Later, Ruth Less felt peeved at how the Fester Growley Book Club gathering fell apart almost before it could come together. She had no experience of “book club,” granted, it not being a subject discussed with Heady or the Tuft or the Speck. Or, Wretch, although she much doubted Wretch read many books.
Until recently, Ruth Less had focused more on the idea of “club” as a weapon or as an action, less like a convocation of flargdorneraks, as on her world, with their messy opinions and habit of eating the disagreer. Yet, the Fester Growley Book Club, in retrospect, still seemed disorganized and impolite and not at all pouch-worthy.
Ruth Less arrived early, to get a good seat, and perhaps a good early view of her prey. It had been vexing to make her way to the bookshop. She had eaten many who had called her fat and some who called her ugly. The ones who didn’t talk to her, but stared, Ruth Less usually spared. But many needed to be pouched or punched. Including a few who called her a “dirty foreigner.” The one who had propositioned her, she had just eaten as soon as she understood he meant a coupling. How rude! Couldn’t he tell she was expecting little ones? Anyway, she’d decoupled him and he’d proven a good snack, which only helped the little ones.
In truth, she hoped she might not even have to attend the book club, but stage an abduction-extraction and, leaving the flargdorneraks to their fleemlypflargnak, be on her way. But, just in case, Ruth Less had made the effort to look normal.
That meant human-sized, or close, and a different appearance to her malleable flesh, given rumors were on the rise of a monstrous schoolmarm prowling through Prague. And some semblance of a suit, because she had decided she liked suits.
Hoping to disguise her mouth-parts, Ruth Less had grown a “hat” atop her head, which was really a thick flap of skin shaped like a hat, with a little red “flower” on it for color. In particular, a farmer’s hat with a broad brim. And she’d decided she would look more mannish, although she wasn’t in the first place a human woman, but an expert mimic from another world. Nor was her suit actually a suit, but instead just more strategically rearranged skin.
The flower was a third eye, almost like a periscope. Because of something Heady had said about disguises in opera performances, Ruth Less had put on, or grown, an eye patch over one of her two eyes, which she could still see through since it just looked like an eye patch and was not an eye patch at all. All of it hopefully borne with grace.
Not for the first time, Ruth Less wished she had someone to share her cleverness with. She really was a very clever Celestial Beast, but she feared Wretch underappreciated her good qualities and saw only the bad. Because she had yet to pouch Jonathan Lambshead. But perhaps the golden marble would make up for it.
A pipe seemed in order—Abt had liked a pipe before he got splatted—and so, sproing!, a pipe it was.
Her shoes were just her feet, so she made them emerald and curled up at the ends like those of the hedge magician who had stared at her for too long from a hedge and whom she had pouched on principle, long gray beard and all.
Because Ruth Less was both early and a little bored, she cast her vast web of senses around the Twisted Spoon Bookshop, well beyond the sad little circle of chairs in the far corner with the sign in front that read “Reserved for Book Clubs” in Czech.
All those rows of bookshelves filled with tomes loomed over her, almost like walls of a maze, their guts made of paper. She could not avoid them, with their dead smell and sometimes a sharp glue smell or even something like turpentine.
When Ruth Less took a peek out the window, she was surprised to see the two who had no scent right outside on the cobblestone street, in the middle of a heated conversation. The tiny woman and the bigger man! The ones who had followed her. She knew from the Tuft that the woman was called Kristýna, and the Tuft had vouched for her. It was the woman who masked their scent by magic, that no one might track them that way. Which is why they only ever smelled, if they smelled at all, of the plants around them.
Suddenly, Ruth Less felt embarrassed by her suit. Even on her world, looking the same was not recommended, and she checked to see if anyone was looking and then changed it to a kind of tunic pants suit, in stunning greens and blues.
“What if it goes out the back door?” the one called Mack was saying.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s here for the book club.”
“You think.”
A pause. “All right. We wait a bit and then we go in.”
“Have you read the book, Mack?”
“Of course. Have you?”
“No. I’ve been busy.”
Curiously enough, hanging back against the ditch near the ivy-wall at the edge of the street, a kind of large shadow had been trickling along the stone the whole time they’d been talking. A rippling, undulating thing the couple didn’t see. With a shape like an elongated … beaver? Hog? Bear? Ruth Less couldn’t quite place it. On her own world she would have guessed it was a seethrawnikiwaki, a ghost leech that came back from the dead by sucking souls out of the blaghghghghghi underworld. But this shadow had not the courage to get too close to the couple, and hover-lingered in one position.
Ruth Less wondered if it, too, longed to go to the Fester Growley Book Club.
Book club began with introductions. That made sense to Ruth Less. How could you discuss a book if you didn’t know who everyone was, although perhaps the opposite made more sense: If you didn’t know anybody, there would only be the book, which was perhaps truer to the idea of a book club.
Anyway, as preamble to introductions, the book-club grand leader or emperor, or whatever their rank, repeated the title and author of the book under discussion.
The fearless leader in this case was a harried-looking Czech woman wearing a flower dress. She had long gray hair and the smell of someone who had been drinking beer, and she said her name was Janovka Veraskayaskovask. The book, she reminded them all, was the detective novel Goose’s Way by Michel Proost. It had been translated into twelve languages and a black-light theater production put on in this very city some years before.
Janovka asked for a show of hands as to who had read Goose’s Way. Everyone had, although most hands only went up half or a quarter and then quickly down again. Ruth Less had put both hands up, suppressing the natural urge to grow even more hands and cause them, too, to show her polite enthusiasm for both “book” and “club.”
“I would note,” Janovka then said carefully, in English as a common tongue, but with much deep, suppressed emotion, “that this is the Twisted Spoon Book Club, not the Fester Growley Book Club. Which doesn’t exist. This has been the Twisted Spoon Book Club for many, many years. If you are here because of posters calling it the Fester Growley Book Club, I hope you will still stay. And I presume you are. Here because of the posters. Because I see so many new faces. Well, welcome. Please introduce yourself if this is your first time.”
Including Janovka there were nine regulars and five “irregulars,” four of whom Ruth Less already knew were not the Golden Sphere. The fifth seemed unlikely to be the Golden Sphere for reasons that became clear during the introductions. Which left only the regulars as possible irregulars that might actually be a Golden Sphere.
Ruth Less was unprepared for the possible disappointment of no Sphere, even if the regulars on a deep snuffling sniff smelled nothing like the Speck or the residue on the poster. Besides, she quite liked a good mystery, in book form or in real life. They had no detectives on her world, only what might be called here “mob justice” and the “pounded” and “unpounded” criminals, all of whom were munched on until thoroughly eaten. This made more sense when you realized that without a certain amount of munching, Ruth Less’s kind would have overpopulated their world in a matter of decades. Sometimes even noncriminals got munched, but Ruth Less didn’t want to think about that.
Onward with introductions! Perhaps because she was so dashing and mannish, Ruth Less found that Janovka latched onto her, pointing and asking her to go first.
“I am an Iberian doctor on holiday who enjoys fishing, hunting, shopping for dresses, doll collection, and sheep days in the big city. My favorite books include wallpaper, omelette, and cheese grater.”
These were all things from conversations Ruth Less had overheard or eaten while in Prague, and she felt confident she had used them correctly.
Janovka’s smell, which had been a lavender bath wash on top of the beer stench, with an underlying sweat smell like mushroom liquor, now changed mostly to something like baked earthworm. On Ruth Less’s world, this smell would have conveyed friendship or sympathy. Here, she doubted it meant either of these things.
“That is … interesting. Welcome … you did not give your name?”
A name! Ruth Less panicked. She hadn’t thought to come up with yet another name! What names of demi-mages did she know?
“No-Name,” she said, then saw Janovka’s frown. “I mean, my name is … Charletta Mange.” Then winced, remembering she had dressed like a man.
“All right, then. Welcome … Charletta … Mange.”
Next up was the tiny woman. “My name is Petunia. I am a retired gardener who enjoys reading, gardening, and the simple pleasure of tea.”
“Welcome,” and this time Janovka’s body odor told Ruth Less she greatly preferred Petunia to Charletta Mange. This hardly seemed fair, as Petunia’s details had been boring even to Ruth Less.
Mack said, “My name is Mack.”
“Anything to add?”
“I like books.”
“Very well. Next.”
Next was actually a regular who felt inclined to ramble on about book-club rules like no eating, no off-topic questions, no talking over anyone else, and that regulars should be respected given their commitment to the book club. Among many other ruminations that became overlong, and Ruth Less really felt the fellow should have been devoured by the other regulars as a sign of respect to the visitors like herself. But she bit her tongues.
Besides, during this ramble, a curious thing happened: Kristýna, who had been turning quite regular to the window, spotted someone there. More curious still, it was clear Mack, who hadn’t looked at the window once, did not expect anyone.
At which point, Kristýna whispered to Mack that she needed some air, which Ruth Less didn’t understand because there was plenty of air in the bookstore, if of a mustier varietal than what existed outside. And when Mack made to come with her anyway, Kristýna put a hand on his shoulder to indicate he shouldn’t “in case something of interest happens,” and she nodded at the group in apology, and walked outside.
To talk to the figure. Who was be-hooded and wearing such thick robes that Ruth Less could not make out … features. Like a face. Some sort of … mask? … was in the way? Bipedal, yes. Human, probably. The smell that came from the figure, who, like all skulkers, hid among the ivy on the far wall, was hard to untangle for Ruth Less. For it was on the one hand sweat, but also … stardust? Stardust from very far away. Sweat, stardust, and a stabbing sweetness. Along with trace elements of some pack animal’s wool on the robes. Mud. Dust. The usual. And yet … yet Ruth Less felt all the smells were a disguise of sorts. Almost as if this person had anticipated a person like Ruth Less smelling him. Peculiar.
The voice from such a protected face came muffled, but still Ruth Less could hear them both. Even as the rules droned on. There was, she noticed, no trace of not-Alice or of the shadow.
“Stimply,” Kristýna said. “You shouldn’t be here long, and I need to get back in there.”
“I won’t be soon enough,” the one she called simply Stimply replied. “But I had to speak to you. The telephone’s not safe anymore.”
“So you said. I haven’t heard from you in a decade. Phone or no phone. You don’t write. You don’t visit.”
“I’m sorry. So many, many things to be sorry about, but now’s not the time.”
Kristýna folded her arms. “Agreed. Speak.”
“Jonathan is on his way to Prague. But not by the usual routes. And I’m not sure where exactly. The Institute has been attacked by Crowley. Crikey is dead and many of his fellows. Jonathan escaped, we think. It was a raid, not an occupation, but who knows what they ransacked.”
“Did they find …?”
“Not as far as we know. They’ve no clue. For all that helps, which isn’t much.”
“Is he … is he still there at all?”
“He still has moments.”
None of which made sense to Ruth Less. These people and their irritating words. She knew “Jonathan” but then that word kept popping up everywhere.
Kristýna was quiet a moment. Ruth Less believed her facial expression was one of distress.
“And what do you want from me? More than I’m doing? This is bad news, yes, but it’s already in the past.”
“Find Jonathan. Send out tufts. Find him.”
“That will take time. Just as we are planning a war.”
“Everything takes time. And you’re not planning a war by yourself. That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it now?” Kristýna said in a hurt tone.
“You know what I mean. I’m sorry. No time for the niceties. No time for putting on an act.”
Kristýna was quiet again, then said, “You were not to get involved. At all. That was safer. But you got involved. You made phone calls, for example.”
“There’s no time, dear. Paris is about to fall to the Old Magic. There are rumors of the Château Peppermint Blonkers making an appearance. Celestial Beasts seem to be a dime a dozen, underfoot. Kubin’s in the wind. Crowley’s familiar isn’t something he conjured up. At this point, you could practically say it conjured up Crowley, in a sense. It’s chaos. It’s not the same situation as before. The wheels are coming off, Kristýna. Please.”
She considered that. “Noted. You may be right. I’ve been in this cocoon so long … Very well. I’ll do it.”
Stimply took her by the shoulders, looked her in the eye with … his eye or eyes, presumably?
“Be safe. Be well. Remember: We’re not doing this for us. We’re doing this for so many others. Now, I have to go.”
“As always.”
A peck on the cheek, a hug, and then the one known as Stimply was gone.
By the time Kristýna was back, eliciting a long stare from Mack, the rules were mercifully over and a woman was introducing herself: “My name’s Janet and this is my pet gingerbread man …”
She pointed to the little irritated-looking gingerbread man sitting in the seat next to her.
Rules-Maker (Ruth Less had already forgotten his name) asked, “Has the … baked good … read the book?”
The gingerbread man said, “Up yours. Up yours. Up yours.”
Rules-Maker appeared affronted, mouth open, trying to formulate the rule against “up yours.”
Janet laughed nervously. “Apologies. He’s just recently learned that.”
“No, I haven’t,” the gingerbread man said. “I’ve known that one forever.”
“Let’s move on,” Janovka said.
The last to introduce themselves, alas, did so about when the trouble started, when Ruth Less reflected on it later. A sort of last straw, and because of this and because she was still sorting through her own personal situation as complicated by Heady’s advice, she neglected to tell Wretch and Crowley later … well, any of it except the last bit.
A late arrival had taken up a place, chairless, in the circle, and on all fours, that had Ruth Less’s full attention. Crouching there was an all-white cow, one person or persons in a cow outfit. It did not strike Ruth Less as odd in book-club context, but it was odd to her. She thought perhaps the book club had a mascot or some such, but as Janovka turned a bit stiffly toward the cow-man or cow-men, her irritated scent gave her away.
“Oh, me? Moo. I am a forest cow, newly arrived from the forest. Of course. I cannot read, but I like using book clubs to improve my language stills. Moo. Moo moo moo mooooooo! That is all.”
But everyone could see it was a pantomime cow.
“And your … other half?”
“I have no other half! I am a cow!”
The feeble movements of the other half contradicted this statement, until the upper half—the half with the face—hit the bottom half with the official book-club book and all nether motion ceased for a time.
But Janovka had had enough, could not leave it alone.
“I’m sorry. But … you’re not a cow. Who or what are you?”
A reasonable question, Ruth Less thought, one as easily directed at her but for her marvelous disguise. Wretch had said there were spies all over Prague and to watch out for them. What better disguise for a spy than an all-white pantomime cow in a city so peculiar it was celebrating before a war.
“I am cow,” said the not-cow.
“No. You’re not. And you haven’t read the book.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“I did too read the book. Sort of.”
“Tell me about it, then.”
“There are murders. And a goose is involved.”
“No.”
“You’ll be better pouched,” Ruth Less added, with kindness, but was ignored.
“Oh, let him be a cow. Let us all be whomever we want to,” said a new voice.
Standing there, newly arrived, at Janovka’s shoulder, was a preternaturally handsome man dressed all in gold thread, from his perfectly fitting trousers to his button-down shirt and blazer. And not showy, either, somehow. For each shade of gold was different, deepening and darkening the effect, with only the gleam of shirt beneath more like the blaze of true gold.
But it all smelled like machine to Ruth Less. It all smelled like marbles and moving parts.
“And who are you?” Janovka asked wearily.
“Oh,” said the newcomer. “Introductions, of course. My name’s Gob Smack. I’m just a poor sprot from a poor familial unit. Who has become uncomfortably numb. After brain surgery. I now make my holes the old-fashioned way: I squeeze them out. That’s a joke, but you won’t get it. Hey nonny nonny. I like sea shanties and long walks by the beach. And I read books—like this one.”
Gob Smack held up the book club selection triumphantly, like a trophy.
Smelled like the Speck, in fact, except vile.
The Golden Sphere! Leapt up in her excitement, did Ruth Less. The Golden Sphere! Finally!
Several things happened at once, then, and Ruth Less only sorted them into their right order, to make sense of them, much later. It wasn’t that she kept a diary, but often when there was conflict and confusion, Ruth Less found it helpful to reexamine the situation, to improve upon her reactions.
True, many of these actions were related to her personal situation and Heady. Some were due to her loyalty to Speck and Tuft.
1. She extended a ruthless pseudopod ending in a fist and smashed Gob Smack into the bookstore wall.
2. All the regulars fled.
3. Ruth Less extended a courtesy to Kristýna by using another tentacle with a face to scream at her, “Squishy says to exit immediately and leave this place! In the name of all the tufts!” Politely and in haste, Kristýna did not hesitate, but fled, taking Mack with her. Perhaps two Celestial Beasts in such a confined space was enough for her. Perhaps a talking tentacle was too much for her.
4. Ruth Less, in stepping forward toward the Golden Sphere, squashed dead the top half of the not-cow, whereupon the bottom half rose half-delirious from the wreckage of the cow suit and shrieked “I’m free!” and fled, too.
5. Janovka made a last stand, screaming, “I just wanted to talk about this amazing book! I just wanted to talk about this amazing book!” She clearly wasn’t going to leave so Ruth Less, sighing, extended a third and fourth tentacle, punched a hole in the ceiling with one, grabbed Janovka with the other, and deposited her on the street beyond, with a little kick from the sudden foot on the end of the tentacle to give her the hint to flee, flee, flee, and forget the book. Which she then did. (Ruth Less was rather sorry to see her leave; in retrospect, Janovka was the only one she would’ve liked to sit down and share a meal with. Perhaps even talking about books.)
6. Gob Smack pulled itself from the buckling wall, no longer a golden man but a golden sphere, and raced toward her. Whereupon she punched it into the wall again.
7. Giving her time to empty the contents of her pouch onto the streets of Prague, via the bookstore’s front door. So many things, with only one left inside for later, per prior agreement with the “thing” in question.
All the things that had been in her pouch! As they left and poured out into Prague in all their magical and nonmagical excess, she sighed in relief.
Some of the things included: bears bears bears. But also, a horse and cart, several dozen cats, a couple of Czech magicians, a few stray circus animals, a few trees, an anvil, a windmill, a wall, a giggly air-breathing sea anemone, a man wearing a bird mask, a thousand red newts, a few dozen confused-looking lighthouse keepers, a giant bird of some kind. Too many things to count or keep track of. Some of them, Ruth Less admitted, were monsters.
There. She felt much lighter, and ready for battle.
Ruth Less turned to face the Golden Sphere in the now-empty, much-destroyed bookshop.
“Squishy for you,” she said.