 
Single Moms

Published by Bill Etem at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Bill Etem

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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ebook cover by Kyra Dune

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Arguments in the Wilderness

Chapter 2. The Enemy Patrol

Chapter 3. The South Face of Mt. Desolation

Chapter 4. Scenes in a Krull Tavern

Chapter 5. Rendezvous in the Dark

Chapter 6. The Enchanted Forest

Chapter 7. Life in O'Conner

Chapter 8. Crack-Heads

Chapter 9. Escape from O'Conner

Chapter 10. Single Moms Living the Sweet-Life in the Welfare State

Single Moms

Chapter 1. Arguments in the Wilderness

Navorasicaa and her little 5-year-old friend, Jocelyn, were sitting on their ruck-sacks on a huge mountain, Mt. Desolation, sitting high above the timber-line. They were on the gentle northern slope, close to a prominent granite buttress. It couldn't be said that they were hidden completely from the sight of spies far below them, but they were well-camouflaged, reposing under a white canvas tarp as they were, and this blended in well with the snowy slopes, and so they were more or less invisible as long as they didn't move about too much, or start any campfires. Both of them had their backs turned toward the cold north wind which was blasting them like an arctic gale.

They were on guard duty. It might be difficult to find too many other reasons why a warrior woman and a little girl would be encamped as they were, just the two of them, on this frigid mountain, where they were trying so desperately to remain invisible to their enemies lower down the mountainside. It was their responsibility to keep an eye out for anything threatening, which would most likely come in the form of an Hibernian patrol. If such a patrol materialized suddenly into view, it would be revealed a thousand vertical feet below them, just at the line where the pine forest abruptly ended and where the barren treeless upper slopes of the mountain began. Their thick woolen cloaks, along with the canvas tarp, the close weave of which worked better than the more open and airy weave of wool, at keeping the wind at bay, were not all that they had as weapons in the fight to stay warm. There were blankets and there was a bottle of bourbon if the blankets weren't enough. But the tarp and their blankets, and their cloaks, and their bourbon, were enough to keep Navorasicaa and Jocelyn warm, warm enough to allow them to think of other things besides freezing to death in the icy gale that was roaring through these peaks rising up all round them.

And there was so much which had happened in recent days for them to think about! Al Mancini had returned to them, though he was no longer their slave, and indeed he won his freedom via an official decree from Queen Brittany. The reunion with Al owed everything to his break-up with Jennifer. She turned out to be a really pushy and uptight sort of person, a classic control-freak and domineering sort of ex-girlfriend. Al decided he had to get away from Jennifer before she dominated him completely and bossed him into submission with her high-maintenance ways. Of course, as with most break-ups, each party probably had a few negative comments to say about the other. Jennifer might have had some legit gripes about Al. Who knows? Anyway, those two were no longer crazy about each other.

Al had always been fascinated by the prospect of the single moms and their kids conquering Cromwell Town. And so, naturally, when he decided to make his escape from the controlling, slave-owner-like ex-girl-friend, Jennifer, he also decided to venture north, to find his former owners and former slave masters, from whom he had also once escaped.

It took Al Mancini two days of diligent searching, and this was after he reached the high country, merely to locate the fixed ropes which led up and over the often vertical 7,000 foot South Face of Mt. Desolation, the great wall only a few miles to the south of where Navorrasicaa and Jocelyn now sat. Al was presently with the rest of their company of warrior women and little kids, a little higher up on the gentle slope of the North Face. They were completely hidden from sight, or at least they were invisible to any patrols which might emerge suddenly at the point where the evergreen forest ended and the treeless slopes began.

The sky was cloudless and magnificently blue. Odd how the gales could be so fierce in these mountains under such a sky. You had to expect storm clouds to appear at any moment, with a wind as strong as the one hitting Jocelyn and Navorasicaa. Amid the wind-driven ribbons of snow rushing past them, the two of them, still sitting motionless and silent, were not too far from the big granite buttress behind them. The reddish gray color of the rock made an aesthetically pleasing contrast to the blinding white of the slope and the clear blue of the sky.

It wasn't just those on guard duty who had been languishing from tedium for day after day, waiting interminably in the cold for the signal fire which never came, waiting for any sort of sign from Luke and Seraphinaria, during their mission within Cromwell Town. Those two were supposed to have lit a fire from atop the wall surrounding Cromwell Town, and then the warrior women would be in position ready to scale the wall the following night, assuming they had the aid of a rope let down to them by their comrades inside the wall.

The dreariness of life for those waiting for that signal fire dragged on for days, dragged on until the day that Al Mancini showed up in their Alpine camp, amid their cluster of tents, to stay the monotony for a little while. And then was only two more days after Al arrived that Luke and Seraphinaria returned to their mountain fastness, bringing with them two Hibernian refugees, young Debra and middle-aged Katie. Everyone was curious indeed about these two, who no doubt were now being hunted as traitors by their Hibernian ex-countrymen, though they were heroes certainly to Luke and Seraphinaria. It was Katie and Debra, after all, who saved Luke and Seraphinaria from the cruel fate of being tossed into a cage holding 4 big hungry tigers. Katie O'Callaghan, it turned out, was also useful in another very significant way. Not only did she save Seraphinaria and Luke from the ferocity of the man-eaters but she also offered them military intelligence which seemed almost too good to believe. Katie informed them that in the great Hibernian city of O'Conner, which was situated 200 miles to the north of their present camp, there were 1,000 Avallonian prisoners of war, 1,000 wretched captives loaded with chains and confined to the darkness and squalor of a huge dungeon. This frightful cage, medieval in its design and monstrous in both its purpose and its huge proportions, might be breached, perhaps perhaps, by a band of brave adventuresses. If those 1,000 prisoners could be rescued, then, the warrior women might well, with their numbers swollen with 1,000 rescued prisoners of war, make another attempt at conquering Cromwell Town. Even if that failed their mission would still be a huge success provided they were able to get the POWs back to their families in Avallonia.

It was only a few days ago that Navorrasicaa was in the depths of despair; she was convinced that their entire venture into Hibernia had degenerated into an ugly farce. The signal fire never came from atop the walls. They could hardly conclude anything else but that they would either be rounded up by a Hibernian patrol or, at best, they would return home short two people, and return to a nation where they would be seen as bloody fools and miserable failures, assuming they were fortunate enough to get back to Avallonia alive.

Getting back to Avallonia alive and being seen as an abject failure and a bloody fool was the best case scenario! The worst case scenario involved meeting up with some big ferocious tigers, face to face.

But now the prospect of freeing those 1,000 P.O.W.s had put a spirit of hope and enthusiasm into the company of single moms and their kids.

Navorrasicaa had plenty of time on guard duty to embellish her reveries, to ornament her thoughts with the most baroque and excessive details. She could well imagine, in her mind's eye, see Her Majesty Rabbi Queen Brittany Cohen-Schwartz, MBA, Ph. D. etc., etc., Queen of Avallonia etc., etc., Defender of the Faith etc., etc., make herself comfortable, as the young monarch settled back into the luxurious folds of her favorite sofa, her legs splayed out before her, and resting or rather planted on a coffee table, one hand holding a silver goblet filled with ale, the other hand holding a slab of roast beef, or an enormous turkey leg.

`So,' began Her Majesty, Queen Brittany, addressing the crowd of females warriors and single mothers, or at least addressing them in the imagination of Navorrasicaa, `you failed in your attempt to conquer the Hibernian Barbarians!' The Queen would pause here for dramatic effect; she would weigh the news she had just announced, and then she would proceed with her oration: `I told you, I say, I told you, many weeks ago, that your defeat and your utter humiliation were inevitable. What else could a sane person conclude? But did you listen to me? Hell no! You were lucky to escape with your lives. Listen to me now. I don't want you setting out to consult this pagan Oracle at Glensheen. I know you want to find husbands. I know that men are scarce in my dominions. Hell, everyone knows most of the good ones were killed off, over the years and decades, in these interminable Hibernian wars, wars which you tried to breathe new life into most recently indeed. Everyone knows that a single man in my dominions who is worth a damn is as rare as the flying Dutchman. Know I know this Oracle at Glensheen has found a few husbands for some lonely girls, but I don't want you resorting to pagan practices, consulting pagan oracles etc. You start mixing good but desperate women with black magic and, mind you, nothing good will come of that combination. As your sovereign, as both your temporal and your spiritual leader, I want you to comport yourselves like good Christian women. It's true my authority is not absolute, and I can't forcibly prevent you from degenerating into pagans, falling headlong into damned paganism, but listen to reason for once in your miserable lives would you please? I'll find husbands for you.'

`How? How are you going to do that? We want to listen to you, we want to do as you ask,' began Navorrasicaa, that is, began Navorrasicaa in Navorrasicaa's imagination. `We don't doubt that you can scrounge up some sort of male refuse. But what assurances can you give us that the men you find for us will not be male crap that you obtained for us by scraping the bottom of the proverbial shit barrel?'

`Let me try to get this straight in my mind. Let's assume I'm a little dense upstairs,' retorted Her Majesty Rabbi Queen Brittany, the Beautiful, the Benevolent etc., etc. `Let's assume I have to take things slowly. Let's see if I understand you correctly. 1, you return to my dominions, you return to fair lovely idyllic heavenly Avallonia, with your tails between your legs. 2, you return to your beloved homeland in a manner which everyone agrees makes you fools and miserable failures. 3, you have the insolence to ask assurances from your Sovereign. 4, you have the insane arrogance, you have the insufferable insane arrogance, to ask that I give assurances to you when I promise to find husbands for you? 5, I remind you, yet again. You failed to conquer Cromwell Town. You failed! That conquest was your only objective. The conquest of that city was the engine which would drive no end of lucrative book deals, and lecture tours, it was to be the motive force by which you single moms would enrich yourselves. You failed to re-conquer a city defended by some girls, and by some pitiful old geezers. And yet you seem confident that I won't strip you of your officers' commissions? You seem to think I would never throw abject failures like yourselves out of my army? Am I missing something? Why, please tell me why, I should not throw the lot of you out of my army right now? I suppose you think I would never jeopardize your kids. If I threw the moms out of my army, and if you moms couldn't find work to support your kids, which is probable, then I guess your kids will have to go to orphanages. Are you so very very sure I would never ship the lot of these little kids back to the orphanage?'

Dr. Rabbi Queen Brittany Cohen-Schwartz then rose from the sofa, at least she did in Navorrasicaa's imagination. She stretched out her arms and curved her back in a beguiling way to reveal the new Brittany, the one which emerged after months of dieting and exercise. In her imagination at least, Navorrasicaa noticed how all of Queen Brittany's courtiers marveled at her Majesty's magnificently feminine hour-glass figure. The warrior women and their kids weren't the only ones who had been starving during the recent months. Queen Brittany must have lost over 100 pounds! She was now ex-behemoth queen. Gone were all those layers of flab which had formerly covered the massive pillars and supports which were her thighs and buttocks. Gone was all the blubber which once made her arms as thick as tree-trunks, which had swollen her belly to the proportions of the elephant.

Then Navorrasicaa tried to imagine another conversation between two people who she barely knew, and who had never met each other - Debra and Queen Brittany. The Queen would have to question the sanity of a 14-year-old girl who left her home and betrayed her country to chase after a 9-year-old boy. Yes, the interminable war had drastically depleted the male populations of both Hibernia and Avallonia. But, all the same, talk about desperate measures from a desperate person in desperate times.

Navorrasicaa's reveries had to end sometime, and her thoughts now returned to their current situation. Two people, a grown woman and a little girl, huddled close together under a canvas tarp, each further buried under blankets and thick woolen cloaks.

`Well, Jocelyn, I've been thinking about what a conversation between Debra and Queen Brittany might sound like,' said Navorrasicaa, as she inclined her head toward Jocelyn. `Debra and Mirabrasantes will relieve us of guard duty before too long, and I suppose this got me thinking of Debra.'

`I'm hungry and cold,' began Jocelyn, `and all you can think about is some make-believe conversation between two people who are strangers to each other? I'm freezing up here on this frigid mountain, and you're off in dreamland. I don't get you.'

`My, you're in a mood! I have to think about something on guard duty or else I'd go crazy. Cold and hungry, you say? What's wrong with the food we got here? If you need another blanket why don't you ask for one? If you want a swig of bourbon, who's stopping you?'

`I wish I was back at the orphanage,' said little Jocelyn. `I wish I wasn't freezing on this mountain. I wish I didn't live in terror, afraid I will be food for some tiger, in a few days or weeks.'

`But you are on this mountain, and it is cold. So, wishing you weren't on this mountain and wishing it wasn't cold is a total waste of time. When you are on guard duty, and when nothing's happening, you're supposed to prepare for action, so when the action comes you will be able to remain calm, and you will be able to think coherently, so that you will be able to defeat the enemy when you engage the enemy, so that you won't be flustered, so that you won't just stand transfixed with confusion in one place, with your lower jaw hanging low, while all the drama which demands instant action unfolds all round you.'

`And how is your day-dreaming about an imaginary conversation between Queen Brittany and Debra not a complete waste of time? How is that going to prepare you for any drama which requires instant action?' asked Jocelyn.

`I'm examining contingencies and possible eventualities. You think day-dreams are a waste of time? You're a queer kid,' said Navorrasicaa.

`I am not a queer kid,' said the sensitive little Jocelyn, as tears welled up in her eyes, as she looked about to weep and sob.

`Well you have to admit you're an odd duck,' said Navorrasicaa.

`I...am...not...I...am...not...odd duck!' sobbed Jocelyn, as she struggled valiantly to make her words comprehensible, while her throat choked with emotion.

`You wish you were back in some orphanage? How is that not queer? How is that not odd-duck-like? What was the name of that place we rescued you from? Sisters of Misery, something or other, wasn't it?'

`Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. And I wish, I tell you, I wish! I wish! I wish! I wish I was back with Sister Claire and Sister Margarita. Sister Margarita taught me how to dress myself, how to wash myself, how to wish upon a star and how to draw pictures and how to say the ABCs. Sister Claire would sing lullabies to me when I was little. I thought she was my mother, but my real mom, she died.'

`How are you ever going to get anywhere in life if you go back to that orphanage? Answer me that? It's a dead end I tell you. It's a hole that you don't want to fall into. It's a trap. It's bomb that will blow-up in your face. It's a....'

`I liked the school and the people at Sisters of Mercy Orphanage. The teachers and kids were wonderful! Everyone was so kind and cheerful.'

`See, that's what I mean when I say you're an odd duck. What sort of kid likes school? A weird kid, I say. Don't get me wrong. Reading and writing and doing your sums are very important. And it's fun to meet new kids and make new friends. But who needs all that regimentation BS that the schools shove down your throat? They tell you when to get up, they tell you when to sit down, when to go to recess, when to go to lunch, when to shut up, when to stop talking to your friends, when to speak up and prove you're not an idiot, then they order you to shut up, then they order you to talk to prove a second time that you're not an ignorant fool, then they tell you when to speak softly, when to speak loudly, then they tell you when to go to bed, when to get out of bed etc. You can have that crap. I mean, who needs that BS? I ask you, who needs it? Yeah, I'm glad I can read and write. I like to read mysteries and detective novels, and I admit I like a trashy romance novel, but only once in a while. In philosophy I am a disciple of 3rd century sage, Johan Salrhinus, not that he is the alpha and the omega of light and truth and plain speaking, but he was a sharp guy. He taught us in his 1st Postulate: "Sayeth not: I wisheth. Sayeth not: I wisheth I was not on this Mountain. Sayeth not: I wisheth it was not cold. Accepth thy circumstances and preparest thyself for thy future."'

`He didn't say it that way!' exclaimed Jocelyn.

`OK, not quite that way. But getting back to my point, you're crazy, you're whacked-out, you're out of your frickin' mind, you're a psycho child - do ya hear me? you're a psycho child! - you got major enormous issues in your head...now don't start crying again. I'm sorry! Forgive me! You know I'm just talkin' a little trash. You know I like to tease and have fun. Don't be so hypersensitive! Jocelyn, sweet-heart! I'm just joking with you. Lighten up would you, honey? As I was saying, you really aren't dealing with a full deck if you think you have to put up with all that regimentation BS, that the schools shove down your throat, in order to become educated. I know you agree with me, because you're smart, you're no fool – I could see that the first time I saw you. I says to myself, the first time I sees you. I says: `this Jocelyn kid is both smart and beautiful, yes ma'am, that's what I says to myself, and I am right too. Just being honest, hon. Smart and beautiful, that's you...So stop crying. Please don't be so hypersensitive. Only a damn fool would disagree with me on this point I'm making about the schools though, right?'

`Sister Margarita said if I was unhappy living with you warrior women I could talk to a lawyer, and then...'

`Oh, Sister Margarita said you could talk to a lawyer did she?'

`Yes, she said if I was unhappy I could talk to a lawyer. She said the lawyer would help me to return to Sisters of Mercy Orphanage if I was unhappy living with my new adoption mom.'

`Look here. I know life hasn't been a bed of roses lately. You must have been scared to death to see all those wolves that surrounded us that day we met the witch...'

`Vyryvyr isn't a witch. She is just a rich woman who is able to buy enough food to feed a thousand wolves. The wolves obey her as if they were her pet dogs because she feeds them,' said Jocelyn.

`Well that's a matter of opinion, isn't it? I suppose Heliomirabellisima taught you that opinion, didn't she? My, you've become quite the parrot when it comes to repeating the crap that comes out of Heliomirabellisima's mouth. You should know that Heliomirabellisima is a big irrational insane cynic when it comes to the supernatural. Let's deal in facts, shall we? It's a fact that you brought up the subject of litigation. It wasn't me. It's a fact that Misevasundia loves you and wants to be your new mom. It's a fact that you will break her heart if you talk to a lawyer and attempt to go back to the orphanage. It may not be a certified sure-fire indisputable fact, but I think we can trust Katie and trust what she says about these 1,000 Avallonian soldiers / POWs who are being held in the most miserable prison conditions in O'Conner, in that city in the middle of Hibernia. You can understand that we would be doing a good thing if we rescued those poor suffering captives being held in O'Conner, right?'

`Yes.'

`Ok, so let's go and rescue them. Think how happy those poor prisoners will be when they get back with their families again. And think how much money we'll make. People will pay money to hear us on a Lecture Tour. That's where we go round the country explaining to crowds of people in lecture halls about all of the heroic deeds that we did while rescuing the 1,000 poor suffering wretches being held captive for years and years by the warlike vengeful Hibernians in the city of O'Conner. And people back in Avallonia will pay lots of money to buy the books which we will write which will explain and document and elaborate on all of our heroic actions in rescuing the poor prisoners. You'll get your cut of the profits. I mean, you're risking your neck out here on guard duty, aren't you? Of course you are. You heard about the man-eating tigers. And now you're risking your body which could easily become food for the tigers. You're cold and hungry and risking your life while keeping a look-out for possible Hibernian army patrols, so, though you are just a little kid, you're being a hero, and actually, if you want to know the truth, the fact that you are a little kid heightens your heroic actions. If some old guy dies on guard duty, who cares? He's already lived most of his life anyway. He's practically dead already, just by being an old geezer. But if you die on guard duty, then think of all that you will be missing: you'll never go to Prom, you'll never have a young man propose marriage to you; you'll never have children of your own; you'll never know those wonderful blissful sweet moments when you and your sweet-heart are holding each other close, under the moon-lit or starry sky, as you stroll together down some warm tropical beach, or as you swing on some porch swing with the intoxicating perfume of honeysuckle and oleander all round the two of you. So, you're either a damn fool for doing what you're doing up here, or else you are being super-heroic up here, risking your young neck on guard duty, because you are risking all of that bliss and happiness, and so much more, risking life and limb and future happiness all so that you can help other people. But it would make you even more heroic if you didn't complain about being hungry and cold, and if you didn't bitch about your new mom. Look at poor Jasmine. Al cut her open and dug out her appendix that one day, and he didn't know what the hell he was doing. She is a brave little kid. She endured a lot of pain and she didn't threaten Al with legal action if he botched the operation. Did she threaten Valmyristarsis, the woman who adopted her and became her mom, with litigation? Of course not. Luke was incorrigible at the orphanage. They insisted on kicking him out. No one wanted to adopt the miserable little brat except Mirabrasantes. And now she has to deal with both his smart-ass mouth and with the smart-ass mouth on that 14-year-old Hibernian girlfriend of his, that Debra chick. That would really be a kick in the balls for Mirabrasantes, so to speak, if Luke got himself a lawyer and tried to sue his new mom. He probably wasn't real pleased with his new mom when he and Seraphinaria were sitting in that cage next to those screaming tigers back in Cromwell Town. She was as responsible as anyone for getting him into that miserable position. But it's news to me if he ever mentioned suing anyone. I'll tell you what. I'll make you a deal. When we get back to Avallonia I'll help you find a lawyer if you are still unhappy with Misevasundia, if you still don't like having her as your new mom. I'll help you return to the orphanage if that's what you really want. But in the mean time, try to be stoical and brave and heroic. Try to watch for enemy patrols without complaining. Think about all the money you will make from the Lecture Tour. Think of all the money you're going to make from the books we're going to write, the books which will explain, document, extoll upon and elaborate on the all of the heroic deeds you have been doing and will in the future be doing. So, like I said, first, let's go rescue those poor prisoners. And like I also said, if you are still unhappy with your new mom after we rescue those prisoners, the ones Katie told us about, then I'll help you find a lawyer, and I'll support you and what you want to do. I'll get you back to the orphanage if that's what you want. But in the meantime promise me to keep quiet about litigation and going back to the orphanage. OK? Is it a deal, Jocelyn?'

`OK. It's a deal.'

`And try to remember that Misevasundia loves you. She loves you as much as she loves her other kids. I know she does. She might not be very good at showing it sometimes. Big Girls can be impatient and demanding. Old ladies can be rude and real bitchy, and they don't always seem like they are filled with flowers and sunshine, and sugar and spice and everything nice. Just give her a chance, ok?'

`OK,' said little Jocelyn who was now able to smile a little bit. At least she was no longer sobbing.

Chapter 2. The Enemy Patrol

`Time to wake up,' said Mirabrasantes, who along with Debra had come to relieve Navorrasicaa and Jocelyn of guard duty. The latter two, who were certainly not asleep, handed the former two the canvas tarp before setting off up the mountain to rejoin the main camp.

`I'd like to hear the conversation between those two,' said Navorasicaa to Jocelyn after they had moved too far away for Mirabrasantes and Debra to hear.

`Do you think it will get nasty?' asked Jocelyn.

`I don't know. Mirabrasantes feels for the poor girl, I'm sure. She's one of those unstable half-crazed juveniles we read so much about these days, not to imply younger kids your age are the very bedrock of emotional stability,' replied Navorasicaa.

`She cries a lot,' stated Jocelyn.

`Perhaps it was just a case of temporary insanity, I don't know,' replied Navorasicaa. `But review the facts for yourself. Debra's 14, and most of the boys her age have been killed off in the wars. Then she falls in love with 9-year-old Luke, Mirabrasantes' adopted son, who was of course formerly an orphan, as indeed you once were yourself. And then Debra and Katie save the lives of Luke and Seraphinaria. So far so good, except for the disparity in Debra's age and Luke's age. And, of course, as everyone knows, Debra and Katie are now seen as traitors to Hibernia by their countrymen. That crime carries the death penalty, so, Debra can't go back to her home with her parents' and siblings, and Katie has likewise separated herself forever from her family. Katie is delusional enough to believe this separation is merely temporary, because, she reasons, incorrectly, that the war is on its last legs and their boss will go before a war crimes tribunal. But who knows? Perhaps it's not inconceivable. Neither she nor Debra see themselves as traitors, obviously. They say they did the only honorable action they could, under the circumstances; but Debra is freaking out now because she wonders if it was insanity which led her to chase after Luke, and betray her country, and leave her family, all because of a fleeting infatuation. Katie was working on Debra last night, trying to convince her that in a year or two the war will be over, and full pardons will be granted to them, as the two of them did save two lives from being murdered by that worthless commander of theirs. Those who disobey the orders of war criminals will not be treated as traitors, not when the treaty between the warring nations is signed. At the moment we just have to keep Debra from freaking out anymore than she already is freaking out. At least she sure as hell isn't infatuated with a 9-year-old any longer. So now, I suppose, Luke will be freaking out over his rejection.'

Night descended and there was a respite in the cold gusts blowing over these northern peaks. The kids were in the tents sleeping while the adults were all sitting round discussing strategy and tactics which might be used on their rescue mission to O'Conner. Their faces were aglow in the light of the campfire. In the midst of a small blizzard yesterday, the lot of them had hauled up a hundred pounds of firewood after descending to the forest. On most nights, while wrapped up in their cloaks and blankets, and protected from the bitter wind by their canvas tarps, everyone was comfortable enough round the campfire. Tonight was even better because the gusts were just beginning to diminish into a gentle breeze.

`So much depends on careful and even intricate planning, on leaving no stone unturned in our endeavors to be thorough. We must account for every eventuality, account for every possible slipup, you see?' Martha Manning was insisting in her pedantic way.

`But we must also not suffer the mental paralysis from over-analysis, that stifling inability to act, because one's brain is locked up and overburdened, suffering under the tonnage of too much information, suffering from too much second guessing, too much paralysis from over-analysis, indeed,' offered Al Mancini, in sort of a mocking sarcastic way.

`Well of course not. I'm not a damn fool, you know,' replied Martha. `We must be thorough in our planning but we must not become brainless idiots from too damn much planning,' countered the irascible Martha.

`I remember watching this British thriller from 1962 called A Prize of Arms,' Al was saying, and of course Al and Martha hailed from our universe not the universe of the single moms and their kids, `one which involved a good deal of planning. It starred Stanley Baker, who had some star power. It was about these three ex-army buddies who robbed a British army base of £100,000. An expeditionary force was being sent to the Middle East and the soldiers required that much cash while on their mission. Anyway, these three ex-soldiers, who all had axes to grind against the British army, I seem to recall, planned every last detail of a very intricately planned heist.'

`Did they pull it off?' asked Seraphinaria. `I bet they did because they had thought of every eventuality, and every detail was orchestrated in advance and planned to perfection, right? Is that what you're saying?'

`No, not quite,' said Al. `Actually they all ended up being burned alive. The truck they were in caught on fire, because one of the crooks sort of went psycho with a flamethrower. But, aside from being burned alive, they were really very very close to pulling off the job and getting away with the caper, free and clear. They planned everything to perfection but then they got careless toward the end of the operation. They thought they were home-free, and so they relaxed their guard a little, when they were almost home-free but not quite completely home-free. And as I say this one guy sort of went psycho in his handling of a flamethrower.'

`Well that's an excellent lesson for us isn't it?' said Misevasundia. `Don't go psycho! And don't get over-confident. And don't make a slip-up just when you think you're home-free which leads to people getting burned alive.'

`The film was a success with the critics but it failed at the box-office. Sometimes the public is stupid and the critics are smart, sometimes it's vice versa. `Movies can have downer endings and still be block buster movies, but A Prize of Arms needed a beautiful female to keep the audience entertained with a love interest, a Diana Dors or an Honor Blackman or some such late 50/ early 60s British to spice things up, something like what Jenny Agutter supplied for Logan's Run, or what Ali MacGraw infused into The Getaway, not that she's British, or what Catherine Denueve lent to Un flic, or what Susan George gave to Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. So often a heist film will die with the public if they don't have a hot chick in them. I don't think you don't have to be an Alfred Hitchcock sort of genius to understand this. Where would Scream...and Die' aka The House that Vanished be without Andrea Allen. That was sort of a heist film in that Andrea Allen and her boyfriend break into the house that vanished because he wanted to steal something. Then it changed into a British giallo film, rather X-rated in parts. The porno scene where the murderer and his middle aged aunt are making love will sear your retinas with its creepiness. And you see lots of Andrea Allen not wearing her bra. Anyway, I think in Andrea Allen and Diana Dors and some others the Brits really show the world that they know how to produce some hot numbers. Check out Diana Dors in Tread Softly Stranger, sometime, Martha, it's free on YouTube, assuming you ever make it back to our universe.'

`I don't want to look at some British woman's naked breasts. And I don't like giallo. Did you like Fraulein Docktor?'

`Well yes,' said Al as he sipped his ale and gnawed on some stale bread and some smoked fish under a hollandaise sauce. `Suzy Kendall is the entire dish in Fraulein Docktor, the piece de resistance, the meat and potatoes, so to speak, but then you can't quite say that Diana Dors is the be all and end all in Tread Softly Stranger, which is about another heist which goes terribly amiss. The crooks, who really don't seem all that crooked in Tread Softly Stranger, botch the job in an astonishingly tragic way.'

`Anyway,' began Seraphinaria, `getting back to those 1,000 P.O.W.s, and to how we're going to get them out of that dungeon without getting caught, it's sort of like pulling a heist, sort of like stealing $500,000 out of a bank vault. Try to think of some tips from movies where they didn't botch the job.'

`Just to interrupt for a second,' said Navorrasicaa. `We haven't heard from Heliomirabellisima and Casilevatates in a while. Aren't they due back from guard duty? They relieved Debra and Mirabrasantes hours ago. It must be close to midnight now. Look at that moon. It has moved half way across the sky since we started talking.'

`We'll worry in another hour,' said Seraphinaria as she drank her ale and dined on smoked turkey, as she warmed herself before the campfire. `They better not have fallen asleep. Discipline has just gone to hell with you people. Sometimes I feel like a lazy slob myself, so I guess I can't bitch too much.'

They were all seated on the upper slopes of the mountain, behind a granite buttress which did a fine job concealing them. The scent of wood-smoke was far more likely to betray their position than was the light of the campfire. And then, to protect them further, they had at least two people on guard duty at all times. They would have begun their journey northwards to O'Conner that night. They would have proceeded down the mountain, then up over a pass between two peaks, and then into a valley before ascending yet another Alpine pass. But several of the kids had been sick and claimed they were too weak to start off on a hike of a few hundred miles.

Katie drew them a rough sketch for a map. To get to the city of O'Conner required them to cross 100 miles of rough terrain - mountain passes and glaciers – but then it was easy trekking on some barren plains for the last 100 miles. Food and drink would be easy to acquire. They had gold and silver, and Hibernia was full of inns and taverns and no end of places where food and drink could be bought with their silver and gold.

The party of warrior women felt the warmth of the campfire on their faces. It was so tranquil and serene, here under the starlit sky now that the winds had softened high up on this beautiful mountain. Some conversed while others drifted off to sleep. Then those who were awake heard the sound of people tramping through snow. They watched as Heliomirabellisima and Casilevatates emerged out of the darkness and took shape in the light of the campfire. The two of them seem to have been running recently as both were panting with exhaustion. As they sucked air, their hands resting on their knees, they managed to explain what was happening. They had just ascended 1,000 vertical feet as fast as they could. They hadn't fallen asleep on guard duty. That was lucky for all of them because Helio and Casie had discovered that a huge Hibernian force was heading their way. It was the middle of the night but it was still time to move out.

Chapter 3. The South Face of Mt. Desolation

`What will save us is this rising wind,' Valmyristarsis was saying, as Al stirred himself from sleep not far from the campfire. `It was dead still an hour ago but notice how it whips up the snow so that we can see any no trace of the footsteps left by Helio and Cassie 2 minutes ago. If it doesn't die down again it ought to quickly erase all signs of our passage.'

We can set off down the mountain, behind the arête to our right,' said Casilevatates, and elude the patrol easily enough.'

`But do we want to go up or down?' asked Mirabrasantes. `What will we do down in that valley when daylight catches us there tomorrow? We can descend from here swiftly enough. But can we traverse those treeless lowlands below, and then climb the high pass before sunrise? We don't have the strength to do that! Anyone looking out over the valley will be sure to spot us. We've been over this a hundred times, haven't we? These kids are like anchors round our necks.'

`Yes, we've been over it a hundred times,' agreed Misevasundia. `But will those who fear the South Face listen to us? Of course not.'

Al Mancini thought he might as well add his two cents. He hadn't been over it a hundred times with anyone, as he had just appeared in camp of the warrior women really not all that long ago.

`I say we retreat to the fixed ropes and descend the South Face, said Al. `Then we can re-ascend the mountains some place closer to the Krull Republic. We can make an end run of things and get to O'Conner via the Krull backcountry.'

`That Hibernian patrol will never locate our camp and our tracks if the wind would just cooperate and conceal everything under blowing snow,' Seraphinaria was saying.

The general consensus was they couldn't lose by descending the fixed ropes on the South Face, assuming no one fell thousands of feet to their death. Some were even saying that it was really only fear and a rather irrational fear at that which prevented some other people from seeing the obvious solution.'

`Fine,' said Sevaladelia. `The south face wall it is, because there's no time to argue. But the fear is perfectly rational. Any idiot can see it is easy to slip and fall of off a vertical mountain wall. Irrational fear my ass!'

`Ok you kids! Listen up children!' exclaimed Martha Manning as she began opening the flaps on the various tents. `It's time to get up. It's time to get out from under those blankets. An enemy patrol is coming this way. Hurry up and move. Use the latrine whether you have to or not. You know in ten minutes you'll need to use it.'

The other women helped to get their kids out of their blankets and sleeping bags. Al took a hand in getting Jasmine and Jocelyn, Barb and Curt, Marla and Brent etc., etc., out of their blankets and into their coats. The littlest kids were fretting a little, because Martha started in with her usual scare tactics, talking about what the Hibernians and their tigers would do to any little kids that they caught loitering on the mountainside. At least Martha's scare tactics got the kids attention.

By the time everything was packed up and the company was ready to start marching, Heliomirabellisima and Casilevatates estimated that the enemy patrol was still 1,000 vertical feet below them, which translated to over 3 miles in horizontal distance, which meant, given the depth of the snow one had to walk through, this enemy patrol was roughly a 3 hour's march away from them, and they knew they were more or less the same time away from the top of the wall, and the beginning of the fixed ropes. Furthermore, though the snow reflected and magnified what moonlight and starlight there was, they would be hidden from the sight of the enemy patrol because the curve of the mountainside would conceal them. So, considering these facts, they had every reason to believe they would escape unseen. Still, it was fresh in everyone's mind what might happen if they got over-confident. If they thought they were home-free when in fact they were surrounded, things would not end well at all. Martha was telling all of this to the little kids to get them to hurry up. But you can only remind a kid so many times of what being thrown into a cage full of tigers really means before a kid just can't take the pressure any longer. The terror overwhelms him. And when he's overwhelmed, half of his brain is telling him to hurry up, to flee the hungry tigers, while the other half of his brain is telling him to just sit down and give up. After all, once you've been eaten by the tiger, all of your worries and fears and anxieties are over. Once you're dead there's no more cold, and no more hunger and fear to be dealt with on a daily basis. It's over. You can rest. So, on the one hand, the thought of being eaten by ferocious tigers was a huge motivator to most of the kids. But then, on the other hand, if you are a kid who is sick of being cold, and sick of being hungry, and sick of living in fear, if you are exhausted and driven half-crazy from fear and cold and exhaustion, so much so that you are a kid who now just wants to embrace death and get it over with in order to find blissful relief...

The enemy was still 3 hours away, and it only took 10 minutes to get all the tents down and stowed in packs, and then it only took another 10 minutes to get all their other gear stuffed into packs and loaded on to people's backs. In 20 minutes everyone was marching uphill, steering a course toward the precipitous sections of Mt. Desolation. Soon they would be looking out over the moon-lit plains of Avallonia again. Soon they would be threading the fixed ropes through their descendeurs and repelling down terrifying South Face of Mt. Desolation.

`You sort of remind me of a young Deborah Kerr,' Al was saying to Debra, the 9-year-old Luke's 14-year-old girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend – the issue was still undecided last Al had heard - as the three of them trudged up the mountain. I suppose the similarity of your names seems frivolous, but that is not the only connection that I can find between you and her. `She got sort of dowdy and frumpish later in life, Deborah Kerr that is - I wonder how you'll turn out, Debra - but just look at her when she was young, in I See a Dark Stranger' – Luke and Debra were trying their best to comprehend the idea of motion pictures. `There was this scene where she's listening to her old man tell lies in an Irish tavern about how he once helped the Irish fight the British, and Deborah Kerr looks really gorgeous in that scene. Deborah Kerr was really something to look at, and you remind me of her when she was in her prime. There's a famous scene where she and Burt Lancaster are rolling around in the waves on some beach in Hawaii, but by then she was well into her dowdy and frumpish years, but as I say, if you want to see Deborah Kerr at her best, don't watch From Here to Eternity, and don't watch The Naked Edge, that film where Gary Cooper played her husband, and she thinks he murdered a man because lots and lots of circumstantial evidence say he murdered man to grab his cash – they stop by the White Cliffs of Dover no less, and there she's thinking he's going to snatch her up and toss her over the pale cliff, all because of these tons and tons of circumstantial evidence which point to the conclusion that the husband played by Gary Cooper is a murderer. Well of course it turns out he isn't a murderer, as if that was any big mystery. I mean who would ever believe that anyone would cast Gary Cooper as a killer? I mean he was an expert killer in Sergeant York but later in his career he was type cast as squeaky clean. But, anyway, to see Debra Kerr in her prime you have to see her with Trevor Howard in I See a Dark Stranger. That's weird how you always make a mistake and saying Deborah CARE even though you know it's Deborah CAR. The Gary Cooper film that I like is the one where he stars with a young Charlton Heston and a young Richard Harris in The Wreck of the Mary Deare. I won't spoil it for you by telling you the ending, in case you ever get a chance to watch it, I mean in case the universe I'm from ever succeeds in transporting its motion pictures into the universe we are now in, but it's a drama set on the high seas, and there is some skullduggery and there are some nasty villains in it, though an innocent man does get his day in court. I probably ought to wander over to those kids lagging behind. They might need some water to drink, or perhaps I need to drag their spent little bodies through these snow drifts. Lord knows they're small enough for me to drag up this mountain. This is the craziest thing I ever saw, all these little kids struggling, fleeing, running, gasping for breath, stumbling, struggling along, fighting for their lives, trudging up this huge mountain, though of course we're on the side with the gentle slope. The incline here is so gentle it wouldn't even make a good ski run. Has your universe invented skiing yet? Yes? That's good. For a second there I was thinking you might have absolutely no clue what I was talking about. I really missed these kids, all these kids. That was perhaps one of the reasons I left Jennifer, though she was really getting on my nerves toward the end there, bossing me around as if I was her slave. I hate it when people remind me I was once a slave. I wonder if she started to treat me like a slave because I was once a slave, I mean, Debra, as Luke knows, I was once owned by these warrior women. I don't know. No doubt, indeed, if a woman gets overbearing you shouldn't slap her around or try to knock some sense into her brains by beating her. Just get the hell away from her. That's why I once had to escape from these warrior women, and more recently from Jennifer. I did love Jennifer in some ways. She could be so wonderful and beautiful at times. But she got so bossy toward the end there. People think they can discriminate against me because I'm a stranger from a parallel universe. I know I'm not the first person to be the victim of prejudice and narrow-minded hypocrisy, but, all the same, the injustice of it all sort of smacks you upside the head.'

`Can we count on you to stay with us, and protect us, and not run away again in the future?' asked Debra.

`I like to think that everyone now has a better understanding of my feelings and my emotional state,' said Al. `But if not, if I meet up with insensitivity and narrow-minded thinking again, then I just might have to go my separate way again. I'm a free agent. Hell, half these kids you see around us might end up dying in the wilderness, or die by being fed to tigers, but I'm pretty sure I'll survive.'

`Don't get overconfident though. Don't assume you're rounding third and the outfielder hasn't even picked up the ball yet, don't assume that you're easily home-free,' said Luke as Al moved off to help some little kids.

`Let's rest here for a minute,' said Al to Valmyristarsis and her four kids – the adopted Jasmine, along with Heather, Hugh and Hamilton, also known as Buddy. Al said the same to Navorrasicaa, and her two children, Barb and Curt. Al had to raise his voice almost to a shout to be heard above the howling wind. The gentle breeze might be returning sometime soon but it was gusting wildly at the moment. The kids had their heads down, hidden in the hoods of their coats, so that Al couldn't see their forlorn and exhausted little faces. But by the way they held themselves, the way they slumped and dragged their little feet, they gave Al the impression they were all done in, as if they were about ready to lay down and die, which was rather alarming to Al because he really wasn't too sure about the sanity of dragging them on a 200 mile march deep into Hibernia. The slope was nothing, though the snow was rather deep, especially for a little kid, and they had only been climbing for half an hour. Al crouched down on one knee and looked into the eyes of the 4-year-old Curt. He was weeping and at the same time struggling to get air into his lungs. Al shouted to the others to stop for a few moments to let the kids catch their breath and to drink some water. He reminded them that it really wasn't necessary to make a sprint to the fixed ropes which were now 500 vertical feet above them. They only had to climb slowly and take rests when they needed them. They would yank out the fixed ropes as they descended the South Face, making pursuit impossible. Katie didn't want to guarantee anything, but she never heard of a patrol which carried sufficient ropes to follow a party such as theirs down the thousands of vertical feet which made up the South Face. As they rested the adults had to calm the kids by insisting they were in no imminent danger, and yet, if a second patrol was to suddenly emerge from behind a ridge, the race would be on, and they would have to pace themselves intelligently to get to the ropes before the patrol got to them.

Al threw his huge pack on his back; then he picked up the two youngest kids, the 3-year-old Jay-Jay and the 4-year-old Curt, and then the three of them started up the slope. By walking for a minute and then resting for a minute, then walking for a minute and resting for a minute, repeating the formula over and over, Al carried the two kids up 300 feet. No Hibernian patrol emerged from behind any ridges during that time.

Soon enough, when they looked back, down the slope, they could barely but nevertheless distinctly discern the Hibernian patrol far beneath them. After a 20 minute rest they were ready to make another supreme effort through the deep snow and the howling winds. They walked and walked, climbed and climbed, nearly dead on their feet, dragging their exhausted selves onwards until at last slope fell away to the south, and, far beneath them, thousands of feet beneath them, lit up in the light of the moon, they saw the wonderful sight of their homeland: the northern plains of Avallonia unfolded at their feet.

Before clipping into the fixed ropes they made sure they were well rested and fully prepared for what was required to descend a huge rock wall, ready to continue their flight without any slip and tragic deaths. They watched as the wind erased the last of their footsteps in the snow on the mountain top. Perhaps the Hibernian patrol never saw them on the slope, and never saw them as they made their escape down the South Face.

Chapter 4. Scenes in a Krull Tavern

The descent went off without incident, more or less. There were some awkward moments when, having removed all of their ropes from the top half of the wall, they had to then reposition the same ropes on the lower half of the wall, which entailed finding, in the dim moonlight, the pitons which served as their principal belays, and which they had hammered in 4 weeks before. Valmyristarsis, their best climber, was responsible for leading everyone down, and was responsible for resetting the ropes on the lower half of the wall, as well as testing the belays and hammering in new pitons when the old belays were judged uncertain or dangerous. Their second best climber, Seraphinaria, was responsible for helping the less skilled women carry the kids down, and she was also responsible for collecting the ropes, and collecting any pitons she could hammer loose.

The following morning found 34 people camped at the base of the South Face. They had reached the bottom an hour after the sun had risen. Requiring six hours to repel down 7,000 feet is a snail's pace for professional climbers, but then they were not professionals, and every precaution was taken to make sure there were no slips, to make sure no kids were fumbled and lost.

`There are our horses,' exclaimed Heather when she was still 1,000 feet above the plains, pointing in the distance, in the light of the rising sun, at some animals pawing through the snow and grazing of the grass beneath.

`And there's the huge cart right where we left it a month ago,' said her brother, Hugh.

Upon reaching level ground, Seraphinaria decided to send Mirabrasantes and Casilevatates off to round up the 4 work horses, suspecting perhaps these horses would be less likely to run off if it was Mirabrasantes and Casilevatates who rounded them up. She seemed to have a vague recollection that these two had something of a rapport with horses. In the mean time everyone else grabbed an hour's cat nap while the two women were preoccupied with the task of retrieving the horses. Some sort of animal, perhaps a colossal cave bear weighing over a ton, had gorged himself on the supplies they left on the wagon. All of the canned good had been torn open and their contents devoured. All of the dried meat and dried fruit which they had left behind was gone. They still had 900 lbs of food which they carried down from above, a supply which ought to last them until they found their way to the Krull city of Ataz, which was a 3 week march to the east and north. They could always kill and eat a horse, or two, should some delay in this timetable threaten them with starvation.

Not bothering to put up any tents, they huddled in their cloaks and under their blankets, finding this arrangement cozy enough. All their exertions from the previous night left everyone exhausted. Most drift easily off to sleep, though Misevasundia and Sevaladelia remained awake, standing watch and on the lookout for cave bears.

Once Mirabrasantes and Casilevatates returned with the 4 horses they too refreshed themselves with a nap as the sun climbed higher and higher above them. By noon the older kids: Marla, Kayla and Shelby; Desiree and Delilah; Jackson and Luke were entrusted with guard duty while everyone else, including Misevasundia and Sevaladelia, either slept or prepared a meal.

Marla, Mirabrasantes' 8-year-old daughter, was watching her newly adopted brother, Luke, and his 14-year-old ex-girlfriend, Debra. Both painful and thrilling emotions were running through Marla. For a few weeks there it was uncertain who would adopt Luke. Marla had developed some sweet feelings for the boy. And then he became her adopted brother, which further confused and complicated matters. And then he returned from Cromwell Town, alive, which thrilled Marla no end, but he also returned with this 14-year-old girlfriend, which devastated Marla no end. But, now, Luke and Debra were no longer a couple, and this re-energized Marla, it gave her hope for a bright and beautiful future. It stirred her soul and brought her to life again. She listened as Debra described the colors she was finding in her Hibernian sweaters to herself and to Luke. The Hibernians were famous for their disdain for both the reserved autumnal shades as well as for the gaudy primary colors. Here was a slash cobalt and there was a splash of fuchsia. Debra pointed out the difference between every shade she could find, ranging from ebony to ivory, in her supply of sweaters and blouses. Here was amethyst and there was aquamarine. Here you'll find navy-blue, gold, silver, crimson, cerise, lapis lazuli, mother-of-pearl, mauve, ecru, teal, ocher, magenta and pewter. Marla was thinking her supply of sweaters, which were either gray or camel-colored, were decidedly dull compared to the rainbow which burst from Debra's treasure trove of garments. Poor Luke was crushed. He looked so terribly crushed and crestfallen. Every time he looked at Debra it's as if he forgot completely that she saved his life back in Cromwell Town. All that he could see was that she had rejected him. For a few brief shining days of beautiful bliss he knew the heaven of having Debra. She was so thrilling to gaze upon, with her fabulous features, with the wonderful way her beautiful eyes and her marvelously feminine décolleté could seize his attention and fill him with euphoria. Then one day Debra came to her senses. She told Luke straight out she could no longer be his girl-friend. The age gap between which once seemed trivial in her eyes was no longer trivial. It was as if she took a knife and stabbed it into Luke's heart. He never suspected such pain could exist! He never knew the world could be so cruel and so treacherous! Luke could see the interest Marla had for him in her eyes. But she was his new sister - Marla's mom, Mirabrasantes, had adopted him - and even if Marla wasn't his sister, she seemed to Luke so terribly young and immature, so terribly childish. Where was her marvelous figure? Where was the thrilling décolleté in this Marla kid? Luke wished he had the guts to throw himself off a cliff every time he looked at Debra. He actually left her a cruel note the night before. Luke had it all planned out. He wanted them to find his smashed lifeless body at the bottom of the mountain. And he wanted Debra to find the cruel note that he wrote and left for her to find in her ruck-sack. The note read: `You killed me Debra! You dashed out my brains! You broke all my bones. You destroyed me. How could you? How could you? I loved you so much, Debra, but you killed me!'

But Luke, though he made a feeble attempt at suicide, just didn't have the guts to finish the job. Either that or his guardian angel was watching over him! It was just the night before, as he looked down from the heights of the South Face, that he attempted to put his suicide plan into operation. But Luke simply didn't have the guts, or rather, Luke had too much sense to hurl himself off a 7,000 foot precipice. If he had found the will they would have found a mangled body indeed! Then Debra would find his note and learn that she had bashed and battered and assaulted him long before the mountain ever did. But Luke couldn't find the strength within him to commit suicide. He later found the will-power to retrieve the note that he left in Debra's ruck-sack. He almost wished she had found it, but he ripped it to shreds as he wept bitter tears of anguish and misery.

By 2:00 pm the sun was beginning to descend in the west. Though there was a hint of spring in the air it was still a cold wintry ordeal for the little kids to step behind the blanket they used for a shower curtain and take their showers. The warrior women made it a rule that everyone had to strip and wash with soap and water, every day, after visiting the latrines. No exceptions were made, not even during blizzards. The women wanted a clean pestilence-free outfit. They didn't want anyone getting sick from dysentery or any other deadly disease due to unhygienic conditions. They didn't want their kids having heads crawling with lice. They weren't about to see their kids struck down with mange or other skin diseases, didn't want to see a kid's bowels in such flux and tumult that death would be his only escape from his misery. A few drops of bleach and iodine went into every glass of water they drank, even in the water for the coffee which always came to a full boil. Parasites would pray on them, strike them down if they neglected to do so.

The landscape beneath the towering mountains was comprised of rolling foothills. By travelling a few miles further to the south they were able to attain more level ground during their push to the east. Here the plains rose gently to crests and fell just as gently to river bottoms where the streams were seldom more than ankle deep, and generally free of ice. Huge swaths of these grasslands were free of snow. Perhaps spring was arriving early. In any event the horses had little difficulty finding both fodder as well as water.

After three days of travelling to the east they saw a cleft in the mountain wall to the north. Here one might enter a wide valley that would funnel travelers to a pass between two high peaks. This pass marked a boundary where three nations met; here the borders between Avallonia, Hibernia and the Krull Republic all came together. The pass would also be guarded by patrols from all three countries, and warrior women from Avallonia were not welcome in either Hibernia or the Krull Republic. They would have to make their invasion of Krull lands, and then later of Hibernia, by unguarded routes.

In two more days there would be a new moon. Ideally it would be best to pass into Krull territory on a moonless night, and on a night when the wind would quickly erase all signs of their footsteps in the snow over the high mountains. By camouflaging themselves in the right colored garb, and by climbing the slope of the mountain above and to the east of the guarded pass, they fully expect to evade the Krull border patrols. They waited 2 nights after the new moon, waited until the gusts sprang up and the air was no longer dead calm. But when the wind picked up the gusts were also blowing at gale force.

The first night was spent ascending the slope and attaining a position high above the guarded pass. Lying low and crouching behind boulders and ridgelines, getting what sleep they could while remaining perfectly silent was their one and only job the next morning and afternoon. Remaining hidden from guards below them who would be scanning the slopes for sign of invaders shouldn't be too difficult. But they had to be perfectly quiet, especially whenever the howling winds faded away, so as to not alert any guard dogs who might be wandering about of their presence.

The second night was much like the first save it was one of descent not ascent. And the wind was still blowing strongly enough to swiftly erase all evidence of their footsteps over the mountain slope. They were well beneath the tree line and hence hidden from the guards by the time the morning sun began to lighten the sky in the east. Next, tt was just a matter to avoid any small border towns, and get to a city large enough to make themselves inconspicuous.

They were relying on Katie's insistence that the best way for them to pass as Krullites was not to worry too much about guttural inflections and the choice of vocabulary too much. The key was to use simple Krull words and to say everything with emphasis, in the idiosyncratic Krull manner, and to make a big dramatic production out of everything you said, which was considered good humor and proper etiquette in the Krull Republic. For instance, rather than say: `pass the salt and pepper, please', the typical Krull citizen would say: `get me that there salt and get me that there pepper real fast or I swear I'm gonna cut ya with this here knife!' Katie insisted that as long as you made your threat and your big melodramatic announcement with a smile on your face, no animosity would not be aroused among the Krullite barbarians, but if you made bland statements like – `Good morning to you sir, the weather is quite beautiful today, don't you agree?' – the Krull will not only assume you are simple-minded, but they will suspect you immediately of being a foreigner and a deadly enemy, and therefore they would try to provoke a street-fight with you, or they at least they would follow you to your inn and then alert the authorities, saying that they have found a foreign spy. So the key was to be dramatic in all things, and never utter boring if honest words, but be sure to offer colorful banter and cutting insults with a smile on your face, as it was absolutely necessary that you let it be know you are just joking; and if you were incapable of speaking like a Krullite then it was imperative that you just keep silent.

Katie gave them a demonstration about how the technique worked when she went up to a lady at the counter of a grocery store and said in a gregarious and friendly way: `I'd like to sleep with your husband if your husband is that big strapping fellow over there!' They lady just smiled in return and said: `you can have the lazy bum, but I'll tell you something, his breath sucks as bad as yours and his feet stink ever worse.' But then Navorrasicaa's girl, the 7-year-old Barb, got a little carried away, and she said: `I feels like cutting an old lady's throat because her prices is too high', but Barb's smile was sort of forced, and not very genuine-looking, even though her crack was close to being OK, still, she just wasn't quite accomplished enough to pass as a Krullite, and so the grocer lady shot Barb a nasty suspicious glance, and this made Barb think the grocer lady was about to cut her throat. But then Barb recovered nicely by getting a genuine smile on her face as she said: `I'll let you and your stinky husband live this time, but next time I want to see some lower prices.'

By midday of their fourth day of trudging along country lanes, mingling infrequently but now and then with the Krull barbarians, they spied a roadside tavern and decide to cool their heels inside it. As they were entering a old man was trying to exit. Buddy, aka Hamilton, Valmyristarsis' almost four-year-old, piped up with his naturally cheerful voice and was heard telling the elderly fellow: `get the hell out of my way you dumb son-of-a-bitch before I bust you one.' And then after they had all been seated, Marla, Mirabrasantes' 8-year-old, the secret admirer of Luke, wanted to try her hand to see if she could pass for a Krull barbarian. She began by telling one of the barmaids: `Your face reminds me of a pig's ass. I mean, the shape and the contours of both things are ugly and hog-like.' Marla surprised herself by the vehemence of her attack. And Marla was even worse than Barb at remembering that you have to smile when you make your colorful remark. The barmaid gave her a look that had homicide written all over her perfectly normal looking face.

Marla was trying to impress Luke by making her bold attack on the barmaid. Luke wasn't cold to Marla. He would give her the time of day. But extreme frustration was setting in for Marla. She was chasing him hard but he wouldn't surrender. You might ask: What did Marla think was going to happen between herself and Luke? Luke, following his adoption, was now Marla's brother. Young Marla had evidently not reasoned out this matter of the heart very well!

The homicidal glace from the barmaid vanished and she shot back with a smile: `I'll be sure to put lots of poison in your lemonade because of that rude heartless crack, Missy.'

This last speech was executed with what could pass as a genuine good-natured smile, nevertheless, Marla, reeling from the earlier homicidal glance, was uneasy and she refused to drink anything that that barmaid brought her. For some minutes Marla retreated into silence. But then she got thirsty and she decided she would make another attempt to pass as a local, so she went with: `you're the best-looking barmaid I've seen in the last 5 minutes, anyway get me a beer and hurry up about it,' her reasoning being that that sort of crack was semi-complimentary, but it wasn't obnoxiously fawning and ass-kissing either.

Katie was now insisting that they were being bold enough but they had to ramp up the sincerity, or insincerity, and get more friendliness into their smiles to avoid suspicion.

`You're a comely wench,' said Brent, Mirabrasantes' 7-year-old, Luke and Marla's brother, to yet another bar-maid. `But I ought to spank your butt for your slow service.'

She laughed at that and replied with: `if you ever lay your grubby hand across my butt I'll dig your eyeballs out of their sockets with my fingernails!'

Brent was left shaking and sullen.

`It can't always be about inflicting pain and launching physical violence,' said Jacqueline, Casilevatates 7-year-old, speaking to both Brent and to Marla. `You have to make other sorts of cracks, or else you will just stir up trouble.'

What do you suggest?' asked Marla.

You could say something like: "You're a beautiful barmaid but I came here for good service and good food and drink, so what use is all of your beauty to me?' said Jacqueline.

`That's just another insult, really, because you're actually saying she's a plain-Jane, whereas true comedy can't always be about insults, and good living never is,' insisted Marla.

`Such fine analysis from one so young,' said the tavern wench, upon her return. `Let me tell you a thing or two. Everyone knows you're spies from Avallonia. You have no talent for speaking the way in which we Krullites actually enliven our conversations. Some of our lowest barbarians speak like you guys. Your manners are the manners of our criminal class not our respectable class. But you're obviously not thugs and brigands! So, what else could you be except enemy spies? I'm telling you all this because I like the look of you people. You seem like nice people, with lots of nice clean-cut looking kids, once you see beyond your phoniness, I mean, and, well, I've always like Avallonia. But you're really incompetent spies. You're going to have to take to the hills, or else you'll be arrested as spies within a day or two for sure, or perhaps arrested within the next hour for that matter.'

Katie immediately saw it was no use bluffing their way out of this one. `I'll give you a gold sovereign, make it two, and we'll pay all the costs, if you get us some supplies that will keep us alive in the hills for a few weeks. We're trying to get to Hibernia.'

`I said I liked you. I usually don't take money for doing favors for people I like. I'm not a mercenary, not a money-for-favors sort of person. But I'm running some big risks here, risking my neck to help foreign spies...'

`OK, OK, we'll give you lots of money, and our gratitude, if you help us,' said Seraphinaria.

Chapter 5. Rendezvous in the Dark

Jackson - Seraphinaria's 10-year-old - was walking with two of his girlfriends – with Desiree, Sevaladelia's 11-year-old, and with Shelby, Misevasundia's 9-year-old. All three of these kids were somewhat put out for two main reasons. First, everyone aside from Al, Seraphinaria and Katie were ordered out of the tavern and ordered to start marching; they were instructed to find a hiding place off the main road, preferably not too far from the tavern, a mile away at most. From this hiding place they were instructed to keep a watch out for their three comrades left behind, who would be joining them sometime later that day, after they had worked out the details for getting the provisions from Maria, that being the name of the barmaid who was helping them. When everyone had met up again, then everyone might have to march right back to the tavern. Eventually they would load the supplies Maria was going to get for them on to their backs. She was quite confident she would have no problems finding 1,000 pounds of provisions on short notice. The second reason they were put out was due to Martha Manning. Martha was forever tossing out crazy ideas as to how they might free these 1,000 Avallonian prisoners-of-war, but she was always referencing books from the 17th century, old books that no one heard of and which probably pushed lots of stupid old ideas, whereas Al was better at describing modern movies, movies where the characters succeeded, or died, or were shot up but lived while attempting to pull off something daring, like a heist or a rescue mission.

Jackson's attention to what Al Mancini was saying came to an abrupt end when he felt both Shelby and Desiree brushing, or to be more accurate, pushing their young bodies into his body as they walked along the road leading away from the tavern, and this naturally distracted Jackson, enough to cause him to completely lose his train of thought. Jackson, who, along with Luke, were more or less the big male heart-throbs among the female kids, was thinking that he would have to choose sooner or later between Desiree and Shelby. Which one did he love more? Desiree was the more mature and the more affectionate of the two, but he found Shelby slightly more beautiful, slightly more exciting. Shelby had the most amazingly beautiful eyes. And it wasn't as if she wasn't affectionate. It's just that her ardor didn't seem to burn quite as hot as Desiree's did. And then it's not as if Desiree didn't have a beautiful face. Still, Jackson had to concede her face was less beautiful than Shelby's. There was also the consideration that Jackson's mom, Seraphinaria, would be thrown into a fit of apoplexy if she ever learned her son and Sevaladelia's daughter Desiree were a couple. Sevaladelia was the widow of a man who was not only never a military officer but he never even served in the military. He had been a beer and spirits distributor, of all things! Seraphinaria was the widow of both a nobleman and a cavalry officer. If his mom ever found out that he was courting a girl of such humble birth Jackson suspected his mom might immediately disown him. But then his mom would no doubt also be angry if he and Shelby were a couple, as her dad, though he was an army officer, and had died valiantly fighting for Avallonia, was not a nobleman. He had been an executive with a big company that made lots and lots of cardboard boxes, but to the widow of a nobleman that's not much different than saying he drove a garbage truck and picked his nose and stank to high heaven all day long. While Jackson was deliberating the passions and opposing forces pulling on his heart-strings, he pulled off something of a shrewd move. He took both of his hands out of his pockets and he reached for the hands of the two girls walking so closely beside him. He was sort of upping the ante in their flirtation. They all had one or two glasses of beer back at the tavern. Jackson knew he could expect the girls to be less inhibited than usual. Two other girls, two slightly younger girls, Barb and Marla, who also had some ale back at the tavern, were snickering at the three people holding hands and walking just in front of them. Then they laughed out loud as the beer-emboldened Jackson kissed both Shelby's hand and Desiree's. Soon enough Jackson was thinking he had overplayed his hand, because Desiree said flat out at one point that Jackson was going to have to decide if he wanted her of if he wanted Shelby. She was seeing his wager and raising it. Then Jackson told the two girls he loved them both, that he was crazy about both of them, which set both Desiree and Shelby, as well as the two younger girls behind them laughing pretty loudly.

Walking just behind these kids was the gang-like clique of the 5-year-old girls: Morgan, Camille, Guilia, Mercedes and Mercedes' new adopted sister, Jocelyn. What was interesting here is that little Jocelyn, who had formerly felt a little alienated from that clique – at one point she even wished she was back at The Sisters of Mercy Orphanage - was now the undisputed leader among the 5-year-old girls. She was both cute and she also had a sophisticated and worldly aura about her, yet, at the same time, there was an immensely gentle and kind quality to little Jocelyn. The shyest and youngest of the boys found her charming and approachable. The rowdiest older boys and older girls didn't disdain to cultivate friendships with her. The other ex-orphan girl, the 7-year-old Jasmine, never had any problems fitting in with the kids her age and younger. But now that Luke had a steady girlfriend, and now that lots of girls were throwing themselves at Jackson, Jasmine felt a good deal of pressure `to get a man and hold on to him.' The problem for Jasmine was not that she was not lovely and alluring: the problem was there was tons and tons of stiff competition if she set her sights on either Jackson or Luke. And Brent, though he was the same age as herself, just wasn't her type. Brent was sort of pushy and aggressive, super gregarious in a way which suggested he was an insincere social climber; he was like a Shriner or a Lions Club member on steroids. Jasmine went for the musician type, preferably a saxophone player or a bass guitarist. She would consider a classical guitarist or even something like a flutist provided he was good-looking and charming. Jasmine could just never see herself digging some guy who bowled or who played beer-league softball. To Jasmine, it just seemed as if you were throwing your life away if you married someone active in Toastmasters or the Elks or Kiwanis etc. The handsome brooding loner, Hugh, was close to her type, but he was just a 6-year-old, and, on top of that, in Jasmine's estimation, he seemed pretty young for his age.

`I'd be robbing the cradle if I went after him,' as Jasmine explained matters to the Heather, the sister she acquired after Jasmine was adopted by Valmyristarsis.

`Well you don't want to be single all your life, do you? You don't strike me as the type who wants to end up an old maid,' replied Heather.

`Am I supposed to throw myself at some 5-year-old? That Dante kid is kinda cute but he is 5 years old! Or what about that 4-year-old, Curt? I got some standards, in case you weren't aware it!'

`You'll never get anywhere in this world if you refuse to compromise,' said the 7-year-old Heather. `Sometimes it is wise to set lofty goals, but it is imperative that you always set realistic goals, as my dear old ancient mother keeps reminding me.'

When they had marched nearly a mile from the tavern they found a place that looked as suitable as any other place to leave the roadway and plunge into the forest of evergreens which ran alongside the road. They settled themselves at a vantage point which gave them a clear view of the roadway while they tried to blend in with the foliage and speak in whispers to remain hidden. The kids wrapped themselves in blankets to keep warm ass they played cards. Their moms let them drink a little whiskey to help them deal with the cold, provided they kept their voices down. You got cut off as soon as you raised your voice a little too loudly. The kids found it rather frustrating to be given whiskey but to be unable to do anything with the whiskey – that is doing things along the lines of partying / love-making - as that was simply impossible with so many moms around policing everyone closely. So, the kids played cards and flirted in the way kids do when the chaperons are close by. There was some chocolate and some cheese and crackers and some pretzels and beer to go along with the whiskey. Though their breath frosted in front of their faces everyone was more or less warm and well-fed and cozy. Many of the kids and some of adults drifted off to sleep while the shadows of the afternoon lengthened towards evening. In a few more hours the sun was setting, and by twilight there was still no sign of Al, Seraphinaria and Katie. At last they heard the approach of footsteps in the night; then the vague outlines of two people were seen striding down the road in the direction of those hidden in the trees. Valmyristarsis whistled, the signal she always used. A match was struck on the roadway, illuminating the faces of Al and Katie. The kids stayed where they were but their moms went out to converse with the two on the road. Al and Katie, who were acting like forward scouts, announced that Maria and Seraphinaria would be along shortly. The four of them were all late in arriving because they thought it best to keep a watch out for trouble, for as long as possible, from a vantage point closer to the tavern. They were naturally watching for soldiers and policemen, but any sort of civilian posse was something to worry about, and by nightfall they still weren't sure if the Krull authorities had been alerted to them or not. A few minutes after Al and Katie arrived Maria arrived on a horse drawn wagon loaded with food and supplies. By this time Al and the womenfolk confirmed what everyone more or less suspected: they would leave the road and take to the back country. The Krull Republic is much like Norway, as both are mountainous and both have numerous fjords, though Norway's fjords reach the sea by flowing to the west, whereas in the Krull Republic they reached the sea by falling to the east. Maria was also helpful in getting them some maps. She was sophisticated enough to not ask where they were going, and no one was naïve enough to tell her. Maria was rather business-like in her arrival and her departure. She said hello, then the supplies were unloaded her wagon, and then everyone thanked her and everyone said their goodbyes. When the click of the horse's hooves were no longer heard in the distance, Seraphinaria took command of the distribution of the goods, seeing that no one was given too much or too little weight carried in his or her ruck sack. They decided to cache 700 pounds of food, which they might need rather desperately on their journey back to Avallonia, and they would carry another 700 lbs on their backs on their journey to Hibernia: 700 lbs they decided was more than enough to last them till they got to O'Conner even if they trekked over the roughest country. Everything in cans was placed in gunny sacks and hidden amid dense clusters of fir trees, which had been scouted out earlier, before night had descended, for just such a purpose. Having stashed away a month's supply of food, it was back to the main road for a short hike. They didn't actually leave the roadway for good until they had walked another three miles beyond the place where they had met Maria. Al was impressed to see that even the youngest kids, the two 3-year-olds, Jay-Jay and Buddy, and the 4-year-old, Curt, walked the entire way without complaining once. Army life seemed to agree with them more now than it ever had before. Or they might simply have had enough whiskey in them to deaden the pain of yet another march in an endless campaign full of such marches.

The light of the half moon rescued them from having to walk in pitch darkness. At one point Sevaladelia's 5-year-old, Dante, who was staggering a good deal from all the beer and whiskey he'd been drinking, became rather lecherous, and he began pawing Camille, Casilevatates', 5-year-old daughter, who then began screaming, as she was already unnerved by the spooky scene of the dark pines rising up on both sides of the road; she was afraid a bear or a pack of wolves or a witch might attack. And then this drunken kid started to grope her in the dark and soon she couldn't stop screaming.

`Get your brat away from my girl before I slap him around,' screamed Casilevatates in Sevaladelia's face.

`You touch my son and I'll smash your face,' screamed Sevaladelia at Casilevatates.

There was silence for a second or two and then some of the older kids, who were well-fueled with alcohol, started screaming: `Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!' This brought in all the younger kids and they starting whooping and howling and shouting things like: `kick her ass!' and `Cat-fight! Cat-fight!' For minute after minute the little kids were impossible to quiet, and they roared like demons, fueled as they were by beer and whiskey. Finally, a large posse of old men on horses road up and told the company of 34 people, in the vilest language, I might add, to shut up. Most of the kids became very quiet, but Casilevatates and Sevaladelia, who were about to rumble, and therefore both were hyped up on adrenaline, told the old men in equally colorful language what they could do with themselves. The men cursed at Casilevatates and Sevaladelia before riding off. A few minutes later Katie informed everyone that those men were probably cops or at least deputies looking for Avallonian spies, and they probably rode off thinking they had just stumbled across a large but typical group of drunken Krullites and not a small army of Avallonian spies.

Chapter 6. The Enchanted Forest

`We'll have to assume those geezers will wise up and come back looking for us sooner or later,' said Seraphinaria.

`Let's not dive into the trees too close to where they spotted us,' said Valmyristarsis. `If we walk a ways further it might work to our advantage. Not too much farther of course, maybe another three hundred feet. We gotta get off this road fast, and we gotta cover up our footsteps in the snow with more snow, and that's a slow job, but let's not dive into the trees here.'

This advice seemed wise or at least plausibly so. Roughly a hundred paces further down the road they found a spot which seemed as good as any other place to leave the road and begin a hike through deep powdery snow, beneath a forest of tall pines. Seraphinaria, carrying her youngest kid, the three-year-old Jay-Jay, led the way. Everyone behind her tried to step in her footsteps. Al brought up the rear. It was his job to wield a four square foot piece of canvas with which to fan the snow so that it blew into their tracks, and thereby eliminated those tracks. Misevasundia, hovering close to Al, held up a torch in the form of a burning pine bough to give Al some illumination, something to help him inspect the quality of his work. There was no sense for Al to go to all this trouble if he couldn't make their tracks invisible. And there was no sense giving up too quickly either. Even so, they only put two hundred yards between themselves and the road before Al had his fill of the job and insisted on calling it quits. They set up their tents more or less on the spot where Al kneeled in the snow panting and gasping for breath.

The next morning the sky was clear but the wind was howling and blowing snow like a typical blizzard. These were perfect conditions for their purposes as the footsteps they left behind them disappeared in a matter of minutes. There was one hitch to otherwise perfect conditions. They were a mile away at a minimum, perhaps further, but they could hear the baying of hounds. To hide in the trees might only delay their capture. They set a zigzag course through the forest but soon the trees in the forest grew further and further apart. They reached an open plain. They had no way of knowing how wide this open plain extended as the blowing snow eclipsed from sight everything beyond fifty feet. The dilemma was of this variety: If they tried to cross the open plain and grew exhausted, they would have no wood to build fires. This was no problem if the cold didn't intensify any further. But if the temperature plunged another 20 or 30 degrees, and if they had no way to light fires, they would not be able to prevent the littlest kids, or perhaps even the adults, from either getting frostbit or from outright freezing to death. They could raise the tents and bundle up inside the tents, but then if a pack of hounds was to surround them, a posse of men might also soon surround them. They had no choice but to risk crossing the open plain. By caring their canteens under their cloaks they could keep their drinks from freeing. These canteens carried coffee laden with sugar mixed with whiskey, as this combination, mixed to varying degrees, was the preferred thing to drink on long cold exhausting marches. They ventured out on to the plain. The littlest kids had the advantage of following behind, therefore they walked through snow which was trampled down by the adults and older kids ahead of them. But even kids hardened by months of hard marching find it impossible to walk over even easy terrain for much longer than four straight hours. After four hours of marching the wood they needed to build a fire was still nowhere to be found. Both the 3-year-old Jay-Jay and 4-year-old Curt looked close to death as they staggered through the clouds of blowing snow. Both insisted their fingers and toes were not cold, both insisted that as long as they kept moving they were warm, but how much longer could the little guys keep moving before they fell down exhausted and unable to walk a step further? Whiskey and coffee laden with sugar can fuel a human being only so far before the inevitable collapse must happen. The spirit of man is indomitable up to a point, but beyond the breaking point, beyond the point where a kid will be crushed to death by cold and exhaustion, there was no negotiating with the ferocity of Nature, no arguing with her and her resolve to execute those who had exceeded their breaking points. Their moms would have loved to carry Jay-Jay and Curt, but to do so was to ensure frozen fingers and toes, and then their sons would die of gangrene if their frozen fingers and toes were not amputated. The only way they could keep their kids from freezing was to make them keep walking. It brought tears to the eyes of their mothers to see their little boys stagger and fall, and then rise to their feet again only to stagger onwards a few more paces before falling again to the ground, then rising again and having more whiskey and more coffee laden with sugar poured down their throats, which gave them the energy to stagger onwards for perhaps another 100 or 200 yards before they again fell to the snow like they were dead, only to be revived and dragged to their feet again by their mothers, who were themselves losing the strength to pull their sons upright and thereby begin the death march anew. And then the dog pack closed in on them. The adults and the older kids formed a wall around the younger kids to keep those kids from being attacked by the dogs, which were primarily Rottweilers and Dobermans, with a few Pit bulls. The dogs were wary of the long knives but they still tried to break through the rings of knives to get at the littlest kids. But the dogs didn't have much to get their jaws around. The thick woolen cloaks worn but the adults protected their arms and most of their legs. Every time one of the dogs jumped for someone's throat a knife slashed his belly and spilled his guts. Still there might have been 50 big vicious hunting dogs in the pack that some Krull posse set upon them, and by late afternoon the adults had barely enough strength to swing their knives and stab at the dogs encircling them. But the dogs were losing strength as well. Many of the smaller ones had already lain down dead or almost dead; and if a dog was weak from loss of blood it would soon freeze completely.

At one point Al stood still and let three of the more energetic dogs sink their fangs into his thick woolen pants above his ankles. He felt some pain, through the layers of thick wool pants under his thick leather trousers saved him from a lot more pain. He was able to stand where he was, above the three dogs, as he stabbed the vicious beasts until they bled to death. By this tactic the other dogs saw the futility of trying to bite any of the adult. They all wore layers of clothing as thick as Al's. The dogs simply circled round and round until they dropped, as blood streamed from their wounds and as they began to freeze from the bitter cold. All of the dogs either bled to death or froze to death in the frigid arctic winds. The last three dogs still living, three huge Rottweilers, threw themselves at the wall of adults and big kids surrounding the littlest kids. The adults and big kids just kept jabbing their knives, stabbing at eyes and noses and fangs. Once in a while they were able to take an uppercut that found its mark in the throat or heart of one of the dogs. At long last the lone remaining dog had a blade driven into its heart.

`Let's....have...another...look...at those maps,' gasped Heliomirabellisima when the battle was over. It then took her a minute or two to catch her breath. `What we want to do is find another road, one where horses and carts have laid down a path through the snow. Maybe we won't get so drunk any time soon. Maybe we'll keep a better watch out for the pursuit. Of course, we'll travel at night and try to be invisible.'

The single moms crowded around Seraphinaria and her maps; they determined that once they reached the forest, which they were now fast approaching, they would have to hike another 10 miles, again through knee-deep snow, before they reached a road of any significance. These actions would be impossible to do today, because they were exhausted, so they decided to raise the tents and camp where they were, even though it was just past 2 in the afternoon. They could grab a few hours of rest and then march on until they were exhausted again. If only they could find some trees to convert into firewood! They had three big tents in all; each one was large enough to sleep 4 adults and 10 kids. The recent nights had been frosty but still warm enough for even the littlest kids to almost want to kick off their eiderdown comforters. But today winds out of the north brought temperatures which plunged to 20 degrees below zero. Everyone would have to bundle up well to keep from freezing, and even with every blanket and comforter covering them, everyone would need some whiskey to keep their toes from freezing at minus 20. Whiskey will save limbs in the cold, but too much of it could also kill you. The temperature that night would probably drop to 40 degrees below zero, and at that temperature the only way the adults could prevent the littlest kids from suffering severe frostbite would be to bundle them up as much as possible, and then make them walk, and make sure they never stopped walking. At 40 degrees below zero, even when bundled up inside the tents, out of the howling wind, the fingers and toes of the little kids would soon be frozen solid soon after they sleep. It was all very simple actually, at 40 degrees below zero: should they have no wood to build fires then they would just have to keep moving. And if they were too exhausted to keep moving then the littlest kids would die first, but everyone would freeze to death eventually.

They got the tents up some time after 2 in the afternoon but by 4 Jay-Jay and Curt were complaining that their toes were freezing. Martha, the member of the party who knew the most about surviving in a Siberian climate, massaged Curt's feet until she got the blood circulating in them again, while Seraphinaria did the same for Jay-Jay. Curt and Jay-Jay then put on layers of felt socks inside of several wool stockings inside of sheepskin boots inside of leather moccasins. Then Katie made everyone drink as much water as possible. Much of their water supply was already frozen but they could melt some of it by carrying their canteens close to their bodies and beneath their thick cloaks. It was easy to stay warm in the far north if you kept moving. But you need lots of food and water to keep your body moving. The thought that some of them might die of thirst before they froze to death occurred to Martha, though she didn't think it necessary to voice this opinion. While everyone was shivering, the howling winds outside their tents suddenly faded away. Al sprang out of his blankets and dashed outside of the tent he was in to see if he could see anything, such as a nearby forest. To the west, about half a mile away, seen through swirling snow that was settling in the calm air, was a wall of evergreens. Al then told everyone that they would survive, firewood was nearby, fire to warm themselves was only minutes away, though everyone was still too numb and too exhausted to celebrate the good news.

Having reached the trees, having dragged themselves the last few yards, everyone was aware that they would be saved as soon as they got the fire starter. But they hadn't gotten the fire started yet. The sparks sent flying from the steel striking the flint stone continued to hit the tinder, and if the smoke blew out most of the time, nevertheless, at last, it didn't stop smoking, and then a little flame sprang up, upon which, at first, a few pine needles where added by Seraphinaria, and then more and more pine needles were added, whereupon the flames flew higher and became strong enough to consume larger and larger twigs. Soon branches were cast on to the flames, and then whole trunks of dead trees were hurled into the inferno. Martha Manning, who came through the portal from our universe to this parallel universe several years back, was carrying her mp3 player at the time. She was also carrying her speakers and lots of batteries. She broke these out of her pack to get the party started. Even though the kids didn't have to start dancing to keep from freezing to death now that the fire was blazing away, they seemed to have lots of energy after their nap. And with this energy they realized they had lots to celebrate, after the dogs that tried to rip their throats out had all died, after they found themselves still alive and not frozen to death. Besides, the kids always had to start dancing every time they heard the music that Martha had on her MP3.

5-year-old Jocelyn, who liked to be close to the 6-year-old Hugh, had fallen asleep by the fire close to him. The cold snap had lasted for three days. One night it fell to 50 degrees below zero. In that sort of weather there was little they could do save spend half the day gathering deadwood to fuel the fire and the other half sleeping, or preparing meals, or lounging about playing cards or chess in the warmth of the fire. On the fourth day there was a tremendous rush of warm south wind. Now they were slipping around and trying their best to stay dry amid all the melting snow. After Jocelyn, Hugh and a few of the other kids woke from their sleep they were informed it was almost time to press on toward to O'Conner. But Jocelyn and Hugh still had a few minutes to chat with each other in whispers as they lay under their blankets by the campfire.

`I wasn't sure how to reply to what you were talking about earlier,' said Hugh to Jocelyn. `But after sleeping on things I see everything clearly now.'

`1 don't like the sound of that,' said Jocelyn. `I just asked you to be more open about your feelings. I want you to be comfortable enough in our relationship to express your deepest and sincerest thoughts. Now you say you had to sleep on this to know how to respond. You seem so calculating sometimes. Why can't you be honest and spontaneous? How do you think that makes me feel when you have to sleep on everything?'

`Unloved? You always say you feel unloved,' said Hugh. `So, taking a wild guess here, let me guess, it makes you feel, it's just a guess now – unloved – yes, it makes you feel unloved - even though I've told you a thousand times that I love you.'

`And I've asked you a thousand times: "How do I know you love me?" Just because you say you love me, how do I know it is legit?' asked Jocelyn.

`Well, if I said I love you so very very much that if I found out you were cheating on me with some guy, I would murder both you and the guy, and then I'd kill myself, because, I would know we could never be together after I killed you, and if I knew I could never be with you, then I would be in such despair that I would kill myself - if I said something like that then you would get on my case for being so violent and crazy. But if I said, I wouldn't be all that upset if I learned you were cheating on me with some other guy, then you would say that I don't love you. So, I can't win with you no matter what I say.'

`That's not true at all, insisted Jocelyn. `You just have to be honest with me.'

`OK, I'll be honest with you. I don't trust a woman who says she loves me but then also says she would never try to hurt me if she caught me cheating on her with another girl. That sort of "love" is like 3.2 beer, it's as weak as water. If you really love someone, and then if he stabs you in the back by cheating on you, then you will want to get even. If you don't want to get revenge, then you don't really love him.'

`Your sort of love sounds like a gangster's code,' said Jocelyn.

`But can't you understand what I'm saying?' asked Hugh.

`Oh I can understand it. You want an obsessive sort of love, a stalker's sort of love. You want to feel so totally devoted to someone that your love for her crosses into madness! Whereas with me, I want the sort of love where a guy will buy me roses the day after I get sick in bed and vomit all over him. I want a guy who will love me for richer or for poorer.'

`We're definitely not talking about the same sort of love.'

`No, my sort of love doesn't involve any gruesome scenes full bloodshed and long prison sentences.'

`But your sort of love is a pale imitation of real love. If a guy buys you roses the day after you get sick and vomit on him, that just means he knows that for most days, though not on every single day, but on most days, you're a decent catch for him, and in order to keep you happy, and in order to avoid paying lots of alimony to you, to avoid getting hammered in divorce court, a guy knows he has to do certain things to keep his wife happy, certain things any robot can be programmed to do: remember your birthday, remember your anniversary, remember to buy you gifts for no special reason, remember to buy you flowers after you have had a bad day etc., etc. He's not really in love with you. He just knows that he would be lonely if he wasn't married to some sort of reasonably attractive female. He has to play the game. He goes along to get along. He'll put up with a certain amount of BS from a female as long as, overall, he rates that female as a decent catch. But if the female falls into the Very Substandard Category, then he'll dump the very substandard one, and he'll suffer what he has to suffer in divorce court, and then he'll find someone he hopes is better than the last failure of a female that he got mixed up with. If you throw up on a guy, then, by all rights, you should be the one buying him flowers the next day. If a guy buys you roses after you throw-up on him, that merely proves he's a cunning devil who will stoop to any level of deceit to avoid paying alimony to you. But if you cheat on a guy and then he comes hunting for you and your lover with a butcher knife, then you know he's really crazy about you, really and truly in love with you.'

`But even if I was attracted to your brand of mad passion, I want him to be crushed by despair not driven into a homicidal rage. If my husband or boyfriend catches me cheating on him, I want him to be so devastated that he seriously thinks about committing suicide: I want him to seriously think about throwing himself off a bridge. I don't want him to actually commit suicide but I certainly don't want him to come hunting for me with a knife! Aside from conducting a dangerous experiment, how am I supposed to know if I can trust you when you say that you really really love me?' asked Jocelyn.

`Well how do I know that you really really love me?' asked Hugh

`Oh let's change the subject! replied Jocelyn. `Every time we talk about our relationship you always have to argue with me by turning my own words against me. It's as if you have some sort of egomaniacal complex which drives you to win every argument, which drives you to crush me every time we debate some issue. Don't deny that you always have to get the last word in.'

`I thought you wanted to change the subject,' said Hugh. `Well, you change the subject from first insisting that my sort of love is a gangster's code to the new subject of insisting that I'm an egomaniac. Talk about egomaniacal!'

`See, there you're doing it again. You exasperate me no end, just like this new mom I got. She's a piece of work. She just comes waltzing into my life "Hi there kiddo, I'm your new mom! – out with the old and in with the new! – we're going to get along great, now go pick up the mess in the tent and fetch me my slippers and my hunting spear". First, they ship me out to the orphanage. Then they ship me out with this group of single moms. Then we cross over the border from Avallonia into Hibernia, and the laws of Hibernia let any woman adopt any orphan if both parties are agreeable. She was the only woman who wanted me. What am I supposed to say, No? I'll just stay an orphan? Why would I need any monetary support to survive in the world? On the one hand, I needed to find a mom who cares about my emotional needs, about my feelings and my sensitivities. How rare and difficult could it be to find could such a mom? But, on the other hand, you are sort of making a slave of yourself when you let yourself be adopted, when you agree to be some stranger's kid, at least until you reach the age of 18. The stranger tells you what to eat and what not to eat, when to get up and when to go to bed, what to fetch them and what not to fetch them. On the one hand, it sucks to be an orphan, but on the other hand it sucks to be an unpaid servant also. So I have some plans which I believe I've mentioned to you.'

`You'll always be pissed about having to be a soldier and having to live in the wilderness. And your intentions to litigate are the same as before?'

`I want to hire a lawyer,' stated Jocelyn. `Oh yes, I intend to tell a judge about how I have been put through hell – sheer absolute hell! - by your mom and by these other mothers, I want to tell a judge about how I want monetary compensation for all the pain and suffering I've had to endure ever since I was torn from my friends at Sisters of Mercy Orphanage.'

`Yeah, that's what I thought,' said Hugh. `But none of these single moms has any money. They're all as poor as church mice. The only way you would ever see any `monetary compensation' – as you phrase it – is if these single moms come into some money. But even if the single moms are successful in rescuing those 1,000 Avallonian prisoners, and successful with books and lecture tours, no judge and no jury in Avallonia is going to take money away from the heroic single moms and give it to you. No, the best way for you to get your hands on some cash, the best way for you to write your own Cinderella Story, as everyone has been telling you, over and over, is still the same advice: 1) stop talking about hiring a lawyer, and 2) try to keep good notes detailing the facts whenever you do something brave: keep excellent notes so you can write an excellent book which will sell lots and lots of copies: remember to jot everything important down on paper so you can speak in an authoritative manner on a lecture tour which will draw in large crowds of paying customers. Like when those dogs were trying to rip your throat out. Don't talk about how you wanted to sue some people who took you away from your friends at an orphanage when those dogs, and the cold, and exhaustion were making life a living hell for you. Mention instead how you took your knife and how you stabbed one of the dog's eyes out, which you certainly did. Mentioned how you roared with glee as you proceeded to stab the foul beast to death. If that's not quite true, then, say you felt like roaring with glee as you stabbed the foul beast to death, but you were too busy gasping for breath. Try to get a feel for what readers want to read. Try to develop a sense for what people attending lectures want to hear.'

`I suppose you're right. I suppose I'll have to make my money through heroic deeds and through the shrewd marketing of those heroic deeds, as everyone has been telling me over and over, but I still want to hire a lawyer, and I still want to sue some people.'

`Have it your way. Just keep quiet about your plans though. You can tell me your secrets - I'm in love with after all – I'm crazy about you - but you don't want some other kid sticking a knife in your back after you talk about suing his mom.'

`I wonder who would be most likely to kill me among this lot?' asked Jocelyn.

`Probably Morgan. She's mad about me. So by murdering you she would eliminate her rival. And as her mom is the commanding officer of this company, her mom and your new mom would be the first people your lawyer would target in litigation to get you some monetary compensation.'

`Are you serious? Is Morgan really mad about you?'

`Well, I might be exaggerating things just a little.'

`Are you exaggerating when you say you love me, when you say you're crazy about me?'

`Oh, no way baby. How can you ask such a thing? I swear I'm mad about you. I'm crazy about you. I love your eyes. Do you know how gorgeous your eyes are? They just knock me out. They leave me breathless. I feel my heart racing every time I look in your eyes. I wonder sometimes if my heart is going to explode: do you know what that feels like when your heart just gets racing so fast it feels like it's going to explode? It's pure bliss, but a little terrifying too.'

On the trek north and west to O'Conner the weather cooperated enough to at least get no colder than minus ten degrees at night, which, inside the tents, was more than enough for everyone to stay warm and cozy. They avoided the roads and trusted their luck to the wilderness. It was on a road after all where a posse, though it first ignored them, on second thought set a large pack of vicious hunting dogs after them. Everyone agreed it was better to endure the hardships of the rough country rather than have easy strolls down roads where who knew what sorts of posses and hellhounds lurked round the next bend. There was some discussion of how they would free the prisoners. They tossed out facile ideas about digging a tunnel under the streets and into the prison, but, ultimately, everyone seemed to know instinctively what had to be done. They needed to get jobs in bars and taverns round the prison. They needed to find out who the guards were who worked at the prison. They needed to find out where these guards lived and whether or not they had any children. Then the day would arrive when they would strike. They would break into the houses or apartments of one or more of these guards. They would hold knives to the throats of various children and they would threaten to cut the throats of those kids if they didn't get a good deal of cooperation from their parents. Of course they were not barbarians; they were never going to make those threats come to reality: but they had to appear to be barbarians: they had to be good enough actors to be believable when they made those threats. With the cooperation of these parents / guards, they had a chance to free 1,000 Avallonian prisoners of war. So, the first order of business upon reaching O'Conner was to find jobs in restaurants and taverns as waitresses, as a waiter in Al's case. Then they had to find apartments or at least boarding houses, as it would never work if they continued to live in tents, and then, once they were in position, they should be able to find out where the guards with the kids lived. Katie and Debra would have to lay low because they were wanted for the crime of being traitors to the nation of Hibernia, and their descriptions were in every police station, or at least they were pretty sure they were. Katie and Debra could perhaps help to see that some kids got to and from school safely, and the kids would have to go to school if they were to blend in and not arouse suspicion. But beyond that there was little that Katie and Debra could do until the night arrived when they would help to liberate the prisoners.

Finally the day arrived when they stood atop a hill and looked down up the city of O'Conner, a metropolis of more than 3 million people. The adults agreed to meet every Saturday evening at 7:00 pm atop this same hill that they now stood upon. Al, who was sort of the boyfriend of most of the single moms - though perhaps he felt closest to Heliomirabellisima, Valmyristarsis and Navorrasicaa - would have to separate himself from everyone. Seraphinaria decided it would be ok if Martha Manning tagged along with Katie and Debra. It might help her to keep out of trouble if she did. Any of the single moms could of course acknowledge her own kids in public but that was all. If, for instance Misevasundia passed Al, or Debra, or Brent on the street, they would all pretend they didn't know each other. And they would all claim to be refugees from the North of Krull, the poorest and most desolate part of the Krull Republic, and, according to Katie and Debra at least, no one would be too suspicious of that story. It would look suspicious if a group of people all from the North of Krull began to apply for jobs at taverns round the prison, and if they all began to make applications for same apartments. So, everyone got her own set of streets and her own set of bars and restaurants and apartments to apply at. On the trek north the adults stressed to the kids over and over: `When you get to your new school in O'Conner don't ask a kid you don't know very well where his mom works. If a kid asks you where your mom works then it's ok to ask her where her mom works. But don't be the first person to ask. We need you to get information for us; we need to know about people who work at the prison; but we don't want you to be too aggressive in getting information. We don't want you to arouse suspicion.'

Of course the kids were never told that the adults planned on threatening to kill some kids if their parents didn't cooperate, but then the kids were not incapable of jumping to a conclusion or two, and speculations spread pretty fast among the kids about what was up and about what exactly was going down.

Chapter 7. Life in O'Conner

They stood atop the hill as Seraphinaria tore her map into seven sections. Seraphinaria and her kids, Jackson, Morgan and Jay-Jay, took a part of the map showing a huge district – Seraphinaria didn't tear the map very carefully – a huge district bounded by two rivers converging on a lake. Katie, Debra and Martha were given the OK to stay together, and Al, who should have the easiest time finding work and an apartment, as most of the Hibernian males his age had been killed off in the interminable wars with Avallonia, was asked to find work and an apartment within a block or two of the prison. Everyone was asked to look for a huge abandoned warehouse somewhere in the city. They could use a place to take the escapees immediately after the breakout; there everyone could be given maps, clothing, knives etc., and directions to the place outside of the city where everyone could meet up again, a place where everyone would then get their provisions, ruck sacks, tents, blankets, cloaks, layers of thick clothing etc. They went over the final details one more time, as the adults wouldn't see each other again until Saturday, today being Monday. Everyone had to acquire sewing items, needles and thread etc., and big piles of cloth of various fabrics: cotton and wool and leather especially; and acquire food and weapons, but slowly and inconspicuously. They would have to supply perhaps more than 1,000 people with clothing, perhaps there would even be 1,500 Avallonian prisoners who would eventually be sprung. Katie, Debra and Martha, who would have the most free time, would be in charge of making hundreds of cloaks and trousers out of the wool and leather; they would need huge amounts of canvas to make tents and ruck sacks for the escapees. Whether they made their escape through Hibernia or the Krull Republic they would need to have thick cloaks and thick layers of multiple trousers, as this sort of armor, along with having long knives, was the best way to defend themselves from the tigers and the packs of hunting dogs used by both the Hibernians and the Krullites. Well, there wasn't much they could do against tigers, as one swipe of a tiger's paw would easily break a woman's neck, but a warrior woman wearing thick clothing and wielding a long knife could easily slay even the biggest and most vicious dog. How weakened the prisoners were from long confinement was another question impossible to answer. No doubt they would gain strength fast once they had some big meals and got some exercise on the march home. With all of their expenses they might have to pull the kids out of school and have them find jobs also. They would either have to steal or purchase everything required to arm and provision a small army. Everyone was thinking that they would probably end up pulling a heist, holding up a bank or robbing a warehouse to get the material to supply the army. Every adult was also thinking it would be best if they could snatch the kids of the guards on a single day, but this was something they could table for now and bring up at future meetings.

Everyone hugged everyone else as they said their goodbyes. Luke and Debra had sort of an awkward parting. She had made it clear long ago that she needed to find someone older than Luke, still it was a bittersweet parting for both of them. Perhaps she would now have that chance. Trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, the crowd of over 30 people broke up and descended the hill taking several different routes leading in several different directions.

`Herschel Grynzspan Avenue?' asked the cab driver. `Where the hell is that?'

`Let me show you where it is on a map,' said Navorrasicaa, as she took the map from her pocket while her kids, Barb and Curt, looked at the two horses which pulled the cab.

`OK,' said the driver. `I know that neighborhood.'

`Do you know of an inn in that neighborhood?' asked Barb.

`Don't worry kid. I'll find you one,' said the driver.

Navorrasicaa got into the cab after her kids. Then driver snapped the reigns to get the horses moving. The morning was clear and bright. The air was invigorating but not too chilly. The city of O'Conner sprawled for many miles and they didn't arrive at an inn until well after noon. Herschel Grynzspan Avenue was a broad thoroughfare which ran the gamut from industrial to retail commercial to wholesale commercial to seedy dilapidation, whereas the nearby Andrea Allen Boulevard was, turn by turn, either trendy and chic or else it was vigorously industrial. Elegant brownstone dwellings, mansions actually, reposed close to huge factories. Navorrasicaa noted a few taverns on some side streets. She supposed it was more than likely that someone who worked at one of those taverns knew someone who knew someone who worked as a guard at the prison. When they got to their room at the inn Navorrasicaa consulted her map of O'Conner to locate the closest elementary school. Curt was only 4 but she needed to find an all-day kindergarten for him. Barb was 7 so she needed to be in the 2nd grade.

`I don't want to go to all-day kindergarten,' said little Curt as the three of them settled into their room at the inn.

`Hell, when I was your age, I had to go to all day and to all night kindergarten,' said Navorrasicaa. `You kids got it soft.'

`Yeah, you young punks are soft,' said Barb to her little brother. `I go to all-day school where I spend hour after hour after hour torturing my mind and body with mental and physical exercise, to strengthen and toughen my mind body, so that I can fight and defeat any warrior I meet combat.'

`You can't remain an uneducated weakling all your life, Curt, dear,' announced Navorrasicaa.

`I still don't want to go to all-day kindergarten,' said Curt. `I'm only 4, and a kid is not even expected to start kindergarten until the age of 5. Try to see things from my point of view for once. First, you're making me go to school when I'm too young. And then you're making me go twice as long, every day, you're making me endure twice as much as what most 5-year-olds have to endure. So there's a double or even a triple injustice there.'

`A triple injustice you say?' asked Navorrasicaa.

`Well, where's the mistake in my reasoning?' asked Curt.

`Why do I have get up and look for a job tomorrow? And after I find a job why do I have to get up early every morning and go to work all day? Why do I have to feed you, and clothe you, and take you to the doctor when you're sick? Why do I have to work all day and then come home and get your dinner, and read you stories, and make sure you do your homework, and make sure you don't screw things up by telling your new classmates who we are and what we're doing here? Why do I have to worry night and day that we'll all be thrown into prison sometime soon?'

`As you're always telling me: "you made your bed and now you got to lie in it",' said Curt. `I want to have my cake and I want to eat it too, but I can't have my cake and eat it too, can I? I can either eat the cake and then I won't have any cake after I've eaten it, or else I can have the cake but I can't eat it, I can just stay hungry and stare at my cake. Is that fair?'

`Them's the breaks,' said Barb as she kicked her feet up on the bed. `I never had to go to all-day kindergarten, but you have to go to all-day kindergarten. I just had to go to half-day kindergarten. So that sucks for you but it's a big win for me!'

`You can't know that for a fact. By attending all-day kindergarten, instead of half-day kindergarten, I might be saved from getting run over by a team of horses. Or I might learn something valuable at all-day kindergarten which I would not have learned at half-day kindergarten. So you can't say for a certainty that it sucks for me.'

`Well then it mostly likely sucks for you.'

`That's right, it most likely sucks for me, and that's why I say it is a double or perhaps even a triple injustice.'

`Well, what would you do instead?' asked Barb. `I'll be in school all day. Mom will be working all day. When you make new friends at all-day kindergarten they will certainly be at all-day kindergarten all day long. You wouldn't be happy sitting in this room all alone for half the day. So what are you bitching about?'

`I ought to be playing with friends in the afternoons, going fishing, or going to the park, which is what I would be doing if I went to half-day kindergarten.'

`Well I want you enrolled in all-day kindergarten, so you might as well quit your complaining,' said Navorrasicaa. `Barb, watch your brother. I have to go apply for jobs and I have to find schools for you two ASAP.'

Barb and Curt stared at the walls for a few minutes after their mom left the room.

`Let's go over it again, shall we?' said Barb.

`No! We've already been over it a million times,' said Curt.

`Practice makes perfect,' said Barb. `Where are you from?'

`A farm in the northern part of the Krull Republic,' said Curt.

`What was the name of the town closest to your farm? What is the capitol of the Krull Republic? Who is the Krull President? Who is the top Krull general? What sort of farm did you have? What sort of crops did you grow? What happened to your father? What was his name? What were the names of your neighbors on this farm in the northern part of Krull? What was the name of your best friend back in Krull? What was the name of my best friend? What did she look like? Was her hair black? Was she a blonde or a brunette? What about the woman who was our closest neighbor. What was her name? What was the color of her hair? What were her kids names? Describe each of them to me. Describe what our other neighbors looked like. The cops will take us into different rooms and if we give different answers to easy questions like these, we'll be hanged as spies for sure. What were the names of out neighbors? What did they look like?'

`I forget,' said Curt with a smile on his face to let his sister know he was joking. `I'll just play dumb and pretend I lost my wits after I got kicked in the head by a horse.'

`No! I don't want to be hanged as a spy!' exclaimed Barb.

`Keep your voice down, the walls might be paper-thin and the neighbors might hear you,' said Curt. This might seem like an especially shrewd observation for a 4-year-old, but he had been ordered repeatedly to pipe down earlier with the same words by his mother.

`Give me the answers and I won't need to raise my voice.'

The kids rehearsed their cover stories for a few minutes and then fell asleep exhausted. They woke up when they heard the door slam shut. Navorrasicaa was back from her errand.

`Did you find a job? Did you get us enrolled in school?' asked Barb.

`We'll worry about that tomorrow. I needed to get a new outfit or two. What do you think of this blouse I bought? Be honest! Does it make me look fat?'

`It makes you look like a big green banana that's been bruised a little,' said Curt, after Navorrasicaa stripped down to her bra and panties and then put on a shiny, shimmering green sweater and her new skirt, a black cashmere knee-length thing that seemed to cling tightly but perhaps not too tightly to her hips.'

`I got some new shoes as well. What do you think of these pumps? They're cool as hell aren't they? You kids sure look like dumb hicks with that nasty stuff you're stuck having to wear - stupid old cloaks and thick wool breaches. You look exactly like what you claim to be: the kids of a couple of pig farmers.'

`When do we get new clothes?' demanded Barb.

`I don't know. First you have to be good. Second you have to obey and not give me any of your backtalk. Third you have to be nice to Al. I know he's not your dad, but your dad is dead, and Al's the best thing we got round here in the man department, and he's coming over to take me out to dinner in half an hour. So you better be nice to Al if you want to get out of that pig farmer getup you're wearing.'

`But Seraphinaria said,' Barb began, `that we're not to have any contact with Al, or with any of the moms and their kids.'

`Oh Seraphinaria can just stick it. If Al and me want to get together and have a romantic dinner in a romantic restaurant then I think we are entitled to do so. Seraphinaria can just butt-out. Her orders are like double or even triple injustices.'

`But if she finds out your disobeying orders she can cause lots of trouble for you,' said Barb.

When Navorrasicaa got back from her romantic dinner with Al, she had some news to tell her kids.

`Al says this prison is an old fashioned sort of fortress. What they do is they put thick iron chains on the prisoners and then they stick them in dark stinking dungeons. They don't have many guards. They don't need many guards, or at least they don't think they need many guards, because they think the thick walls in the dungeon and the iron chains make everything secure. There are no watchtowers, no search lights, no razor wire. Al says cutting through the iron chains on the prisoners is no big deal. He says he can make something that he calls `hardened steel,' which is made out of iron, nickel and carbon, and with this hardened steel he says he can cut through 1,000 iron chains in less than 2 hours. If he makes 10 cutters then we could be in and out in maybe 15 minutes. So the whole prison break is just a matter of taking control of the main guard house without alerting the cops, and then we can get in and out of there in half hour at the most, assuming we have to free 1,000 prisoners. It will take Al a few days to get the nickel, iron and carbon together, and he needs to find a forge and a blacksmith to make the cutters, four or five will be enough, and then he says we're almost ready to go. It will take us at least three weeks to amass enough food and clothing for 1,000 people. He says it's best to make the breakout in broad daylight, on a busy work day, like at 10 am on a Tuesday, when there are lots of carts and horses on the streets. The horses and carts will keep the roads congested so the cops won't be able to move too fast. We'll be on foot and we can dodge in and around the carts. There are 11 warrior women counting Katie and Debra but not Martha, who's not a warrior though she has a commission, and we have to treat her like an officer, up to a point. With Al that's 12 people who can fight, and Jackson, Desiree and Luke are all pretty strong though they're terribly young. Anyway, each of the 12 will be leading 12 groups, each group has from 40 to 100 ex-P.O.W.s in it. Each of the 12 leaders will take a different route to the abandoned building. Then each of the 12 takes her group via separate routes to the meeting place outside of town. Then it's over the back country and home to Avallonia. Who's going to stop an army of 1,000 people armed with knives in the back country? And spring is almost here so it shouldn't be as cold as it was before, but if it is cold then that works to our advantage, because we'll have the clothing and the tents and the blankets to enable 1,000 people or even more to survive in the cold. Al just needs to prove to us that he can in fact cut through thick iron chains as fast as he says he can, and then we have to get the clothes and the provisions and 1,000 long knives ready to go. We'll be in and out of this city in three weeks at the most. I'm not going to bother sending you to school next week. I'll have you sewing pants and making cloaks in this room once we get the material. Pretty soon we'll be looking for a warehouse, something Al can bust into like a cat-burglar on a dark night and then quietly loot it. Al says the best way to get inside the prison is for me to pretend I'm a school teacher leading a class of little kids to visit the prison. We'll scratch the idea of taking the kids of some guards as hostages; we'll cancel the idea of threatening to cut their throats. Al says that such threats will lead to reprisals against Avallonia. Reprisals will cut into our popularity back home, and what cuts into our popularity back home will also cut into our profits. There's also the consideration that Katie or Debra, though they say they are ok with it as long as no one gets hurt, might have other plans if we threaten any kids. The rebelled once because of intolerable treatment of people. Once I'm inside with you kids, the 10 other warrior women will also slip in, and then we take control of the prison, and then Al and a few others go to work on those chains. Anyway it's time you kids got to bed. It's a school-night after all.'

`Ah can't we stay up and think some more about how we're going to free those prisoners?' pleaded Barb.'

`On a school-night? Are you crazy? It's off to bed for you two!'

The weird thing for Curt the next day at school was that he found himself in the same kindergarten class with two other new kids, though he knew them quite well. The teacher made the three new kids stand beside their desks and say their names and announce where they were from. So Curt, Guilia and Dante all had to say they were from farms in the north of the Krull Republic, and they all had to pretend they never saw each other before.

`That's incredible you're all from the same part of Krull, and you all show up here, today, in O'Conner, and none of you know each other! That's amazing,' exclaimed the teacher.

`As they say, truth is stranger than fiction,' said Guilia.

`I hear they got huge vicious farm dogs all over the Krull Republic,' said the teacher, a middle-aged, pleasant-looking woman who was addressing her comment to Curt in particular.

`They don't die easy, ma'am. You got to stab `em a lot to kill `em,' replied Curt.

Guilia and Dante approached Curt at recess and told him it would look weird if they didn't speak to each other, if they acted like they didn't want to get to know one another. Curt agreed with this sort of thinking and then he told the girls about what Al had been saying to his mom the night before.

`I'm glad we're not going to threaten to cut the throats of any kids,' said Guilia.

`That would be weird if you became friends with a kid at school one day, and then the next day your mom is holding a knife to his throat, and threatening to kill him if his mom doesn't cooperate by unlocking some prison doors,' said Dante.

`If he was your true friend, and not a fake friend, then he would still want to be your buddy even if that sort of thing happened,' volunteered Curt.

`What do you think?' began Guilia, `was the teacher rolling her eyes in disbelief when we told the class we were all farm kids from the north of Krull, and we never saw each other before, after we all show up in O'Conner for her class on the same day?'

`Most people are too wrapped up in themselves to give it a second thought,' said Dante.

`If they think we have a deep dark secret,' began Guilia, `they probably think we have to pretend we don't know each other because our moms and dads are also the brothers and sisters of each other. Parts of the Krull Republic have a bad reputation for that sort of thing.'

`Wait a second, you're saying what now?' asked Curt.

`I'll explain it to you later,' said Dante. `You and me should run along and play with those boys over there. It would look suspicious if we hung with this chick all recess.'

Chapter 8. Crack-Heads

Seraphinaria held her 3-year-old, Jay-Jay, in her lap as she looked out one of the window in the waiting room of one of the three conveniently located the CLR plasma donation clinics in O'Conner. The universe Al and Martha and all the others were in was a queer universe in that they hadn't yet developed the internal combustion engine, though steam engines were in their infancy and they had discovered penicillin, anesthetics, the beginnings of photography as well as plasma donation centers. Valmyristarsis had been clipping tons of coupons out of the Sunday papers. With these coupons the eleven adults in their party could each make $50 per week over the next four weeks – meaning they would have altogether $2200 merely from each donating plasma four times in one month, a sum which would really help out in paying their expenses. It wasn't so difficult for the women to find low paying temp jobs here and there, but it was tough to find high paying jobs. Competition for waitress positions in the high traffic restaurants was fierce; it was dog-eat-dog, as they say. And they found out very quickly that it was a lot cheaper to stay in cheap flea-bag hotels than it was to come up with the first month's rent, the last month's rent, and the damage deposit, which is what it took to move into most of the apartments they had looked at. Furthermore, Seraphinaria didn't want to send her kids to the public schools because, though they were free, she heard they were really pathetic: they were closer to zoos or maximum security prisons than they were to bone fide schools. But to get her two school-age kids into just one semester at private school cost her $3,000, and while she was certainly not flat broke after she paid their tuition, she wasn't rich enough to sneer at the $50 she would get from donating plasma every week. This was her fourth time donating and she was glad it was the last time. She missed walking with Morgan to and from school every day. She entrusted her 10-year-old son Jackson with the job of making sure his little sister, Morgan, got home from school safely on the days that Seraphinaria donated plasma. There was so much Seraphinaria had to worry about. Was Jackson mature enough to watch Morgan? Might Morgan get lost or run over by a team of horses in the streets? Morgan had all-day kindergarten. What if she talked in her sleep during nap time? What if she named names? What if she talked about freeing Avallonian P.O.W.s? `You've picked a fine time to start worrying about "what ifs"' said Seraphinaria to herself. So much weight had been pressing on her psyche for so long a time. Just the worry alone that Jackson would chase after Desiree, the daughter of a bootlegger, more or less, weighed terribly upon the brow of Seraphinaria, the noblewoman, the widow of a Count and a cavalry officer. And what was this vain aristocratic pretense of a worry about Desiree compared to all of the real worries she had to endure: watching her sons and daughter fight for their lives when the hounds were snarling round them, hearing those tigers screaming when she and Luke where in the cage so close to those tigers etc., etc. She had used all her wits and imagination while striving to accomplish a great end – the freeing of the prisoners – but who was going to free her from the tyranny of these doubts and worries which preyed upon her mind, upon her peace of mind, upon her sanity? Al and Katie and everyone else had risen against her authority and had insisted that they not kidnap any children of any guards, and insisted they not threaten to cut their throats to ensure the cooperation of their mothers. And now so many of the women under her command were meeting with each other, comparing notes, checking on each others' progress, exchanging information of all kinds, and not just info on where to find wool and leather and canvas to make cloaks and trousers and tents etc., etc. It was her direct order that they only meet every Saturday night. The rest of the time they were to pretend they were strangers. All of her plans were being second-guessed. Her authority was inconsequential if it conflicted with the will of the majority. How was this state of affairs consistent with her position as the military commander of a company of warrior women? What did such rebellion portend for the future? Was it at all plausible to think they could free 1,000 prisoners or more and then escape with their lives?

`Mama's worried,' said Jay-Jay.

`It's obvious, is it?'

`Yes.'

`What do you suggest I do,' asked Seraphinaria.

`You should do what Al and Katie and Valmyristarsis and Heliomirabellisima and all the other women say you should do.'

`And what's that?'

`They say,' said little Jay-Jay, `that you should not carry something, not carry the....weight of something...the weight of the world?...Yes, that's what they say, you should not carry weight of the world on your shoulders.....They also say that you should drink whiskey now and then.'

`They say lots of things don't they? They say I need to build coalitions. They say I need to explore all of my options by gathering insights from disparate voices, from people with opinions far different than my own opinions. They say I must not try to force my will upon everyone, as a Caesar or an Alexander would. But I was the one who insisted that we attempt to conquer Cromwell Town. I was the one who insisted that we attempt to free the captives when Katie directed our attention to the existence of those captives. By my will alone I caused this company to take the action which will determine our destiny. They say that I am an intrepid explorer, but also a noblewoman who would make a poor colonist, and a truly wretched cultivator of the soil. I can discover Continents but I can not farm the earth or turn land into bountiful commercial and manufacturing ventures. I can cross oceans and deserts and battle ferocious lions and wild tribesmen. But I can not create the wealth required to support the teeming masses. So they say. And what good is discovering a continent if it can't be made the home of millions or billions of people, people who were once sunk in misery and poverty but who have been transformed into happy industrious people? Mine is the vision of a Columbus not the vision of an Edison. So they say. I would not have your brother throw himself at some hussy. Rather, I want him to find a girl of breeding and quality. For this caprice of mine in wanting what is best for my son, they say I am cold and imperious, dictatorial and ruthless. Am I too old to change? I'll soon be 30. You're almost 4 but you're still only 3. A woman in our society is an old bag by the time she is 40. You don't know how the years can crush the life out of you, how they weigh upon you, how they try to suffocate you. You've seen a little of what the world can throw at a person. You've had to climb high mountains. You've had to run for your life from vicious dogs and enemy patrols. You've endured bitter cold and famine and sickness. You faced that witch, Vyryvyr, and all of her ferocious wolves and hellish dungeons. Even before we left the walls of our home you saw men burned alive, buried alive, skinned alive, tortured to death in the most fiendish ways. You know what it's like to drink whiskey all night in a tent crammed with ten other people, who, like you, are all trying to keep from freezing to death, and you know what it feels like to spend the next morning puking your guts out and wishing you were dead. But can you endure such things for year after year after year? To rest upon your laurels is to become an ignoble slob, not a nobleman, Jay-Jay dear. But if there is no rest, are you strong enough to fight on and never stop fighting? Can you slay the next dragon, and the next, and the next that rears up before you? Can you conquer these tumultuous Hibernians and bring them under the yoke of Avallonia?

`I thought we were going to free some prisoners? What dragons are you talking about?'

`There are always dragons to slay. You know. There are always more obstacles.'

`Let's take them one at a time,' said Jay-Jay, with wisdom beyond his years. `First we free the hostages. Then we make money by writing the books describing how we freed the hostages. Then we make more money by going on Lecture Tours describing to people our exploits. That's how Misevasundia and Navorrasicaa and Casilevatates and all the others explained it to me. That's how they got it figured. So I don't know why you have to make everything so complicated. I mean, what is all this talk about slaying dragons, and my bringing Hibernia under the Avallonian yoke? No one is saying we will be ignoble slobs if we rest a little while and make a little money after we accomplish our heroic venture.'

A door opened and a homeless guy with a long beard slouched past Seraphinaria and Jay-Jay. Then a nurse appeared and announced: `OK we got an open chair. Who's next? Come on, come on! I ain't got all day. Do ya want the cash or not?'

`Very good,' said Seraphinaria as she took Jay-Jay from her lap and held his hand as the three of them went into another room where the plasma and the red blood cells were removed from Seraphinaria, but only the red blood cells where injected back into Seraphinaria.

`When I get big can I donate plasma too?' asked Jay-Jay directing his question at the nurse.

`Yeah, I spose. Why the hell couldn't ya? That's what I'd like to know,' said the nurse. `I'll bet you'll be donating plasma before you know it. It's the easiest way to make some cash. Just don't get drunk the day before or on the day that you do donate. I suppose it would be ok if you got drunk after you donated, but not before! Then you should be good to go.'

`Can I smoke cannabis before I donate,' asked Jay-Jay.

`Can of what?' asked the nurse.

`It's a weed, sort of like tobacco, and it's also called hemp and marijuana,' said Jay-Jay.

`I don't see why you can't smoke it, but why would you want to?'

`I don't know that I want to. But I know this guy named Al, and Al is always saying that it's good to have a plan B. Plan A is to make money by writing books and going on a lecture tour, and Plan B is to make money by growing and selling cannabis. Al says there are no laws and no regulations against the cultivation, transportation and selling of cannabis. He's always talking about how he has a gold mine just waiting to be mined.'

Seraphinaria was watching Jay-Jay closely to make sure he didn't let anything slip out that absolutely had to be kept secret. But everything had been made perfectly clear to Jay-Jay what would happen if their secret about freeing the Avallonian prisoners got out. He knew what prison meant; he knew what separation from his mom and siblings meant; he knew what executions and hangings and what being broken on the wheel, what being burned alive, buried alive, flayed alive etc., etc., meant, and therefore he was careful to not divulge any important secrets. Al told him to not talk about the cannabis operation but Jay-Jay reasoned that Al would have mentioned all the terrible things that would happen to him if he told that secret, if Al truly expected him to keep it secret.

`I thought you were about to blow everything there when you told the nurse about Al's plans for the cannabis,' said Seraphinaria to Jay-Jay, as she held his hand while the two of them walked to a hamburger joint. They would catch a cab back to their hotel after they had some Cokes, fries and cheeseburgers.

`I don't know what got into me. Al told me to keep it a secret. And then I didn't keep it a secret.'

`You blew it, alright. At least you didn't blow it in a really big way, I mean by telling that nurse what the books and lecture tours would be about. Tell yourself that next time when you promise someone you will keep their secret, then do it. Take some pride in keeping your word. I could walk into any of these shops you see round us and I could steal something and not get caught. But I take pride in not being a thief. So should everybody. And you should take pride in being able to keep a secret when someone asks you to keep a secret.'

`I wonder why I like to tell secrets,' said Jay-Jay.

`It makes us feel important, like a big-shot, when we tell secrets.'

`I suppose so. I suppose I wanted to impress that nurse by telling her I had a friend who had a gold mine.'

`That's right.'

`Say, you're not still worried about me slacking off and not conquering Hibernia, and not bringing it under the yoke of Avallonia when I'm older, are you?'

`That's a secret between us you know. Don't go telling your friends that your mom wants you to conquer nations when you get older.'

`I just don't think I would be very good at conquering nations. I was thinking maybe I would be better at helping Al with his cannabis operation.'

Jay-Jay and Seraphinaria found the hamburger joint and treated themselves to a cheap yet satisfying feast.

A few hours after Seraphinaria and Jay-Jay were hailing a cab to take them back to their hotel, Misevasundia and her kids were starting their 8 hour shift at Sturgis Tool and Die, which began at 3 pm. Some might find it odd that her kids were paid the wages that Misevasundia was paid, whereas in so many countries kids were always paid half as much as adults. But Hibernians prided themselves on their sense of fair play, reasoning that if a kid could do the job then he deserved the same wages as what an adult earned, and therefore under the laws of Hibernia, Jocelyn (5 years of age), Mercedes (5) and Shelby (9) all earned the same hourly wage as did their mother, Misevasundia (27). They were temps - temporary workers - who worked for Quality Staffing, and Quality sent them on their first assignment to Kramarschmidts Nursing Homes Inc.®, where all four of them worked as part of the Kramarschmidts Team, a Team which upheld and embodied the Kramarschmidts' Key Values of the 5Ks: Kind, Konsiderate, Kwality, Kramarschmidts Karegivers. First, the Kramarschmidts' Team Member would check in on the patients. If a patient was incontinent or not, but especially if he was incontinent, they had to roll the old man or the old woman on to his or her side, so they could get to work cleaning his butt with soap and water. First they had to wash away any filth they found on his butt. Then they wiped his butt with rubbing alcohol to try to kill most of the germs. Then they slipped a clean 3 foot by 3 foot rubber pad under his butt as they rolled him on to his other side, so that they could clean the other side of his butt, again, first, with soap and water, and then again with more rubbing alcohol. Then they had to get the old man or old woman out of bed so they could put new sheets on to the bed. Even while he was tottering on his weak spindly old legs, about ready to fall flat on his face, the rules of the Corporation said that all caregivers were required to give his butt one last cleaning. Usually though they just gave it one last inspection. If it passed inspection then that was good enough, at least in the eyes of the caregivers if not in the eyes of management. It was always sort of a pain in the ass having to listen to some stinky old geezer bitching at you because the alcohol that you splashed on his butt stung like hell. The incontinent patients always had these nasty red sores on their butts, and they bitched when the soap and water stung them, but they really screamed their heads off when you slapped rubbing alcohol on to their rashes and their open sores. No doubt the patients were telling the truth and where not just bitching to hear themselves bitch when they insisted it stung like hell when rubbing alcohol was splashed on their open sores.

After inspecting and cleaning the residents of the nursing home, after changing all sheets on all beds, and after tossing the dirty sheets into the wash tubs, Misevasundia and her kids would then prepare dinner, which was either fish or roast beef or turkey or Salisbury steak or ham, with gravy atop either baked, mashed or scalloped potatoes, and with either beets or asparagus or carrots or peas. And for desert there was always either fudge or a raspberry tort or some type of cake and ice cream or some sort of `home made' pie with lots of whipped cream. After dinner they had a good deal more cleaning to do. The kitchen had to be scrubbed. And all of the remaining laundry from the day had to be washed, dried, folded and stored away. The patients had to be checked one last time before quitting time. `Let no filthy butt go unwashed and unsanitized,' Mercedes would say mimicking the guy who trained her in on her first day on the job. She sounded sort of like the way JFK sounded when he said: `I too am a Berliner,' and `Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country' or the way Barry Goldwater sounded when he said, `Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice, Moderation in the defense of Freedom is no virtue', or whatever it was. Misevasundia and the kids knew it was only a two week assignment when Quality Staffing offered them the positions. They would simply be filling in while some people on the regular full-time staff were on vacation. But they jumped at the offer because they needed the money. The hotel they were at was costing them $500 every week. And all of the other single moms were working hard to buy the gear and the provisions the freed prisoners would need on the march back to Avallonia. After two weeks working at the nursing home the four of them made over $5,000, thanks in large part to the liberality of Hibernia's child labor laws.

For their second assignment with Quality Staffing they were sent to a factory called Sturgis Tool and Die. At Sturgis the work was not nearly as stinky as it was at Kramarschmidts Nursing Homes Inc.®, but it was a million times more nerve-racking for Misevasundia. At Sturgis they had these huge punch presses which would stamp out iron parts. After the press slammed down you had to stick your hand into the machine to pull the newly made part out of the mold. You didn't have to be super quick or anything to avoid getting your hand smashed, but nevertheless, if you were slow, if for instance you were day-dreaming and forgot to be somewhat quick, well, if you were still reaching for a part when the press slammed down, then you would lose your hand and all of your arm up to your elbow. Blood would be flying everywhere, and everything would be smashed as thin as a dime up to your elbow. That's the worst thing that could happen. The second worst thing would be to reach for a part and get it out of its mold, but then fumble it. If you dropped the part when it's still inside the press, then, though you got your arm out, the press would still slam down on the part now that it's out of its mold, and then the press would get damaged, and you'd be fired if you damaged a million dollar machine. Misevasundia didn't want her kids doing that job so she did it herself. What the kids had to do was much safer but also much more arduous. After the parts came out of the punch presses they were dipped in an acid bad. Jocelyn, Mercedes and Shelby had to put on thick rubber gloves and hang the parts on the racks, and then these racks were wheeled into rooms where they would be dried and then painted, and then they were wheeled into huge ovens where the paint would be heat-sealed. For 8 hours every day little Jocelyn and little Mercedes, along with the 9-year-old Shelby, had to take the parts out of the acid bath, hang the parts on the racks, and then wheel the racks into a room where the parts would dry. While one batch of parts were drying, they would wheel a different batch of parts, a batch which had just been painted, from the paint room into the ovens. Sturgis Tool and Die had everything down to a science. As long as the three girls kept up a steady pace they could get all their batches done without having to rush too much. The problem was they had to wear thick clothing to protect themselves from getting burned in the ovens, and this thick clothing was very heavy and hot, and it was exhausting work especially for the 5-year-old girls to be kept on the run all day long - though they worked the 3:00 pm to 11:30 pm shift - moving from the acid bath to the drying room, and then from the paint room to the ovens, and then back to the acid bath, to begin the whole cycle anew. All the while they were sweating from the heat of the ovens and from the weight of all the thick protective gear they had to wear as they rushed from room to room. So they had to make sure they drink lots and lots of water during their shift to avoid cramping up or fainting. You wouldn't get paid if you had to go to the infirmary.

Misevasundia, Jocelyn, Mercedes and Shelby got two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute lunch break every day at Sturgis. The kids always had `lunch' with their mom, from 8 to 8:30 pm, every evening that week, but they didn't have the same 15-minute break times as she did, as they had different jobs, and people doing different jobs often had to take their 15-minute breaks at different times. It was on Monday, their first day at Sturgis, during their first 15-minute break of their shift, that they met Randy in the break room. Randy is a huge obese 575 lb guy, about 40 years old, with long greasy blonde hair. He was eating a foot-long chili-dog in the break room when Jocelyn, Mercedes and Shelby walked in. Randy immediately piped up with, `Come over here to this table girls. I'm Randy and I'm the group leader for this shift. I need to speak with you about a few things, such as what we expect out of you while you're working at Sturgis.' The three little girls were scared of the huge man and his brusque tone of voice, but they sat down at his table as directed.

`You're Krullites, ain't ya?'

`Yes,' said all three girls in soft tones.

`That's all right if you're Krullites. I ain't going to complain about that. Lots of people in Hibernia don't like Krullites coming to this country to take jobs away from Hibernians. But I say you Krullites just do the jobs that most Hibernians refuse to do. Now, let's get down to business. Why aren't you in school and where did you work before you came here?'

Shelby, being the oldest, felt it was her place to answer the questions. `We will go back to school next week, but our mom needed us to work this month because we've had lots of extra expenses. The bills have been piling up recently. We worked at Kramarschmidts Nursing Home for two weeks before we came here. We're temps. We really work for Quality Staffing. So far Quality has given us just two assignments, Kramarschmidts and here at Sturgis Tool & Die.'

`So you're crack-heads are ya? You know how the lingo works. When you clean some old guy's ass, you're cleaning his crack, and when you clean other people's cracks to make money then you're a crack-head. You don't get to be a crack-head just by cleaning your own crack. I was cleanin' crack when I was your age too. It's just a job like any other job. I never worked at Kramarschmidts but I worked at places just like it, though they weren't as corporate and fouled up with rules and red-tape made by out-of-touch managers who never cleaned crack once in their lives. I've been here at Sturgis for the last twenty years and I can't complain too much. You're lucky Quality sent you to Kramarschmidts and then over here to Sturgis because the worst place to work, in my humble opinion, is the slaughterhouses. And Quality sends lots of Krullite immigrants to work in the slaughterhouses. I used to work as this place called Thompson and Rutherford Inc. They slaughter 1500 hogs and 500 cows every day at the Thompson and Rutherford plant, maybe you know the one? It's over on the East side. I didn't want to stick no knife into no pig \- pig never done nothin' to me - and lots of other folks don't care to do that sort of work either, so I don't think that makes me a weakling or some candy-ass if I chooses not to do that kind of work. They give you a job cleaning the rooms where they kills the piggies and the cattles, and they give you a lower wage if you ain't got the stomach for cuttin' animals' throats. It's debatable, I suppose, which is the tougher job, being a crack-head or toiling in the slaughterhouses. What I really didn't like about working at Thompson and Rutherford is that they treats us temps like dirt. The full-time employees got full medical and dental, 401K, paid Holidays, four weeks paid vacation every year. It sucks for you being a temp here at Sturgis because you don't get the benefits that those of us who are full-timers get. But then you're going back to school next week anyhow. I got full medical and dental. I think there's a $3 co-pay on generic prescription drugs, a $5 co-pay on glasses and contacts, a $10 co-pay on arch supports and wheelchairs, the 401k is providing most generously to my retirement fund, and me and the wife usually goes to her sister's place every year during my month's paid vacation. I imagine it puts a strain upon the sister-in-law having me around eating everything in sight at her place for a month every year. Well, anyway, nice chatting with you temps. I gotta get back to the paint room to supervise some stuff,' said Randy as he shoved the last section of his foot-long chili-dog into his face while he was getting up from the table. He couldn't find a cup in the break room so he just bent over the sink, turned the faucet to cold, and then washed his meal down his throat by putting his mouth right on the faucet, and then drank up.

`He's a group leader?' asked Shelby of some other workers in the break room after Randy left.

`Yeah, but he's just like you guys,' said a woman who identified herself as an HR person.'

`He's just like us?' said Shelby.

`Yeah, you three all look just like him! No I mean you're all members of our team.'

`He is the fattest dude I ever saw in my life. And what's up with him putting his mouth right on the tap? Talk about a slob,' said Jocelyn.

`We don't use the word `fat' or `fattest' or `slob' around here, and we especially don't use those words when referring to co-workers, said the HR woman. `I'll have to write you up for those remarks. I wasn't pleased with him putting his mouth on the tap either, but that doesn't give anyone the right to denigrate a team member by calling him a slob. I'll need to see you in my office for at least half an hour. We've got a good deal of Diversity Training to run through. I'm an HR professional which means I'm also a licensed and certified Diversity Trainer. Then there are some papers you'll have to sign. Assuming you pass Diversity Training, then, if there was to be a second violation of this sort, it will result in your immediate termination. So you are now officially PUT ON NOTICE. The rest of you people in this break-room will witness the fact that she has been officially PUT ON NOTICE. If there is a second violation then you can't try to say that that second violation is only your first violation, because, besides the papers you will sign, I have witnesses here who will testify that they witnessed your first violation. Come with me now to me office and we'll get started on the Diversity Training. Once that is successfully completed, and once you sign some forms, you will be permitted to return to work.'

Poor little Jocelyn was crying as the HR woman escorted the offender out of the break-room, away from her sisters and off to Diversity Training.

In their one week temp assignment at Sturgis the four of them earned $2,000, but despite being flush with cash they were still glad to see the last of Sturgis Tool and Die when their last shift came to an end. It was a Friday night, just before midnight, when all four of them stepped into a bar called Mike's Bar which was right across the street from Sturgis Tool & Die. All four of them were still sweating from the heat of the factory and they all ordered MGDs, and they all slammed their beers in about five seconds, and then all four of them ordered a second round of beers, and then they slammed their second round of Miller Genuine Drafts. Ordinarily Misevasundia didn't let her 5-year-olds have more than two 12-ounce beers in one evening. But she was in a liberal mood and she bent her own rules a little bit that night. While in this happy mood, while they were enjoying a round of Bud Light Limes, she let her girls know what was happening. They were just about ready to spring the prisoners. Everyone knew that tunnels were being dug to get to the dungeon beneath the prison. The idea of taking hostages was never seriously discussed as all of their experience had taught them that Hibernians never negotiate with people who take hostages. They could show up holding knives to the throats of the children of the prison guards, and those same guards would never let them passed the front gate. Taking hostages might work as a diversionary tactic but it would never free any Avallonian P.O.W.s. The diversion was simply one to buy time, to give the prisoners more to time to escape through the tunnel. Katie, Debra and Martha had stopped by Misevasundia's hotel before their shift to drop off a bundle of clothing: a policewoman's uniform and some black leather policewoman's shoes. They also related a message from Seraphinaria: `Next Tuesday's the day. 10:00 am. There will be no meeting on Saturday night. We meet Tuesday. You know where. Don't get their early. Get their exactly at 10:00. We don't want anyone to be seen loitering more than a minute. We're going with the plan everyone approved four weeks ago. The kids will be dropped off at the Hotel we discussed on Saturday. Everyone besides Seraphinaria, Al, Katie and Debra will be staying at the other hotel we discussed from Saturday night onwards. On Tuesday the women, but not Debra, will all be wearing the uniforms we've made to look exactly like official O'Conner police uniforms. Wear the uniform you are given. Don't alter it in any way. Wear the uniform under another coat or jacket as we've discussed. Remove and toss away this coat or jacket, but do not remove it until 9:55 at the earliest, and remove it only when you are sure there are no people around to see you remove it. Step into a doorway to remove it. Then drop the coat. Then walk briskly. You needn't walk straight to the prison. But walk briskly some place, and be at the main gate of the prison at 10:00, posing as a policewoman. We'll have to improvise once we are there. We'll have to divert attention away from the tunnel's opening at Al's place as best we can. Everyone knows we might have to scatter and everyone knows where to meet-up again. Every kid will know the procedure. Once we get control of the main gate then we move on to the next set of locked doors. Get your kids to Hotel X by noon on Saturday. Al and Martha will rehearse everything with them.'

When Jocelyn, Mercedes, Shelby and Misevasundia got up from their table and left Mike's Bar they were all feelin' pretty good. Not only were they feeling good from the beer but they were thrilled that they would see friends tomorrow who they hadn't seen in four weeks.

Chapter 10. Escape from O'Conner

Well, Seraphinaria, Misevasundia et. Al. freed 1,000 Avallonian P.O.W.s from the most miserable conditions. The Avallonian P.O.W.s were found languishing in a dark dungeon, full of hideous instruments of torture. So, we've been over how the Hibernians – those inveterate barbarians! - were not going to negotiate with any hostage-takers. The Hibernians would simply say to the hostage-takers: we don't care if you cut the throats of your hostages or not. We'll give you 5 minutes to surrender, and then if you still refuse to surrender we'll douse both the hostages and you hostage-takers with kerosene, and we'll then ignite the lot of you! Therefore, logic tells us that a tunnel had to be dug if there was going to be any liberation of any Avallonian P.O.W.s. And that's exactly what happened. Our Avallonian heroes, the single moms, along with Martha, Al, Katie and Debra, used hammers and chisels to punch a large hole through the wall of the subterranean dungeon. Of course lots of boards and posts had to be purchased beforehand, and then positioned in the tunnel to keep the roof of the tunnel from collapsing. Al and a few others had 4 weeks to dig 30 feet down, and then dig 200 feet horizontally, and then punched a large hole through the stone wall of the dungeon. So, if they advanced 10 feet every day, that's doable. It had to be doable, obviously, because that's exactly how it was done. The guards didn't hear the sounds of chisels chipping away at the wall of the dungeon, because the dungeon was 30 feet below street level, and the nearest guard was a long way from the dungeon, because the stench there was unendurable, due to all the excrement and all the body odor of unwashed prisoners etc., etc. So, to keep strictly to the facts surrounding the flight of the pungent Avallonian horde of 1,000 escapees from Hibernia, it was like this: eventually, the escapees had to be hosed down, scrubbed with soap, shaved, trimmed, fed etc., etc. They weren't going to get very far if they couldn't blend into Hibernian society to at least some minimal degree. And they weren't going to blend in with Hibernian society - barbaric though it is in so many ways! - even to a minimal degree, if they stank to high heaven and if they look exactly like people who had just bust out of a dungeon after they had been held in that dungeon for five or ten years. This need to scrub and shave and trim and feed and medicate the 1,000 man and woman horde is not any sort of evidence that I'm straying from the facts. It is simply a fact that the liberated prisoners needed to be made presentable; they needed to blend in with their surroundings. And this fact was foreseen by our heroes, by the single moms, and that's why they located an abandoned building before they sprang the prisoners, as they needed a large place where they could set up shop, so to speak. Showers or at least sponge baths, food, clothing, identity papers were dispensed from this ancient warehouse that was about ready to be razed. It was a get in fast, get out fast sort of operation. The escapees had a ten minute hike to get from one end of the tunnel, which was in the bedroom of Al's basement level apartment, to the ancient warehouse. Al and Martha and Katie and Debra were armed with scissors and after shave lotion, perfume and deodorant etc. They hacked away at the ten-year growths of beard as best they could. They doused the escapees with any sort of perfume they could lay their hands on, and then they got them into some clothes; knives where passed back to the people still in the dungeon and the tunnel, so they could fight off the guards if they were forced to fight to escape with their lives. Once they had been shaved some and fumigated some, and given some clothes to wear they were off in packs of fifty, led by one of the single moms, to the ancient warehouse. Each pack of 50 escapees loitered a little close to Al's apartment before setting off for the warehouse. They would have to fight off any cops which showed up, to give the others still in the tunnel and in the dungeon a chance to escape. Once an escapee was out of the tunnel, he might spend 5 minutes at or near Al's place, and then 15 minutes at the ancient warehouse getting washed, shaved, fed etc. He was given a map drawn by Debra's skilful hand with which he could find the next rendezvous point. And then he was off with his pack of 50 other escapees, but without the aid now of any warrior girls, as they now had to get their kids out of the city. In the instructions they received directing the escapees to this latest rendezvous point, which was 20 miles south of the city, the escapees were told to take very circuitous routes. It was natural to assume the Hibernian army would soon be called up en masse to round up the escapees. But if reports of escapees were coming in from all over the eastern and western and southern parts of O'Conner, it would be impossible for the army to concentrate its forces on one point. Once the escapees reached the rendezvous point 20 miles south of O'Conner, where most of the gear and provisions had been stored away by Al and the warrior girls: the tents, the blankets, the ruck sacks, the money and the food, then all the Avallonians could band together and strike out over the rough country, chased perhaps by an ill-prepared ill-equipped Hibernian army. No doubt the escapees would have to take it slowly at first. They might require three days just to reach the rendezvous point 20 miles south of the city. One's muscles will atrophy a good deal when one sits on one's butt for ten years.

The warrior women and their kids waited at the rendezvous point south of the city for four days but at least half escapees never arrived at the rendezvous point. Then they waited three more days. Not one escapee arrived during those three days. This rendezvous point was close to a high hill, atop which one was afforded an excellent view of the city of O'Conner. The day after the women got to the rendezvous point they noticed two huge clouds of smoke filling the skies over O'Conner. On the fourth day at least ten fires were burning in O'Conner. By the seventh day it seemed as if the whole city was on fire. Martha, from reading newspaper accounts off what happened during their flight south, said she should have known what was going to happen. There were roughly 1,000 escapees, 90% of which were male. All of the female prisoners and roughly half of the males were marching south, heading for their homes in Avallonia. But the other half of the males were looking for revenge. They found O'Conner easy to loot and pillage. It was payback time for them. The escapees who passed by Seraphinaria's company at the rendezvous point described the mindset of the men who pillaged O'Conner. Who deserved to be pillaged more than the people who kept us in darkness and chains for all those years than the Hibernians in O'Conner? As Martha described things: `We unleashed 500 John Rambos on that city.' As it turned out from the accounts of the first group of escapees, those heading for Avallonia, first, most of the escapees were attacked by the police and the citizens of O'Conner. It was the Hibernians who drew first blood, so to speak. From the newspaper accounts Martha later read there were no rapes or unprovoked murders perpetrated by the escapees. At first they weren't looking to hurt anyone. But once they got a few big meals in them, once they got their strength back, then, when they were cornered by mobs of citizens trying to force them back to the dungeon, when they were forced to fight, the Avallonian escapees began to slaughter hundreds or thousands of people. It was a matter of enormous debate as to who first used kerosene filled flame throwers. But, whoever it was, it little mattered to the peaceful population of the city. O'Conner was set ablaze. In a matter of weeks the city of O'Conner was ruled by gangs, with the Avallonian escapees who chose to remain in O'Conner forming the strongest gang. It is debatable as to how much there was to rule over. For mile after mile O'Conner was little more than a smoldering scene of burned-out concrete buildings, with a population devoid of the means of production necessary to feed and house and medicate its citizens. In the coming months how could millions not succumb to famine and pestilence?

Chapter 10. Single Moms Living the Sweet Life in the Welfare State

`I told you not to go to there. Didn't I tell you not to go there?' asked Her Majesty Rabbi Queen Brittany Cohen-Schwartz. She was directing her question to the single moms / warrior girls and to their kids, and to Al and Martha. Debra and Katie decided to remain in Hibernia with their families. `You destroyed that city of O'Conner with your actions, not that it was your intention to destroy it. You took a thriving city of 3 million industrious, happy people, and via your actions, you burned it to the ground. It's like you took a knife and stabbed 3 million people through their hearts. That's what you did! You created the unstable conditions by which seven gangsters saw that they could rise to power, they saw that they could grab power and become like Caesar or Alexander, by unleashing bloodbaths against anyone who opposed them. So, if your actions in Hibernia were like a term paper, then I would give you a big fat F for a grade on your term paper. If there was any grade lower than an F, I would give you that lower grade. Try to think of a grade below which it is impossible to conceive of an even lower grade. I give you that lowest of all possible grades.....But we're not all about laying big heavy guilt trips on people round here. You made huge enormous gigantic stupendously large mistakes, but you can learn from those mistakes, and you can be wiser next time. Who hasn't made a mistake or two in their lives? I sure have. But I don't think I ever destroyed a city of 3 million people. I don't think I ever turned a metropolitan area into a smoking pile of rubble where men fight and murder each other like starving rats fighting over a rotten piece of meat.'

`The weird thing is,' said Jacqueline, Casilevatates' 7-year-old, `is that Al and Martha were always talking about these motion pictures involving heists or prison breakouts and it usually went bad for the main characters. Remember Rafifi, and remember in A Prize of Arms the guys more or less burned themselves alive at the end of the picture, which is what happened to a lot of those P.O.W.s that we liberated. So that's kind of eerie in its foreshadowing, you know?'

`Are you throwing my mom under the bus for not having enough sense to learn from those movies?' asked Valmyristarsis' 7-year-old, Heather.

`I'm not throwing anyone under the bus, per se,' answered Jacqueline, `or maybe I'm throwing myself under the bus along with you others, because I should have known things would go from bad to worse, but as Queen Brittany says, we want full disclosure at this meeting. It doesn't do anyone any good to cover up facts which are material to the fullest exposé of the crimes, blunders and follies which befell this company on its mission to Hibernia.'

`That's right,' said Queen Brittany. `It must be a thoroughly honest and above-board reappraisal of all of our efforts. It might be an agonizing reappraisal, but we all have to give ourselves a good long look in the mirror as we ask the tough questions about our motives, our competency and our professionalism, or lack thereof.'

`I might have known everything would go to hell,' said Martha. `The streets in O'Conner were often named after traitors, though a few were named after heroes too.'

`Let's have full disclosure of the facts and an agonizing reappraisal of all of our actions, but let's also have some sense of proportion and rationality, for goodness sake,' exclaimed Heliomirabellisima. `We did rescue 1,000 of our soldiers from a hideous dungeon after all. Queen Brittany's popularity has taken a large hit with her core supports of peaceniks, but as everyone knows there's also a huge faction of warmongering hawks in Avallonia, and this bloc have praised her and us for freeing those 1,000 P.O.W.s.'

`What you say is true,' added Queen Brittany, `but overall it is huge defeat for me. The Hibernians will hold me responsible for the destruction of a metropolitan area of 3 million people, and we can expect retaliatory strikes any day now. I'm popular with the hawks, with the warmongers, as you say, but how long will this last once the body count starts to climb in another round of warfare?'

`Apropos of proportion and rationality, I'm still not convinced that a policy of full disclosure is more prudent than a policy of partial containment,' said Curt, Navorrasicaa's 4-year-old who liked to think he had the lingo of grown-ups down pretty well.

`No, I must stand firm on this issue,' interjected Queen Brittany immediately. `Expertise gained from innumerable attempted palace coups has taught me that partial containment is a sound policy only for Sovereigns, whereas full disclosure is best for subjects....I hope you realize just how angry and enraged the peaceniks in Avallonia are at you at this moment...I hope you can realize how fishy it sounds....how the whole story just seems to stink to high heaven...when all of you single moms fail to conquer the little city of Cromwell Town....but then your actions result in the huge city of O'Conner being turned into an inferno. This nation had lost all appetite for a continuation of its war with Hibernia. Now we might have another 50 years of war thanks to you guys. It's going to be a feeding frenzy with the press; the sharks are circling round my castle as we speak, the jackals in the press are assuming I'll be hurled from the throne and then any guttersnipe reporter will be able to stab me in the back. I just hope a mob of peasants carrying pitch-forks doesn't string up the lot of us any minute now.'

`It will all be explained in our books and on our lecture tour. The blind will no longer lead the blind. The people who now stagger in darkness will understand the truth, and then peace and happiness will reign on earth!' exclaimed Desiree, Sevaladelia's 11-year-old.'

`Oh brother,' exclaimed Queen Brittany. `Try to see it from my point of view, will you? The press is already saying I'm conducting Operation Whitewash. They'll say I never cared two cents about those P.O.W.s in the first place, and that's why I sent such a poorly equipped force to rescue them, because I wanted that mission to fail.'

`It was just like in the movie A Perfect Storm,' piped up Martha Manning., `You're thinking: no way are they going to kill off George Clooney at the end of the movie, but then the right weather conditions came together to create this perfect storm, so to speak, and sure enough George Clooney gets his ass kicked big-time by a monster wave at the end of the movie. We were always thinking we had to move fast fast fast, ya know? We cut their beards fast, we threw some Aqua Velva on them fast to try to kill as much of their stench as possible. But they were so weak at first, and the mobs could locate them just by their weird smell, or at least that's what we read in the Hibernian papers that we were able to read on our trek back here. I mean we were throwing any sort of perfume on them to try to tame their stench. Of course we know they would still stand out in a crowd, but we were convinced we had to move fast; we were thinking the cops would close in on all of us if we spent minute after minute getting the escapees to look and smell 100% presentable. We did what we could for them. In retrospect it is obvious we didn't do enough for them. Hindsight is always 20-20. But the single moms had to get their kids out of the city fast. They had a maternal responsibility to make sure their kids were not torn to pieces by angry mobs.'

`I like this line you're taking here,' said Queen Brittany. It sounds reasonable. I think it will sell. But we got it wrap it up and put a pretty ribbon on it. We got to memorize it and just keep repeating it: It was a perfect storm; you had to move fast; you had to protect the kids; you got the escapees to the abandoned warehouse. You washed them. You shaved them. You fed them. You clothed. We know that it sounds fishy as hell to think that a group of single moms and their kids could all escape mobs of citizens, whereas half of the P.O.W.s couldn't escape street fights, but the facts of the matter are they were just too weak to move as fast as you were able to move. They got cornered by mobs. The mobs set fires to burn them out of their hiding places. It was the Hibernian mobs who burned their own city of O'Conner to the ground....There's also the fact that you, Martha, and you Al, are a huge problem for me. You're both a big problem because the press will spin things to say that I permitted two crazy-ass mothers who claim to be from a parallel universe to go with the single moms and their kids on a military mission to Hibernia, the press is going to say that I wanted to sabotage the whole mission right from the start. They will say I was in on a plot, on a conspiracy to destroy those P.O.W.s, because, my failure in previous years to liberate them would eventually become known, and therefore I had to destroy them before it became widely known in this country that these 1,000 P.O.W.s existed, or some such rot that the press likes to invent: but, trust me, the press will say that I had to destroy those P.O.W.s before their existence became widely known, or else the Anti-Divine Right of Kings Party would gain enough strength to topple my regime in a coup, in a coup having the support of the majority of my subjects, rather rebellious subjects I might add.'

`That's another reason why I continue to insist that partial containment is a better policy than full disclosure,' said Curt.

`On the issue of Al and Martha claiming to be from another universe,' said Queen Brittany, `let's all agree to go with a policy of full containment on that issue: we'll say it's news to us, assuming their claim ever gets publicity, but for the most part I think we want to go with the policy of full disclosure.'

`We'll deny ever seriously claiming to be from another universe, though we will have to say that we made some jokes about it,' said Martha. `Do you agree with this, Al?'

`Yeah sure,' said Al.

`All right, it's settled then,' said Queen Britanny. `I'll give you three months leave from your army duties so you can go on your lecture tours, and your book tours. If you sell lots of books, great. In my public speeches I'll put a positive spin on everything. I certainly won't be saying your expedition gets a big fat F for a grade! We'll emphasize the positive aspects of the expedition. Then, if you fail to make tons of money after three months of pushing your books and lectures, if you need money and can't retire from the army, I'll assign you to some post on the frontier, far away from any angry mobs from the Anti-Divine Right of Kings faction, some post where you will all continue to receive your salaries as officers in my army, and where a full pension will be yours after 20 years of service, provided you all continue to insist to the press, and to everyone else, that I begged you not to go to Hibernia, and that I was not part of any plot to destroy the P.O.W.s, that I only permitted you to go because I was curious about your chances, and I didn't want to set a roadblock in the path of such devoted, patriotic, single-minded officers as yourselves. You must agree to never say that the reason I permitted you to go was because of politics, or because of power politics, namely, you must never tell the press that I permitted you to go because I knew the Pro-Divine Right of Kings faction would lose members and power, and I knew the Anti-Divine Right of Kings faction would gain members and power, if I expressly commanded you to not invade Hibernia. So, I'm asking you to cover-up the truth, just a little bit, and I will sweeten the deal that I've offered you, provided you not only promise to cover-up the truth, but you actually do it. The Anti-Divine Right of Kings faction will no doubt offer you money to say that I permitted you to go because I knew I would be hurt politically if I commanded you not to go. They'll offer you money to tell the truth, but I'm offering you money to cover-it up. And well, I'm still your Sovereign, so when I ask you to do something I think you ought to do it, even if I didn't sweeten the deal, but I will sweeten the deal. OK?'

`How sweet will you sweeten it?' asked Jay-Jay, Seraphinaria's 3-year-old.

`Let's leave that ambiguous. We all more or less know what a sweet deal looks like, right? I promise to keep my word, and you'll know that I kept it,' said Queen Brittany.

`Just a ballpark figure, Queen Brittany, would be really appreciated,' said Jay-Jay.

`£100 every month to every man, woman and child of you provided you all hold up your end of the deal every month. If one of you talks every one of you forfeits his share.'

`Could you make it £1,000 to each of us every month?' asked Jay-Jay.

`No, final offer is £100 to each of you per month. Take it or leave it.'

`It's a deal!' exclaimed Jay-Jay.

That's weird how the policy of partial containment is always more sensible than the policy of full-disclosure,' whispered Kayla, Heliomirabellisima's 9-year-old. She whispered her thoughts because she didn't want Queen Brittany to hear her.

`I know,' whispered back her sister Guilia. `It's like you have to be a total moron not to understand something that simple.'

`One moment please, Queen Brittany,' said Guilia in a louder voice. `I just want to make sure that everyone in the room is on the same page, and that everyone is clear that we must tell the press that we have all embraced, 100%, the policy of full disclosure, whereas, of course, in secret, we have all actually embraced, 100%, the policy of partial containment.'

`Righto,' said Queen Brittany. `Everybody straight on this? Jay-Jay, do you got it?'

`Yes indeed, Queen Brittany,' said Jay-Jay. `It's all perfectly clear: we want to all get with the program of insisting that the escapees who didn't make it back to Avallonia succumbed to a `perfect storm' of wretchedly unfortunate events. We're willing to admit to a limited amount of bungling incompetency; we're willing to admit to making our share of mistakes, but under no circumstances will we ever admit that you, Queen Brittany, permitted us to invade Hibernia for reasons of power politics, in order for you to bolster the Pro-Divine Right of Kings faction and to weaken the Anti-Divine Right of Kings faction. There was never any deal between us where we get fame and glory for the Conquest, and you get a stronger hold on your throne, and Avallonia gets stuck with another round of endless interminable full-scale ramped up wars with Hibernia. No, no, that was never anyone's plan or intention. We will tell the press and the public that we're all about full disclosure, that we are 100% committed to bringing the facts of our mission to Hibernia to the light of day, but in reality, we're actually all about pursuing a policy of partial containment. We're all about telling the public that we're telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the fiery unfortunate end of those Avallonian escapees who didn't make it back to Avallonia, but, in point of fact, we're all about keeping the most sensitive and the most embarrassing facts secret, and we're all about making an extra £100 per month for each of us, and keeping that a secret as well.'

`An excellent summation,' said Queen Brittany. `Well I guess that about wraps it up then.'

Queen Brittany stood up and smiled at everyone in a warm and genuine way. She gave Al Mancini an odd look though as she said goodbye to him. She still might have some issues, some sort of hang-up, with his claim to being from a parallel universe. And perhaps his former slave status would always be lodged somewhere in her memory. But who knows? Maybe she was simply disconcerted and trying desperately to figure out a way to get better acquainted with this guy who looks exactly like the young Rock Hudson without the press finding out about his insane claims about being from a parallel universe. But, overall, her smile was warm and friendly. If you could read minds however you would know that the Queen was really thinking: `OK, you can go now. You can get out of my castle now. Well, try not to destroy any more large metropolitan areas in the future! I mean, thanks for risking your necks freeing those 1,000 P.O.W.s, but thanks for nothing for extending the war between Avallonia and Hibernia for another 100 years, or, rather, thanks for everything for helping me to solidify my hold on the throne via my new popularity with the pro-war faction! But, on the other hand, thanks for nothing for making my name dirt with the anti-war faction.'

The End
