It took until dusk for Momma to assemble a judgment against me.

The first response had been a positive one, as our hands had been pleased that my cousin and I were unhurt, and somewhat smitten besides that by her bellicose display of shovelry. As were were all somewhat overstimulated, we forgot our propriety and spoke free without respect for keeping civil distance. In particular, Maynard pointed (for my benefit and to my unease) at this and that proportion of the slain animal’s anatomy and made comment on its divergences from its more natural ancestors. Its fur was slick and oily like an otter’s, its claws thick and curled, its lips peeled back to reveal the pair of fused compound blood-letting teeth from which the mole derived its name.

Our mood and fortunes turned when the fractional herd (those that were morning afield) drove in towards the gate with great commotion and we received Mr Sadiqi during their ingress and disposition. I was only too eager to recount to him how a dangerous beast had made its last desperate attempt on us, and how Ashli had so neatly set it in its place. Thus I was set aback; for Mr. Sadiqi’s ears were deaf to our valor and heard only our hazard. Though he was much exhausted and yet further still in need of refreshment, he found new fire for reprimanding Maynard and Fat Mike (who were both grown ass men and ought to know better, goddammit). In this way, the hands were rebuked and make low of spirit, and Mr. Sadiqi further implied to them that the Mister would hold them to account for all the possibilities of danger which for us had been unrealized.

Foul of mood, I marched home with Mr Sadiqi at my back and Ashli at my side. The main entry was recessed just enough that one might take shelter from rain, and the door was heavy wood with glazed panel windows. As we entered into the receiving room, Momma and Aunties Anne and Mabel were brought out to meet us. There we found unhappily that the interpretation of our afternoon was changed once again.

In this new paradigm, it was not the hands who were at fault, but we as reckless children who hadn’t the sense to appreciate the comfort and shelter of the residence. In particular I understood Auntie Anne to direct this reproof chiefly for Ashli; Momma only seemed to be upset that I had been present at an inopportune time. She did made some small effort to establish a particular fault in my decisions which would have led me into danger, but I had been well within my established liberties and little fruit was born of it.

I could not then, and cannot now, reckon the calculus of mothers in the negotiation of discipline. Auntie Anne’s complaint against her daughter was demonstrably based on longstanding disagreement, the fact of things was that in this episode, she’d near as well saved my hide. For my part, I had been guilty of nothing which Momma had not explicitly given me past permission to do. Nevertheless, Momma and Auntie Anne conferenced and concluded that I should be confined to the residence for a duration of three days in order to reflect generally on the virtues of humility and caution. Through this course, their own tempers would have opportunity to moderate, the hands might be disciplined to a renewed caution, and Ashli might be punished de facto, tamen non de jure (in fact if not in law).

I had an opinion about this miscarriage of justice, but I was satisfied by my cousin’s final words on the matter. “Fucking bullshit,” she spat. Then she stomped her way through the kitchen, lit herself a smoke from the iron stove, and climbed out a window which led out into Auntie Seung-Hee’s herb garden.

During the middle course of this discussion, Auntie Mabel also set to fetch the Mister from his evening toilet, but he had replied only with: “They’re alive? Then I can’t see the problem. Fetch me my supper up to the study. Don’t be bringing me salad, you hear?” Then he firmly shut the door to us.

El Chisme del Pueblo, Febrero 02, 2021

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After seasons of ceasefire, there is ample cause to believe that war with those ‘new century conquistadores’ the Pacific Imperial forces may no longer be deferred. Multiple independent sources have confirmed that UEE aligned combatants have overrun the independent Fort Stockton, as occupation fighters have simultaneously pushed into greater provincial Chihuahua.

The naive may not have seen this coming, but there are no surprises here at El Chisme. Of course, the UEE was supposed to be bound by the provisions of the 2020 Partitional Accords (PAGP), which it signed early last year; it is supposed to uphold the 2019 North American Non-Aggression Pact (NANAP) to which it is a signatory along with most of the incorporated Polistati and the Burban Duchies. Ah! But if only we could have a Peso for every broken UEE promise!

According to the Office of the Ambassador, the NANAP and PAGP agreements place specific limits on the global ambitions of the UEE and its rivals, most important of which is by the definition of territory classes whose sovereignty is legally protected. Aztlan is understood to qualify as a Class 2 Domain as defined by the NANAP (article 2.4), and PAGP (article 8.2) clearly prohibits the UEE as a Class 4 (PAGP a. 12.1) from initiating acts of aggression against it. But the thuggish violence and brazen expansionism which is being displayed this past week leaves no doubt in our minds that the UEE intends to shamelessly menace Aztlan borders.

Neither Chihuahua nor Fort Stockton are considered close strategic allies of the Republic, but they do represent critical buffer territories which stabilize the west against beasts, bogeys, and ghouls. As Class 3 (F. Stockton Class 1 rumors unconfirmed) domains, neither of the disputed territories is protected under international agreement; on the other hand, nor are they valuable as key strategic resources. That is to say, except as staging grounds for further eastern momentum.

While early reports suggest that the attacks are being conducted by small independent groups, our sources in the Border Defense assure us that they undeniably represent a larger strategic effort. But if we see reason for caution, there’s none whatsoever for fear. Our brave citizens at arms are ready at the frontier for any threat, and Parliament has announced its intentions to authorize broader regional arms sales as a show of solidarity with our neighbors.

Free peoples of the unaligned territories should keep in mind that blah blah hyperbole, and yadda yadda jingoism exceptionally... a general call to action... something about the Rio Conchos river... vague threatening language... additional article padding for the purpose of column alignment...

...

At this point, my eyes just about glazed over and my attention set to wandering, so I folded the news pamphlet into thirds and set it down.

My punishment had transpired leisurely, as I had taken up some small tasks in the kitchen and the laundry, and in the education of my younger cousins. Our suppers had been quiet and taken in shifts to prevent further feuding. Meanwhile, it had happened that Ashli was somewhat touched by the Argument, having been so instrumental in the destruction of the mole. Therefore she had withdrawn with Auntie Vaunda on the following morning to make the appropriate dedications and obeisances to Diana. The hands would have observed similar procedures, but I had yet to be inducted to either ritual, and was ignorant to their details or differences. What time was left in the remainder I devoted to reading, a habit which immutably remains one of the greatest pleasures of my life.

It was the turn of the evening (some days later) and I was reclined on my bunk. It was framed of hewn wood stacked to two levels, and padded with old cushions which had been grafted together with more love than proficiency. There were three such double lofted beds in the room, pushed up against the shelves which covered up most of the walls, and all of those shelves were long fatigued with the weight of books. Looking above me, I saw the ceiling up to a second story, ringed at the middle height with a narrow banistered mezzanine. What small light I had was made available from one tall thin window with pinned curtains.

The rules of the house forbade us children from taking meals to our room, and I flaunted this restriction regularly. Close to hand lay a folded yellow napkin and a touch-weathered ceramic plate, and my supper in progress on top of it. With care for the risk of dropping crumbs, I took up a fragment of corn-bread and swabbed it in spicy verde yogurt sauce. I frowned in discovering I’d let it go cold.

The literature I set aside was a foreign news bulletin from the south, acquired (not unusually) a month out of date, after it had passed into discard out from the Mister’s keeping. Publications such as El Chisme were rare to come into our (the cousins’) possession as few folk of the time had the resources, the perspective, and even the inclination for journalism. Even beyond that limit of supply, we had to collect them from what the adults would cast off, or what the hands might be convinced to smuggle on our behalf. Through those channels I became familiar also with The Prairie Gazette, the Civilized World, the UEE Post, the Greenback Prayer Bulletin, The Belsham Review, Voice of the Mother, The New Adventures of the Hero, The Abriged Journal of Agenobiotics, and through Ashli, the subversives DigitL Glitter, and a single issue of Knit Bitch. Which is, upon reflection, quite a lot actually.

As I set my plate aside again, the door knob twisted with the soft click of brass mechanism and the air in the room felt immediately more occupied.

The footprint of this library which had become the children’s room was comparably small, and the seven of us only were increasingly cramped as we grew older; it is fair to say this closeness of quarters pressed as one more cause in the host of reasons I enjoyed the out-of-doors. The same was true of my cousins and their chores about the house, so aside from lessons and bedtime, the room rarely held more than two of us (or so) at once. At the start of that repast (which should be likened to the bridge from late afternoon to early evening), only Saleena Jeminee had been my company and she’d been whisper quiet in the study of her letters. Now it was Cousin Cooper (who was Ashli’s younger brother) who joined us from the hall. I further noticed that my cousin Su-Hope had slipped in sometime quietly during my reading, and she lay face down on a coverlet and pillow which she’d laid in the middle of the floor.

“Ursula, I cut my finger cooking and now I’m dead,” Su-Hope declared in a muffled voice. She then raised her head off the floor strewn quilt and found young Cooper unexpected at the door instead. “Oh. Tell Ursula I died.”

Cooper made no response. Instead he began to tremor bodily, which would’ve been taken as an early sign of one of his fits.

“Wait,” Su-Hope said on, not noticing her cousin’s state of distress. “If I died and gave you all my blood, and you ate it, would you have normal blood then?”

Cooper’s expression took on more strain. His purple complexion took on a whitened pallor, and his voiceless complaint sounded windy and dry like cotton tumbling. For purple was exactly what color Cooper was, nearly a match to the blossoms of a Kentucky wisteria, and when he blushed he did so in violet.

“Now, now, Suzy H,” I sighed, “you know that ain’t the way it works. Be kind. And get those dressings picked up off the floor before you catch trouble.” I set my things aside and swung my legs over. My bunk had no ladder, just an extra brace on either narrow end which I tended to neglect and most especially on descent.

“No eating in the room,” Su-Hope, reproved me as I landed.

So I tussled up her hair a tiny bit, which she hated on account of fiercely prizing her braids. “You’ve caught me fair, it’s true. Do so anyway. I swiped some playing cards from old Maynard, so we can set a table for a game of bridge.”

She found the idea fine enough, if not my abuse. So she picked up her quilt as I asked.

“Cooper,” I reached out to touch his shoulder, but withdrew. “You okay?”

The boy shook something terrible, and pain was writ clear on him. “Five emperors come to conquer,” he groaned. “They will subjugate all the lands of the Earth to its circumference, and the peoples will wail, and fire will unseat the stones of the temples, and death shall make itself a place at the table of every home, and –”

I stooped just enough to match my cousin’s height, and at the eye-to-eye gave him a warm smile. “Did you get some rice pudding to-night, kin-o-mine?”

“I-”, Cooper’s eyes refocused from some other ‘there when’ back to the ‘this here now’. He frowned, and tears gathered up. “Yes.”

“Did you like your pudding?”

“...yes.”

“It was good?”

“Yes.”

I patted his head and waved for him to help me set up a low corner table in the room for our game. The center-point of our room was covered by means of a battered throw rug, which was set down on top of prior carpeting for reason of being easier to clean. We drew out also a small tin dish, a length of twine, and a small carafe of rendered beast fat, and set them on the table to make a candle, though we could not light it without fetching fire from the kitchen.

Twilight was most pronounced in our library, which was dark with wood and the spines of books. To the point my cousins and aunts would combat the dimness by means of stringing up white sheets about the walls to provide for a more luminous atmosphere. This practice though, would obstruct me from reaching the literature and so those curtains were like to advance and retreat like the tide as we warred over their deployment.

Saleena, having been run out of her patience for learning, threw down her grammar book with exasperation. “I hate ajectivs! Havin’ words for usin’ other words is dumb. Why cain’t I be satisfied to know a thing without knowin’ the name for knowin’ it?” She rolled off her bed and slumped over the table with her cheek flattened against the surface. “I give up on learnin’ to talk, entire. I’ll say nothin’ forever, then I cain’t catch trouble for sayin’ nothin’ wrong.”

Carefully, I pushed her head so that her hair couldn’t get into the candle grease and rolled my eyes. Then, for the purpose of sharing, I fetched my plate off my bunk and set it crossways her on the table. Though I had exhausted my corn-bread, there were some red beans and mushrooms still, with a dried currant and kale slaw, and slices of pickled goose to mop them up with.

“Go fetch us our candle lit if you be pleased, Saleena sweetest,” I requested, and so she did at reckless speed before, a minute later on the return, setting her head back down with a ‘thunk’ and an ‘ow’. The grease burned with a slight foul smell and dark smoke (which we partly reduced by means of sage and lemon oil), but the light was good.

In short order, the door swung open again. It was Ursula (who was Saleena’s elder sister) then who joined us, and with little Priscilla (who was Cooper and Ashli’s youngest sibling, and the final cousin I promised to name to you) herded gently and docile ahead of her.

Su-Hope waved a small cloth bandage eagerly, and there was a tiny pink blot visible. “Ursula! Look at my finger! It’s chopped off and we ate it for dinner, and I died! I’m ex-sang-uin-ate-d.”

Cousin Ursula was shaped in the spitting image of her own younger sister, except taller and for her skin which was bristled with small thorny papula. It is unkind for me to say that this condition gave my cousin a shark-like appearance, but this was true; though I stress it did not injure her countenance half as much as you must imagine, or a tenth of how she feared.

Solemnly, Ursula nodded. “I shall gather up flowers for your grave to-morrow, my dearest. But by grace forgive me for my reserve to-night, for I must save my tears until the wake so that I may weep then in proportion to my grief.”

Su-Hope grinned and was satisfied. Then she fetched the playing cards from my coat pocket and dealt out hands to us except for Priscilla, who did not have the capacity for play; and as the rules were meant for four, she sat besides me so that we might trade places between deals and so preserve our teams.

I have intended to relay to you a picture of our domestic existence, in a happy hour of our company. We lived as such, with both love and contention for one another, and shared near everything we had by necessity. If one were to watch us play cards by candle-light and Ashli absent, it was an easy thing to see our resemblance. We all had the same dark hair, the same nose, and an affection for maudlin dramatics. We also were all terrible and irredeemable cheats in the game of bridge.

---

I mentioned before that Su-Hope and Saleena shared some measure of privilege with me in our home. If you are wise to the prejudices of our humankind, you may already have guessed at the cause of it. Grown women and men were discomforted with Ursula’s sharkly skin, and with Cooper’s purpled blood. And though I have not yet impressed upon its severity, Priscilla’s vacancy of mind would provoke a subtler discomfort in hearts vulnerable to introspection.

Nowadays, we have come to call children born in this time as Generation Mu (μ), which many folk suspect is meant to be understood unkindly as generation mutant. Though by definition, the start marker for μ must be understood to have come at the death of Mother Juno and the first stillbirth tide, by convention we do not hear the slur mutant (or mutie) apply until after the Witch’s Cry, and ending with the Season of Stilling (during whose long years there were near no natural-born human children come into the world at all).

I was born into the Witch’s Season, like Ashli before me. My shape and my blood is as close to standard homo sapiens, as true to Juno’s Legacy, as can be measured by mortal means. Then Ursula was the first to join us with… atypical feature, and I am ashamed to say we did not respond well to her arrival in our home. By the time Su-Hope and Saleena were en route, we had come to know that μ was a broader, perhaps even a global calamity, so our aunties solicited preventative measures from abroad at great expense.

Cooper produced an unexpected King of Spades, and collected the trick from us. Saleena and I had each been quite certain that the other held the card, and we were much aggrieved.

Poor Cooper though, the victim of a miserly purse. Lilac for life, and that for will of the Mister, who had come to resent the cost of Burban natal potions and the upkeep of too many growing youths.

Close sat next to Ursula was Priscilla, who deserved sympathy most of all. For she was the one who had survived the stilling, and even then in the living lost something essential to do it. Her mouth made the shape of noises, but not the sounds, and she would reach out to touch Ursula’s cards, who would dissuade her but with tenderness and kind comforting words.

My plate emptied fast, and we produced some small part of our secret reserves of snacks to replenish it. We played faster, as we were knowingly limited in both candle and curfew.

Finally, hallway footfalls turned all our heads at once. I imagine we painted ourselves a frightful image, so alike and in our evening linens, twelve eyes in orange and shadow and whispers cut mute. Ashli (for that’s who it was) was took with a start, then with her hand on her heart, breathed deep with some part of relief.

“For fucks sake, munchkins. I’ve seen a dude three hundred years dead, and he isn’t half as creepy as you.”

Saleena leapt to her side first, and wrapped our eldest about the waist without restraint. “Ashli, we’re losin’, you smell bad. I like your hair now.”

All this was true, as our cousin was both uncharacteristically clean and reeking of a competition between tobacco and detergent. Her hair was fine and bright and folded up into a neat top bun, and she had on a white linen button-down shirt and fine capris, while her clean boots hung around her neck to her breast by their laces tied together.

Without her charcoal black applied, her eyes appeared to me to be more open, more thoughtful, more vulnerable.

Ashli placed her palm to Saleena’s cheek and kissed her forehead. “Nuh-uh. You smell worster, ya lil’ snot.” Then she pinched her ear, turned her about by the shoulders, and prodded her towards her bunk. “Alright, gambling fiends. It’s bedtime. Bed. Time!” Ashli then bent over our game and swept up our cards against our protest. “Mabel’s on her way, so you go get yourselves unconscious like the good little brats you are.”

Though the little ones made some little argument and bargaining, they made quick to comply once I betrayed them and snuffed out our light with a promise to resume our play on the morrow.

Once the others were changed into their evening gowns and scrambled into their sleeping places, and Auntie Mabel come visit to see us off to sleep, Ashli sighed and from the top of my bunk vaulted up to take hold of the mezzanine lip. From there, she lifted herself to the second story: the place where she made her own rest on a mattress which was hidden from below.

But I myself did not make to dreaming. Instead I lay for a long hour with my thoughts until I was sure the small ones were aslumber.

“Ashli,” I whispered, and she being awake replied.

“Todd, don’t be a dweeb. Fuck off to sleep.”

I declined. From my tiptoes in the barest hint of moonlight, I took hold of the banisters above and raised to climb up over it and then to kneel besides her.

Scowling, she raised up on her elbows. “Yo. Privacy much?” But I was not dissuaded, for that night I found we were at the edge of the Argument and it was my cousin who carried it with her.

Leaning closer, I levied my suspicions in a whisper: “Ashli Hektor, kin-o-mine. Sworn of Diana, and free woman of the West. How is it I hear you singing in the Voice of the Witch?”