A Sudden Glut of Gluttons

[Treadwell]

Afternoon of the nineteenth day of the eighth month, 213.

The royal bedroom suite in New Hibera, specifically the bedchambers devoted to Richard Aengus--now going by "Queen Mother" since delivering children and giving the title of King to his half-brother, Orin Barrin--and to the infants Lora and Lara.

A grouchy Orin Barrin comes toddling in through the door separating their bedrooms, grumpy and puffy-faced and roused from a nap for "What, Richard? I was fast asleep, and you sent Angela in there to wake me up to show me what?"

The King and personal physician to the Queen Mother stops inside the bedroom, hands on his fat hips, wearing merely his white nightgown and slippers.

"Clothes! And not so loud, Orin. The babies are sleeping in their cribs, by the bed," comes the jolly squeak from the owner of a shadow about to emerge through the bathroom door.

"Clothes? Richard, I've seen you in every state from fully naked to fully garbed! What is so important that you had to wake me up to see now?"

The Queen Mother's head pops through the crack of the door to the bathroom, merry and floofy-pink-bearded as ever--and grinning.

"I've been thinking a lot--"

"May Tubbius have mercy."

"Indeed! About Tubbius and Marta and how they dress for their comfort."

The white fairy king frowns. "Tubbius is as naked as fairies first pushed from their mothers, Richard. He's unclothed save the white hairs of his chest and beard and the grass sprouting from everywhere else. Marta always dresses lightly, as she spends most of her time abed, about to deliver or in the act. Anyone who's a proper Tubbian, such as all of New Hibera, knows these facts."

"Indeed, again! And I pondered, old man--"

"Yes, dear girl?"

"Pondered! How might I, as head official of our church here in New Hibera, honor both of them at the same time? I finally decided it could be through how I dress."

"Richard, you know our rules for mothers. You've lived by them ever since your, ahem, alterations. You must dress in a distinctly feminine fashion, given your status of motherhood. Going around as naked as Tubbius Himself would not be remotely dignified." The fairy king plumps onto the edge of the bed. "Well? Go ahead. What did you have our round old Angela make for you, then?"

"A matching dress and nightgown, done in the same purple cloth as my Tubbian robes."

"That's nothing extraordinary so far, old girl. A little more plumpness all around for a skirt and bustle for the dress? Not worth waking me up." A yawwwwn jiggles the whitewing's jowls.

"Oho! But what is it that makes every mother the same in our kind? What is it they're forced to cover up with their clothing, something no one's ever thought to show to everyone else?"

"I'm not following. To the point, Richard. I want back in bed."

Out of the bathroom waddles the fat fairy mother, wearing a purple dress from neck to toe, with excessively poofy bustle behind as suspected; Tubbians must dress big to make themselves look even more rotund! However, two subtle changes are visible first.

A button holds the two sides of the top together.

The entire belly is exposed all the way around to the sides.

"By Tubbius's great gut, Richard, what is it you're wearing?"

The fairy queen mother erupts into tummy-jiggling giggles.

"Orin, it's rather simple."

"What is? That you look like an oaf? You--you're half-clothed! You might as well be waddling about with nothing covering your woman's parts either!"

A pudgy, pink finger comes up, tapping the king's lips to shush them.

"The top is a convenience. With our kind, babies stay at their mothers' breasts for years, possibly decades! Feeding them must be simpler than it has been, what with having to find a room and nearly disrobe every time they need a suckle."

A simple shrug of agreement from the doctor-king. "You speak truth. And your big, baggy gut flopping about?"

"My honor to Tubbius and Marta both in one moment: inspired by the look of Tubbius, hee hee, but honoring Marta by exposing something very precious that all of Hibera's mothers have in common."

"The belly?"

Another tap of finger to lips.

"No, no, no! The mother's light! We're made to cover it up in our blouses and dresses and gowns, but it's one of the most blessedly beautiful things about the whole experience!"

Orin Barrin frowns and slowly shakes his head, reaching up to rub his sleepy eyes.

"You really have taken up this cause of being a woman--no, of being a mommy--wholeheartedly, Richard. I don't know why we don't just have someone clip your manhood off and sew you up. You've given up being anything resembling male entirely, except for the beard!"

Giggles from both parties.

"Dear me, old girl. Well, I haven't been able to talk any sense into you ever since all this began. You do have a splendid glow about your middle from the birthing. . . ."

The doctor sighs as the grin on Richard's face only grows.

"Fine, fine, fine! Make yourself up a wardrobe of the things, if you like! I'm quite sure they'll be selling copies of them in the streets and stalls in a week or two. Mothers everywhere will be walking and flying about wearing the same in short order."

"Delightful, Orin! Deeeeelightful!"

The portly queen mother thus rushes forward, smushing two corpulent stomachs in a belly-squooshy, endearing embrace.

[Treadwell]

Night of the nineteenth day of the eighth month, 213.

Aloisius Horatio Treadwell was very close to snoozing in his wheelchair at home. He had found it stashed in a spare bedroom, taken the time to replace the seat cushion, and had one of the Tubbian blacksmiths rework the seat and widen it a bit to compensate for his growth over the years.

It sits very comfy now, almost as good as the rocking chairs in his toy shop.

That was when a carriage came rolling up the cobblestones to the house.

A carriage?

Presently, his butler--one Gregory by name--comes to the lounge where Treadwell is still nearly dozing, with an odd announcement.

"Your wife and children and brother are home, m'lord."

"What? Home? I didn't send Arnold for 'em yet!"

Up Treadwell wobbles to his feet, still wearing his brown coveralls over his yellow pajama jumper, fetching his cane.

"Be that as it is, my lord, the lady of the house is most certainly home. The two of you are quite assuredly very hard to miss."

"Mmph mmph."

And from down the hall?

"Aloiiiiiiiisius!"

"Coming, lovey!"

The two great-bellied Treadwells meet bellies in the hall as Aloisius scurries far too quickly. He catches her in his pudgy arms, balancing both, and asks a simple question.

"What are you lot doing home?"

"You never sent! It's been about a month, or more!"

"But that's. . . whose carriage is that? Myrken still isn't safe, dearest!"

"Your friend Jon Lincoln's. The driver and horse are staying the night and leaving out in the morning, and Langley's told me he wants to move in with us, that he's drained from living by himself at his house. Oh, and Elizia came with us, too, for the same reason. She's already sold her house and the movables."

"What? Langley? Elizia? Both?"

"And why not? We've plenty of rooms available, and--"

"And five little children, all under the age of five years! Three of them are two years and under! Darling, Gabriel and Gertrude aren't even nine months old yet, mmph mmph!"

"And these two are your only remaining blood family apart from those cousins of yours, the Drivels."

"But Elizia acts just like my mother, mmph mmph!"

"It's settled, Aloisius. They're going in the spare bedrooms on the first floor, off the back hall."

Aloisius frowns mightily and seriously.

"Frederick, lovey. Do they know?"

A fat finger makes a curly-q notion in the air. Alice's voice lowers to a hush in response.

"Why should they? They haven't seen him naked."

"Good, darling. That fat little pig tail on his rump is one secret I don't need Elizia badgering me about. She would. Loathsome wench."

"Aloisius."

"Snippy, brazen--"

"Aloisius. They're in the dining hall. Keep your voice down."

"They're eating my food?"

"Our food, Aloisius. They are your family. They are our guests."

"Hmph!"

[Treadwell]

Just after midnight, going into the twentieth day of the ninth month, 213.

Wife and husband lie in bed together, she staring in the darkness, frowning; he snoring mightily, having wormed over against her when getting under the covers. They are both big, warm, cozy, blubbery tubs. . . except for one fact.

"Aloisius," Alice finally, grouchily, sleepily growls, "your feet are ice!"

They are so cold with good reason: a mortal body reflecting divine terror.

In Tubbius's endless, grassy plain, the harvest god knows heart-numbing, chilled fear. Insight goes to a distant possibility, a country devoted not to Tubbius but to Rhaena Olwak-Burnie. His roots, plump and wide and immense, hit against dry, less nourishing soil; above ground, his body is cooled by incoming, wintry winds and the first spattering of fat, frigid raindrops.

This is all wrong.

This is not as Tubbius wishes.

"Wake up, you old belly! Roll over!"

A thunderous slap of hand echoes against great stomach in an effort to rouse the trembling, frozen-footed Treadwell to wakefulness.

With huffing and wheezing and much grousing, Aloisius does as ordered, half-awake as he rolls lazily over, freeing his beloved Alice of the touch of his frozen feet.

[Treadwell]

Morning of the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month, 213.

"Famine, Richard. The biglings are facing it out there in their Wood. The guards out at the Tunnel did a little exploring last night outside the Cave and learned as much."

"Orin? What's that?" The enormous, pink fairy Queen Mother (or so the former king calls himself now after the miraculous births of the two royal twin daughters) lies in bed, cradling his fat baby Lara as she dozes in his pudgy, pink-gowned arms. Her sister lies snugly covered in a crib by the bed.

"Famine, Richard. It's where people don't have food to eat."

"I know that much! We've been through that before, years ago, if you remember. It's why I signed that treaty with, oooooh, what was the old blubbery fellow's name?"

"Beauregard."

"Yes! Him! Handsome fellow. Big, plump. Lovely gray, powdered wig."

"Richard."

"Yes?" A giggle down at the dozing Lara.

"The famine. Locusts passed through the Wood the last few days. They've. . . well, they've lost quite a bit of food to rather unusual looking bugs."

"But Orin?"

"Yes, Richard?"

"Sit here by the bed." A wave at a nearby couch next to bed and crib. "Tready--our great Tubbius, the Great Belly Himself--lives there among those biglings. Why can't he do anything? He tested us all, three years ago now, and blessed our stores to never run out as long as we're faithful."

The doctor settles his round frame onto the requested sofa and shakes his head.

"Richard, we have a kingdom devoted to Tubbian worship."

"Well! And?"

"And they don't. Remember that most biglings thinks Tubbius and the faithful quite foolish and silly and greedy."

"Greedy?"

"Greedy, Richard. It takes a great deal of food to stay so fat, as you and I well know."

"Then we need to do something to help! We have supplies here! We--!"

"Shush. You're waking the babies getting so worked up. Shhhhh." A warm, fleshy hand softly soothes each of Richard's daughters at a touch. "Richard, our food, even in endless amounts, is for us. It won't feed biglings properly. Besides. . . oh, dear me."

"What is it?" the Queen Mother asks, voice lowering with a momentary blink at each sleeping baby and a light shifting of Lara's weight.

"There are two problems, Richard. We are one. We are a kingdom of what, to biglings, would look like fat, hungry bugs with wings like the ones that just ate their crops."

"But we're fairies, Orin."

"Do you think that's going to matter when they come at passing, wing-buzzing insects with sticks and papers to swat with? No, Richard, we are keeping all of our kind, including the guards who should be patrolling, here. It's for our safety."

"Hmph. I think we ought to help, Orin. They helped us years past."

"That famine was only here in these caves, Richard, and it was caused by an overabundance of Hiberan Rock Rodents, like your old pet Squeaky, that we had to hunt. It didn't affect them past the food and drink they gave us."

"Squeaky! I do miss that little rodent."

"Oh, will you stay focused, old girl? In short, we can't help them right now. Maybe we can later, but not at this moment when they're apt to kill everything buzzing about on two wings."

"Hmph! And what is the second problem you thought of, then?"

"The Tubbians, Richard."

"The Tubbians?"

"And Tready, too! They are fat, Richard, and they have stores of food. Never mind that Tready is in some measure of control over their tax monies."

"What of it all? Speak quickly, brother. It's getting on lunch time, and I have to feed my babies first."

There is a moment of sullen silence from the doctor-king, but it is a moment of mere frustration with his half-brother's oft-absent-minded innocence. The frustration is forced to pass--Richard is family, and, despite the oddities of the circumstances of the births, Richard is a mother, and those are revered by custom.

The doctor brings a fleshy hand patting Richard's fat belly as a reminder of the latter.

"May your womb stay fruitful, old mother, should Marta bless you again in time."

An enormous grin jiggles the pink fairy's face! Stated approval of a second future pregnancy! The first was very much delightful, and, in truth, Richard has been left wanting more, a whole nursery full of infants. Prayers to Marta must, must begin this very moment, and hourly!

"But my point, Richard, is that the Tubbians are very much in a position to be reviled by the other biglings. They will need to be careful, for they have what others will most surely want."

"Oh." It's a simple answer. The Queen Mother is already dazed and misty-eyed, already forgetting the perils of the biglings for the moment in exchange for silent, fervent prayers. "Then what do we do?"

"We do absolutely nothing unless they ask of us. We stay right here."

[Treadwell]

Late night of the thirtieth day of the ninth month, going into the first of the tenth, 213.

The Treadwell household.

An abundance of wine, a two-person feast.

A bed done up in comfortable cloth and cushions.

A simple, giggled, "Love me, Allie."

A divine blessing and nod.

An exhausted morning for both spent in sleep and snores.

Thus does Harvell "Harvey" Urias Treadwell, who will be the final child in Aloisius Treadwell's immediate family--to be born against all sane expectations of conception and childbirth in A. R. 214, to be some day mayor of Colmouth after his twenty-fourth birthday in 238 (name recognition is a wonderful thing in a town filled by Tubbians!)--slip silently and invisibly into creation.

[Treadwell]

Morning of the twelfth day of the tenth month, 213.

"Orin, I'm ill."

Richard Aengus lies sprawled out in his bathtub, soaking in long since chilly water, a temperature he certainly doesn't seem to mind at the moment given the film of sweat and the light flush to his face.

"A fever, obviously, old girl. How long have you felt this way?"

"Well, nearly a week, I suppose. You've been too busy managing the kingdom to be around much lately."

"You're the one who gave the throne to me, Richard. It's a lot to do to oversee it properly."

"Hmph! Well, dear brother, what's the matter with me?"

A snort from the doctor sitting beside his half-brother in the Queen Mother's bathroom.

"What are your symptoms, apart from the obvious low, persistent fever you're feeling?"

The pink fairy in the tub manages a weak giggle. "I find I'm feeling horribly ticklish all over, sensitive to the touch."

"Oh?"

"Particularly down there," Richard notes with a nod toward his lower body, "and my bosom! Oh, my breasts!"

"What of them?"

"Why, they're just absolutely swollen with milk, but Lora and Lara can't take to suckling them without--!" Richard cuts off, blushing.

"Without what, Richard?" Out comes a pudgy-fingered, white hand; the doctor-king brushes it against the exposed nipple tip, prompting a sudden moo-oooaaaaaaa-oaaaaan, long and far too pleasurable, from his sibling.

A chuckle escapes the doctor, much to his half-sibling's immediately frowning, grumpy chagrin.

"Heightened sense of arousal to the touch, Richard. Very well. Is there anything else?"

"Vanilla. Faint scent of vanilla, Orin, especially when I move too hastily or I flutter my wings much."

The doctor's chuckling finally bursts into an explosive tummy-rolling quake of laughter.

"Richard, dear mother! You're in quite the fix!"

"What is it? What's wrong with me? Quick, Orin!"

Doctor Barrin puts a hand to Richard's shoulder, patting softly as the old fairy continues his laughter. When he's ready, he resumes.

"Richard, you're apparently what most lower-class fairies--mainly the redwings, and even then it's exceptionally infrequent, maybe one in a hundred redwing mothers or less--call a 'belly rounder.'"

"A 'belly rounder,' Orin?"

"Think of it like a craving, Richard, a craving like you and I might have for sweets, or candies, or a good supper. Your body demands what it craves, and it acts differently from normal to have it, yes?"

"Yeeeees? What does this have to do with how I'm feeling?"

"Richard, a belly rounder is the term that the redwings have given to mothers who, after their first birth, have bodies that, simply put, crave more children. They stay constantly at the ready for being impregnated, of rounding out their bellies; thus, the term! It's not just a few days of the month like everyone else; it's an eternal, perpetual state save after conception is achieved. About three months after their six, though, the cycle begins anew. In some ways, it's a little like what the Tubbians teach of Marta, although it's to a much lesser degree."

Richard lies there in the tub, staring, frowning.

"It's actually something of a miracle. While our mothers can certainly have children until their dying days, very few of them manage very large families because everything just doesn't line up properly. You have a quite distinct blessing to you, Richard Aengus. It's an odd one, but it's certainly a blessing."

"But Marta told me I would never know a man in my years, Orin. She told me that."

"Then I think you should either hasten your prayers for another bun in your oven, hee hee, or you should get used to living like this without complaining about it, keeping shut up about it all and living as you are. You're in a most peculiar condition, old girl."

[Treadwell]

Night of the eighteenth day of the tenth month, 213.

New Hibera.

The bedroom of Richard Andrew Aengus.

The pink glow from the fat, reclining figure in the bed is dim.

It has been this way for many months, now, with Dr. Orin Barrin, the fairy king's half-brother, keeping a nightly vigil.

The king has been kept comatose by whitewing magic since late last year--the twenty-fifth of the twelfth month, specifically, the result of one of the most dreadful relationships, of sorts, for fairies.

Hiberan rock rodents are not proper rodents. They do not birth live young, but eggs, one of nature's two safety measures against the harsh realities of life in caves. This usually works well enough for the rodents to breed and grow, though in reasonably small numbers. The other, better safety measure is a symbiosis only accomplished if a fairy ingests a fertilized egg by mistake; the egg thus implants within the fairy. It does minimal damage while passing partly through the stomach lining thanks to a decidedly acidic natural state, finally implanting into the stomach. In all of the medical records of New Hibera, once the growing rodent settles in to its comfy spot, its feet latch into place and it grows within the host, filling out and sealing up its forced hole in the belly and taking a diet of whatever its host feeds upon, its back legs and body wiggling just a little in the abdomen and its front feet flopping generally useless inside the fairy's tummy, pinned into place by the animal's growth. Otherwise, waste is disposed of by means of an umbilical also attached inside the fairy host, the link thus completed and permanent.

Removal is generally seen as impossible, given the cutting that would be required to get to the rodent, first, and given the immense bleeding that would happen from taking it out of the stomach wall.

Once in place, the rock rodent releases a variety of chemicals as it grows--a mix of appetite increasers and mood regulators, especially increasing feelings of pleasure while feeding. This is usually exhausting for the host, of course, even if the host is young and fit. For a host elderly and corpulent, though. . . the doctor quickly made the decision to put his half-brother under.

Orin has watched. His dream, daily, was to find the swelling in the king's belly decreasing, the intruder being disintegrated and slowly absorbed. However, the same whitewing magic keeping the king alive, fat, as toned and muscular as he ever was, and healthy--though not awake in the slightest--was just as nourishing to the rodent having taken up residence. The rodent in question, nicknamed "Squeaky" by the doctor, had grown as if Richard had fed it quite well himself. It was likely just as fat and merry, proportionally, as the fairy it inhabited.

The doctor had decided within the first week that surgery was out of the question, for now. Richard is over three centuries--old, for Hiberan fairies. His age, though, is only compounded by his girth. Cutting through gobby layers of his half-brother's belly fat did not appeal to the doctor.

But?

"I can't just leave you in bed for the rest of our lives, Richard. It's nearly been a year, old boy. What have you been dreaming?"

A frown. A pause. Plans were being made before all of this to find the king a wife--a queen!--to prevent his potential passing without an heir.

But life must continue. The heir in question will not be a fattened rock rodent.

Thus, the decision was made to alter the spells being cast on his sleeping sibling. He would be nudged slowly back to his waking, very slowly, very carefully.

This is all taken very gently until, finally, the king's eyes drowsily flit open. Richard yawns.

"Orin?" comes the squeaky, sleepy, weakened pipe of a voice.

"Richard! Don't move! Don't talk! Just lie there and listen to me!" A cup of water would be placed into the king's hands and guided to his fleshy lips. Slow, gentle shlurps and sips.

"You have been unconscious for almost a year, Richard, nearly ten months to the day."

"My babies? Lora? Lara?"

"What babies, Richard? Shush, and listen."

"But--?"

"Richard."

"You said. . . called me a 'belly rounder?'"

A gentle slap to the pink fairy's bearded cheek.

"Richard Aengus, the only thing you're even remotely pregnant with, old man, is a rock rodent. Do you understand me? Are you listening?" A jab of fat, white finger into the king's gut, down to the first knuckle. "You accidentally ingested one of its mother's eggs, and now you have a rock rodent grown in your belly, latched into place."

A pause. A stern narrowing of eyes.

"Do you comprehend the words I'm trying to tell you?"

Tears well in the fat fairy king's pink eyes.

"It has been in your belly for nearly ten months. I was hoping your body would absorb it, that it would die instead of grow to its current size. It did not."

A pause.

"I cannot--I will not!--operate. You will have to live with this until I can discern a way to get rid of it properly. It's not as if it is in a woman's womb and that you have a woman's parts to push it out. It is floating, stuck inside the wall of your belly, and we are taking a great, Tubbius-sized risk in leaving this where it is."

Another pause, and another stab of finger into belly.

"I am at the end of my wits. As your physician, I--oh, by Tubbius's great belly, you're crying, Richard. Why? Whatever has upset you?"

A frown creases the fat physician's face. Over comes a washrag to dab at pink cheeks.

"You've had a most interesting ten months, I'm sure. You'll have to speak of them some time, when you're well. I can only begin to guess what's been in your dreams this whole time, if you have dreamt at all."

The doctor sighs, his head wobbling to either side.

"As for the rodent, Richard, as best as I can tell, it's a girl."

[Treadwell]

Morning of the twenty-fifth day of the tenth month, 213.

New Hibera.

"Well, Richard, you've been awake and moving around for a week, now. I trust you're getting used to things?"

"As used to them as I can be after having been asleep for ten months, Orin. You say it's right here?" A fleshy hand presses down on a slight bulge under the flesh just right of the center of the king's chest. "And that's why I'm having such a difficult time getting my breath, and why I'm feeling weak when I'm doing the least little things?"

"Yes, to all of that. She's embedded in the wall of your stomach, with her head and her front legs the only things inside it. Her legs are pinned as to be mostly immobile. There's an umbilical cord stuck in the lining of your belly, too. But her belly and her back legs and her posterior?" The doctor reaches over to put a hand atop his half-brother's. "Right here. She's pressing on one of your lungs and your heart."

King and doctor sit together on a couch by the king's bed.

"She has to come out, Richard. Rock rodents manipulate their hosts, as I'm quite sure you've learned this week."

"It feels wonderful when I eat, quite euphoric! And she wiggles about when she's being fed, and it tickles, and--"

"Manipulation, Richard." Two of the doctor's fat fingers press down harder on the internal invader. "She has to come out."

"Well. . . . How do we do that? Or, I should ask, how do you do that?"

"We have two possibilities. Both have been tried on fairies in the past who've been in this situation. Both have worked, I might add, but those other fairies were half your age and nowhere near as round. This was well before the Tubbian faith took root here, so all the other fairies besides you at the time were quite slim--including me, hee hee."

"I'm quite glad we fixed that little problem!"

"One solution, Richard, is that we can poison it to death and leave it there. That, of course, makes the host dreadfully sick at the same time, and it wouldn't fix the problem of your housing a rodent that's grown so large that she's inhibiting your breathing and your heart beating."

"Then what's the other solution?"

"We put the two of you back to sleep, we cut you open, and we cut her out. That leaves two problems: we would need to seal up, immediately, the hole in your stomach wall, and then we would need to seal you up, too. It would be dangerous, to say the least, but you would be rid of the beast."

"I would?"

"You would. Mind you, the one fairy this was done to ended up experiencing a dreadfully depressive time after, similar to how some mothers do after they give birth. In your case, it's all because of the manipulation I mentioned. Your body will want her back. Remember, Richard, she's been in there this long already. You're quite used to her being there whether you know it or not."

"Mmmmm. Or I simply leave her in there and take my chances?"

"Your Majesty, if you leave her in there, you'll soon be able to do so very little from her growing fatter and heavier that you will be rolling your own round body into your grave."

Richard frowns, rubbing at the swollen lump in his middle.

"You think you can put me back together properly and rouse me from being asleep after she's gone, Orin?"

"We can. You'll be on a fairly strict diet after for some weeks while you heal, and, as I said, you might feel rather down about it all. . . but we can."

"Then help me to my bed, gather your servants. . . and pray with me to Holy Tubbius that all of this goes well this afternoon."

[Treadwell]

Night of the twenty-fifth of the tenth month, 213.

New Hibera.

The king's bedroom is dimly lit again, much more so than earlier today when it was flooded by half a dozen fat bodies all gleaming white and working busily to ensure the king stayed sedated and healthy and reasonably unbloodied.

Now, only Richard Aengus, bare-bellied and only half-covered in his bed, and Orin Barrin, his physician equally bare-bellied as he's cast aside his gown after its dampening with sweat, remain.

The doctor puts a sweaty, trembling hand on the king's shoulder, gently shaking as his beady eyes take in the evidence of his hours of handiwork: a neat little scar sewn up and magically sealed just right of Richard's center, above his stomach proper.

"Wake, Richard. For the love of Tubbius, awake!"

Richard had not awoken yet. His breathing had been shallow and light all evening after the surgery; his color had been light and pale. Squeaky was doing fine on her own, a fat little furry ball in a cage set beside the bed, the rodent lightly trilling and keeping her dark eyes on her adopted would-be mother. Proper rodent food--little slips of cheese and meat--and a dish of water was in there with her, as well as shavings to sleep or mess in.

"Richard?"

A harder squeeze of pudgy fingers.

A snort of breath from the aged monarch, a yawn, a reach up to rub and smush bleary eyes.

"Orin? Did I--did she--? Am I all right?"

"Richard! Bless us! Bless you! You're alive, old boy! You're perfectly well!"

Thus Orin throws his pudgy arms around his tubby brother, ignoring for the moment the king's startled squeak as fat physician squeezes a little too hard with the king's newest injuries. There is weeping, teary-eyed rejoicing, and then a gleeful yip from the elderly whitewing.

"Guards! Let everyone know he's fine! He'll be fine! But for now, he's resting! Send out word immediately!"

[Treadwell]

First day of the eleventh month, 213.

Morning at the Treadwell house.

Aloisius Treadwell dozes in his custom-made bathtub, sized for the pairing of him and his beloved Alice. His yellow pajama jumper hangs atop a nearby chair, the room is warm with a glowing fireplace, and all seems well.

He wakes to something most unexpected: his bulbous shnozz gently smushed into his standing, naked wife's navel.

"Allie, wake up, love."

"Mmph!" sees him wriggling his head free of Alice's enormous belly as its owner toddles back a step. She stands there just as naked as she is, hanging her purple nightgown atop his pajamas with one hand and her other hand hidden under the curve of her middle.

"One side, beloved. I'm joining you in there. I feel miserable."

The elderly woman circles the tub before carefully easing into it, sinking slowly into place and cuddling up to her slightly more rotund husband.

"I have important news, Allie. I think I'm pregnant again."

"Hrmph!" comes a splutter as water laps over the sprawled out politician's face. "You are, dearest! There's no thinking about it!" Another snort, another snuffle, and Tready worms a little more upright, wriggling an arm around his beloved. "When you're wed to a man who's truly the embodiment, mmph mmph, of the Great Mother Herself, my dear, making time for any manner of lovemaking is just going to result in at least one baby, hee hee!"

"But at our ages, Aloisius? In our shapes?"

"Why not? Marta herself is much like the both of us, mmph mmph: very aged, very corpulent, and very happy with her eternal state!"

Thus, Mr. Treadwell hands Mrs. Treadwell a washrag and a block of soap, setting them along with a flabby, resting hand atop her belly.

"I'll merely say this, darling. This baby boy is our last, mmph mmph. He'll be our biggest yet, but mommy and baby both will come through it perfectly fine."

A kiss to Alice's cheek.

"Here, Alice, my love. Let me help you get to those spots I know you have trouble reaching, and then you might return the favor, hmm?"

[Treadwell]

Fifteenth day of the eleventh month, 213.

Noon at the Treadwell house, after a very early lunch.

"Allie, I said you ought to dress before you ate. The tightening of your clothes would have been signal enough to stop, but now? Look at you, love!"

The wife's plump pointer jabs deep into the husband's flabby side, rolling pudgily out over the edge of his trousers.

"We can't get your shirt tucked in your pants properly because your gut's too full!"

"Mmph mmph."

Thus having spoken does Aloisius reach for and gobble down a leftover block of cheese.

"And that isn't going to help you, either! Of all the people in Myrken Wood, leave it to you to just get fatter during famine!"

"Oho! Alice, lovie, you're keeping up right well with me, hmm hmm, and you're hardly anywhere near far enough along to blame the baby for that!"

The poke to bulgy corpulence is returned from husband to wife!

"You're having just as much trouble wiggling into your skirts as I am into my suit, hmm hmm. We're both quite, quite blessed by holy Tubbius, mmph mmph, and it shows in both our middles. Now," Treadwell unbuttons the shirt he half wears, setting it aside on an Aloisius-sized tailor's dummy; he then sits long enough to wriggle out of his trousers. "My pajamas, hmm? There's good reason those are made to cover the full body, dearest. It's so, hee hee, I don't have to deal with moments like this!"

The usual yellow pajama jumper is pulled from the bed and wormed into; then, pants and shirt of the same matching yellow are replaced.

"You're still bulging out between your shirt and your pants, Aloisius."

"But now, love, it's a little less obvious, hmm hmm?"

A warm, great grin spreads over the fat man's face.

"Let's see what we can do about getting you into your dress, hmm?"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the twenty-third day of the eleventh month, 213.

"Ice, Aloisius. It hasn't stopped sleeting for days."

Aloisius Treadwell is sprawled out in the cushioned comfort of his immense, sturdy wheelchair, parked amid the cozy furnishings of a lounge he has devoted to smoking his pipe when he wishes. The Acting Governor is warmly wrapped, thanks to the help of his butler sitting nearby on a couch; Treadwell wears a heavy, brown, fur robe and hat with matching slippers and scarf. A blanket--equally brown and fluffy to match--covers the old tub. Smoke floofs lazily from his pipe as he wheezes for breath.

"The chair, m'lord."

"Mm? Gregory? What?"

"Why did you insist on the chair, when the ground is frozen outside? It's a trifle dangerous."

"Oh, oh! I don't plan on going anywhere out and about unless I need to and have no other option, mmph mmph. I'm not risking my hide, Arnold's, or yours driving me much of anywhere. I plan, hmm hmm, to stay right here, next to that fireplace there, mmph, with this pipe."

"But the chair, m'lord."

"It's simple, mmph. At my age, in my condition, hmm hmm, getting around is difficult enough as it is. When everything is icy and cold, dear fellow, it simply aches everything in my bones! My leg, Gregory! Now that moans and aches and throbs, hmm hmm, every time the temperature comes anywhere close to frigid!"

"But you can't push yourself, m'lord."

"And at your age, I shan't expect you to manage doing that for me, mmph mmph, especially how we're both given, hee hee, to a little softness about the tum-tum."

"A little, m'lord?"

The butler smiles softly, his white-gloved right hand coming to rest on his paunch.

"A little! Tubbius has blessed you, dear fellow, mmph mmph. You ought to let him bless you more!"

"But I have my work to do. It would hardly set the example for the younger staff for the butler to sit in the kitchen eating all of the cook's nibbles and bites and courses."

"Hmph! Remember that I'm in there cooking something for myself every once in a while, hmm hmm! You've certainly my permission to indulge in such whenever I'm the one in the kitchen, mmph mmph! In fact, I'll likely order you to do so."

"As you wish, m'lord. As you wish. So I suppose that the wheels on that chair are, largely, for show?"

"Largely, but should I need to go somewhere, hmm hmm, you will certainly fetch one of the younger, stronger lads to help it along, won't you?"

"Of course, m'lord. Of course."

[Treadwell]

Afternoon of the twenty-ninth day of the eleventh month, 213.

Aloisius Horatio Treadwell, sprawled in his wheelchair in his smoking lounge at home, dreams. His dream is not one of his many visits to the divine realms ruled by the Glutton in his many facets. It is mere darkness. It is desolation. It is soul-crushing, endless expanse that humbles the spirit to nothingness and leaves the all-consuming hunger of a monster unfed and unable to move except to float in the midst of the emptiness, his tail unable to find solid purchase to shove from, his tongues flailing and teeth snapping angrily all around.

Yet, there is a voice that forces the maddened, misplaced deity to pause: faint, subtle, speaking yet unheard. Its reverberations are instead felt throughout the blubber-layered body of the Glutton.

Your brothers: the Cook and the Toymaker. You have slain them. You have taken their bodies and their roles, their realms, their subjects. You seek to encompass all things that are not freely given to you, as is your wont and nature.

You grow too much. You encroach upon all creation. This must not be.

To your pit you go. I leave you the shape of your birth and the two shapes with which you have always related to your mortal followers, that of the harvest body and the sow. Of your newest shapes, I leave you that of the human mother, as I gave you that shape and her responsibilities for all of eternity to foster her growth and the growth of her children.

Your brothers whom you slew are thus restored, away from you and your knowledge, and you. . . .

My gluttonous child.

You will know only hunger and growth.

Thus does Aloisius Treadwell rumble to his waking senses mid-snort of breath.

The dream is forgotten, a haunting absence in a day's rest.

But other things are completely absent, too.

He has lost the overwhelming skills of cooking and toymaking beyond his well-trained, human abilities in the kitchen and toy shop.

All that remains of divine origin are the neverending hunger, that rumbling in the stomach and quivering in the middle, an innate affinity for the crops and fields, the base desires of lowly pigs, and the motherly cycles of birth and creation. All other ties are cut; the two other facets are formed anew into their own, proper wholes, separate from the Glutton's slow and ravenous advance.

Aloisius Treadwell wakes with a frigid chill holding fast in his bones, despite the many layers of fur robes and fluffy blanket. Shuddering, shivering, he reaches to a bell resting beside his parked chair. A shrill ding-a-linging echoes through the wing of the house, calling one of his serving staff who has been informed recently of his new duty in rolling Aloisius around the house as he deems necessary.

"Master Treadwell?"

"I'm starving, boy! To the dining hall, with haste!"

[Treadwell]

Morning of the twentieth day of the twelfth month, 213.

The pig pens behind the Church of Tubbius of awake with activity as morning draws closer to mid-day. Grunts and squeals and snorts abound, furious and frantic.

The numbers of the pigs have dwindled drastically in recent weeks. The pink-skin two-legs have been ceaseless in drawing knives through pig throats, soaking too much ground in too much porcine blood.

This is a council of swine.

The porkers number around three-quarters fewer than they did but a few weeks ago after this morning's deadly slaughter and purging. Families have been ripped asunder: fathers and mothers slain, babies taken from life by blades put to necks. Screeches and mournful wails have filled the barn and wallows.

No more! demands portly, old Three-Hooves, hobbling vehemently about the muddy swath of wallow he calls his. He ranks among the eldest remaining. He has sired many of those at this council--and many of those taken from them in recent weeks.

No more! Our children, murdered by the two-leggers! Our brothers, our sisters! They come through in the mornings with feed and water; they treat us as royalty for many, many suns and moons, but now? Who among us will be next? No more, I say!

From across the pens, near the food troughs, agreement by way of plaintive squeal. Three-Hooves is right! When next they come for us, their deadly tusks stretched forth of their hands--they call them 'knives!'--we attack! Trample the two-leggers!

Kill them!

Feed on their fat flesh! They are as much pigs as we!

But from the center of the penned enclosure, a shrill roar, a maddened nipping of maw to the fat thigh of Three-Hooves' crippled short-leg.

He screams, more startled than hurt; the bite wasn't meant to draw blood--just to force him to step down. It is followed by another, feminine ringing of sow voice.

I say 'No more!' No more of this foolishness!

So speaks Mother, Three-Hooves' mate many times over, even now but less than two weeks from laboring over another litter. Many of her babies and children have been taken in recent weeks. She has known anguish and frantic squeals from dying kin.

So speaks the one that two-leggers call "'Pinky," with her special neck-strap (a collar, they call it) with its dangly, shiny piece with squiggly engravings. She is the one much adored by the fattest of the two-leggers.

She is special among their porcine kind.

No more! They feed us! They give us home! A place to raise our babes, to live, to feed! We eat them, and we are trapped here! We cannot escape, and they send other two-legs to kill us--maddened hogs, we!

A snort, a squint of black eyes at the whimpering Three-Hooves. Mother had been the one responsible for his crippling injury ages ago--a fight, a frenzied charge by an aggressive and very gravid sow that broke the one known simply as Father before gaining the name he now bears. She had broken his shoulder against the food troughs for taunting her and daring to say she didn't need to feed her litter growing in her belly.

No more! I am oldest here! I have birthed many of you who are left! We carry on! We mate! We eat! We drink! We grow fat! If they take more of us, then we answer them by making more!

An ear-wriggling squeeeeeee fills the barn. Mother has their attention.

Tonight! Tonight, when they come to us with food for the troughs, you--all of you! Even you, Three-Hooves!--will be on the best of your behavior!

A snort as Mother sinks back onto her side in the wallow, exposing that enormous belly as she sprawls out with stomach-huffing wheezes for air.

Or there will be more Three-Hooves here in this pen!

[Treadwell]

Morning of the tenth day of the first month, 214. New Hibera.

It is time for one of the king's fairly regular health checkups, much to his chagrin.

"Your wings, Richard. Flap, flap, flap! A little higher!"

"I can't, Orin! I can't!"

"Oh, shush! You've spent almost a year asleep. Keep trying!"

The situation is quite comical, at least for the doctor, who giggles at his half-brother's exertions. For Richard Aengus, though, the corpulent old fairy is barely able to buzz about at a little above waist height, his pink silk gown not quite touching the floor as he bobs and bumbles about in the air, his wings beating furiously to keep him aloft.

"Richard, Richard. . . Just land, dear boy. I don't fancy I could do any better myself." Arms come out to embrace the sweaty, exhausted king's belly and gently help him down from the flight. "You made it for about half a minute, although you've certainly lost most of any sense of control or forward motion." A pat-pat is given to Richard's aching back, near where the wings attach to the shoulders. "I think it's safe to say that these things are about useless now for the both of us!"

The fairy king totters the few steps to his bedside, taking up a pitcher of water. The glass beside it is bypassed entirely as he gulps, gulps, gulps away.

"We might as well be biglings, all of us. Most of our kind are at least a little plump about the middle, and some are quite hefty, just like you and I. I think that's what had to happen to biglings at some point, Richard; they grew too big and lost their wings in doing so."

"Hmph!" Pitcher drained, Richard Aengus reaches over to pet lovingly his now caged rock rodent--the second he's owned, the only one that ever grew inside him, and the second to bear the name "Squeaky." "Just. . . don't ask me to do that again for a while, hmm?"

"Of course not, Your Majesty. I have other tortures in mind."

"Oh!" comes a startled yip as Squeaky playfully clamps teeth softly onto the end of a prodding, fat finger. "What, then?"

The doctor smirks, unraveling a rope that rests on the bed, a rope marked off every half inch with colored dye.

"Measurements!"