Here, for your entertainment, is an entire chapter of the current W.I.P., Humorless.

Day Two

Thaddeus was lost.

Right. Back to work, then.

I'm currently working on two stories, one of which is called Humorless; sort of a horror comedy¹ about the intra-dimensional invasion of an otherwise harmless clockpunk-fantasy world. The cast currently includes:

• Grayson Dawes, antisocial alchemist and captain of the airship Humorless
  
• Hugh, his friend
  
• Emma Elsa Eliza Cassini, math-wiz
  
• Her suspiciously competent horse
  
• Grand Duke Jonathan Jacob Jorgen Cassini
  
• Simon Sayers, the Duke's youngest and most gifted adviser
  
• Rebecca Vaughn, senior engineer aboard the Humorless
  
• Thaddeus Vaughn, one of the most gifted spies within the League of Professionals; bit absentminded, though

As the title of the story clearly conveys, this is meant to be be somewhat funny², and I thought I'd share a few bits I like.

The Humorless:

The bag of the dirigible was oblong from starboard to port as well as stem to stern - like a fat cigar that had been stepped on - and was woven of asbestos and glass silk. The whole of the thing was encrusted with sensor arrays, weapons, armor plating, landing platforms for smaller craft, several clockwork mechanisms of undetermined and likely illegal purpose, and one transplanted roof garden. The overall effect, when viewed from the city below, was that one was looking up from the bottom of a pool at a fat woman floating on the surface, wearing an ugly dress and too much jewelry.

Bit more on the zeppelin:

No one in Bodea-Lotnikk looked particularly surprised that their city was talking; it wasn’t a terribly common occurrence, but it happened often enough that most people knew what to expect when it did.

A talking zeppelin, though; that was something else entirely. That was something worth paying attention to.

A bit on the city below:

The irregular, winding, and most of all narrow streets of Lotnikk reminded Thaddeus Vaughn (not uncomfortably) of the moment of birth. That was always the first impression that came to him – claustrophobic, yet disconcertingly Oedipal.

Thaddeus encounters the worst that the world has to offer -- professional adventurers:

It goes (almost) without saying that the man had companions. Professional adventurer types almost never travel in packs of less than four and, if separated, have a preternatural habit of ‘accidentally’ stumbling upon their lone companions just before or just after said companion is about to attract some kind of potentially profitable violence to their person.

There's a few other bits that I've emailed out to the defenseless folks on in my contacts list, but these are what's caught my eye today. Cheers.

1. Too many re-viewings of movies like Army of Darkness, House, and Shawn of the Dead, I think. There's been (so far) only one or two scenes that went in the way of the Spooky, but I think they came off fairly well. My goal is to try to convey (through showing) the kind horror-via-non-euclidean-wossnames that Lovecraft enjoyed telling about.
2. Being funny, as others have already said many times, is exhausting. I don't really know how some authors manage it.³
3. There's also quite a lot of footnotes.

one word.

And here's the wrap up... what ended up being chapter three of the NaNoWriMo project.

Now, while the boy is working on getting the spindle loose, I should let you know what Mudferthing is up to, because he certainly isn't sleeping, not with a sneak-thief in the house.

Oh yes, he definitely knows about that.

The boy was lucky that the giant was sick that day, because as you know, a giant's sense of smell is uncanny keen, and he would have squished the boy into jelly for his evening toast if he'd so much as caught a whiff of him. But, with his nose clogged up, of course he didn't.

Still, Mudferthing knew that something was wrong; he could feel it. Giants have a kind of sense about them -- a way of knowing things they couldn't really know that almost makes up for their generally mean natures and utterly dim wits, and Mudferthing, as I've said, was the worst of them all. He knew that he knew... something. He just couldn't say what.

So, once his scarf was done, he shuffled out of the weaving room very loudly, then turned himself around and got very, very quiet. It's not a thing that most folk know a giant can do, because it's not in giants' best interest to advertise the fact, but they can move like a cat when they need to, if they're in a place they know very well, which Mudferthing certainly was. So, while the boy waited and waited and counted to two hundred, Mudferthing had crept back to the door, peeked in at the weaving room, and did a little waiting of his own.

When the boy started his run across the room, the giant thought, "Fee, there goes the little hairless rat! I knew there was summat there!"

When the boy climbed up on his stool, the giant thought, "Fi, what's he up to? I'm gonna squish him into jelly for my toast, but I'll see what his greedy guts have got into before that!"

When the boy swung under the loom and started working on the rawhide tie, the giant thought, "Foe! He's after my spindle! My most prized possession!" (Which it certainly was not, and certainly was not what he had been cursing and calling it all day, but a giant who sees a thief going after one of his already-stolen things thinks of it as the most precious, and that is the honest truth.)

That was all the giant needed to see. He burst into the room and shouted, "Fum! You'll not get away from me, my little jelly pastry!" Which is not a very terrifying battle-cry, unless it is being shouted at you by a giant.

Here, you must give the boy credit, because he did not loose his nerve.

The boy almost slapped himself on the forehead and gave himself away when he realized what had punctured the giant's thumb for the fourth time today; Mudferthing had gone short of thread for his scarf, reached (clumsily, as he did most things) for the spindle on the side of the loom, and poked himself.

"It makes all kinds of sense," thought the boy. "Spindles are always the secret to things like this -- that's what mother always told me," and he dashed away a tear. "That's how to hurt Mudferthing -- I just have to get that spindle!"

You'll notice that somewhere in the middle of that thought, the boy had decided to get the spindle himself.

Of course, it wasn't going to be easy.

-=-=-=-

The giant wove and sniffled, sniffled and wove, for most of the day, and the boy saw him prick himself no less than three other times while he watched.

"It's too bad he doesn't work as a tailor," he thought, "he'd have bled to death years ago and everyone would be happier."

Finally, the scarf was long enough for Mudferthing's needs and the giant got to his feet and shuffled out of the room to his bed, each step bouncing the boy off the floor almost a foot (by this time, he had moved to hide behind the coal broom next to the fireplace, which was lucky).

After Mudferthing had left, the boy waited. Waited some more. Counted to two hundred and, finally, started toward the loom.

First, he climbed up to the top of the stool (which was still warm from the giant sitting on it all day and, unfortunately, still smelled like a giant had sat on it all day).

From there, he got hold of a piece of yarn dangling from the loom -- there were quite a few of these, since Mudferthing hadn't bothered cleaning up any of his mess -- and used it to swing to the leg of the loom, where he could stand on one of the cross-pieces, just a few feet below the spindle.

It was the most beautiful thing the boy had ever seen (which was quite an accomplishment, considering all the treasures in the giant's house), it looked like pure silver and shone like a full moon, coming to a sharp, giant-hide-piercing point at one end and a thicker, safer end where it was tied to the loom with a strip of rawhide.

It was this strip of rawhide that the boy started to work on, so he could get the spindle free and get out of the giant's house.

The loom was a great and clumsy thing, and on top of that, so was Mudferthing (covered in sweat from the heat of the fire and sniffling constantly, he was quite the sight to see). It looked as though he'd been working on the scarf most of the day, and the ugly thing was still only about fifteen feet long, which is to say about enough to get once around his neck, and no real use as a proper scarf at all, if you were Mudferthing.

The boy, who had never actually seen the giant (or any giant) before, took note of everything he could -- the broad, fat shoulders; the broad, fat stomach; the broad, fat hands... to be honest, 'broad' and 'fat' worked very well for most of Mudferthing until you got to describing his beady, black eyes or the tufts of wiry hair growing out of his ears like extra eyebrows.

The boy got a bit lost in examining the giant (from as far away has he could, naturally) until his attention was caught by Mudferthing swearing.

"Dragon's balls," the giant shouted, so loud the boy's eyes watered. Mudferthing shook his hand as though something had gotten hold of it and wouldn't let go, and then stuck his thumb in his mouth. "Forf toime todaw," he mumbled, before withdrawing it and peering at the end, still sniffling.

And there, before the boy's eyes, was a drop of blood on the giant's thumb tip.

The boy was no fool -- I've said as much before -- and his first thought was to get out of Mudferthing's house just as fast as could be got.

But I've also said that the boy was brave and curious, and he was also, after so many trips to the giant's house, more than a little tired of searching and searching and finding no answers.

"I'll just take a peek and see what the old bugger is up to," he thought to himself (not daring even to whisper). "Maybe I'll see something that will give me an idea about how to beat him."

You see, the boy had been at this for so long that he'd started to think of this as his quest, instead of something he would show a hero, once he knew Mudferthing's weakness (which he very shortly will, as you might have guessed).

So the boy snuck ever-so-very-very-quietly up to the door frame of the room in which he could hear the giant's sniffles -- as well as a kind of 'shoop-shoop... whiiiir' every so often -- and crawled on his hands and knees under the door (which is how he gotten from room to room since his first visit).

The room was stifling hot -- Mudferthing had stoked up a fire that could have burned the boy's house down in a minute -- and the giant himself was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, working a loom.

The boy watched for several minutes, trying to figure out what it was that Mudferthing could possibly be making for himself that he couldn't more easily have just taken from some hapless farmer (or King, for that matter), and finally he understood.

Mudferthing was weaving himself a scarf.

And the boy was no expert, but he was fairly sure that the giant was very bad at it.

Every day, the boy would find himself alone in his house, and every day he would walk into the Forest of Anything and along the wide, straight road to Mudferthing's huge house, climb the trellis to the closet window, and search for something that would show him how the heroes of the Forest could beat the unbeatable giant.

It took a very long time. In the Slowing World, the door of summer closed and the gate of winter opened, and in the end the boy still found nothing.

Until one day, Mudferthing caught a cold.

----

Now, some of you are being very pert and thinking to yourselves 'A ha! The giant got a cold! That must be how he can be beat!' Well, let me tell you that there is nothing in any story ever about a hero who saved the day by making sure that the monster went out-of-doors without his stocking cap and mittens, and there never will be.

You should just sit and listen a bit longer and try to learn something.

----

Of course, the boy didn't know that Mudferthing had a cold when he came to the giant's house that day, and he didn't know that Mudferthing had decided to stay home instead of wandering the forest in search of more princesses to eat and more children to boil. He didn't realize it when he climbed into the closet on the third floor, and it wasn't until he'd gotten down to the first floor (where he'd decided he would have another look at the giant's trophy room) that he found out he wasn't alone in the house.

He could hear Mudferthing sniffling.

"Well," said the boy, "I went all through that house -- the top floor, at least, and I saw all sorts of things that the giant has taken from other people. There's armor, there's treasure; I even saw a phoenix feather (I think, or something like it) standing in an ink pot! Why do people let Mudferthing get away with it?"

"Well, what," said Kibber, "do you think people should do? And who do you think should do it?" He had crossed his arms across his chest, and looked like a grandfather who could not wait to hear his grandchild explain a spilt honey pot.

"I think people should stop him," said the boy. "There's all sorts of heroes and knights and hunters in the Forest of Anything, isn't there? You've already told me about the King's gamekeeper and how he was so good at guarding the King's land that the King made him guard his people and castle as well, and the Lorrigan has all kinds of --"

"Shh, boyo, I get your point." Kibber looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had heard. "But you don't know about Mudferthing; if you did, you'd understand."

"Then tell me," said the boy.

Kibber gave him his very best angry look, but the boy didn't budge. Kibber sighed. "Fine, boyo. If you must know, Mudferthing cannot be hurt."

The boy frowned. "What, by anything?"

Kibber nodded. "There is nothing in Anything that can cut Mudferthing's hide, and nothing so heavy it can crack his noggin wide -- that's how the saying goes, and that's why heroes (and those who aren't so much heroes) the land over can only dream of getting what was once theirs back from Mudferthing -- no one can kill him, so they know that no matter what, he'll come after them, and he'll find them."

The boy thought for a long time.

"I suppose that only makes sense," he finally said. Kibber nodded and went on his way, sure that he had gotten his young friend to see reason.

But he whispered to himself after Kibber had gone. "I suppose it makes sense, except I don't believe it."