Just finished writing my latest episode of BRYAN THE TYGER, where my hero & his panther-friend try to sail between a rock & a hard place; but this mission is complicated by the fact that these two obstacles are continuously repositioning their geolocation.
P.S.
In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.
Chapter Eighteen
When I Bryan the Tyger and my shadow soul-mate Myala the Black Panther finish shopping at the Torrible Zone’s open marketplace, we push our cart onto our sieve-ship and secure it to the mast with a lash; then we take a moment to behold the gorgeous landscape:
The setting sunlight twinkles from the rocks. The moon climbs
slowly. The deep moans round with many voices.
“Come, my friend,” I say to Myala. “Let us push off now: I’m
eager to sail beyond this sunset and the baths of all these stars, so that we
may face together the challenge posed by those newly ambulant obstacles, Scylla
and Charybdis, whose geolocation the gods are rumored to control by remote. I believe
that we can surpass these impossibilities. It’s important to me that we at least
try to reach the Happy Isles of Golgonooza; for I yearn to visit the hills
of the Chankly Bore. My dream is to walk with you, my love, in the shade of those
mountains brown, so that, eons from now, some poet might gaze in wonderment at our
own footprints and exclaim:
Ah! so, in futures past, those paws
DID pounce upon the Chankly Bore,
When Tyger Bryan, burning bright,
Frisked all about our pleasant shore!
“Does that make sense?”
Myala smiles and offers me a cat-kiss. Then we ready our craft
by pulling up all fourteen anchors as well as the myriad hempen ropes that we tied
to the native trees (thus preventing our sieve-chariot from escaping off into the
heavens, where it always wants to go — for it is impatient to steal more fire: the
thing has a mind of its own; it is literally instilled with the spirits of various
cherubim). Then we adjust the weights and set the navigation system to “unharnessed/manual”. . .
Finally, Myala and I take our positions before the control panel
with our forepaws at the ready above the large red buttons that make the craft go:
She takes the “forward” and “right” arrow-buttons, and I will do the buttons
for “left” and “fast-forward”. (That latter button is basically
a speed boost; there is no “reverse”
control for our ship, because it only proceeds forever ahead and moves either
fast or faster.) Now, as we stand here, tense and determined to co-navigate thru
unprecedented horrors, just before flipping the “Adventure: GO!” switch, I turn to Myala and say:
“Would it not be better if we were to recline for a bit and enjoy
this one last night in the Torrible Zone, before beginning our next deadly mission?
For if we were to pull the reclining deckchairs out of storage and lounge for a
spell before pushing off, it would help us relax, and we’d probably have a better
chance of surviving.”
“I agree,” sez Myala.
So we pull out the reclining deckchairs; also, in the back of
the storage chamber I find our coppery gong, which I wheel forth as well. Thus we
spend our evening sipping Ring-Bo-Ree while warbling moony songs.
Then, when the rosy fingers of dawn begin to ruin the mood, we
breakfast on dumplings and return to our workstation, where we pose tensely before
the control panel’s four large buttons.
I look at Myala and pose a question; then she nods firmly and
gives her answer:
“Adventure, go?”
“Adventure, go.”
Together we place our forepaws on the slider switch that reads
“Adventure: GO!” and shift it all the
way up until it locks.
The ship blasts forward and we begin rapidly pressing our nav-control
buttons to avoid running into any of the dolphins that have suddenly begun leaping
out of the wine-dark sea to show their support for us.
“Thank you for your gestures of solidarity,” I yell to the friendly
creatures while still deftly pressing the correct navigational buttons to avoid
future mishaps. The dolphins shimmy and happily cackle in answer.
But now we encounter the dire threat that Achilles warned us
of. The newly mobile death-traps of Scylla and Charybdis. We see them rotating around
in the midground like two figure-skaters. The paths of travel that they trace are
bewildering: You assume that they’re following some sort of a pattern, but you just
can’t figure out where they’re going to glide next; so if you think that the best
move would be to swoop diagonally rightward, then you might find yourself heading
directly into the whirlpool, which leads straight to Valhalla (the antechamber of
the Land of the Slain — not the place where any hero wants to end up); whereas,
if it seems smarter to zoom fast diagonally leftward and subsequently commit to
a zig-zag maneuver for the next few kilometers, then you might run smack dab into
the hideous sea-monster who will eat your whole crew. So, either way, you’re a goner:
that’s guaranteed.
Plus, remember, this ship cannot stop dashing full-speed ahead:
it is constantly racing forward at the rate of either “superfast” or “much, much
faster” (800 or 1500 knots, respectively); thus there’s no time to think
through your plans or schedule board meetings with your investors so as to mull
over and review the best way to minimize loss while maximizing profits. All you
can do is listen to your instincts, which come from gosh-knows-where, and make a
decision in real-time while life-threatening conditions are scaring you witless.
So Myala the Black Panther presses the “right” button, and then “right” again, and then I press “fast-forward” and I keep mashing down on
that button until we get to the point where there’s a haze of mist. Now Myala presses
“forward” and I press “left” and our chariot bed-craft thunks straight
into Scylla.
Scylla screams in agony, just like that horse that I bit on the
battlefield of Troy — it was the warhorse of Nestor, if I remember correctly — so
I switchblade out my claws, and Myala the Black Panther switchblades out her own
claws, and we climb up the body of Scylla until we reach her big mouth. Then I hold
her jaws open with my mighty forepaws while Myala pours liquid opium under Scylla’s
tongue. Then we heroic felines climb down to our sieve-ship to check the damage.
While we’re climbing down, we notice that the wild painful screams of the monster
Scylla are fading to whimpers, because the analgesic that Myala provided is beginning
to take effect. Fortunately, our chariot of fire was not ruined by this crash —
in fact, when I pull it out of the place where it jammed itself into Scylla’s monster-flesh,
there’s not a single scratch on it. I now look up at drowsy Scylla, whose eyelids
are drooping from the opium that we administered; and I shout:
“Stupid fool! Why did you get in the way!? We were only trying
to scoot past you, so that we could reach the Happy Isles! Now you got yourself
injured! — But we will try to repair you.”
I head back to the medicine cabinet and find the first-aid supplies.
Then my travelmate Myala the Black Panther and I Bryan the Tyger apportion out medical
assistance to the sea-monster Scylla who tried to murder us:
We disinfect the wound and close it up; then we bandage it properly.
We leave some ointments and additional gauze, plus detailed instructions for Scylla
about how to dress and care for her wound; and we also leave a generous supply of
pills that should help manage the pain and prevent infection.
Before we push off again in the direction of Golgonooza, just
on a whim, I climb back up to the top of the evil sea-monster, who is now half-asleep
and comfortably numb. I take Scylla’s head in my paws (it’s so big that I must extend
both of my arms pretty far out to reach both sides), and I have a long look directly
at her. I stand there, staring at her drooping lids with my own enormous eyes, and
we behold each other, terrifying face to terrifying face — then suddenly it hits
me: This is the third Leviathan!
Therefore I scramble back down the beast and find the note that
I had tucked under one of her appendages: I add a postscript that contains my contact
information and the directions to my castle on the peninsula, plus some lines telling
her that she is more than welcome to join us there, where she can live in the surrounding
sea with her two sibling species-members:
“And, if you happen to meet our castle-cats, Nuos the Kitten
and her soul-mate Zephyros,” I conclude, “just tell them that I, Bryan the Tyger,
said that it’s OK for you to stay with us, as long as you keep to the waters. And
the only other condition is that you don’t deplete our shark population too severely.”
Then I sign the P.S. with my paw print and add a note:
“I used your own blood to ink my signature, for this was written on the day that we repaired you. Au revoir!”
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