Once More With Footnotes

garage.
     
                  Car needs a wash. Lunch.
     
                  Solid morning's work, really.
     
                  Back in front of screen.
     
                  Stare at screen.
     
                  Another lady phones to ask if this is Paradise. (Motel up the road apparently has a phone number one digit different from ours.) Give humorous rejoinder number three.
     
                  Sta re at screen.
     
                  Start wondering, perhaps not eagle's fault after all, it just had job to do, it had been flying too many missions, jeez, you get thrown out of eagle air force if you start worrying about the innocent philosophers you're dropping your tortoi ses on. Hatch 22. No.
     
                  Stare at screen.
     
                  No. It was obviously tortoise's idea all along. Had grudge against playwright, perhaps tortoises had been insulted in latest play, perhaps offended at speed-ist jokes, perhaps had seen tortoise shell spectacles: y ou dirty rat, you got my brother. So hijacked eagle, hanging on to desperate bird's legs like the tortoise in the old Friends of the Earth logo, giving directions in muffled voice, vector 19, beepbeepbeep, Geronimooooo ...
     
                  Stare at screen.
     
                  Wonder if ea gle has anything else a desperate tortoise could hang on to.
     
                  Look up biology of birds in encyclopedia in box on stairs. Gosh. Supper.
     
                  Stare at screen. Turn ideas over and over. Tortoises, bald head, eagles. Hmm. No, can't be playwright, what sort of p erson would tortoises instantly dislike?
     
                  Midnight ...
     
                  Stare at screen. Vaguely aware right hand has hit keys to open new file. Start breathing very slowly.
     
                  Write 1,943 words.
     
                  Bed.
     
                  For a day there, thought we weren't going to make it.
     

Short st ories cost me blood. I envy those people who can write one with ease, or at least what looks like ease. I doubt if I've done more than fifteen in my life.
     
    The Sea and Little Fishes, though, was one of the rare story ideas that just popped up. About two we eks later Bob Silverberg popped up, too, and asked if I could write a story for the Legends anthology.
     
    I'm not sure what would have happened if he hadn't; it would probably have become the start of a novel, or a thread in one. It was originally about a th ousand words longer, containing a scene that did nothing but slow it down, according to Bob. He was right. It was quite a good scene, nevertheless, and turned up later in Carpe Jugulum.
     
    The title? Totally made up, but it sounded right. For reasons I can't quite remember now, some years ago I invented the "ancient" saying, "The big sea does not care which way the little fishes swim," and put it in the mouth of a character. It sounds wise, in a slightly stupid kind of way, and I thought it also sounded like the kind of title you got on an award winning story, in which surmise I turned out to be entirely wrong.
     
     
     
     
     
T he S ea and L ittle F ishes
     
                  Trouble began, and not for the first time, with an apple.
     
                  There was a bag of them on Granny Weatherwax's bleached and spotless table. Red and round, shiny and fruity, if they'd known the future they should have ticked like bombs.
     
                  "Keep the lot, old Hopcroft said I could have as many as I wanted," said Nanny Ogg. She gave her sister witch a sidelong glance. "Tasty, a bit wrinkled, but a damn good keeper."
     
                  "He named an apple after you?" said Granny. Each word was an acid drop on the air.
     
                  '"Cos of my rosy cheeks," said Nanny Ogg. "An I cured his leg for him after he fell off that ladder last year. An' I made him up some jollop for his bald head."
     
                  "It didn't work, though," said Granny. "That wig he wears, that's a terrible thing to see on a man still alive."
     
                  "But he was pleased I took an interest."
     
                  Granny Weatherwax didn't take her eyes off the bag. Fruit and v egetables grew famously in the mountains' hot summers and cold