The Guardian of Aloons

The Guardian of Aloons

Author	Morbus Iff
Genre	Fantasy, Humor, Mystery
Rating	PG-13
Frequency	Weekly

Part 1

When I came to, I was kissing the gravel. She was gone. I tried to raise myself up and that’s when I noticed a few of the rarer things in life: getting clocked by a six-inch heel feels much like a jab from a two-bit thug, and this was the third time my pants were missing. You’d think that I’d be getting used it by now. The beatings, not the pants.

It was about two weeks ago, that first beating. I had walked into her yard like each blade of grass was mine to tread upon, a flattener of crops whose message was more theatrics than mystery. Her back was to me as she planted zhur fruits, sitting on her knees and leaning forward like a polka-dotted bloomer ornament. I waved her letter like a white flag and asked when I could come home.

A gardening trowel, when properly wielded, scales near the end of blunt sharpness: a fist has none, a heel narrows to a coin-sized square, but a trowel, well, whether it’s a slice or a jab there’s going to be a cut and there’s going to be blood. Mine didn’t taste so good but, seeing her eyes burn the way they did, her blouse ruffling in the wind, it was worth it. I still loved Olivia Birns and I was sure I could sweet-talk her back. After she invited me in to atone for the trowel it’d be downhill and fireworks, y’know?

That time however, she must have forgotten to clean the house because she tried to give my right cheek twin artistry. I caught her thrust with my left and pulled her in. I could see the midday sweat on her neck escaping the loose folds of the kerchief she wore. There’s something special about a lady working up an effort, doubly so when it’s her own initiative.

“What’s that, Liv?” I nodded down to the letter that had fallen when she threw herself at me.

“It’s over, Henry.” she said, and pulled away. “We’re done.”

“You know you won’t follow through.”

“You’ll get the paperwork tomorrow.”

“I’ll wait you out. I’ve more patience.”

“You’re right, you know that Henry?” She turned back to me, a zhur plant in her gloved hand, new roots poking through sod and soil. “I have lost all patience! With you, your job”, I could see the air quotes, “your lifestyle. You’ve yet to create a single puzzle! To broach a single conundrum!”

“The margi...”

“Oh, I know all about the margins.” She had a talent for dripping the sort of acid one would gladly swim through. “Venn ain’t got nothing on you, Henry! But it’s not enough. Children need these challenges and I need a man who can provide them.” She turned away, giving me a good look at her long neck. “Go away, Henry”.

I turned to go. I’d wait her out, like I said. I’d give her a question. I’d go home right now and give a sprout a question that’d take months, no, years!, to answer. That’d make her proud. I turned to tell her as much when I felt a wind ruffling the hair on my legs, which I knew somewhere deep inside shouldn’t have been possible. She noticed it first.

“Henry! Quezlar's ghost, put some pants on and get the hell outta here!” She had raised the trowel again and I rushed back to my wagon. Not because I was afraid mind you, but because blood was reaching my shirt and I couldn’t really afford the laundering. As the creak of the wheels cracked the occasional stick in the mud, I remember staring down at my undergarments and thinking it the funniest thing. Me, a Hive-Lord, wandering around town unclothed. I couldn’t help but laugh but I also wondered if it would improve my reputation: I could pass it off as research for a really tough question. That’d gain me respect.

I never did find out where my pants went that day, but I sent Liv’s mailing to the same null and void. Badge extrication was a procedure I knew she couldn't afford, and no one wanted a marked filly. I wasn’t quite sure she’d be willing to lose the honor of being branded a Hive-Lord’s wife either.

A week later, I was mulling over the commonalities of fefferberries and interrobangs when a knock shook me awake. It was one of the children, Lenvard something-or-other, wondering if I had come up with his challenge yet. I beckoned him in, being certain to look lost in thought, the weight of the orthogonality spread out unevenly upon my shoulders. I pointed to a chair, returned to my desk, and went back to staring at fefferberries.

I’d say it was about thirty minutes or so before I remembered he was there. By then the berries had started to drip a little, and the enthusiasm of the ‘bang was on the wane. “Yes,” I murmured, as if some great insight had come to me. I nodded to myself. Menward was impressed. Lenvard. Edward? Something or other.

“Nothing today, boy.” I said.

“Sir, I’m nearing five years.” He wouldn’t stare me in the face and I took his statement of fact as just that. I’m the one who implies the questions, not him.

“I said, nothing today!” and for theatric effect, for it pays to keep the children in line, I swept the fefferberry jar to the floor. It smashed, the dying light from the glass giving a barely poetic show to the juice that sprayed. The boy scurried out the front though I knew he'd be back tomorrow. I chuckled and rubbed my mandibles.

And sisters be damned if I didn’t feel something dripping down my legs.

That was the second time my pants went missing and I wiped up a track of fefferberry juice and savored the sweetness of it. I wasn’t too worried about the disappearance - not only was I in my office where few could see me (but fi!, the missed opportunity to proclaim a breakthrough in my research!), but I happened to have another set in the wagon. Liv had dropped a suitcase off the other day, hiding her kindness and love under excuses of cleaning house and asking whether I had signed the papers.

As I ruffled through the back of my wagon, I heard the whistling. So did Mrs. Gurptshonis, whom I caught from the corner of my eye taking her gaze from me to look at the sky. I shared her fixation: it was a bi... no, a flock of birds. On fire. With mail bags. This would be considered relatively abnormal but I hadn’t a chance to state as such before they slammed into the roo... no, make that through the roof, of my office. Things started bursting into flames.

“My margins!” The thought tore a hole through my carapace and became sound. Pants or no pants, I ran in the side door only to be pushed back by a wave of heat. My papers, my scrawled side notes, all were aflame. So too were the avians, a dozen or more, broken wings, charred talons. In the air was the flit-flit of undelivered mail dancing on jetstreams of heat.

Somewhere in the roar of flames and exasperation, I felt a jabbing sensation. It was Gurptshonis, poking at me with that damned hook of hers. Her lips mouthed something about “getting out of there” and “pants”, then she yanked hard: she hadn't been just poking but scrabbling for a hold. As I was pulled back, I clutched at anything to keep me there, anything to comprehend what was going on. All I got was two or three scraps of burning notes and a charred bird's leg.

Part 2

Last week we were introduced to Henry, an insectoid Hive-Lord whose pants keep disappearing mysteriously. But, what’s a Hive-Lord and all this business of questions and answers for little kids? Let’s find out!

---

I laid on the soft earth behind my office for a few seconds trying to grasp what was going on. Hastily penned and blown-out notes in my left hand, a smoking bird’s leg in my right, my naked legs and scrunched undergarments a wee bit lower, and ol’ cranky Gurptshonis standing over me with flames and smoke blocking out the sky behind her head. I will admit that this image haunted my dreams for weeks to come.

It was quickly replaced by pants. My pants.

“Still running around with no pants on? You nothing!”

And the sound of my lovely wife.

A crowd was gathering to watch my office burn, a victim of a dive-bombing of enflamed postal-carrying birds. No one was rushing in to save anything and I saw a few kids running around playing tag with burning sticks. Flames don’t hurt our shelled bodies too much though prolonged exposure still isn’t a good idea. Gurptshonis could have dragged me out with her bare hands with no ill effect, but she and that hook of hers had a romance that was fit to write an encyclopedia entry about.

“They know there’s nothing to save, Henry. Put your pants on.”

Olivia Birns, my wife. She must have rushed to my rescue when she heard the crashing of the birds and fetched new pants to save me further embarrassment. Must be fixing to invite me back home and carry my suitcase herself. I stuffed the pockets of my thrown pants with what I was holding, put them on, and rose up to thank my wife for her love.

“This is our Hive-Lord, the great Henry Bother,” she called out to the crowd. “And this”, a triumphant finger point, “is his contribution to the community, going up in flames.” No one said a thing. The kids stopped playing.

“How many of you have benefited from our Hive-Lord’s guidance, his tutelage of our children? How many of your spawn have answered one of his questions, graduating from the grubs they are now to the farmers, scholars, and leaders of tomorrow?” Still, no one said a thing. I didn’t really like the way she was building me up. I resolved to help her with that for the next time.

“Every town and city has a Hive-Lord. Every child needs one to assert their readiness to enter society. Every child requires that push, that gumption, to answer a Hive-Lord’s question and show that, yes!, they are not bottom feeders! But Henry Bother, my husband...”, she laughed. Probably remembering the day we met. It was right after I came to town to replace Sakadamas: she had come by the office as I was moving in, with a bowl of her homemade sou...

“He hasn’t done a thing for our children, has he? Oh, he’s asked me plenty of questions: where’s his this, what’s that doing there, Livvy-lovey I’m hungry!” Scorn was hardening her features and by golly I knew I should have stepped in and planted one on her face, but Gurptshonis had hooked me again as she nodded along in agreement to what I was beginning to think wasn’t my wife’s expression of adoration.

One of the kids started to cry. It was that Eduard person again.

“A week ago, I ended the relationship with my husband. He has yet to sign his papers, has yet to foot the bill for the badge extrication”, wait, what?, “just as he has as yet to provide our children with a way to become the men and women they need to be. TransAvian’s mishaps have given us an opportunity to request a new Hive-Lord!” There were some agreeing murmurs and something crossed the kid’s faces which better not have been hope.

“You want questions?” I had had enough. I loved Liv, but this reverse psychology of hers was having the opposite effect on those assembled. Could the flames of my office excite the simmerings of the past week into a boil? With the loss of my notes, my margins, a clean slate of questions, nay, demands, starting bubbling forth.

“I’ll give you questions!”, I yelled. The ire in my gullet threatened to become the same indigestion and acid that my wife flung so freely. I backed slowly away from the crowd which felt like it was closing in. The fire warmed my carapace and I imagined myself a revelatory sight, arms outstretched, crazed look in my eye, flames and burning birds and building behind me.

“Why is my office on fire?”, I pointed to a yellow striped kid on my left.

“What branch of TransAvian is responsible?”, to one on my right whose mandibles were hanging open in a stunned silence.

“What’s the longest way to stall a badge extrication?” Oh, I was getting in the mood now, and the parents of the kid on the receiving end of my accusatory fingers gasped slightly. My wife’s eyes narrowed and I took a small delight in it. Reverse psychology, when properly applied, works. I began to giggle!

“And”, I paused for dramatic effect, the only sound the crackling of flames, the splintering of beams of my once-office, and shouted “WHITER MY PANTS!?” I saved the best for Menford (Lenvard? I really must figure out his name). Every day he had come to my office, every day he had sat there waiting for acknowledgement. I had seen the most hope in his eyes during my wife’s ranting and it veritably tickled me to see it dashed away so.

I stood there victorious, my wife surely awed at these questions that had come so easily. I had promised her I’d give out some doozies, and doozies given I did!

If memory serves, that’s when my office collapsed on top of me.

Part 3 (next week)

Planned for 2010-04-30. Watch for it!