• called “wildlife” for a reason
• not a single one of us
• legs tightly crossed
• what do our bodies sound like?
• rubbing her stomach

Tune in next time part 488      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Let us begin the bidding at a million dollars!” Oksana proclaimed. Tatiana’s hand shot up, along with many others.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the Crystal Clown’s proxy?” I muttered.

Tatiana stood there rubbing her stomach like she was very hungry. “Let me worry about her,” she said. The rubbing intensified, and she said, “I wonder, as new life springs forth from us, what do our bodies sound like?”

She was now grasping her bulging belly in both hands, legs tightly crossed and a puddle around her feet.

“I think they sound like that,” I deadpanned. “You should probably call for your helicopter or whatever to take you to labor and delivery.” I could commandeer it and take us back to Enigma Fortress instead.

Tatiana shook her head. Her voice was strained as she said, “Oksana has made it clear that not a single one of us shall be allowed out until the auction is complete.”

The bidding was up to two million dollars, and not really slowing. I couldn’t think of a way to hurry it along, but I did have an idea for disrupting it. Even if it would probably blow my cover. I watched John, and just as he was signalling a bid on behalf of Viscount Arlo, I did my Himalayan Snowcock impression as loudly as I could.

John let out an even louder scream of panic and began running about and flailing his arms, heedless of the people around him. The closest he ever came to telling me the reason for his terror of those birds was when he whispered tremulously from the darkness as we lay in our bunks at the Academy, “It’s called ‘wildlife’ for a reason.”

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• spire composed of the twisted tails of four bronze dragons
• Swirly, swirly, swirly!
• charm the knickers off you
• a bastard by birth
• there’s just no pleasing you

Tune in next time part 476      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Your waterfowl impression is horrible,” Oksana said.

Jim pouted up at her. “I wonder sometimes why I bother, when there’s just no pleasing you.”

At that she laughed, and even blushed a bit. “Is your memory so brief? Are you a simpleton by nature, or just a bastard by birth?”

She must be getting this out of her system before presenting him for auction, I thought. Otherwise, she really needed to work on her sales pitch.

In any case, Jim wasn’t offended. He chuckled low and throaty, saying, “I got birdcalls that could charm the knickers off you.”

“Let’s hear one, then.”

It was hard to know how much the drugs were contributing to Jim’s actions, and how much he was just making a spectacle of himself. He contorted his lips and emitted a trilling noise that sounded like a small child yelling “Swirly, swirly, swirly!”

Oksana posed with her hand on her cocked hip, and threw back her head in maniacal glee.

But I glanced around nervously. The weird trilling noise was, in fact, an uncanny rendition of an animal call I hadn’t heard in a long time, not since my brief stint at a monastery founded by a wealthy, eccentric Dane, where the cloister’s tower held a spire composed of the twisted tails of four bronze dragons.

How did Jim know the cry of the Himalayan Snowcock?

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• I’d love to get to know you
• she’s not a girl who
• You may be an adventurous person
• use their vacant home to have sex
• — or so he thought —

Tune in next time part 360      Click Here for Earlier Installments

John turned in a full circle. He was surrounded by basilisk lizards — or so he thought — as my uncanny reproduction of that creature’s call echoed and reverberated from the limestone cliffs overlooking the beach. This end of the island chain had few permanent residents, but the clifftop was dominated by a sprawling vacation house. When the owners are away, the locals use their vacant home to have sex, I assume.

Before John could regain his wits, I belted out my piece de resistance, the cry of the Himalayan Snowcock. Such creatures would never be found at sea level, but John’s terror of them was such that he slumped onto his derriere. I stepped up and collected the babies. You may be an adventurous person, but you do not want to fuck with a new father of quadruplets.

“Go save your sister,” I urged John. “She needs you. You know she’s not a girl who will get herself out of trouble.”

I left him there in the sand, carrying the four infants like I’d been lugging four infants around my whole life. “So,” I said to them, “what’s your story? I’d love to get to know you little dudes better.”

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