Savage Tales

formations near the mountain and he feigned interest while his attention was fully engaged on her. He kissed her.
    That night the village elder asked about his day and he said it had been very enjoyable. The elder said that he was glad of this, and invited the boy to stay on for another day if he so chose. He told the elder he would like to.
    And after two days of staying on, two weeks seemed like nothing, and after several weeks a few months seemed even less. And after many months of time had elapsed, the idea of returning to his own village and his former ways seemed completely impossible to him.
    When the night before his wedding came, the village elder spoke with him. He told the boy that he was glad that he and his daughter would be one. He also asked the boy if he had any constraints from his former life that might hold him. The boy considered, and told the elder the truth, about his mission to get medicine for his father.
    The elder looked at the boy. He told the boy that he could not marry his daughter if such was the case. The wedding would be postponed. First, the boy must return to his village and see what had transpired. The boy protested, weakly, knowing that the elder was right. He said goodbye to his bride-to-be that night and set out the next day.
    It took him one day less on this voyage. His desire to be with his bride impelled him on. He went down to the point where the river and stream met, through the meadow, through the forest, and through the hills where he had played so long ago.
    When he arrived at his village, people stared at him as though they didn't know him or were seeing a ghost. He came to his hut and called out his mother's name. She came out. She looked at him and seemed older, her hair grayer. She asked him where he had been all this time.
    He ignored her question and asked what had become of his father.
    She called his father's name and the man emerged from the hut. He too looked older, but he had lived. He had questions for the boy, and the boy told them of his meeting with the other tribe and his planned marriage.
    His mother asked him why he had not followed his instructions to bring a doctor. She said that his father had nearly died and only been saved by the village shaman. The boy gave no answer to her questions, and the boy's father looked at the boy with anger.
    The boy told his parents that he would leave tomorrow for the other village, and that they were invited to come to his wedding. His parents looked at him with disgust, and went inside their hut, closing the door flap behind them.
    The boy looked at the door covering and decided he would not stay in his village that night. He began the walk back to the other village.
    He slept again in the forest that night.
    In the middle of darkness and dreams, without warning or preamble, a wolf attacked him and tore one of his arms off. The boy then slew the beast. It was a painful experience. He eventually stopped the bleeding on his arm, slept again, and continued walking in the morning.
    When he arrived again at the foreign village, the elder came to meet him. Seeing the boy's injury, he asked him if he was all right.
    The boy told him that he was, and that he had no impediments to marrying his daughter now.

EMILY

    At the Canadian Security Institute of Security (CSIS) the kindergarteners were being led by a morbidly obese gentleman with no testicles through the silver corridors of science fiction pickling into their young brains the sordid details of his job that would lay the foundation for railroad tracks of the synapses that would guarantee a future of mediocrity and bureaucracy for all within earshot including young Emily Poon who sensed the angle, the Ministry of this and that, yes, she'd read 1984 and knew all about it, and she wanted no part of it, so she wandered off and didn't look back, letting go of her partner, the morbidly obese Linda Gleick, an ungodly little Mexican girl who smelled of baking soda and pronounced all her words strangely because she had no teeth, yes, leave, leave Linda and all of them behind, especially the fat man and his giant crippling words and yes even Mrs. Knight her favorite teacher until she brought Emily to this horrid place of fluorescent nightmare.
    As Emily wandered and was ignored by the automatons she could hear disco tracks playing indistinctly in the background the voices blurred and autotuned into oblivion and left the listener feeling like a fool, a fool, except for Emily, who