the stairs.

Doglick resumed barking, looking like he was enjoying himself.

“Clean up the mess you made,” Gashwad told the others.  Nat gave him a look, glaring.  He reiterated, “Clean, ya ratfucks!”

Avery grabbed paper towels, and swiped up the maggots and blood from the scepter as best she could with one hand.  Gashwad cleaned up blood, as did Nat, before they turned their attention to the corpse.  Butty bent over, tongue to floor, and began propelling himself forward to the bloody mayo mess.  Doglick cleaned up a bit but mostly laid down the ‘cover’ of letting the homeowners think some wild dogs were fighting in their house.

Avery didn’t look, because she wasn’t sure her stomach could take it.

“We’ll get it,” Gashwad said.  “Go.  We’ll find you.”

Out the front door.  She could see other dogs scattering, running off.  A car stopped abruptly to avoid running into one.

“Heyyy, my coolest girl,” Avery said.  “You okay?”

Snowdrop stirred, struggling, as if she needed to stretch in the right way before she could work her way to full consciousness.

She turned to a human before Avery had fully let go, and Avery transitioned from that to wrapping her in a hug.

“Yessss,” Snowdrop said, backing up a few steps post-hug, looking around.  She was wearing a dress printed with ‘The ‘sum of all fears’, the silhouette of various screaming opossum heads at the bottom border.  “No need to catch me up.”

“We’re safe.  It’s handled.  I carried you away, goblins came in the nick of time.”

“Great.  I’m glad.”

“You have my back and I’m the dumb mascot who faints when it counts and that’s cool.  I can work with that.”

“Snow,” Avery said.  “No.  Not what happened.”

“It’s okay!” Snowdrop said, clutching Avery’s wrist with two hands.  “You help me and I get a free ride and that’s our way of doing stuff.”

“You helped, Snow.  You did.  You screamed for help and I was able to get us to safety because of that.  The goblins… I don’t think they would have gone quite so above and beyond if it wasn’t for you building that rapport.”

“Okay,” Snowdrop said.  “I can live with that.  That’s enough.”

Avery put her hands to Snowdrop’s cheeks, cupping her face.  “I don’t want things to be bad between us.”

“They’re great.  We’re great.”

“You keep me sane.  I couldn’t have gotten through the first part of that without you.  I couldn’t have gotten through the second part of it like I did if it weren’t for you.  I say it and I mean it and let my words count.”

“Why are we not great, Snow?”

“Why did you translate for me, before?” Snowdrop asked.  “In the truck?”

Avery shook her head, thinking back.  “I… I don’t know how used to you Matthew and Edith are, and Lucy is tired, and it’s not that she’s dumb, like, at all.  She gets better grades than me or Verona.  But she gets frustrated, I think, with the effort, sometimes.  It doesn’t mean I don’t respect you.  That bothered you?”

“I love you, Snowdrop.  You’re the best thing this practice stuff has provided me with, and I worry I’m taking you for granted sometimes, or that…” Avery took in a deep breath.  “…I dunno.  Is it bad if you’re what you are because of me?”

“Yeah,” Snowdrop said, laconic.  “Terrible.”

“I don’t- just the fact that you’re set up to be my companion, and we forced that on you.”

“Ruined my long, healthy life.”

“I’m yours,” Snowdrop said.  “Your slave, doomed to adapt to you every moment as you grow up, you loser.”

“From the moment I’m made to the moment I die.”

“One time thing, huh?” Avery asked.

“Constant downloads of Averystuff,” Snowdrop said.

So Snowdrop had gotten the one-time information packet on everything Avery knew and everything relevant about Avery.  And that was it.

“We grow and change from that point on, huh?”

“Nah.  Not me and definitely not you.  You cowardly, uncool loser.  Which is awful. You had a real shot at being way shittier and wayyyy more uncool.”

“If we’re going to grow and possibly diverge, I’m willing to make the effort to stay close.”

“Not me.  Screw that.”

Avery smiled.  “I can’t think of a thing I’d change anything about you, Snow.”

“I’d change a lot about you.  Especially the way you pet me.  It’s so gross and clumsy.”

“Come here,” Avery said.  “Some pets, but then you gotta help me find Clementine.”

“No, no pets, no help,” Snowdrop said.  Avery extended her hand, and Snowdrop turned into an opossum.

Avery adjusted her bag, buckling it across her chest to keep it secure.  She was still holding the gross scepter in one hand, and did her best to pet Snowdrop with the end in one hand while she began jogging.

She reached a side street with nobody out and about, checked with her Sight, and then black-roped her way to another telephone pole.  She skipped forward a few times, from pole to pole, until she had a good view of the town.

Thinking over her stuff while she was wondering how to help Snowdrop had reminded her.  She did have the glasses.

The glasses were tricky.  They were subtle, and effectively replaced her Sight with another kind of Sight, that surrounded people in colorful hues, indicating emotion.  It was bad with individual people, and stronger with groups, where currents and flows became apparent.

Problem was, they were really dorky and conspicuous.  So a lot of the time, there were situations where she’d try to test them and skim a situation, only to have the people she was looking at turn their attention toward her.

She gave the scepter to Snowdrop, who made a full-bodied effort to hold onto it with her opossum form, then accessed her bag.  She donned the shades, and then looked out over the city, taking the scepter back from Snowdrop and resuming the pets, fingernails scratching skin beneath fur.

There was a lot of lime green at the edges, bleeding in with red.  Green was attention, vigilance, and focus.  Lime green was… something.

“Do you remember what lime green was to the glasses?” Avery asked.

“I think it was interest.  Was it interest?  Does that sound right?”

“Okay, yeah.  Thanks Snowdrop.”

She could see splashes of fear, including in the neighborhood she’d just vacated.  Technically ‘her’ neighborhood, but the spot was as far from her house as it was possible to get before being in a different place altogether.

There was also one dramatically colored burst near downtown, and weirdness out in the woods.

She tracked one blob of weird color and saw a woman, thin and stooped, giggling to herself.

The woman looked up at her and giggled more, covering her mouth with her hand, shoulders hunching together.

The fact the woman wasn’t freaking out seeing Avery on a telephone pole was telling.

“Hello?  Are you new to town?”

The woman ran off, running like a kid did, with no sense of the mechanics of capable motion.  She giggled the entire way.

“Are we being attacked?” she asked.  “What the heck is going on?”

“The friggin’ perimeter’s down,” Gashwad growled.

Avery looked down and saw the goblins were climbing the telephone pole.

“Wards and shit, yeh?  And something’s bringing all those assholes in here.”

“Strange Others?  The pig-dog-man?”

“I heard he asked to live here, once.  They said no.  We cleaned him up this time.”

“His type come back again and again, if they’re angry enough.  Keep that furnace of shitty feelings burning.  He’ll come back.  He’ll try again.”

“He walked into that house like it was nothing.  I thought innocents were protected, or was he just messing with-”

“No messing,” Nat spat the words.

“If you don’t get caught you can’t get in trouble,” Gashwad added.  “So things like him, they pick ’em off while they’re far enough away from things.  Or they get real good at killing without the police findin’ em.”

“Same for goblins, I guess?”

“Some.  Easier if you go after the people who’re fucked up.  The ones with karma just asking for trouble.  Makes it easier to not get caught, and they have less friends to check on ’em.”

“And you go after innocents too?”

“Me?  Neh.  I like a good scrap.  I’d rather go to the deep woods and find some squirrel headed fairy shitter that walks around with a sword and shield and show ’em how a real fight’s done.  Rub their face in the dirt and make them question their life choices.”

“There are squirrel knights out there?” Avery asked.

“There’s almost everything if you look long enough.  Those spirit-infused animals are total losers.  Sniffing their own shit pellets and thinking it smells like roses and adventure.  Making tea with acorns?  Fuck you, little squirrel nerd.  Makes me mad just thinking about your stupid tea.”

Nat joined in with a “Yeah!” and Doglick yipped.

“We have stuff to do, right?  You cleaned up the mess?”

“Broken screen and I wouldn’t eat off the floor Butty licked clean, but it’s good enough.  Satisfied, princess?”

“I am reasonably satisfied, thank you.  I hate leaving that mess and anxiety on their doorstep.  I should do something nice for them.”

“Thanks for doing that, by the way.  Helping.”

“Helping?  Pshah and fuck off.  No.  That big asshole’s been bothering us for years, acting bigger than he is, and there’s nothing funner than going after something like him, bogeyman that keeps coming back.  You leave them a scar and the scar keeps.  So if you blow out their rear end, turn it into a hole you could hide a baby in… that’s just funny.”

“That was… something.”

“He’s a fester, you know.  That’s what he does.”

“I’m not playing that game, Gash.  I’ve been told he’s a bulge, a fester now, ummm, I think Cherry called him a boil.  You guys make this up.”

“Exactly!  Perfect, you’re not so dumb after all.  That’s what he does.  He takes all the ugly, all the mess, all the bile and crap and he concentrates it.  Longer he waits and lets it sit before it goes pop, the better.  Rest of the time, he’s just a greasy stain.  He’d be good to have around if he wasn’t so shit.”

“He’s greasing the pole!” Nat exclaimed.  “You’re greasing the pole we’re climbing by rubbing up on it like that, you–”

Butty, further down, giggled, until Nat jumped him, knocking him off the pole.  She began pounding him.

“I’m supposed to find Clementine, the Gilded Lily,” Avery said.

“The shit picker upper.”

“Sure.  But… I don’t know where to begin.  It doesn’t help that time is moving faster around her.  I can find the trail, but then she turns around, I’m in a slow zone, I think, and she zips away.”

“I’d have to find her before I could and I can’t.  And I wouldn’t.”

“You said you can’t before you said you wouldn’t, eh?” Gashwad sniggered.  “It crossed your mind, hm?  You’re learning, girly.”

“Um, it didn’t and I really don’t think I am.  It’s just that you’re really wrong, and I can’t say both reasons why at once.”

She saw a plume of purple, then deep blue, and black.  All downtown.

“The glitterstink?  Probably.”

“We all are,” Gashwad said.  “It’s a mess and it won’t clean up anytime soon.”

“It’s great,” Nat piped up, from the ground.  Doglick yipped.

“It’s horrible.  I don’t think I can catch Clem on my own.”

“Matthew asked us to hunt the bastards who’re invading.  Can’t really go with ya, tits, but if you wanted one of us…”

It’s not that I wouldn’t appreciate help, but…

She wanted Lucy and Verona.

“Going to help them, and circle back to Clem.  I know that’s not ideal but… keep an eye out?”

Gashwad snorted.  Good enough, as a ‘yes’ went.

She leaped, using her shoes.  She hit the ground and then bounded forward.  She’d gotten enough use out of her shoes that she had a good instinct for when they’d pull the rug out from under her.  Air spirits were capricious, yes, but they were also spirits of friendship and whimsy.  Screwing over a friend wasn’t fun or whimsical.  It made for less goodness in the long run.

She made sure to do some front-flips and turns in the air as she got underway, bounding forward, keeping to the shadows where the streetlights didn’t illuminate the road.  It helped that so many roads turned off half or all the streetlights after a certain late hour.

Or what she presumed was Lucy.

Toward the big blob of dark colors.  She pulled the glasses off and she put her Sight on.

To see the movements in the air.  Particles of glamour swirling around.  Connections… and the void where there were so very few connections at all.

There was a street where there hadn’t been one before, sandwiched in somehow, and the buildings were decorated.  Purple-black bricks, banners of gossamer-fine silk, and unfamiliar shops.

What the hell had happened, here?

It was Charles, balding and scraggly-bearded, clothes simple and badly worn.  He wore an ill-fitting t-shirt that had once had a front pocket but now had holes in the rough outline of where the pocket had been, and cargo pants with a dark stain at one leg.  It was warm out, but he was skinny enough that he maybe didn’t get enough from the warmth.  Skinny and scary and offputting.

“You’re alone?” she asked.

“I had an escort.  She got distracted.”

“There are a lot of scary Others around.  Isn’t it dangerous for you?”

“Yes, it is.  Matthew came to me.  He needed eyes on him while he reasserted his bindings on himself.  We noticed the Others aren’t interested in me.”

“If you asked someone to pick one person out of a crowd to shoot, they would pick me, if possible.  If you asked an Other to prey on a victim…”

“Goblins were just talking about that.”

“They aren’t interested.  Which means they’re interested in something else.  We thought I might be a good way to figure out where they’re going.  A destination that seems to be moving.  Screening out the obvious.  Maricica could protect me.”

Avery paused.  She looked down at Snowdrop, who squeaked.

“Because this is a lot of glamour, and I was just very frustrated at how I haven’t been able to find the Gilded Lily.  She’s too slippery, or there are forces keeping me away from her.”

“So you saying you might have a way to find her.  If these Others are after something and that something could be her…”

“Too good to be true?” Charles asked.

“What?  I don’t- I-”

“Matthew told me you play hockey.  You should know how to hit a person.  Hit me.  Hard enough to shatter a glamour.”

“That feels like a pretty brutal way of-”

“I have permission, I don’t get bad karma for hurting someone vulnerable?”

“Everyone has permission to hurt me.  You get good karma by doing so.  Everyone does.  It’s helping the universe to bring about justice,” Charles said.  He smiled, but it was a mean, sad, dark smile.

She started to move, then stopped.  Then she thought about Lucy and Verona maybe needing her.

“Good,” he said.  “Anything?”

“Imagine I were some poor soul, glamoured up to be Charles Abrams and play a trick on a novice witch.  Few things so piteous as that.”

“It’s good.  Thinking that way.  Trusting little to nothing.  This world will eat you alive.  You shouldn’t have stepped into it, but this is a good way to survive it, now that you have.”

Avery frowned more.  She stroked Snowdrop, then adjusted her bag, uncomfortable.

“Where are the others?” she asked, to change the subject.

“Verona was handling the Griggs girl, alone.  Matthew, Alpeana, and Edith were with her, but they had to leave.  Too dangerous.   I don’t know where the goblins or Guilherme are.  Maricica was evasive.  As for the rest, Lucy, John, and Maricica are…”

He indicated the shadowy street that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Are you okay coming with me?” she asked.  “I’d- I think I’d like to get their help before we go for Clementine.  The Gilded Lily.”

“Are you okay with me coming with you?” he asked, in return.

“You’re allowed to say no.”

She thought of how frustrating it had been to fight alone.  “Come.  I need all the help I can get.  And we’re getting too scattered.  This entire thing’s a mess.  The perimeter, apparently.”

“I know.  I made it, back when I was here but not yet forsworn.”

“The how is simple.  A lot of lesser Others caught.  Brainless spirits, echoes, and things, lashed to wards or turned into wisps with a void around them they felt compelled to fill.”

“We’ll talk while we walk,” he said.

They walked together toward the strange street.

“Forgive me, I can’t run fast.  Wisps are a form of spirit.  Concentrated and drawn to a point.  Briefly lived but strong.  Some places and things concentrate them.”

Avery thought of the group thing with Zachariah.  “Statues?”

“And shrines and natural phenomena.  But a spirit wants to persist.  The circles I would use to form the wisp would create and seal the void, making it part of the wisp.  I would make it so it could only be filled with one thing.  A specific arrangement of things.  Sometimes dust, sometimes branches, and sometimes spiderwebs.  Given time, the dust would gather and concentrate until it was like stone.  The spiderwebs would disappear but the memory of them would remain.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.”

“I made a means of collecting spirits small and immaterial enough, and I arranged it so they would be concentrated into wisps without my being there.  Send them out so they would stop just beyond Kennet’s borders.  They would turn away the people who could find them, or outsiders, or cloud scrying attempts.  Each ward a little push for a person, a bit of resistance for an outsider, a speck of dust in the sight of a scryer.”

“And it’s gone.  We can’t rebuild it?”

“It takes time, and it’s fragile at the start.  Right now, there are too many forces who would tear down that fragile, nascent effort. There are other ways, but they are expensive.  They’re singular, powerful effects that drain power.  It could halve the power of every Other here, making it too costly to remain for some, like the goblins or Alpeana.  And it would be vulnerable to the right key.  The right Other or practice, with enough force behind it.  My way was patient, it covered a lot of individual approaches.  It could be layered with other things.  Like the goblin alarms.”

“It still fell to the right key, didn’t it?  If it’s the skeptic?”

“It was the skeptic.  And you’re right.  If I hadn’t been forsworn, I could have done more.”

A store that was selling pipes and only pipes.  A kitchen with a stove between customer and server, with no heat or steam, nor a modicum of light, the chef standing behind her stove with hair covering most of her features.

Avery passed what could have been a pub, where slim people in fashionable clothes were talking, laughing, and flirting.  Above the black stone table, a beautiful woman of about twenty was bound in thorns, hands to ankles, thorn bands pinning a white dress to her upper body and legs.  Her head was bowed, her hair clearly well cared for.

Really beautiful, and… so sad, somehow.

A customer sat on a stool, looking like he was posing for a picture, one hand with fingers in the woman’s hair, stroking it.  He said something, and she smiled, laughing, before a look of regret crossed her face.

Thorns glowed, and a droplet of luminous gold welled at one, bright, before it fell into a martini glass.  Small as the droplet was, it filled the glass.

Just looking at that glowing liquid made Avery feel like she was a kid again, no troubles, hanging out with Olivia, having a great time.  Her lips moved involuntarily.

The man sipped from the glass.  The woman… she looked so deeply sad, for what had been taken from her.

Avery went to the door.  If she was quick, brutal, maybe she could catch them off guard.  She could cut the thorny vines and-

Her finger touched the surface.  The knob was painted onto the wall.  As the shadows of her hand and arm moved past it, it looked like there’d never been a knob.

“It’s a trick,” Charles said.

The scene was subtly different.  A young man was draped on the bar, unconscious.  A droplet of something luminous and white dripped from a collar of thorns to a glass, while a stunning girl who looked like a teenager, with upswept features, looked like she was tired, but in a sultry, inviting way, for her companion of ambiguous gender.  There was so little left in the boy at the counter that it didn’t even fill the glass.

Avery looked and the door was at the opposite side, and she knew this was… it was a scene remembered, painted, but it wasn’t real.  If she went to the other door, it would be false, too, and she could go back and forth forever without ever accessing the interior.  Probably.

“You could break it,” he said.  “Hitting it hard enough.”

“Could you?  Is that a thing?”

“I would risk being sucked into it.  The glamour could ensnare me, and you would have to pull me out.�

“Is there a point to breaking it?”

“It would get his attention.  It could distract him.  It would weaken what he’s building, making all the rest weaker.”

“What if I don’t want his attention?” Avery asked.

“Then you don’t break it.”

“Good job petting me for so long,” Snowdrop said.  “I’m satisfied.”

“I’m sorry.  I’m distracted.  And you’re spoiled.”

“Nuh uh,” Snowdrop said, smiling.  The smile fell from her face as she looked back at Charles.

They passed a tailor’s, and the clothes in the window were nice enough that Avery felt like just the passing glance had made her more fashionable.  Maybe that was a trap, too.  It lined up with what they’d heard about the Faerie, enough that Avery could connect the aesthetic to the Dark Spring.  Daniel’s court.

Daniel had done this?  Or had Lucy, as a trap for Daniel?

Lucy wouldn’t.  Couldn’t.  This was too much.

“Dark spring,” Avery murmured.

“Super boring, super uncool stuff,” Snowdrop said, looking.

“I thought markets were the Autumn courts.”

“All courts have markets, all courts have lords and ladies and monsters.”

“Daniel’s sister was autumn.  Maybe he liked markets because he spent time with her.”

“Or he built on what was nearby.  A downtown area.”

They walked past a store where flowing script in English promised youth, with a price tag, as well as ‘perfect beauty’, ‘true absolution’, ‘wretched suffering’, ‘unsatisfying revenge’, and ‘fashionable loss’.

A store that sold coats and umbrellas.  A human woman stood in the display window, modeling clothes, looking like she was trying to avoid nodding off.  She jerked awake, locked eyes with Avery, and looked more deeply afraid than Avery had seen anyone.

And she’d seen Gabe realize he was a goner.  She’d seen Brie sobbing her heart out.

She touched the window, and the woman touched the other side, before giving a furtive look over her shoulder, and striking a still pose.

A woman, slender, with upswept features and what could have been some really fantastic runway fashion, emerged from the darkness of the store.  She dropped curtains over the window, and Avery saw the girl in the display window flinch.

“Fakery.  Memories of things long ago,” Charles said.

Avery was so tempted to break it, just in case.

Another store that sold ‘Makeovers, expensive but thorough.  Other stores offer beauty from now to forever.  We offer makeovers to past, present, and future.’  From beauty to wretched beast, from hero to villain, villain to hero, from musician to artist, boy to girl, girl to boy, young to old, and from Dark Spring to any court one chose.

“Why did you make the Wards?” she asked.

“Because I was asked.  I wanted them too.”

“Why did you want them?  Why were you asked?”

“I wanted them because I wanted a sizeable demesnes.  My old house was not far from Kennet.  Closing the perimeter meant I faced challengers from one less direction.  My deal with the locals was that they wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.  I would stick to their rules.  I came, went, acted as their practitioner when they needed it.”

“And they asked for it because?” Avery asked, again.

“Because, I think, each and every one of them had grown so weary of what lay out there.”

“In our world.  Other and practitioner.  John spent most of his existence on the run, his Yalda in tow.  Goblins often get exterminated in their sleep, and they can sleep twenty hours a day.  It’s a big weakness.  They’re also bound, bartered, coerced.  Gashwad has been bound twice.  Bluntmunch ran from a Goblin Queen who wanted him for his muscle.  Toadswallow always runs the risk that he’ll be asked to tutor a child, only to have the parents try to kill him, in case he could leak any small family secrets a child could share.”

“Couldn’t they make a better contract with him?”

“They could.  But that’s not what it’s really about.  For some, it’s about having knowledge and denying it to others.”

“And Matthew and Edith struggled with the Doom and Edith’s situation.”

“Yes.  They still struggle.  They’re anxious tonight.  They came close, simply by being near the wrong person.”

“I haven’t talked to her much.  She gives me regular nightmares, so you’d think… no, I haven’t talked to her much.  The world is big, and the areas she would normally be asked to serve are vast.  Riddled with those who would use her, or practitioners that would mug her for what she’s already gathered from echoes and spirits and refined into dreamstuff.  Here she can focus on the work.”

“And Miss?  Last one, except the Choir, but we know most of the story there.”

“Miss.  Still gone, hm?”

“Good,” Snowdrop said.  “Good for nothing.  Didn’t like her at all.  Don’t miss her, when I only spent a little while with her.”

“You haven’t gone to find her?” Charles asked.

“She came up to the Wolf and me, and she talked to the Wolf.  Kept me company until Nicolette came.  She talked to me a fair bit.  Explained.”

“That if you take certain kinds of something from the Paths, that there can be traps and tricks.  If we call her back, soon or later, there’s a risk that, like, she has the Wolf’s face and hands, and a bit of the Wolf in her heart, and by the time we realize and she lets us see her face, it’s too late.”

“That is a risk.  Do you think it’s her primary reason?” Charles asked.

“I think… she didn’t want to come back.  Maybe because she knew this was coming, and she’s maybe vulnerable to it all in the same way you are?”

“Or the opposite way.”

“Huh,” Avery said, trying to parse that.

She could hear faint singing.  Charles stubbornly limped on.  Avery itched to hurry ahead, but she worried that leaving Charles defenseless could kill him.

“You never answered my question.  Why did Miss want Kennet like this?”

“I don’t know.  She was wary of me.  She didn’t like practitioners.”

“Doesn’t,” Avery said.

“Hmm.  Whichever it is, she didn’t share or even hint at it with me.  Nor Matthew, nor Edith.”

“At school, there was someone who worked with rituals on a city scale.”

“Kennet as a large ritual?  Nothing so complex.  I have an eye for that.  It was a space that became tacit sanctuary, drawing in supporting spirits.”

“I don’t know,” Snowdrop cut in.

Avery looked down at her.

“From what I know I think it’s really nefarious and dangerous though.  But she didn’t confide in me before she left, when she was telling me about being Lost and what to be careful for.  So I don’t know.  I’d totally give her the middle finger and tell you.  So there, ha.”

Avery had caught the ‘so there, ha’ before.  It was a tricky one to turn around.

“No.  That’s fine.  I didn’t know you knew anything.”

“I knew it would bother you I knew so I went out of my way not to tell you.  So there.”

Avery set a hand on Snowdrop’s head.

“The singing can capture my heart.  I don’t have defenses.  If he sets his eyes on me and claims me, I’m his pawn.”

“Hitting me.  Stopping him.  Controlling me.”

The street had a curve to it, and the curve led to a raised platform, circular.  A small crowd had gathered.  Fifty or sixty people.

Many of those fifty or sixty were Fae.  Dark haired, dark clothed, beautiful, stylish, and intense.

Glamour.  Avery hoped, anyway.

But there were twenty or so that were people.  Kennet citizens, it looked like.  Wide eyed, captured by the performance.  Lucy was at the front of the crowd, feet on the road, hands on the stage, like she was ready to climb up.

Daniel had a blade, and he shared the stage.  With Maricica, who lay unmoving, one wing torn out.  With six older teenagers, who lounged and sat back, reaching out toward him as he sang, periodically touching a blade to a cheek or a lock of hair.  They swayed, and tensed and reacted as if the song ran through them.

And, to Avery’s Sight, those bands that connected him to them were like more bondage, tying them down, wrapping them up.  Squeezing something out of them, so he could drink it.

The crowd was fifty or sixty Dark Spring Fae, conjured up with glamour, and twenty-five more who were people.  Kennet citizens.

The song was haunting, intense, and bitter, and sad.

He sounded- there were no words.  It was like most music Avery had heard in the past came from something broken and stopped just past arm’s reach of her.  There to be appreciated but… at arm’s reach.

This melancholy singing ran through her like that blade he held.  It stirred up feelings of loneliness, and feelings she hadn’t known she had, like anger and frustration at the people who had let her down.  Some of those people were here.

He locked eyes with her and for a moment it was like he was singing to her.  He smiled.  The song turned.  To betrayals.  To exile.  To imminent loss.

Like it was a promise that everyone would let her down.  That her father wouldn’t accept her.  And if she listened it would come to pass and it would be tragic, but it wouldn’t be a sword hanging over her head anymore.

Snowdrop touched her arm, and the touch felt like an apology for the inevitable.

She touched Snowdrop’s hand, then touched the mark at her arm, where she’d put down glamour.

Illuminating it.  Stirring it.  Reminding herself.

Daniel didn’t even seem to notice.  He had Maricica.

But she- she could tap into that, she could remind herself of good things.

She slapped herself, hard.

Heads turned.  People reacted.  The singing shifted, to recapture what was lost, and for a moment it wasn’t as strong.

Lucy saw her.  She smiled a bit.

By contrast, Daniel’s smile was gone.  The look in his eyes was sharp, and his gaze was on her.  The Daniel she’d seen earlier had been beautiful and sweet and off-kilter.

This Daniel was beautiful too, yes, but wild and bitter and so, so dark.  His every action seemed to promise he was about to slit a throat with that long blade he held, to accentuate a note.  Now that he was angry she’d spoiled a moment, her sharp slap cutting into things, it only seemed more inevitable.  The blade touched throat and ran from point to hilt, but his touch was so fine he didn’t saw at or cut the skin.  He sang and he played them like they were his violins or cellos, their movements an accompaniment to his song.

An entirely different person than the one who had been at that picnic table.

He didn’t sing but created, created emotions, created sounds, created glamour and spun it out into a crowd that expanded subtly.

Glamour, if unbroken or unchallenged, can become reality.

What happens if this becomes reality?  Do we go to the Dark Spring?  Does the Dark Spring come here?

“Guard Charles?” she asked Snowdrop.

Snowdrop gave her the finger.

She met Lucy’s eyes, and as she started walking, Lucy did too, so they were each on one side of Daniel, pacing, looking for openings.

He didn’t seem bothered.  If anything, he accepted it, inviting it, moving with more enthusiasm, as his song twisted into something bloodier.

There were a hundred Dark Spring Fae in the crowd.  Glamoured up.  The audience he wanted.  In addition, at the periphery, spellbound, were thirty, forty, or fifty Kennet civilians.  Rounding out the growing crowd were a number of unfamiliar Others, increasingly restless as the song continued.

Glamour unchallenged is a problem.  So let’s put up a challenge.