Author: admin

Next to the Tesearm steps there once stood a restaurant for about three hundred years. It was called The Distant Thunder, and was known throughout the City for its excellent, reasonably priced food; the various awards it won over the years never seemed to go to the heads of those who ran the place, it was not a ‘posh’ restaurant by any means. They also always seemed up to date with new fashions and developments with food, and whilst there were dishes to which they inevitably kept coming back, they didn’t become inflexible or stuck in their ways.

Amongst other things, The Distant Thunder has been credited with the introduction of salad to (western) Buentoillitants, and with the invention of the Tesearm Step Sandwich. This sandwich, filled with tomato, wilted spinach, artichoke hearts and olives, is usually served warm, inside a foil wrapper so that it can be consumed anywhere, and is still served at The Present Lightning, the spiritual successor to The Distant Thunder which was opened by the Thunder’s previous head chef, Angelique Mansim, three years after a monarchist bomb almost completely demolished the original establishment.

Quite why a restaurant was targetted is still something of a mystery, although most folk believe it was merely a numbers game; on any day of the week, at almost any time, the Distant Thunder would be certain to be filled to the brim with people, and the bombers were looking to cause as much widespread damage as possible; this was the late 20s when their attacks were becoming more generalised as they got more desperate. The place was usually so packed that the queue stretched well out into the street, and diners happily made use of the Tesearm steps to eat and socialise on, meaning that anyone trying to get through had quite the job on their hands.

It took some time before they opened up the new establishment, partly out of respect for the dead. There was some debate on whether simply replacing the old restaurant, nestled in amongst the steps, would show adequate respect for the dead and suffering, so in the end a small garden was decided upon. It is in this garden and on the steps that today many will turn out to honour that death and suffering, usually with food brought over from the Lightning. It began as a sign of resilience and resistance to the attempts by the monarchists to scare Buentoille’s population, as an alternative to rebuilding.

It’s not quite the same as it once would have been, with the waiters running up and down the steps, popping in and out of the three entrances from the restaurant which led out onto them. Yet there is a camaraderie here, and a sense of solidarity that seems most tangible, what with the steps becoming almost entirely packed with folk unwrapping tin foil packages, then taking a hearty bite.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Dreadful Hats
• Mr Canon Ball Day
• The Patter Festival

You’ve probably never heard of Karelan Johan, because Johan was a writer and conceptual artist who never got famous. Which isn’t to say that they weren’t successful. Johan was very successful, it’s just that their name is not normally attached to this success, which is clear in the hundreds of people who vicariously celebrate their work on this day every year.

It’s not that Johan was particularly forgetful as a person; they were a big figure in the art and transgender communities in their time, and were even tipped to be the next big thing their ‘Tattoo Portraits’. These were small, succinct descriptions of people which were written onto their hands and then photographed, an example of the Early Anti-Separatist art movement which proved popular in the 1930s. Yet Johan never really took off with any of this gallery work; this was popularity, not true fame.

Yet it was not these images that led to today’s festival, but instead a series of small fictions, made to seem like real accounts, real journals. These were released all over the City into second hand book stores, where they fitted in well with the other leather-bound, patinated tomes of indiscernible age. These ‘journals’ were produced entirely in secret, and were only found out later when, on their deathbed, Johan confided in a friend.

Every single one of these diaries and journals told, at their collective hearts, beneath layers of the mundane (‘Nantwither came over for dinner today and I stupidly served her boiled ham, oh I am such a fool,’ ‘lost my bike pump today, dad says he will look with me by the canal tomorrow’), the story of a ghost that haunted each and every one of the eighteen fictional journal-writers. Whilst only three of these journals have been discovered or survived bookshop culling, and therefore there is probably much missing from the full tale, the ghost appears to have the same characteristics in each appearance; it is a large, tall woman with long black hair and an enormous leather-and-fur coat. She always appears with the sound of scraping and scrabbling, and leaves rusted nails in her wake.

Out of these three journals, one made the biggest splash; the tale of Orpheus Drummond, a gravedigger at Our Lady of Flowing Halls’ Cemetery. Possibly the final instalment and the only journal where the superfluous disguise of mundane details is stripped back, Drummond’s diary has seemingly had most of its pages torn out, an act probably performed by the artist themselves, given the relative succinctness of the remaining passages. Folk thought that the tiny book, more of a leather-bound pamphlet really, was real, and that such a ghost really did exist, haunting the footsteps of a kindly gravedigger and grounds keeper, constantly dropping rusted nails over his tidy lawn. Before long, ghost hunters heard about the hoaxed book and came out in force, hoping to catch a glimpse of the enigmatic lady.

As it was probably the final text in the art piece, Drummond’s diary provided an explanation for the ghostly apparitions which had only confused the other two ‘witnesses.’ Apparently, she was a hunter who was buried alive beneath the cemetery of Our Lady, having been knocked unconscious by a deer. She awoke beneath six feet of soil and rock, but then died shortly afterwards, leaving scratches on the inside of the coffin lid. Such was the media frenzy around the prank, that several of the bodies in the cemetery were actually exhumed to ensure that they didn’t bear this telltale mark.

Apparently, whilst the ghost constantly followed Drummond around, leaving its nails, others could only hear it today, the anniversary of its burial, when it began once more to scratch and scrabble at the coffin lid. Today, those who still believe this strange tale despite the fact it was long ago disproved as fiction, will sit on the grass with an upturned glass in their hand, trying to listen carefully to the vibrations beneath, trying to make out the sound of nails (human, not rusted iron) on wood.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Desk Sleeping Festival
• Yes No Maybe Festival
• The Lack Festival

Symbols tend to have fixed meanings and associations; it’s part of what makes them a symbol and not simply an image or pictogram. There are many of these symbols all around the City; the little whirlpool for public toilets, the open book for a public library, the specific font type (Robeau’s Last Typeface – round and thick) which signifies official directional signage. There are also those symbols which are more esoteric; the stylised circular barrette of the General Union Council, the skull-like smile of the Onanic Fellowship, the three stacked loaves carved beneath the window of anywhere a baker lived in 1359, so that they might be knocked up at three in the morning to start work. Yet whilst these symbolic meanings might have changed over time, as with the ‘boxing hare’ which has come to symbolise the Warrens on the whole, but was once the symbol for one specific self-defence league, the Knuckles, there are few symbols like the Ussglander coat of arms; symbols which hold multiple contradictory, recognised meanings at once.

The coat of arms is, like many of the examples given above, spread across the City on the side of buildings, over doorways, on bridges, adorning picture frames in galleries and carved into the rafters of many a church. It depicts an eastern white wolf on all fours, wearing a dress. In some instances the dress is finely adorned with bright dots and delicate floral designs, in others it is plain and representative. Beneath the wolf are the numbers 10/10. In the basic sense, the symbol does have a single, undisputed meaning; it represents the Ussglander family; but if you look beyond that things start to get tricky.

All coats of arms have an innate meaning to them, something about the family that they wanted to convey through certain forms of loaded iconography; there is, for example, the symbol of the tree for venerable old age and wisdom, or the wine cup for generosity, or the squirrel for wealth. In other cases there are historical signifiers, like the right and left hands which signify upon which side the family fought in the 1287 Battle of the Bloodied Pancake. Yet when it comes to the wolf in a dress, there are no obvious comparisons (there are some vague associations between wolves and strength, but it is seldom seen in heraldry) or known historical events, so it is assumed that the image instead symbolises some family myth or significant event which happened to early members. Precisely what caused the symbol to be used is where interpretations vary, where a multiplicity of meaning spawns from.

The Ussglander family lived a long time ago, dying out in 1426, but whilst they lived they were perhaps the most influential non-monarchic family existent in Buentoille. The family business seems to have been centred in textile or clothes manufacturing, although by other accounts they made the largest proportion from rent; they owned huge amounts of land, and seemed intent upon building as much on that land as was possible. This is why their coat of arms is still visible throughout the City; they stamped it into whatever they made, and they were obsessed with building grand buildings everywhere. There are (possibly apocryphal) stories about the family living in poverty, despite having a large income, because they were investing so much in building. Unfortunately, as most of the family was illiterate, there is very little known about them beyond this predilection for construction.

The fact of the matter is that there is no real way of verifying any of the stories which are acted out today, in an odd attempt to give each one some sense of credibility. Thousands of folks claim to be descendants of the Ussglanders, who lost the name when their ancestors married into different families, and quite a few of them are probably right. There is a great range of stories which surround the clothed wolf, but they are mostly variations on three base stories (those which are acted out today, like a Catrosondian mystery play): The Child Stealer, The Woman Transformed, and The Bad Disguise.

In The Child Stealer ‘play’, folk will dress up as a pantomime wolf, with a person at the rear and front, wielding a great set of snapping jaws, which are articulated with both hands, like a very large pair of scissors. In this tale, the first of the Ussglanders is carried, as a baby, into the City from some unknown outer place in a picnic basket held in the jaws of the wolf. The basket has a top, which is held closed by a catch which the wolf cannot open. The wolf carries the child up a street full of washer women and is scared off by the child’s future adoptive mother, getting trapped in a dress on a low hanging line in the process. The image remained forever stuck in the mother’s mind, and she would often tell her child about it, who she named after the name on a locket it grasped in its tiny hands. In the ‘play’, the wolf runs through Castoff street, which is filled with hanging washing, and whoever can trap it in a blanket gets the contents of this year’s hamper (usually a sweet treat rather than a baby).

In The Woman Transformed, the family’s matriarch is given a glamour by a witch that, instead of making them young and beautiful as they’d intended, turns them to a wolf on the night of every full moon. As this ‘play’, women from Callow Hand House, which is adorned with the coat of arms, will dress up as wolves, usually just with masks, dresses and tails, and terrorise the local men, chasing them around the halls. Apparently the family built a circus around the wolf matriarch, and this proved very popular earning the family enough capital to start up their business.

In The Bad Disguise the wolf comes to the City, looking for mischief, dressed as a human to avoid suspicion. For many this works, and they do not see a wolf but a beautiful young woman who breaks many hearts, steals lots of money, and eats plenty of children when adults aren’t looking. Yet the nascent family do realise the disguise, and they strip the wolf, revealing it for what it is, then cast it out. They are celebrated for many days. This play is more traditional in its storytelling efforts, and there is little audience participation at the old dye works yard where it is held. The story is thought to be allegorical of the family unveiling some royal wrongdoing.

All three ‘plays’ are held today, on this, the tenth day of the tenth month, which is what people have always assumed the ‘10/10’ meant. It could, of course, have signified to contemporaries that the family were a good financial bet. Each local group that hosts the plays claims that theirs was set up by the family themselves long ago, in an attempt to make it seem more true and to discredit the others. Quite why anybody cares so much is a question that nobody seems to be able to answer.

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Other festivals happening today:

• Show us the Heart Festival
• The Festival of Trumpet Malfeasance
• The Attenuated Salt Crust Festival

Whatever you do, do not go into the sea surrounding Buentoille today. Apart from the fact it’s probably very cold at this time of year, there is another, far more pressing reason. Three o’clock in the afternoon is the time to avoid most strongly, although staying on dry land for the entire day is advised, just in case. If you were in the sea at three today, when the Unearthly Horn sounds, then you would feel very, very uncomfortable, and for some people who are less confident swimmers, there is a risk of death as this discomfort could make them panic and begin to flail.

The Unearthly Horn is actually very much of the earth, despite its name, which was devised because the horn seems to affect the sea and not the earth or air most strongly. At least, this is the story; it’s likely that the name stuck because it sounds eerie and dramatic, and because ‘unearthly’ is a fairly accurate way of describing the deep sound that emanates into the ocean in boiling ripples. To most Buentoillitants it sounds fearful, raising the pulse and making hairs stand on end.

On land the horn call is very affecting to a person, making the knees tremble and the joints ache, especially in the elderly and arthritic. Some have described it as causing pain in their hearts too, possibly as the sound wave interferes with their heartbeat in some way. According to a recent study, those who are caused heart pain by the noise hear it as a deep, polyphonic noise, whereas those who are pained in the joints hear a deep note, but also a high one too, as if a saxophonist were struggling to keep their instrument in a lower octave and it were screeching intermittently in a higher one.

In the water these effects are increased in potency, and then there is the added danger of drowning. As the sound wave travels through the water it is, close to the surface, boiled briefly, which can cause burns to the skin, which is likely exposed in swimmers. The body is battered too, pulled around by the sound wave. If you had your head beneath the water, your ear drums would immediately burst. Feelings of sickness are commonly reported in those who either ignore, flaunt or do not see the advice to keep out of the water.

It’s often remarked that one of the strangest things about the Horn is that, despite these significant and powerful effects, it only takes eleven people to power. The Unearthly Horn is located at Corpse Point, a limestone island which once connected to Buentoille Bay through a sandbar. To put it more accurately, the island is the Horn; this ‘island’ is little more than a rock above water, upon which the eleven members of the Licensed People’s Unearthly Company (LPUC) will comfortably fit as they take their positions and wait for the clock to strike three. They will sit by of the openings in the little stone pyramid, and then on the hour they will blow into these openings in a synchronised, rhythmic manner, each stopping for breath in timed succession, so that the noise doesn’t stop for a full three minutes. They are crouched and stood around the rock in strange positions, so each small air tube can be reached.

Whilst it was long assumed that the tubes that percolate down from these openings, and which are shaped in such a way that they produce the unearthly noise, were naturally occurring, new theories suggest that they were created, rather than merely exploited by humans, potentially with the use of strong acids to direct the erosion of the rock. This ‘new’ theory was raised by Etock Lerm in 2007, and is far from being the scientific orthodoxy on the creation of the Unearthly Horn. This is partly because the theory lacks a serious explanation of how the enormous instrument would be planned, but also because there is very little research into the large sea rock, as access to it is restricted to all but the LPUC, and only then on this day; the LPUC keep a constant watch on the rock, arresting and prosecuting anyone who attempts to play the instrument.

Other than the obvious and immediate reasons for restricting use of the Horn, there is another which only becomes fully apparent about twenty minutes after its sounding; the Buentoilliçan mackerel cull. This is also the reason that the use of the Horn has persisted over the years, rather than dying out because of the discomfort and danger it causes. In earlier times, the horn would be sounded when the City’s food stores ran low, but since the Fisheries Act of 1726 its use has been restricted to the single day to protect fish stocks and prevent environmental devastation. It is sounded today as at this time of the year most of the Buentoilliçan mackerel are beyond its influence and therefore the impact is lessened, but also because those fish which float to the surface, ready to be plucked out with ease by anyone with a boat, can be smoked in time to be eaten over the long winter months.

Thankfully there are no other species of fish affected by the dreadful noise, or at least not effected enough to be killed like the mackerel, which seems to be stunned into a catatonic state. As mackerel are obligate ram breathers; i.e. they require constant movement to be able to breathe; this catatonic state eventually leads to their death, and they float to the surface. There will be folk out skimming the water with nets today, gathering as many fish as they can, which are then either smoked or baked into an ‘unearthly pie’, which has fish heads poking out above the crust, as if they are trying to breathe the air.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Unlikely Gestation
• The Dreamer’s Web Festival
• Cool Breeze Empty Mind Day

Yesterday, in 1888, the student protest group, the Benetek Revolutionary Army, staged a mass protest outside the High House, a large, domed hall with accompanying library tower that serves as the central point of Benetek University. They were calling for the removal of the Vice Chancellor, Vitor Lamm, who had recently passed a pay review that reduced the pay of junior lecturers, and the house and grounds-keeping staff, whilst raising his pay to astronomical levels. As well as students, many of the lecturers (both junior and senior) and staff were there to make their voices heard too.

After some time there was an attempt to enter the High House through the main doors, which was unsuccessful as they had been locked and barricaded by the University management and security teams earlier in the day. Instead, the crowds walked around the building, chanting all the way, trying different doors as they went. The building had about thirty entrances, and it seemed as if most were barred and could not be entered with anything less than a battering ram, not a piece of equipment anyone had thought to bring. However, the security team had forgotten about one door.

The Museum of Earth Sciences was supposed to be open to the public, and it was, but it was so boring that barely anyone ever went there. It was hidden away at the rear end of the High House, below ground level, with little semicircle windows meeting the cobbles outside. The protestors poured down the little set of steps and through the door which was unlocked for them by Squigg, a dusty little caretaker and expert in various academic fields who was sympathetic to the cause. The protestors then hauled a large glass cabinet out from its place in the wall, creating an opening through which they gained access to the High House proper. Before long they had the place occupied, the security team subdued (three priceless vases were smashed in the fracas) and their own barricades constructed.

There was one problem. The protestors had intended to occupy the High House until such a point that the Vice Chancellor was forced to resign. They had hoped they might catch him inside and take him hostage, even, but he was elsewhere in the City, in his private mansion, and just hours later he was coordinating a response, hoping to use his contacts with various militia-wielding aristocrats to besiege the building. This had not been planned for; the protestors had expected to be able to send out teams to get supplies with no resistance as the security team had been dealt with. Instead, when they woke up from their makeshift beds the next day, they looked out the windows and saw a cordon of hundreds of burly soldiers surrounding the House.

The Benetek Revolutionary Army (BRA) were not without their own friends though, the question was, how did they call on their help? They were entirely surrounded, and anyone leaving would be sure to be arrested immediately. Eventually, that night when pretty much all the food in the High House was expended, they hit upon a plan. Under cover of darkness, one of their number would sneak out and steal the bike which had been chained to a drainpipe near one of the entrances for about six months, which they would then ride down the hill and to safety, whereupon they would gather help from other revolutionary groups of anarchists and socialists, with whom the BRA had great solidarity. A rope pulley system was devised, so that these black-clothed groups could drop off supplies into a basket, which would then be raised to a window, at a lesser protected part of the High House, in the dead of night.

That ride, originally performed by Yaan Harvouria, is today re-enacted by whoever leads the Benetek University Steering Committee, the group of students and staff that now manages the University, having replaced the Vice Chancellor later that year when the occupation proved a success. Another Vice Chancellor was appointed by the Traitor King when he saw the University as a challenge to his power, but the Committee was re-established when the Revolution came. In scenes reminiscent of the occupation, students and staff will today enter the High House via the museum, heading to the main hall, where the Committee is voted in. Whoever becomes the Chair is then led to that side door, and placed on the same old rickety bike. The trip down the hill is very uncomfortable, the bike having no suspension, and the hill being cobbled, rather than tarmac-clad. Yet it is a necessary sacrifice that the Chair must make to show their dedication to the University. It is considered good form to remain seated for the entire trip, to bear the bumps and bruises that leave you unable to sit down for a week, the results of this Bone Shaking Ride.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Untimely Health
• The Disciples of Naryman’s Death Day
• The Euphoric Backpack Festival

It’s not normal for the witches of Strigaxia to be seen outside of their city; they hold no embassy in Buentoille, and almost all Strigaxian visitors have been other parts of their much-feared society. Some scholars have theorised that this lack of communication is why Strigaxia continues to be fearful for Buentoillitants, for the unknown is always scary. In opposition, others cite events like that which is remembered today as evidence for righteous, reasoned fear. On this day in 1255, a real Strigaxian witch was discovered in the City.

The event having occurred so long ago, there are obviously various issues with the stories and reports that surround that day. Perhaps most famous in written reports of the discovery is the Adentis Trychlear, or Witch Hunter’s Guide (1431), the first written ‘study’ on witches, which subdivides them into various sections. The section on ‘Wytchys Strigaxoria’ was allegedly written after various conversations with ‘folke werthee of myne truhste’ who had been told about the Strigaxian witch by their great grandparents who had witnessed it themselves. It describes a creature ‘alyke in construktshun to a talle laydee’ who had the ability to turn into a cat or snake at will, and in whose mouth there was hidden the mandibles of a preying mantis. Her fingers allegedly ended in sharp points, with no nails but a steady hardening of the flesh, and her hair seemed to lengthen or shorten as she desired, or perhaps with her emotional state.

Given that this ‘guide’ was written almost two centuries after the actual event, and given the capacity of stories to morph as time goes on, this description is, in all likelihood, false, or fanciful at best. Contemporary written accounts, such as the court documents that regard to the witch’s trial, make no reference to the appearance, simply stating that she was very clearly a ‘wytche of that moste eyvlle citee, Strygaxya.’ There were no charges listed against the witch (it seems the trial was a perfunctory formality, which may have even been carried out after the execution), but it was noted that the witch was caught by Ertine Trugth, whilst it was preparing a ‘machyne innefernalle’ using the blood of a child. There is no information given about how the witch was caught; whilst the Adentis Trychlear seems to believe that this a feat requiring several holy artefacts, it is unlikely that Trugth, who was a poor weaver, had access to these. There is one part where the Witch Hunter’s Guide does seem to hit on the truth, however; when you have caught your witch, whatever you do you must not burn it.

This lesson was one learned by the people of Buentoille the hard way, and it is this mistake that is today remembered, partly as a way of commemorating the victims, and partly as a way of teaching successive generations not to make the same mistake again. The festival is formed in two parts; firstly there is the building of the bonfire the placement of the witch-effigy (which is usually a simple straw figure swathed in black fabric) atop it. When the bonfire is complete, then torch-bearers come to light it, but have their way blocked by the crowds. Out of the crowd, the Memoriam steps forward, and makes an eloquent speech that explains the dreadful effects of burning the witch, but this person is cast aside by the torch-bearers, and they light the fire. As soon as it is lit, the assembled crowds cover their faces and leave to fetch water from the river, which is cast upon the pyre, leaving a smouldering mess.

The second part of the festival deals with the commemoration, with the effects that were caused when there was no attempt to stop the fire, no Buentoillitants with pails of water to save the day. In the three days that followed the burning, almost every person who had been present, who had inhaled in some way the smoke and ashes that poured off the witch’s body as if she were made of dry ice, fell very ill. They seemed to have some terrible fever, and screamed out all night, sweating and contorting. On the third day they awoke, and seemed preternaturally calm. The torch-lit vigil of small rowing boats that winds its way down the Moway tonight mirrors the path their floating bodies would have taken to the sea, after they cast themselves, en masse, into the frigid waters from Tricchol Bridge, itself closed for the night.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Jovial Noise
• The Quick Brown Fox Festival
• The Day of Haughtiness Revenged

There are some animals that people seem predisposed to hate: rats, spiders, snakes, flies. Wasps are a curious one, always defined in opposition to bees; they are so alike, yet thin and nasty, with no stores of sugar to share around. They create hard little polyps on trees to breed, reminding us of the parasites that dig beneath human skin. Their homes are made from sallow paper, crumbling bones to the full, fleshy wax of the beehive. You will never see a fluffy wasp. Still, there are some who prefer wasps, despite all these reasons. There are even some people who treat them as something far more than a mere insect.

Withall Henree had a very successful career as a genetic researcher before he was hit by a tram in 1978. Someone had spilled a large quantity of milk on the pavement, which he, late for a meeting, slipped up on and hurtled into the tramway. Thankfully he survived, but had suffered severe head trauma. Before the accident, Henree had been sequencing the genomes of various animals, and had recently completed that of the tentacular wasp, a subspecies of wasp primarily differentiated because of the strange tentacle-like forms it builds on the bottom of its paper nests. There are usually five or six to a nest, and they spiral downwards in a naturalistic manner; the effect is for the nest to appear something like a stranded jellyfish hanging from a tree or part of a building.

There was something very odd about the tentacular wasp: unlike a honey bee, for example, which has something in the region of 250 million base pairs in its genome, the wasp had well over 7 billion, far more than even a comparatively complex organism like a human. This number could well be even higher; Henree had not finished sequencing when he was hit by the tram, and indeed, he claimed to be mulling over the strangeness of such a large genome when he slipped on the milk. Base pairs are component parts of DNA; they are essentially pieces of code which, in combination, determine how an organism is formed and functions. They tell your body what colour eyes it should have, how tall you should grow, how quickly you use energy and various other factors, many of which are still being discovered today. It made no sense that an organism so simple would need so complex a DNA chain.

After the accident, however, it all seemed to make perfect sense to Henree. The wasps were simply doing something else, something that we couldn’t see. Whilst he sustained a good deal of damage to his prefrontal cortex, Henree seemed perfectly capable of working and carrying on as normal, despite the development of uncharacteristic mood swings, and a sudden adoration for the works of the harpsichordist Seman Varrik and goose eggs. He became obsessed with studying the hibernation states of tentacular wasp queens, the only member of the colony to overwinter in this manner. According to his logic, this is when the ‘something else’ they were doing would be most easily discerned, as there were no other activities covering it up.

All the peer reviews of the papers he wrote on the studies he performed were thrown out as ridiculous, unreplicable. The tiny twitches that he claimed he saw in the hibernating insects weren’t verified by anyone else, and the changes in gas composition were negligible. Most of all, Henree provided no theory or framework as to how the excess DNA of the tentacular wasp was supposed to interact with or create these barely-recordable changes. Eventually Henree lost his job by neglecting the studies he was supposed to be carrying out, instead focusing on the wasps. Yet he was not done yet; it was at this point that Henree realised that the ‘something’ being performed by the wasps was spiritual; they were connecting with some higher, divine being, the unknowable spark that created the earth and life and yet which seems so distant to us in our modern world. Perhaps the wasps understand it because they are more alike to it than we are?

The tentacular wasp is a very specific creature, only choosing to go into hibernation when the weather has been below ten degrees for at least five days. Similarly, it will awaken if the temperature rises above this level for a further five days, a mechanism designed to ensure that it outlasts the winter, when no food is available. Henree keeps a special chamber, wherein these flying insects are contained at a constant temperature, to ensure their survival in case of premature good weather. Today, he, and his fellow ‘researchers’ from the Enlightened Seers of the Great Wasp in the Sky (ESGWS), will gather wasps to them with a low electronically generated thrum, and trap them inside the chamber, ready to hibernate for another year. There they will be observed winterlong, their infinitesimal and possibly non-existent twitches interpreted as godly speech.

This is a big day for the ESGWS, and spirits will be high. Henree, now in his eighties, is like to give a tearful speech, after which a large bowl of rum punch will be shared out, served with blue cheese and crackers, the low thrum replaced with the music of Seman Varrik, who is considered something akin to a saint in this pseudo-religious organisation. Finally, before the night is out (at the early time of 10pm), the ‘researchers’ will all chant together a small section of the sequenced tentacular wasp genome, the thousand-or-so base pairs which are theorised by Henree to form the link between the wasps and their god, with whom they constantly commune. Perhaps, if they keep it up, they too will be blessed with the touch of its alien mind?

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Apportioning Blame
• The Snake in the Grass Festival
• Map Drawing Day

The best place to hear the Anguished Howl is out of the City, either on a high hill or a cliff overlooking the coast. At one time the City would have been a fine place to hear the Howl, but since about 1940 it has been steadily reducing in volume, reason for which has not been ascertained; in Buentoille the noises of the City can easily drown out this far-off, wind-carried yell.

This is a shame, because at one point festival proceedings on this day would have centred around Expeditionary Pier. Whilst there have been some attempts to instigate silence upon the surrounding district, there is no silencing the crashing waves of the sea which will be particularly noisy today, what with the high wind speeds that accompany the Anguished Howl. The Pier was not only a good, close location from which to hear the noise (it being on the edge of the City and facing out to sea, where the Howl seems to originate), it was also an excellent location to create an associative link between the Great Expedition and the mournful Howl.

Expeditionary Pier was built in the late sixteenth century to help dock the tallships that Buentoillitants hoped would be attracted to the City by the colony the Great Expedition hoped to set up. As such it is entirely useless for most docking procedures, it being raised several metres in the air, but it has been maintained ever since as a reminder of the hubris it symbolises. This hubris is the central rhetorical thrust designed to be conveyed by the festival, parts of which are still performed on the Pier, but which moves elsewhere to hear the Howl. Yet this is not the way in which Buentoillitants always thought about the Great Expedition – for a short while it was more closely associated with righteous, impotent anger, and a sense of betrayal.

When the Howl first started to be heard in 1616, it was a gift to Aether Tyewell, the anti-expansionist, anti-colonialist writer and activist whose work has shaped the attitude of most Buentoillitants towards colonialism and Buentoille’s brief foray into its waters in the form of the Great Expedition. The Howl sounded the day after the ninth anniversary of the Expedition, shocking many Buentoillitants as, at that point, it was very loud. There was a rush to attempt an explanation of the phenomenon, which sounded like the scream of some giant pining for their dead lover, carried on the strong autumnal wind. There is still no definitive scientific explanation; most theories centre around it being the sound created by a particularly large gust of wind being funnelled through the Tibizian Straits, which acts something like an amplifying cone pointed directly at the City, yet there is no understanding of why this happens at the same time once a year, why it only started in 1616, or how it travels across so great a distance and remains so loud. No matter science, Tyewell saw a great opportunity in the timing of the noise.

Every year the loved ones of those who ventured out with the Expedition, and lost their lives fairly soon after they had exited the Tibizian Straits into the Outer Ocean, where almost all of the boats were sunk or captured by the Picaroon Consulate, gathered on Expeditionary Pier, where they held vigil. This would happen yesterday, when the Expedition set sail, and would be accompanied by various firebrand speechmakers who swore revenge on the piratical fleets and the Seven Cities Trading Company who had betrayed them, by building up a greater, more militaristic fleet of their own. The general consensus was that the Buentoillitants who were killed in the conflict did so for good cause, for the honour and glory of Buentoille; that their deaths were righteous. Tyewell sought to change all this, and they succeeded; today the festival held on the Pier and across the high, quiet places near the City focuses on the hubris and tragedy of the event, the greed and trickery by which it was allowed to happen, and the necessity of ensuring that it never happens again.

When the Great Expedition ventured into the high seas that day, they were expecting to be left alone by the Picaroon Consulate, to be given safe passage across their territory, as negotiated by the Seven Cities Trading Company. The fact of the matter was that only ships flying the Trading Company’s flag were given safe passage, and that the Buentoillitant fleet, unprepared for sea warfare (yet fully prepared to subjugate the natives where they planned to land) were attacked almost immediately. This was all a clever ruse by Golga Cherm, a future Master of the Company, who suggested the Expedition to Buentoille, telling them of the riches they would gather if they made a colony in the (fictional) place he marked on their maps. Cherm’s intention was to weaken Buentoille’s control over the trade routes of the Inner Sea, once almost the entirety of the City’s naval forces were destroyed. Unfortunately for Buentoille, the plan worked. It was not only those who died and their families that suffered; thousands had invested in the colony and they lost that money to the bottom of the sea; a small financial crisis erupted.

If it wasn’t for the Howl and the accompanying work of Tyewell, Buentoille, at this time fertile ground for authoritarian sentiment, might have been pulled down a more militaristic route in response to the tragedy, and more would have died as a result. Tyewell helped the City realise that the Expedition had been driven by greed, and that it wouldn’t have been worth the lives, even had it succeeded. The Howl was, she claimed, an echo of the pain caused by the irresponsible attempt at colonial rule; it was the sound of Buentoillitants dying away from their beloved home, reverberating through time each year to the day they died, a day after they set off. Then, as today, her anti-colonialist sentiments and arguments were formed into speeches, read out on that Pier, backed up by the Howl. The vigil is still held, a reminder of young lives wasted in service of dubious goals, of imagined riches. Candles are lit and the names of the dead read out, and after the final name the Anguished Howl comes, nowadays just a whisper in a gust, still strong enough to snuff out all the candles at once.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Boiled Meats
• The Brine Slinger Festival
• Dullen Day

Look at the reading list for any university literature course, and you will find Mansir Paelen, nestled amongst the other greats in his rightful place. His heady prose, with its inexplicable yet inexorable logic, and his capricious plots where the anodyne has hidden teeth and trickery waits around each corner, are now a familiar part of the Buentoilliçan literary canon, but this was not always the case; Paelen was both a writer and an activist, and wrote scathingly about the failings of the monarcho-capitalist system, and his works were, as a result, repressed thoroughly by the Traitor King and his predecessors.

It was not only in his Polemical Treatises (as Paelen’s non-fictional writings, published only via samizdat methods, have come to be known) that Paelen’s politics were expounded; he also wrote a great deal of fiction, most of which was allegorical in nature. The most famous of these novels and short stories was called The Entrapment of Ersa Cerna, which was actually taken on by the publishers Quine House before it was found out that Morgan Morganson, the alleged author, was actually one of Paelen’s pseudonyms. Quine House promptly dropped it from production when they found out, for fear of losing their license, but by that time there were already thousands of copies of the book in circulation, not all of which the censors could track down. It is around this book that the celebrations today are based.

You will likely see them, if you travel on Goldphelious’ Annulus today: the literary critics, the teachers, the appreciators and literary historians. They all gather with their copies of The Entrapment and various other texts with the name Paelen emblazoned on their covers, a stark contrast to the original publications which employed misdirection on their covers and deception so as not to incriminate their readers. Besides the book covers, the scene would not have looked so different about two hundred years ago, when the gathering first began, save that there would have been many more revolutionaries and social activists amongst the crowds, fewer books, and the conversations they had would have been quieter, more measured, though not lacking in the enthusiasm for Paelen’s work shown today. Why did they choose to gather on this train? For two reasons; firstly it was a fairly inconspicuous place to gather and discuss banned works, and any caught could claim they were just a commuter, so long as they didn’t bring their book with them (most chose not to). Secondly, it was the setting of The Entrapment of Ersa Cerna.

In the book, the beleaguered protagonist, Ersa Cerna, is trapped on a train (which, though not named, is identified by several small details to be that which travels around Goldphelious’ Annulus) because she cannot pay the ‘exit fee’ of the train after accidentally dropping her purse out the window. When she reveals this to the attendant who staffs the door, he tells her that as she cannot pay she must also pay a fine before she is allowed to leave. This farcical episode is only the beginnings of Cerna’s nightmarish struggles with bureaucracy and debt, which slowly grows as the ‘fee’ begins to accrue interest as the train travels onward.

In this dreamlike alternate world in which the protagonist finds herself, she must beg others for money and take on strange work in exchange for spare change. Her moral compass begins to deteriorate, and she begins to steal from other passengers, but can never earn enough money to both pay the exit fee and feed herself with the extortionately priced food that the railway sells. She attempts to jump out a window, but cannot fit though and is fined even further. Eventually she strikes up a relationship with another woman who brings her food, allowing her to steal enough money to get out, but is told that her debt has been sold on to another rail company, who have raised the interest rate. The book ends darkly: Cerna hangs herself in the train toilet, never having obtained her freedom.

The allegorical tale has been described as a ‘surgical excoriation’ of the economic systems that create and perpetuate poverty, and is considered a classic in modern Buentoille. In an interview with the socialist paper The Sound of Morning, Paelen claimed that he thought up the plot when he was momentarily trapped in a similar situation; there really was an ‘exit charge’ on some privately run Buentoilliçan rail lines before the Great Rail Conglomeration of 1907, and Paelen had not known that the particular exit fee he was supposed to pay had been hiked that day, so had not brought enough money with him. Thankfully, in Paelen’s case he was allowed to leave the train but ordered to pay up later.

It is perhaps ironic that those who gathered to discuss his work, and to organise against economic injustice, all paid the entry and exit fees that kept the immoral rail companies going, yet these sessions no doubt spawned many of the anti-monarchist, anti-capitalist groups which later brought about the Revolution, so most would agree it was worth it. In contrast, today there are no charges for travelling Goldphelious’ Annulus, and there will even be free copies of The Entrapment laid out on the tables, on this, the birthday of Mansir Paelen.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Misplaced Scorn
• The Essence of Her Breath Festival

Even in the day, walking through Barrowman’s Holloway can be an eerie experience. This ancient trackway, furrowed into the earth through thousands of years of usage, leads up around the edge of Deep Hall forest and to the foot of Ceaen Moor, where an ancient, abandoned settlement is kept exposed on the hillside by the prevailing wind. Perhaps this settlement, called Deep Hall for reasons lost, was a sister to that proto-Buentoille that lies beneath the City, no wind or wild horse of its own to keep it from being buried. Nowadays it is only home to the occasional litter of baby wolves, and few travel the Holloway. Mostly it is kept clear by wild animals and water that flows down it during periods of high rainfall, yet it still attracts the occasional traveller, beguiled in by its tunnel-like branches, intertwined so that you feel entirely separate to the world, in some strange other place.

Many travellers will come to the Holloway today, mostly those of occult sensibilities, in the hopes of seeing the Stranger, a mythical figure written about in the journal of the photographer Eddin Serele, who became convinced, towards the end of his life, that he had been meeting with a ghost every year. For those who travel Barrowman’s Holloway, which is thought to be the longest of all Holloways near the City, the possibility of seeing a ghost seems likely, given the otherworldly nature of the place. All sound from the outside world passes overhead in this sunken zone, and your own footsteps seem to reverberate around, sounding as if they were behind you in some places, where the track winds around an outcrop of rock or turns for some other, unknown reason. It can quite easily seem as if there is someone else there with you, even if you are entirely alone.

Serele’s father, Holmstop Serele, was a constant fascination throughout his life. He was an enigmatic figure; Serele never seemed to know what it was that he did for work (his mother would not tell him), only that he went away for long periods of time. He would return only for a day or so before once again leaving, but the time he spent with Serele seemed, to him, somewhat magical. Later on, after Holmstop died, Serele’s mother admitted that his father had another family, who did not know about them. Apparently he made elaborate chimney pots at a workshop in Sleade Yard. Serele wrote in his journal that this seemed ‘offensively pedestrian,’ that they must be speaking of two different men. This was not the same man who, on Eddin’s birthday each year, would walk him down Barrowman’s Holloway, only revealing his present when they got to the end, where the sunken track opened up onto a hilltop. Just them, in their own separate world, their footsteps reverberating around them.

Later in his life, Serele became a celebrated photographer, who documented much of the Revolution with the camera his father gave him at the end of one of these birthday trips. Inside his journal was tucked a photograph of his father, taken by Serele that day. He’s sitting atop the hill, and you can see Deep Hall behind him. It’s remarkably good quality for someone who’d never used a camera before; Holmstop has an arresting presence in the photograph, as if he is looking straight back at you. He is very handsome, and judging from the angle of the photo, very tall also. He has some stubble, and a heavy brow which seems inquisitive, rather than angry. He looks as if he is finding something quietly very funny. They never walked back through the Holloway, but this time Serele wanted to, to take some photographs of this place he loved so well. ‘You must not,’ said his father, ‘ever take a camera into that place.’ He was not angry, or insistent, just firm.

None of those walking in the Holloway today will take a camera with them, nor will they travel in groups of any more than two, staggered out across the day. Some choose to bring ghost hunting tools with them; electrostatic receptors and the like; whereas others think that this will actually reduce their chances. If you read Serele’s diary, they say, you will see how they always met the Stranger without any artificial help. Some walk at night, others at twilight; both times ghosts are likely to make themselves known; but most walk in the day, when Serele and his father were always there, every year on this day for Serele’s birthday. Some don’t believe that their walk will yield any results, that there was something about Holmstop Serele that made the Stranger want to show himself.

It was three days before Eddin’s seventeenth birthday that his father died, but he wasn’t told until the day itself; his mother didn’t know until then. He was angry, he didn’t believe her. He decided to walk the Holloway by himself; surely he’d meet his father there. In his haste he forgot to leave his camera behind, as per his father’s instruction. He didn’t listen to what his mother was telling him about how he had died, about how it was going to be okay and they were going to be allowed to visit the body the next day. His mother rarely cried, and part of him was shocked, wanted to stay and to comfort her, to tell her that it was fine, he wasn’t dead, he was going to meet him. He was so deep in thought, walking up the Holloway, that he almost bumped into the Stranger coming the other way around a bend.

The Stranger was, according to Serele’s journal, a tall man, with a walking stick and a leather backpack slung over one shoulder. He seemed old, with wrinkled skin, yet was spry and fit looking; Serele suspected he was actually middle aged, but years outdoors had weathered him. His clothes were tatty, and he smelled somewhat. ‘Have you seen my father?’ Serele said, as soon as he looked at him, and he realised that these were the first words that he’d said to the Stranger, and though he’d met him here every year for almost his whole life he had forgotten about it. His father had always said hello, and shaken the Stranger’s hand, but he had held back, and afterwards he was an unimportant detail on an important day, so easy to slip though the cracks of memory.

Nor had he ever heard the Stranger speak. His voice was thin and weak, the voice of a man who had not spoken in some time, and Serele had to lean in close to hear him. ‘In the village,’ was all he said, pointing up the hill toward Deep Hall. Eddin thanked him and turned to walk away, but as he did he felt the camera in his pocket, took it out, and took a photograph of the Stranger walking away, so as not to forget him again. When he looked up from the camera, he was gone, probably around the bend. His father was not at the top of the hill, or in Deep Hall, where the grass is short around the old stone foundations. You don’t need to to be told to know that the picture, when developed, was just the empty Holloway.

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Other festivals happening today:

• The Festival of Pasty Pastries
• The Otter’s Dam Festival
• The Festival of the Private Island’s Opening