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Aunt Idle was going to visit her old friend Margit Brynjúlfursdóttir. It was all very hush hush: Margit had intimated that there was to be a family reunion, but it was to be a surprise party, and she mustn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Margit had sent her the tickets to Keflavik, instructing her to inform her family and friends that she had won the trip in a story writing competition.

It was Idle’s first trip to Iceland. She had met Margit in a beach bar near Cairns some years ago, just after the scandalous expose on the goings on of a mad doctor on a remote south Pacific island. The Icelandic woman had been drowning her sorrows, and Idle had been a shoulder to cry on. The age old story of a wayward son, a brilliant mind, so full of potential, victim of a conniving nurse , and now sadly incarcerated on the wrong side of the law.

Aunt Idle didn’t immediately make a connection between the name Brynjúlfursdóttir and Bronklehampton, indeed it would have been impossible to do so using conventional means, Icelandic naming laws and traditions being what they were. But the intuitive Idle had made a connection notwithstanding. The maudlin woman in the beach bar was clearly the mad doctors mother.

Idle had invited Margit to come and stay at the Flying Fish Inn for a few weeks before returning to Iceland, a visit which turned out to last almost a year. Over the months, Margit confided in her new friend Idle. Nobody back home in Iceland knew that the doctor in the lurid headlines was her son, and Margit wanted to keep it that way, but it was a relief to be able to talk about it to someone. Idle wasn’t all that sure that Margit was fully in the picture regarding the depths to which the fruit of her loins had sunk, but she witnessed the womans outpourings with tact and compassion and they became good friends.

The fasten your seatbelts sign flashed and pinged. The landing at Keflavik was going to be on time.

John placed himself down on a crooked old chair at the table, with journal in hand, and stared out the window of his cottage. As he sat there, the imperfect glass of the window distorted his view slightly, but noticeably, almost unconsciously, and he swayed in minuscule displacements or perhaps shifted a bit to take a sip of his black coffee, giving the effect of a liquid world – to someone of imagination, of course. To those with no imagination, the window was rubbish and needed to be replaced.

It’s been a relaxing weekend for John, who, on his working days, finds himself as a writer. This is, of course, if you were to think of any days as those in which you might suddenly stop writing or ignore inspiration. In that respect, every day is a working day. However, this weekend was a special one for himself.

The writing that got him money was of the technical sort, dedicated to dry manuals and instructional fare. His passion, however, lent itself to the imagination. No doubt, he still adored the natural world and it’s workings, but he found himself nearly dead inside after completing a project for work. This, invariably, lead him to his personal expeditions.

Every few weeks he’d save up enough money to take a train or bus to another location, picked nearly at random, just so he could get away and bring color back into his life. This cottage, with its imperfect windows, was one such expedition.

So, he sat there for a moment, playing with his perception through the window, and then shifted his attention through it to world outside. A breath of beauty swept over him and he was inspired. In his journal, with no expectation of the entry living beyond those pages, he wrote:

The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest

The Wystlewynds (Whistle Winds) or Wystlewynd Forest is a forested, mountainous area – if you’re apt to call these green, low laying perturbations in the Earth “mountains”. The cool-yet-comfortable south-easterly winds blow through the Wystlewood trees, whistling as it goes. Some would say the forest sings.

Wystlewood trees “sing”, as it were, due to the way the wind passes through their decomposing trunks. While alive, the trunks of the trees have a hard, fibrous outer wood, while the inner portion is soft and sponge-like, saturated in chemical that simultaneously grabs on to water and repels insects. When the trees get old and begin to die off, they tend to remain upright for some time as the inner sponge decomposes. This leaves a hollow void where a particular caterpillar takes refuge, unaffected by the repellent chemical that a fungus slowly decomposes into an edible source of nutrition.

These caterpillars leave behind a secretion that the decomposing fungus in the tree requires. The relationship between the caterpillar and fungus is symbiotic in that regard, both feeding each other. We call these caterpillars “Woodworms”.

When the caterpillars are ready to cocoon, they climb out to one of the old branches and hang themselves from a cord of twisted threads at least a foot long. When they are ready to come out, they bite through the cord, dropping themselves to the forest floor while still in the cocoon. The cocoon and all drops below the foliage of the undergrowth, where the moth can come out into the world under cover of green leaves and the shimmering violet flowers of the Spirit Flower – a color scheme that the moth shares.

The Spirit Flower is a rhizome with a sprawling root structure that tends to poke it’s way into everything. It has small violet shimmering flowers in umbels that in any other case might be white. The leaves are simple with a jagged margin, alternating. The stem is on the shorter end, perhaps a foot tall, fibrous and slightly prickly.

There are a few flowers that tend to dominate the undergrowth, Spirit Flowers being one. Sun Drops and Red Rolls are additional examples, the former a yellow droopy flower and the latter a peculiar red flower with a single pedal that’s rolled up in a certain way that would suggest a flared funnel with wavy edges.

The flowers and trees enjoy the soil here, a bit sandy and rocky, but mixed with a richness created by the mixture of undergrowth, fungi and bacteria. The roots dig into the soil, slowly stirring it and adding to it’s nutrients. The fungi eat the dead roots and fallen foliage and the bacteria eat the fungi and everything else, of course.

The whole matter leaves a note of scent in the air that cannot be described as anything other than that of the Wystlewynds. It’s perhaps sweet, with Earthy undertones and an addictive bitterness. The whole place seems to elevate one’s energy, sharpening the senses. You want to sing with the trees, or perhaps play along with a haelio (a flute-like instrument created with wystlewood).

Hilda regretted her decision to fly to the British Isles, now that she was caught up in all the Fuxit brouhaha. The mysterious plague doctor in Chester had turned out to be nothing more than a common madman, looking for a party to crash. The Mexican band with a wheelbarrow full of bricks welcoming the orange toupee’d buffoon from the west had been momentarily amusing, but was nothing more than another common madman looking for a party to crash as far as Hilda could see, and not worth further investigation, but the madness that had enveloped the country over the Fuxit was another matter.

Exit mania had swept the country ~ and not only the country, but the continent as well. Doors were falling off their hinges on buildings across Europe with the rush of people demanding to leave, or trying to keep others out. Irate women were pushing their husbands out of the front door and locking them out, while shop assistants slammed the doors shut on customers, exercising their rights to determine who should be allowed in, and who should leave. “Exit” signs on motorways were set alight and exit ramps barricaded, lighted exit signs in nightclubs were smashed. Herds of dairy cows smashed down gates and roamed the streets, and sheep huddled next to boarded doorways.

Itinerant builders were in high demand to fix broken hinges on gates and doors, and the memes about the population becoming unhinged quickly ceased to amuse in the utter mayhem.

Hilda decided to get a flight back to Iceland as soon as possible. As an investigative reporter, she knew she should stay, but justified leaving on the grounds that a wider picture was imperative. And frankly, she’s seen enough!

But leaving the beleaguered nation was not going to be easy. The airline websites had been closed, and the doors on the travel agents had either been boarded up or had been removed altogether, and nobody was staffing the premises. The motorway exit ramp to the airport had been barricaded. Not to be deterred, Hilda left her hire car on the side of the road, and dragged her flight bag across the waste ground towards the airport building. The place was deserted: the doors on all the aircraft had been removed, and emergency exit signs lay smashed on the tarmac.

“Then I have no other option,” Hilda said, “But to teleport.”

Connie excused herself from an after dinner drink with Supposedly Sweet Sophie, pleading indigestion from the sour berries in the reindeer stew. It was only half a lie: she did feel sour, but she didn’t know why. Locking the hotel bedroom door behind her, she leaned on it and let out a long sigh. Being annoyed all the time was starting to get so annoying.

In an attempt to lighten her mood and release some pent up energy, she found an exercise video and pressed play. When she saw the fitness instructor using weights on her ankles she had an idea. Scanning the room, she noticed a pair of matching concrete buddhas either side of the balcony doors. Perfect! Connie thought, and with gritted teeth strapped one to each ankle with a couple of brassieres. Now when I take them off, I’ll feel the impossible lightness of being.

Unaware that she’d been spotted at Keflavik airport, a few hours later Hilda was happily sipping a cocktail in the glass-walled Northern Lights bar of the Ion hotel, listening to eerie Icelandic folk tunes and marveling at the mystical ambiance of the place. She was particularly taken with the surreal moss covered lava fields outside, and congratulated herself on her decision to lay low in a remote location for a day or two, while the dust settled, so to speak.

“Look, Sophie! Isn’t that Hilda? What’s she doing here at Keflavik airport!?”

“Oh, there you are Hilda, can I have a word?”

Hilda started guiltily at Connie’s voice, and pushed her teacup behind a stack of papers on her desk. Slurping down the last of the tea before making her way to the airport for the Boston flight, she hadn’t been able to resist looking into the dregs for a minute or two. What she’d seen had made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. But what was she to do about it? And now here was Connie, fidgeting in the doorway. Well, see what she wants first, Hilda told herself, and then decide.

“Do you know anything about these?” asked Connie, thrusting the flight tickets in front of Hilda. “And what’s the background on the old crone, Sophie? I thought she was just a temp?”

Hilda’s head was spinning. Should she say nothing, let Connie take the flight, and hope for the best? Or try and prevent her making the trip, just in case? How accurate was her tea leaf reading really? What if she had misinterpreted the signs? It could be too embarrassing. Better just hope for the best and say nothing.

“Sorry Connie, must dash.” Hilda quickly gathered her things together and shoved them in the flight bag at her feet. Pushing past Connie she said, “Er, have a good trip!” and with a sickly smile she fled.

When Hilda arrived at the airport an hour later, she made a snap decision to change her flight. Luckily there were a few seats left to Keflavik in Iceland. She really hadn’t fancied Boston and the crotch grabbers anyway. She wouldn’t tell the others she was already in Iceland, but at least she would be there to monitor events as they unfolded.

Back at her desk after a crash course at zumba with the Chinese team, Connie was sorting her e-mails (meaning sending them to trash). Nothing fancy, nothing catchy, nothing to grab her attention span for more than a minute.

The noise of the open space was making her feel drowsy. Maybe a coffee would help her wake up, or maybe if something could happen to stir the pot. Connie deleted a few more e-mails to show the others that she was a busy reporter before leaving her desk.
Passing by the desks of her colleagues, Connie looked surreptitiously at their computer screens and saw that everyone was playing the busy game. It was sad to recognize that good news (meaning bad news) were hard to come by nowadays.

In times like these, she had to resist the tentation to create her own news, it was not that kind of press. But still toying with the idea and making up some outrageous stories with her team was a way to make time fly away more quickly. Once, Hilda had even reused one of the titles for a real stories that sadly happened shortly after she had made it up.
Rumour had it that Hilda’s great grand mother was a gypsy and could do palm reading. The gran even used palm tree leaves to do her reading when there was nobody, you just had to cut the leave in the shape of the person you wanted to read the future and she would tell you all about them. She was good.
“It runs in the family,” Hilda had said. “It’s helpful to be at the right place at the right time.” And for sure she was the most prolific reporter of the agency.
Connie sure would have used some of Hilda’s medium inner sight to know when something would happen.

She made herself a cappuccino and with the milk drew the face of Al Pacino. Many years at a press agency and you learn a few tricks to impress your friends.
She heard the slow and uneven pace of sweet old Sophie behind her. She sighed, she didn’t want to have to answer another of her dumb questions about the future. If Hilda could read bits of the future, Sophie was always thirsty about it. Maybe that’s why Hilda was more often in the field and not so often at her desk.

Connie turned and almost dropped her cappuccino as the old lady handed her a Fedex envelop.
“Sorry,” said sweet old Sophie, “That just arrived for you. I wonder what it is.”
“I’m sure you do,” muttered Connie.
“It’s from Santa Claus,” said the old lady with a conniving smile.
Connie looked at the old lady, with a forced smile. Was insanity a cause to get rid of one of your employee ? She took the package with one hand. Heavier than she had expected. When she saw the address, she couldn’t believe it was real. The sender’s and city’s names were certainly fake. Jesus Carpenter, Santa Claus, AZ
Sophie was still there, looking at Connie with a big smile.
“What are you waiting for ?” the reporter asked.
“Aren’t you opening it?”

Connie considered opening the package, but the avidity on the old face was making her uncomfortable. “Nope,” she said. With her cappuccino and the package she went back to her desk. Sweet Sophie was still looking at her with that greedy smile on her face. Connie shivered and shook her head. It was obvious, the old tramp was mad.
She touched the package, trying to guess what was inside. As no convincing guess presented itself in her mind, she stripped it open. There was an iPhone 5 SE with 64Gb memory in it, two plane tickets for Keflavik in Iceland, and a note.
‘If you want a good story prepare your suitcase. Bring Sweet Sophie with you. We’ll contact you once you are there.’

Connie thought of a joke. She checked the package and no matter how many times she looked it was still her name. She looked toward the cafeteria and she shuddered. Sweet Sophie was still looking at Connie with that strange smile, as if she knew. Or as if she had sent the package herself, the reporter thought.
“Someone knows where Hilda is ? I need to talk to Hilda.”

“Bird poo is good for your hair,” said Tina scathingly, once again reading Quentin’s thoughts. “When these little ones hatch… “ She trailed off, not feeling the need to elaborate further.

Meanwhile in another part of town (or possibly in another dimension … it is not clear to the writer at this point but the writer is determined to carry on regardless — the editorial staff can clean it up later), Miss Bossy Pants managed to crawl her way out of bed, just long enough to send an urgent message:

Can’t possibly write today. One of you will need to do my contribution for the story. Thanks.

She contemplated adding a smile emoticon but feeling such a strong urge to punch it in the face decided that it was extraneous.

In the fashion section of Rim of the Realm, Connie “Continuity” Brown was weaving the latest reports together.
An unsavoury trend was gaining momentum in the meat factories to increase productivity: workers were wearing nappies to save wasting time visiting the lavatory.

The trend was spreading to banks and offices, where high heels and codpieces were required, causing a spate of unusual injuries and accidents, especially since the equality laws came into force, requiring both men and women to wear both high heels and codpieces ~ and nappies, due to the removal of time wasting unproductive lavatories worldwide.

Hilda “Red-Eye” Astoria jotted down a few more thoughts in her notebook, and pulled a red pen out of her top pocket to dot the i’s. It wasn’t that she was old, or even old fashioned by nature: at 42 she was as tech savvy as anyone, and had not been in the habit of writing things with pens on paper since she was at school. But the notepad and pens were part of the game, as was the Panama hat and the camel coat.

After a quick perusal of the days notes, Hilda smiled and snapped the notebook shut. The interview with the eccentric artist from the Flatlands had been even more entertaining than expected. She would enjoy writing the article. The Riddle of the Polar Molar, a tale to get your teeth into. Or Weird Tales from The Tooth Fairy Dimension. Or maybe “True Story: The 21st Century Time Traveler and the Iron Age Dentist”.

“HELP ME!” Liz shouted over her shoulder, while simultaneously grabbing the back of the gardeners trousers with one hand, and attempting to floogle the phrase stickum lute putty on her pocket device with the other hand. What in tarnation did it mean? Probably some ancient tribal voodoo Finnley had picked up during her sojourn in the nether regions of the planet.

Roberto struggled to escape the vice like grip on his belt, but Liz’s grip was firm. Godfrey charged across the lawn like like a wild boar to assist with the detention of the errant gardener and gripped Roberto’s shoulder firmly. The sticky shreds of paper in Godfrey’s hand stuck to the gardeners denim shirt like glue. Roberto wrenched himself free, sending Godfrey flying into the herbaceous border, and leaving Liz holding an empty pair of jeans in her hand. Focusing on the information now showing on her pocket information device ~ an aboriginal dreamwalker teleport code ~ it was a moment before Liz realized that she was no longer detaining the gardener but merely holding his trousers. Of Roberto, there was no sign.

Godfrey, sitting in amongst the delphiniums, was looking as pale as Finnley after the cucumber mask. Although Liz had missed the sight of the gardener sans trews, Godfrey had not.

“An imposter!” he cried. “That was no Roberto, that was Roberta Slack! A WOMAN!”

“Don’t push me,” snapped Finnley. “Yes Godfrey, I believe picking up rubbish is in my job description. Your job description … well buggered if I know what you do around here,” she said snarkily, perversely annoyed at being telepathically described as ‘the maid’. “Give me that rubbish immediately and I will deal with it,” she commanded, making a grab for Godfrey’s hand. “You go and help LIz with Roberto. And whatever you do, don’t let the blighter jump 3 times in the air and shout stickum lute putty. ”

“Who are you?” whispered Godfrey, keeping a firm grasp on the scraps of paper, aided perhaps by the fact that the honey was adhering them to his hand. “You are not the Finnley we know and … well, the Finnley we know. Is that cucumber on your face really a disguise? What have you done with Finnley?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Finnley, rolling her eyes.

“Help!” screamed Liz. “He’s trying to jump!”

Aunt Idle wandered around, wondering where everyone was. Had everyone gone out on a day trip or a holiday? Had she forgotten? She clumped across the yard looking for Bert. If she could find Bert, he would know ~ but where was he? Her feet felt dry and heavy. I really must do something about those dry callouses, she thought ~ perhaps a long hot soak in the bath. But first, I must find the others.

Idle continued her search, but her legs began to feel like lead. Funny how some days gravity seemed so much stronger. It was becoming harder to put one foot in front of the other. What was it that guy on the internet had said about a lightness of energy? The unbearable lightness of being ~ well this was more like the unbearable heaviness of feet.

A pair of butterfly’s scampered through the air, fluttering and darting around Idle’s sticky dreads. Be light like the skipping of a butterfly, that guy had said. Hah! she croaked. Easy to say! Unable to walk any further, Idle grabbed onto a straight little eucalyptus sapling to hold herself up. Her fingers felt stiff and inflexible as she grasped the slender trunk.

It’s just too hard, she thought with a heavy heart. It’s too hard to move.