Fuzzy (Notevember 2021, #21)

The dockhand laughed in my face.
   “You can’t be serious?” He laughed again. “You foreigners will believe anything, won’t ya? What’s next, you want to hunt the Midwinter Rabbit, too? Look,” – he crossed his arms and gave me the once over – “even if it was real, which it ain’t, I doubt a fella such as yourself could bring one down, let alone catch one.”
   “Well, suppose it was real…” I began.
   “It’s not.”
   “But if it were real, and a fella such as myself could catch one, who might know where I could find one to catch?”
   “How should I know?” He cleared his throat and spat off the pier into the green water. “Ask anyone. Ask everyone, for all I care. Should net you a barrel of fancy stories, if nothing else.”

A grandmother, hunched over her basket weaving, nodded sagely – they always do.
   “Oh, yes, they are strange as they come. They look rather sweet from a distance. Fluffy, almost. But then you notice the skull mask, and the gruesome dolls they bind into their hair. And their eyes! Unkind eyes, predatory eyes. Mind you, that’s just what I’ve heard. Never seen one myself, you know, and I’m eighty-two and all.”
   She advised me to “best stay well clear”, then diligently returned to her handicraft.

“I swear I saw one, once,” the waiter whispered, leaning in conspiratorially. “But it wasn’t no monster. Just a man in a costume. Palm fronds and whatnot. Reckon it’s them woodland bandits trying to scare decent folks into leaving their packs and running for it. Never seen one after, but I did, that once.”
   “You did nah!” a patron scoffed at his tale. “Nobody ever done seen one with their own eyes and lived.”
   I asked the sceptic how the rumor started, then. “Well, I suppose…” He trailed off, and I went on my way. Behind me, I could hear the waiter ask his customer “Care to pay your tab?” in a tone of voice that suggested he felt ever so vindicated.

“It’s a myth,” said the professor with certainty.
   “Not so,” claimed his academic colleague with equal conviction. “There have been a handful of reliable sightings reported over the years.”
   “Independent sources?” asked the professor. “Verified?”
   “I said reliable, didn’t I?” came the indignant response.
   “Well, perhaps we define that word differently. I, for one…”
I left them to their bickering and walked on toward the bazaar.

The veteran merchant answered me with a sly look on his face. “Can’t tell you if it’s real or not – but if it is out there, bring me back a piece, would you? I’ll make it worth your while. In imperial coin, or pure gold if you want. Or something to trade? I have luxurious silks from Caju Bassu, fine wood all the way from the jungles of Kaï-Dwe, exotic spices that smell like Paradise itself!”
   I told him no thank you. “You ought to consider it, at least. Let me know if you change your mind!” he shouted after me.

Just outside, a caravan was unloading their wares. A girl, tending their camels, beckoned me closer.
   “I know what you look,” she said in the staccato pattern of her language, superimposed onto mine.
   I didn’t bother to ask her how she knew. Word travels fast in cities, they say. Nowhere faster than here. I just raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
   “Yes. It is not animal. But also, it is not man. Different, not from this world.”
   “Divine? I find that hard to believe.”
   “No, not godly. Not even demon. But like demon. Could been.”
   “It could have been a demon?”
   “Mmm.” She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. “I tell you story.”
   “Please do.”
“They say it was like this: In a time when time was not, when Burning King fall, he gather all creatures of evil to him. And they come to his… His chair?”
   “Throne.”
   “Throne. Yes. They come to him in Desert of No End. Even the ones you look, they also come. But they see court of Burning King, and they walk past. They keep walking.”
   “Into the Endless Desert? Surely they would get lost and die.”
   “Lost, yes. Some die, but not all. Some find new places, beyond sand. Still lost, but now lost here. In our world. And cannot find road home. So they stay. And still it is so, all days until today.”
   “That’s a neat story,” I told the girl. “But is it more than that?”
She shrugged. “I do not know. When you find one, you ask it for me. And you come back to tell.”

I did find one. But now, facing it, I get the sense it’s not keen to tell me. And I get the sense I won’t be coming back, with an answer or without.