Fourth Dispatch Fifth Dispatch: Letters Largely Brusquely Answered Quench your Curiousity First Dispatch Our first dispatch is the weather report. Tonight in Magonia: The skies are amber, streaks of red run 'cross the sky, horizon to horizon, stem to stern. Great purple clouds of particulate miasma issue forth from the horns of the sky gods, drifting the length of the Bornedown River where the night fills the water with the day's dead for collection by the barrow men of morning. The sun is melting again, great masses of liquid light seeping into the sea. The stars are winking out. It is eighty-six degrees.
Procedural Note Typewriters are something of a novelty in Magonia, where it is still considered de rigeur to write down your thoughts in longhand, preferably upon the finest tanned lambskin that you can ruthlessly acquire or, when traveling on the continent, that you can flense from the living lambs yourself with implements of the finest ore taken from your slave-woven picnic basket where you keep them during outings in the country, next to the chilled fleur-de-andalusia and the flavorful stark beak. Much like a fine lemonade, life in Magonia is best enjoyed slowly. The typewriter, that infernal machine, has arrived in that fair land with all the grace and hail-fellow-well-met bluff, ruddy-faced cheer of the proverbial, provincial, and providential turd in a punch bowl. The self-described "doctors" who sell these devices from the backs of gaily painted wagons describe them--elocute them, they'd say--as time-saving devices. But who in Magonia has so little time that they must save it? In Magonia, life is lived with interest accrued from the joint checking account of Reflection and Meditation. Yet the demands of the Magonia-America post being what they are, those professional scribes responsible for preparing these dispatches for the enjoyment of you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the shapes at sea, have elected--democratically, of course--to supply our dispatches in the form of typewritten missives. The typewriter is not a forgiving beast. It is precise, meticulous. It will not accept the finest tanned lambskin, let alone the sort of common rubbish pawned off as same upon unsuspecting Magonians by the proprietors of five-and-thyme wagons. No, to present you with the latest dispatches, ladies and gentlemen, we have had to export carefully selected and controlled quantities of typing paper, and each individually numbered and accounted-for sheet is returned to us, in the mailbag, with the freshest dispatches Magonia can provide. We thought you'd like to know.
Second Dispatch Reader and sometime Magonia enthusiast Thomas J. Schlesinger of Adamsville, Tennessee--home of "Walking Tall" Sheriff Buford Pusser, Mr. Schlesinger notes--writes to ask for a point of clarification. Thomas J. writes: "Regarding your weather report, please tell me what a 'barrow man' is." By a coincidence almost as big and strong as Pusser himself, our second dispatch from Magonia addresses this very point. Our correspondent writes: It is morning in Magonia--but only just. The molten sun has not completed its reformation, has not called forth all its mercurial children from the waters. Its light shines, but not as bright as it will when the orb, once more complete, hangs steady overhead. It is time for the barrow men. To pass them on the street, you would not know them for what they are. The barrow men look no different than you or I--at least, no different than I. Each morning at this time, Linchester Tornabout joins his fellows in their shuffling march to the shore of the Bornedown River, where all the day's dead accumulate in the watches of the night. A small crowd gathers. One might not call them fans, per se, but they are, at the least, interested onlookers. Linchester is tired. By night he is a ratcatcher in Bornedown Town, the hamlet positioned here on the mouth of the river where the water talks to the sea and where, sometimes, the sea answers. There are a great many rats in Linchester. The powerful current of the mighty Bornedown takes all of Magonia's dead and floats them towards sea. The rats of the hamlet surge into the churning waters, leaping from body to body, many drowning, but some returning just before the sun unmelts, bellies swollen with the night's prize. Now Linchester, his hands bandaged from rat bites, boards the small watercraft. The previous day's dead bob with the waves at the catch-gates, those lengthy swinging nets that are set across the mouth of the river each eve, to catch the night's effluvia. Linchester and his fellow barrow men sail out, hauling in first one body, then another, until all the dead of Magonia's previous day have been accounted for and placed aboard. There is Richless Sontom, who perished in his sleep atop the plow-mule. And Maglorn Cathai, who succumbed to an imbalance of bodily humors. Linchester pulls them all in, carries them aboard the watercraft, hands them off to his fellows. When the ship is full and the dead are free of the Bornedown and the Bornedown is free of the dead, the catch-gates swing open and the fishing fleet sets out. The first catch, right there at the mouth of the river, is always the largest, for reasons best left unsaid. Returning to shore, Linchester readies the cart and the dead are placed aboard. This is no crass man-handling. Each of the unfortunates ferried in from the river is moved with care and reverence. Many of the onlookers are the bereaved, here to say their final goodbyes. Then Linchester pulls on the reins, the yoke-mules start forward, and the barrow men and their morning's charges rattle off through the streets of the hamlet towards the barrow fields beyond the horizon. The fields lie a half-day's journey off, and what the barrow men do there with their charges is a mystery known to none save the hoary priests and the barrow men themselves. Does that answer your question, Mr. Schlesinger?
Third Dispatch Our third dispatch from Magonia is on the subject of aqueduct decoration. While aqueducts and the unsightliness thereof is surely a rarely encountered difficulty among those of us who live in America, rest assured that for Magonians, this is a veritable Gordian Knot of a dilemma. Our correspondent writes: What to do about aqueducts? This topic was debated for three fourths tonight at the Bornedown Town Council, presided over by Lewisrew Pointost, Mayor Prefect of the hamlet. Our American readers may be unfamiliar with this situation. Aqueducts convey fresh, clean water from the mouth of the Bornedown River to all the homes of the hamlet for varied sanitary uses. As a result, they are everywhere, these elevated gutters, and townsfolk consider them an unsightly nuisance. (The possibility of placing such water conveyances underground, instead, has been discarded, owing to the ongoing war with the Underdwellers.) At tonight's Council meeting, various strategies were proposed. Painting the aqueducts, of course, was foremost on everyone's hindbrains. But swift disputes over colors were the initial undoing of this idea. One bright spark suggested that individual homedwellers could paint their individual aqueducts, but the rights of neighbors to line-of-sight aesthetics--having been well-established in prior Council aesthetics precedents--dragged this particular Icarus to the ground. Following a period of much discussion and an escalating sense of injured dignity, two distinct and opposing suggestions were rendered down from the conversational offal: one side, led by prosperous businessman Arliss DeQuit, proposed that all the aqueducts be painted white; the other side, comprised of a coalition of priests and artists--the latter late of Bohemia, the former late of the Eternal--proposed that all the aqueducts be painted gold. (White and gold are, of course, the national colors of Magonia.) When it became clear to all that neither of these groups could be reconciled, Mayor Prefect Pointost decided that a democratic firing squad should be assembled. The principal of the Magonia democratic firing squad is a simple one: all of those involved in an unresolvable dispute are lined up and shot at by blindfolded militia. The side with the greatest number of survivors triumphs. As usual, the motion to assemble a democratic firing squad swiftly resolved the unresolvable dilemma.* The aqueducts are to be painted a harmonious mix of white and gold, mimicing the stripes and carp rampant of the Magonia flag. This matter decided, the Bornedown Town Council adjourned for the night. * It has been sixteen years since the last time a democratic firing squad actually carried out its duties. The occasion was a great dispute in the Bornedown Province Legislature, and the result was the complete execution of every member of said legislature, at which point Mayor Prefect Pointost simply dissolved the no-longer-extant body, reduced as it was to barely-extant bodies. The idea to blindfold the firing squad, rather than allowing them full rein to shoot as accurately as they could, grew out of this incident.
Fourth Dispatch The twitching of our thumbs serves notice that yes, an ample sample of dispatches from Magonia have been left in the hollow tree outside our offices once again. Foremost among these is the latest word from the front lines of the Sub-War, as Magonians have come to refer to it. Our correspondent writes: Pray pardon the handwriting. The grim-faced men of Unit 731 made me leave the typewriter at the barracks--wisely, since its earnest clattering would have revealed our position to the enemy once in the field, or rather under it. Today's sortie takes us into Crystal Caverns, a popular day-trip spot some seventy circles ago but now the staging ground for war's clamor. As the uniformed soldiers move stealthily through the passages, curious relics of the Caverns' past greet us: cheery painted dioramas of cavorting Halbers and benevolent Stone Kings, damp signs directing visitors to Ever Falls and the Lake of a Thousand Wishes, and of course the old candle-smoked graffitti of long-ago explorers recording their presence within these chill walls. A distant rumble, then, and the men crouch as one. The Underdwellers are nothing if not sensitive to violations of their territory. I wonder what awaits us when at last we confront the glory of battle: a churning Twist burrowing out of the rock and brimming with weaponry, or perhaps a flood of molten rock from an unglimpsed flue overhead? The faces of these brave men burn into my mind, and I wonder who will live when we emerge into the sunlight once more. To think that they would lay down their lives for the preservation of our society . . . the thought sends chills through my bones, chills that do not originate in the damp and the dark of this strange place. At last we advance into the Sighing Cavern, where once visitors were bade to stand still and listen, just listen, for two or three fourths, until eventually, when even the group's breathing had achieved a collective singularity of rhythm, all could hear it: the gentle passage of wind through the cavern that produced a distinctive sighing sound, said to be the breath of the oldest and greatest of the Stone Kings. Now, however, it is a battleground. No, more accurate: it is an ambush. The rocks move. What seemed floor is revealed as chasm, and there is a scream and a cacophony of rifle fire as a third of our force tumble into a fresh abyss. There I see Taybor Lewson, the look on his face one of terror as he drops so fast his beret is left, for a moment, in empty air. I can mark no more before they are gone. The rest of the unit kneels, rolls, dives, screams, fires, lives, dies. The rocks move. Terrible claws of granite, eyes of quartz, bodily fissures disgorging scalding steam from molten hearts. These are the Halbers, who once were our friends and trading partners, bringing precious metals and gems to trade for slaves. Now they are our bitterest foes, making the very ground beneath our land into an enemy. Few are the Magonians who have not seen a house suddenly swallowed by the churning earth, the residents' screams heard dimly even after the ground closed up again. The rifles do their work, gouging terrible wounds into the foe. Volley after volley shatter limbs and sunder hearts, but even as the Halbers topple they turn to slag and meld with the cavern, their consciousness--we now know--returning to the sentient stone under our feet. They never truly die, but the pain of reconstitution is said to be so terrifying that some Halbers retain integrity after their deaths and simply lie there, ruined stone, minds lost for all time. What kind of afterlife could be so terrible that some of its potential beneficiaries would instead choose annihlation? Eventually, the battle is at an end. The Magonian flag flies high and proud as the wounded and the dead are accounted for by the unit's corpic mystic. A thick layer of foam, made from the rendered feathers of the Magonian vermilion ibis, is slathered onto the rock, rendering it insensate and useless to the enemy. This land is ours now. I make my way out of the Crystal Caverns to file my report. Behind, the cheery camaraderie of the brave men of Unit 731 ushers me forth with song:
To fight is to live Fifth Dispatch: Letters Largely Brusquely Answered It seems our dispatches from Magonia have spurred new interest in this unseen locale, to the no-doubt obsequious delight of the Department of Arrivals & Departures. We do our humble best to answer these letters in the following lines.
Greg Stolze, from Aurora, Illinois writes . . . You've opened the proverbial cobsack of aphasians with this query, Mr. Stolze, so we'll narrow our focus to the most pertinent of data. The accessory most rarely in place among genuine claymills is the trundle pedal with integral belt; if this piece is present, and the whole functions when carefully tested (apply liberal amounts of codwallag ungeunt first, of course) then you may be reasonably assured of the piece's authenticity. The final test, however, is the maker's mark. There were eight known crafters of these pieces, each of whom left their marks on the innermost ring of the spindle. There you should find one of the following inscriptions: XM, DALY, CCU, IPOCH, GRUND, SALFAST, BORIZOFF, or DMU. To test their authenticity, apply a candle flame directly to the inscription; the inlay should briefly flouresce in magenta.
Dear Sir:As is typical for his cheese-loving class, the lard-besotted likes of Mr. Feudfork have forgotten the contributions made by the xanthene bandeaus to the last war effort, and he is heartily encouraged to take his squalsome brood to the Falls--and then over them. Pshaw.
Dear Sir or Madam, Mr. Hockney's concerns as to public safety are, of course, warranted and appreciated, and the council assures us that they have issued appropriate advisories to the painting staff. But Mr. Hockney's notion that private citizens should dismantle the scaffolding smacks dangerously of the anarchist to me; should citizens likewise dismantle city hall when they disagree with a decision by the council? Remember, it's been tried.
I've been getting these for some time, and having just visited your site, I can finally figure out what to do with them. I can't imagine how this confusion was engendered. Anyway, I'd already stripped all the headers in hopes of turning them into something for Suppressed Transmission, so I'm afraid personal responses can't be done. In fact, I'm not quite sure I've got all of them in this email; my Eudora filters have started acting oddly again.These things happen, the electronic post being a rather unreliable proposition all 'round. Answers follow.
Dear Sir,To our considerable distress, this message reached us too late to prevent the impostrous Mr. Thursday from gaining access to these, our offices. Damage was minimal, however, and at least now we have located the source of the strange odor.
Mister Magonian Corespondent There are indeed puppies in Magonia, Ms. Kidd, and I can assure you that Mr. Fluffster is presently here tucked safe and sound in bed with a snoutful of porridge.
Tevis, The pursuit of Mr. & Mrs. Tevis Sivet had occupied our constabulary for many a moon, but thanks to the interception of this missive I'm pleased to report that both were apprehended twixt flux and detourned.
Dear sirs, Good sir, pray see our response to Mr. Feudfork, above.
Esteemed sir, For the love of Pallas, is there no end to the maddening pursuits of the widowed elderly in our society? Will no one step forward to offer Mrs. Watershey the peaceful rest that she and we so richly deserve? Birdwatching is a blight upon the aged and a pox upon the rest of us. Do not trouble us with these niggling questions again, madam, and we hope you expire at your earliest possible convenience.
To the purported "correspondent" from Magonia: And indeed, we are out of time. Thank you one and all for your letters.
Quench your Curiousity Do you have a question about Magonia? Please contact us via the electronic post and we will do our best to provide an answer. General letters of comment are also welcome and may appear in these pages at the discretion of the editor.
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