DEAD PRINCEs: An Anarchist Fairy Tale by Danbert Nobacon with illustrations by Alex Cox
DIRK QUIGBY’S GUIDE TO THE AFTERLIFE
by E. E. King
EDITOR’S NOTE
This book came to Exterminating Angel Press in an unusual way. We still don’t know entirely what to make of it, though everyone around here feels it should be published, and in its original form.
It was like this: sometime last year, in the late fall, I went out as usual to walk the dogs in the woods behind the house. There’s a big tree back there, next to the creek, one that’s bigger than all the others, saved from the general logging of the area back at the turn of the twentieth century. It’s a fir, and it’s so big around that you can’t hug it; two people can’t even touch fingers if they try to circle it with their arms. It’s a favorite tree of mine. I usually stop to greet it in some way as I pass.
This particular morning was an early warning of winter, that first early snowfall that surprises you after a warm day. Everything was white and quiet. As I passed the tree, I looked at it the way I always did. And there, leaning neatly up against the trunk of the giant fir tree, sitting up straight on the snow, was a brown paper and string wrapped parcel.
You can imagine how this isn’t a normal sight in the woods behind my house. It’s National Forest back there, and hardly anyone walks there but me. So I was curious. And when I bent down to get the package, I saw that it was addressed like this:
To the Publisher of Exterminating Angel Press located in the woods of the State of Jefferson in the country of Cascadia
I took it home and opened it.
It was a book. Not just a manuscript, a book.There were stamps on the parcel of a type that I certainly have never seen before. No one I’ve shown them to can identify them either. There were a lot of them, stuck on haphazardly, the way you do when you’re not sure how much postage a package is going to take. Most of them were gold lined around the edges, pictures of mountains and rivers—that kind of thing. Two of them were pictures of a young woman holding a crown. I didn’t recognize her.
And there was a note with the book. It claimed the parcel had come to me from another world. Another country in another world.
I asked Alan, our FedEx guy; Jesse, our UPS driver; and Ben, our mailman, if they had any idea where the parcel came from, but all three seemed honestly surprised by the question (except Jesse, who, like all UPS drivers, is too cool to be surprised by anything). So that seems to rule out any kind of regular delivery.
It was later that I remembered that on the night before I found the parcel, I’d heard an owl hooting behind the house. I love owls, so I notice when they hoot. We hadn’t heard one for a long time, is why I remember. But I didn’t connect it with the parcel. Now, though, I’m not so sure.
In the parcel was a book, a fairy tale, with notes from a scholar, explaining its importance to this other world. I don’t know why they sent the book to EAP. The only thing I can think of is that they—and the fairy tale itself—seem to think the Small and Everyday are more important than the Transcendent and the Great. And of course we’re completely on side with that.
We decided to publish the book in the form it was sent to us—though we did add our own illustrations, since the ones that came with the original text appear to be pictures from the actual history of Arcadia, and so probably have little meaning to our own audience.
Whether or not Dr. Alan Fallaize was right in entrusting this work to EAP, only time, I guess, will tell.
The Editor
[What follows is the letter enclosed in the parcel of the book The History of Arcadia: SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY (also known as the Legendus Snottianicus).]
FROM THE DESK OF DR. ALAN FALLAIZE
The Publisher of Exterminating Angel Press
In the land of Cascadia
The state of Oregon
The valley of Colestin
A warm greeting sent to you from Arcadia, and please forgive the hurried note. I have little time to send this parcel safely off to you; the war here means our libraries are in immediate danger, and we have little time to save certain key works.
We have tried several times before this to send other books for response, and to other laboratories, universities, governments, worlds. In fact, we tried several times to send the best known of our Arcadian works, my own ON THE DISCOVERY OF BIOLOGICAL TRUTHS IN FAIRY TALES. Almost every time was a failure. Almost every time the parcel came back “return to sender.” Except for our fairy tales. Technical works do not travel well. Stories do.
As for the importance of this story: we believe the late Professor Devindra Vale discovered, right before her death, that SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is the actual story of real events. We believe she had discovered that what Snotty became literally formed our world.
I’ve no time to explain further. If the present battle should end in our favor, you’ll hear from me again. If not, at least SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY will have found its way to safety. And who knows what happens to Ideas once they find a place in any world.
Yours,
Dr. Alan Fallaize
The Tower By The Pond
St. Vitus’s College
Wrykyn
ARCADIA
As he walked, though, he started to feel lonely.
THE HISTORY of ARCADIA
SNOTTY
SAVES THE DAY
ALSO KNOWN AS The Legendus Snottianicus
EDITED
by DR. ALAN FALLAIZE
WITH FOREWORD AND ORIGINAL NOTES
by PROFESSOR DEVINDRA VALE
ILLUSTRATED
OTTERBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
