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“Did you call me?” Sumhellfi the Devilish Half-Elf Half-Goblin of the lost Dhataland poopped into existence to answer the wishes of the lost soul.

When she had tripped on the dog’s turds that her friends had reminded her more than once to take care of removing, she also inadvertently moved the old family dusty fish-clock that sings when you stoke it. Only that it had not sung for years —Flove forbids! That awful drunkard song didn’t play now there wasn’t any battery left in the horrible decoration.
Was it a magic clock? With a genie in there?

While Yoland was lost in deep thoughts and concern, Sumhellfi leaned forward with an enticing raise of the eyebrows “May I offer you some sliced naggin? It tastes like coleslaw they say…”

Annabel Ingram was chatting the tourists through her guided tours, but most of the time, her mind was wandering elsewhere.
As a matter of fact, she often thought she should have been named “Wandering Elsewhere” instead. These were her two favourite words in the whole Manilvan language. Scholars had made fancy claims like basement portal or something of that ilk was the loveliest words combination, but she’s never been one to follow the trends and fleeting modes anyway.

All in all, it was probably time she got herself a new job; touring the tourists in the middle of “ohs” and “ahs” to the Doorway of the Goddess Amarylis Moo Rue? Not for her any longer.
To be bluntly honest she was beginning to find herself a little of a fraud, as she tried to maintain a decent level of excitement at the ridiculous amazement of the tourists when they recounted their litanies of visions of Goddess Amarylis surrounded with cohorts of naked ladies and bare butt cupids holding wreaths of flowers. Amarylis was the Goddess of Flove. A glorious goddess representing the duality of the aspects of love and death. Quite a hype for people coming from the cities, eager to get a quick shot of esoteric experiences.

But she’d seen Amarylis more than once, and it was not all that pretty behind the scenes. She was not as mean as herself, but she wasn’t the last to poke fun at people for whisking unwarranted followers to the altars. Anyway, that and her perfumes, honestly you had to wonder. Lavender and decaying morue (cod), what a blend…

Salome was recalling her first steps on the Murtuane as she was fondly turning a small pale greenish stone into her palm. The stone was smooth, with a milky shine and had a diffuse warmth.

It was carrying many of her memories of this time. She’d taken it from the shores of the Kandulim that first night, taking the rough stone as something to cling on, and firmly grasp, to bring herself back to her own senses, and drown her fearfulness and disorientation in the strong presence of feeling alive.

She’d kept it for a while, and then had started to learn how to use stones to encode certain information. Of all the shiny crystals that she could have used, she’d preferred to keep the rough unpolished stone because of its genuineness.
Encoding it wasn’t as easy as for more regular crystalline structures found in more precious stones, yet it was almost as if she’d wanted this one to bear the mark of her mastery at this art.

She wasn’t very educated, and had not seen much of the Earth, but she had known at once that this place where they had docked the dinghy after that epic escape from the Sultan’s palace wasn’t like anything she could have found on Earth. Somehow, even her own body had begun to reflect that alien-ority to her.

The stone was showing her scenes she had conveniently let slip away from her current focus. As she was seeing them, appreciation was overflowing her heart. It had taken her a while to get accustomed to this place and eerily enough, despite that lack of familiarity, she’d had a knowing that she was meant to be there.

Her thirst of discovery was as immense at that time —not that it was less at the moment, but the contrast between her ignorance and the things she knew she could access had been stark and bitterly felt.

She couldn’t help but smile at the scene of her past self learning to read and write. When Madame Chesterhope had taken her under her wing in her schemes to approach the Sultan with a worthy price, she had begun to learn from her a modicum of English language, but she would never have dreamt of learning how to read.

And there, how ironic that the first place she would learn that, of all the many languages she would learn over the course of their explorations with Georges, was a place from another dimension, with a language she only started to feel she could utter the sonorities of.

It was no mistake Leonard had brought them here first. Now she was thinking back, reminiscing this period of time, she recognized how much she loved the languages of the Turmakis. For her, it was as close as “home” a foreign culture could be called.

Bea was looking at the book Barb had brought.

“Gosh it’s big…”
“Yeah, wish they’ll make the next one lighter”
“Sure, they could stop like at the 1444th…”
“Oh, great idea Bea! That would be lovely, that’s the number of the angels”
“What you’re sayin’ again Leo?”
“4-4-4: that’s the number of the angels! Everybody knows that!”
“Mmm Circle of Fours… well, doesn’t have the same ring though…”
“Like you know anything about rings just because you’ve been a professional wrestler Bea, tsk…” Leo rolled her eyes

That was it. She had enough for the time being. Ever since the management had agreed to hire him for the new show, the Freakus was not as Fabulously Great as it once was.

Not that he was a bad guy, but he was all so closeted, he was imprinting it to the circus, and she wanted to breathe some different kind of air. Of course, never been a freak himself, Morgan the Mentalist wouldn’t ever come close as to understand what having been closeted your all life would mean. Being the Lobster girl of the show, she knew quite a bit about that.
It had took her awhile to know that there wasn’t anything wrong with her expression, so no one would told her how to express. Not the Mentalist of all others.

Damo, the guy who was setting up the tents had seen her leave the Freakus without a word, her little piece of luggage on her “normal” hand, while her claw-like one was tucked in a glove under her bosom. Sweet-hearted as he was, he had tried to convince her to stay, that surely there was some misunderstanding.
“Lyla, don’t be stoopid, ain’t got nothin’ fur you out there” he’d said to her.

She didn’t know how to tell him that all was good. She didn’t want to tell too much either, for Fama, his teen daughter wasn’t really loving the life at the circus either, and would easily have taken the bait to get out of there too. So she had moved saying that she would come back, “when it’s safe for kids” she’d added mysteriously.

Strange at it seemed, it was like taking a breathe of air, and yet, she couldn’t help but think over and over at how she could have changed anything in what had happened. Perhaps it was just a pretext for her to do her next step.
When Morgan first came to the show, he wasn’t in a good shape, and had begged Pat Elson to hire him. As he was kind of smart guy, he didn’t stay long in Damo’s team of workers. Pat saw his potential as a sort of empathic guy, and devised the Mentalist act with him.

He was good at cold-reading, mostly guessing at people problems; in the beginning, some of the freakus’ people would play a part with him, to amaze the audience, but it became less and less necessary, and he would do a nice job buy himself, with lots of “it wouldn’t happen to be that your mother gave the watch to you? No… not your mother… but someone close… I can feel blah blah” and then picking on the subtle hints the guy was giving off unwittingly.

Lately, he had started to kind of feel stuff for real. And he started to freak out. After all this time, not many people remembered Morgan as he first came to the circus, and for most he was the Outstandingly Great Mentalist. Yeah, he had been pimping up a bit his name too… Those things happen in the milieu.
But Lyla remembered. She was a girl at this time, but your work at the circus starts very early when you’re a freak.
She had seen how he gained a little confidence in himself, as long as it stayed within closed tents and half-lit veils. He was truly a master of illusion games, and he didn’t want people to see him differently than the way he was presenting himself. He’d first tried his little games of séances with some close trusty friends, and Lyla had been quite encouraging; he deserved to blossom his potential; no one deserved to be maintained at a place where you can’t reach your highest.

A few days before, Lyla had had the pleasure of seeing Jenny, who’d been snake charmer many years ago, and had quit to become a singer in a bar: “tired me to travel so much, ya see” she’d said to Lyla “Now my life ain’t so complicated”.
Then Jenny had then asked about the guys she’d known in the freakus, first of all was Morgan the Mentalist. “How’s that old fart of Morgy?” she’d asked with a giggle “still scamming around?”

Lyla had said innocently that he’d been practicing doing it more genuinely, even to some success with local peasants in a few séances. Jenny had greeted the news with a cheer. “Wonderful, hey!”

The next day, Lyla had had the Mentalist erupt in the caravan she shared with Zarafina and Venus, since Twi had gone to sing too. He was looking furious and once they were out of earshot (how could there be any need of making secrets with the others, Lyla had wondered, they shared everything, even the tiny bar of soap) told her with his sweetest voice how he appreciated Jenny. Of course she wasn’t a Mentalist, but she knew when someone was beating around the bush; and she needn’t be Moses to know the bush was smelling of burning.

“I greatly appreciate Jenny, but I’d love to choose when I disclose my information to her” that’s what he said. At first, she’d thought, well, why the theatrics? Cool for you guy, peace off now. Then she slowly understood that he wanted to tell her to shut her mouth. How could she know what part to shut and which to tell? She hadn’t done anything wrong did she? Why was he having the same tone than the frigging priests with their sermons telling that you’re sinful, and when you’ve got a crooked arm, it’s because you’re born evil and such guilt shit.”

Well, she didn’t want to stay in a position where she had to figure out which of his sharing was a real sharing or was not. So she better bugger off, take some fresh air.

She thought how she loved to hear the radio, and her lifelong dream was to work there, in a place where people would hear her before judging from her appearance… Maybe she would thank Morgy in the future for giving her the last excuse to do what she wanted.

“Can we go home now?” Arona asked the dragon … “I don’t know what we came here to do, but I miss Buckberry and Yikesy (and his nanny), even old grumpy Mandrake. And it feels like we’ve been gone for months!”

“You’re not interested by knowing more about this place , are you?” asked Leörmn

She didn’t answer lest she might hurt the dragon’s feelings —if he had any, that is.

“Well, I don’t want to get home so soon!” said Irtak who was usually keeping quiet, but obviously was taking it all in here, being on this place like a grake on a lake.

Leörmn took a deep breathe, pondering the situation and the many other probable realities verging on this one, and told Arona:

“I believe there is a cave, at a day of walk from the shore, inside this land. This cave was used by the Guardians, long before you were born, and is known to dragons and nirguals from this time. From this cave, you shall be able to travel where you want. You may even meet the zynder to guide you.”

Arona was thinking that the dragon was surely becoming senile talking all that nonsense she could barely figure out, but she was too considerate to mention it.

“Do you remember your glubolin?” the dragon continued abruptly, but her mind was sharp, and she answered with certainty

“I sure do. Why?”

“Please take a moment to feel the remembrance of it”

Well, sure, if that can please you she had learnt not to contradict old dotty dragons, so she tried her best to remember herself and Mandrake playing with the glowing ball filled with coloured sands ; that would surely not bring her back home, but at least the dragon couldn’t accuse her of not complying.

“Continue…”

As she remembered it, she felt how delicious and strange that object was, and how she’d loved it, and suddenly, it was here. In her hands!

“The old dotty dragon still has a few tricks up its scales, young lady” Leörmn said with a slight smug on his snout (or whatever it is called).

“Oh, that’s all very nice, but what’s the point of dragging this along?”

“It’ll show you where to go” Leörmn answered, “use it as a compass; I’ve imprinted it with the location of the cave, so that you won’t be lost, and can find your way to the cave, or wherever you want to go. We are continuing here with the boys. Have a safe trip. We will meet again.”

Arona blew a kiss in the direction of Irtak and the dragons, and without hesitation went in the direction of the dense tropical forest.

“Well, that dragon is an odd ball, but at least, I don’t have to wait for them to finish whatever they’re doing on that weird place.” Arona was glad to be finally alone for the next days.

“Will she be safe here?” asked Irtak

“I believe she will, she has got resources. Besides, the Murtuane is a place filled with a certain peace and blessed with a slow unraveling of time; it helps take the measure of the events, and find one’s own truths.”

“Hey! Look at that Bea!”
“What?” Beattie answered distractedly
“A flyer for a friggin’ Christmas Boulder Moving Party ! Bugger if I want to go there and spend euros on stupid gifts! Spoiling the fun on the snowy mount, innit a shame?”
“Mmmm mmm”
“What’re you looking at Bea for Pete’s sake! You’re not even listening to a word I just said!”
“Shhht Leo, that old bat of Barb has found another treasure of a book, it’s full of tattoos designs ; I’d love to get one.”
“You’re kiddin’?!” Leonora was dismayed “And where would you put the fucker? On your hips with all your cellulite, it’ll look like a bloated wrinkled balloon in no time at all!”
“Yeah, been thinkin’ of that for a while… I think I’ve got a good smooth n’ firm place for it though…”
“Don’t tell me…”
“Yes, on my butt!”

Gloria had volunteered to go fetch whatever thing she could find to feed the measly fire burning in a ice crevice. They were starting to get a bit hungry and the watermelbomb once exploded weren’t giving off much to feed on. She was starting to hallucinate delicious roasted penguins on a fire, with a slice of bread and whale lard, and a smoking cup of algae tisane…

“Golly, this is gettin’ sick! The little buggers are so cute…” she mused, fondly overlooking the flock of penguins on the shore, some diving and catching fish, others nursing, some gliding lazily on the glittering ice.

“Now look at this!” she said “SHA! SHA! Com’ere!”

“What the ‘eck!” Akita couldn’t believe its ears.
“Weeehoo! We’re goin’ome, and on a cruise mind ye!” Mavis was beaming.
“On a frigging iceberg! You can’t be serious!”
“Oh don’t be such a party pooper Akitooh, it’s perfect!” Sharon said
Not even trying to be reassuring, Mavis echoed “Yes! Remember BBC talkin’ about it years ago; just another mad project they said. But I loved that! Mad projects ye know… never thought I would see that in my lifetime. Guess the project has been funded after all. Drifting bagged icebergs to Africa through the Indian Ocean! Now that’s a plan!”
“And look! this one has got propellers, and a little platform,… and a satellite dish!” Sharon was inspecting the behemothic plastic-bagged iceberg on rockets which was bobbing up and down, still anchored to the nearby whale-watching base.
“Hope it’s not teleguided by aliens though…” Gloria said a bit wearily.

“Well, I suppose it’s our best option for now” Akita was trying to be appreciative of the ladies efforts. “And how do we hop on that thing?”

“Oh, that’s easy! Bring the ropes girls!”

When he had been hit by the blow of the watermelbombs and the furious lady he had come to rescue, Akita found himself in a strange peaceful place. He was getting bits of what was happening, but the will to resist and fight seemed vanished in a distant scene he was only distantly aware of.
He was seeing Kay, his spirit dog beside him, beckoning him to another place of white luminous and warm peacefulness.

“Am I dying” he asked, feeling the answer to the question wasn’t very important.
“Don’t be silly” the dog said mentally “Just let go for a moment, it’ll make things easier for you to get out of this place to another one you’d prefer”
“I’m not sure going anywhere is so important, being here reminds me of something long forgotten”
“Yes, you know this place, you’re drawing to you some memories of others of your focuses, explorers from your time and also ancient dwellers, in a very very distant past. These living memories will help you.”
“You were there too, configured differently but I remember you from there”
“Yes” the dog nodded “you had a pack of dogs in one of these explorer focuses. I was the alpha one, see…”

Some scenes moved in the white foam sprinkled with diamond dust like he was seeing through openings in a crystal cave. All was so clear it was elating.

“But we’re never going to get out of this place, not without a boat, a plane, not without a compass… and not without a brain!” he was being drawn back to where his body was, wrapped in the warm snet, jumping on the back of the snow scooter. “These women will lead us to a sure death, and pretty fast!”
“Just relax, even if they don’t give that impression, they know what they are doing. They focus on what they want, and they trust. They can’t see the dead-ends you are seeing. Sometimes you get caught up in those other memories of yours. You’ve read adventures of Antarctica explorers, most of them were drama, but it doesn’t have to be the same broken record now, you’re going to love that time if you choose to…”
“They’re so focused on themselves it’s hard to believe you. They wouldn’t see a leopard seal as a threat even if it was at their throats!”
“But they wouldn’t even draw the predator to them in the first place.” Kay was saying warmly “Have a little faith in them, there is a surprise coming along that’ll show you beyond a shred of doubt that their allowing for miracles is fairly titanic.”
“Titanic, yes… Now tell me I shouldn’t worry with all those icebergs!”
“Indeed” Kay said with a hint of mischief in its ethereal voice “Now, let’s wake up and have some fun!”

“Girls! Let’s ‘ave a rest! Akita’s waking up!” Sharon’s powerful voice commanded the caravan of snooter-powered hairy ladies to a halt.

“Wow, I really start to love this place,” Gloria was reeling. “And who knew all this extra hair would come in so handy. Look! Another aurora borealis !”
“Yeah, an’ another crowd of trillion of these darn Adélie penguins shoutin’ like Freddy during those bloody crickets cups…” said Mavis with a sniffle, pointing at the icy coastline blackened by the seemingly boundless flock of little noisy creatures.
“And how the heck you so sure they’re Adultery penguins?” snapped Gloria a bit vexed her sharing of the beauties of the white paradise was left soiled by Mavis “like you’re goin’ to impress us with your botanic knowledge-it-all? Just because you love looking at those stupid nightly animal documentaries?”

“Be still girls! Bring those watermelbombs to make a fire, food and water, we’re camping here until Akita’s ready to go.”

When the four friends Angela Goose, Jobby the Pygmy Hippo, Weirdy the Weasel and Freaky the Ferret came to the dwelling of Barry the White Bear, they were all greeted by Pawanie the Lady Panda, his lovely partner.

“Oh,” she told them, “Barry is already gone fishing, but if that’s Arky the Aardvark you are looking for, I can tell you that I saw sweet Arkie Pooh not too long ago. He’s never far away when you need him.”

“By the way,” Pawanie the Lady Panda said to Angela “There’s a litter of the cutest baby crocodiles that has been placed for adoption, and I immediately thought of you.”

“What?!” Angela quacked almost frantically.

“Oh” said Freaky the Ferret “I saw that recently somewhere, they said baby crocos could talk to each other even when still inside the eggs! Could you believe that?”

“Well, of course,” Weirdy the Weasel answered teasingly, “ everybody knows that .”