Curious Lives

Book Excerpt: chapter One

The Ferrets and the Humans

Once there was a team of ferrets, exploring mysteries, who landed upon a small blue planet and discovered a hidden valley that opened onto the land of the humans. The ferrets found these creatures a promising species, of grace and charm, intelligence and curiosity, of warm humor and great courage.
     Because of this, and because of the dangers and promises ahead for the young race, the ferrets gave to the humans four powers with which they could prevail over the challenges to come.
     The first was the power of fire, the second was the power of the wheel, the third was the power of written language, the fourth was the power of courtesy and respect, one to another.
     The humans were quick to learn, and cherished the gifts that the ferrets had brought. As the explorers prepared to depart, the humans begged them to stay and to share with humankind the delight of the brave new civilization that would rise.
     The ferrets were touched, and promised to return. On the day of their departure, one human turned to them. ?Of these powers, dear ferrets, which is the first among them, which would you have us guard above all others??
     ?Well asked,? replied the ferrets. ?Without fire can you prosper, and without the wheel, and without the alphabet, for many have prospered on your planet and across the galaxies without these. The one power without which no civilization can long survive, however, is the last, the power of courtesy and respect for each other and for all life.?
     The humans murmured, understanding, and used their new letters to scribe the Courtesies on tablets of onyx, the words finished in purest silver. When the ferrets had departed, the new race learned swiftly, mastering the natures of fire and wheel and alphabet.
     They pondered long, however, how best to protect the most precious of powers, and at last it was agreed to keep the Tablets of the Courtesies in the safest place their world could offer. From reverence, no copy was made, nor were its holy words read but by those who first had heard them from the ferrets.
     And so it came to pass that the one essential of the Four Gifts was weighted in rare metals and precious jewels, locked within a giant chest of iron, and after a long voyage and with great ceremony, was given to the waves and buried, safe forever in the uttermost part of the sea.

How others deal with gifts we?ve given is not our decision, but theirs.
                                                                                         - Antonius Ferret, Fables

1

SHAMROCK FERRET set a cup of Mandalay blackberry tea on the side table, tilted a tiny pitcher to add a dash of honey (poured, not stirred) and curled herself in the comfort of her Cases Unsolved chair. The antique she had bought at a used-thing sale, whirl-dots for pattern, soft as woven sunlight.
     As the fire warmed the hearth and her own sable-chocolate fur, the detective set a small disk of black felt upon the chair and reviewed the facts.
     The patterns of cornstalks fallen in the fields were always finished and complete; they were ever the same, almost an insignia: two stars, one large, one small, joined by a sweeping curved pathway.
     The patterns had always been discovered in the morning, having appeared sometime between dusk and dawn, under a full moon. There were no marks of tools or machinery of any kind. There was no reason for the designs, nor meaning in them.
     Here she reached a paw to stroke her whiskers as she stared into the light of the fire, and corrected herself.
     No apparent reason, she thought. Every mystery cloaks an inner reason, each one gives its meaning only when we have allowed ourselves a new point of view. There are no secrets, she had learned. Through observation, inquiry, through the kaleidoscope of intuition, we detect what has been facing us all along.
     She sipped her tea in the office of her flat, watching the fire.
     About her in the modest dark-paneled room stood her desk with notepads and pens, the old clock which had ticked in her home since she was a kit, her microscope, brass polished, focus knob worn from use. Here were her shelves of books: Analysis from Zero, Principles of Deduction and thirty volumes of The Paws of Knowledge, a set much lined and dog-eared. From a peg on the wall hung her crimson tam-o?-shanter and snow-color scarf of many pockets. By the door a letter-drop and a whimsical bell made from an old ship?s telegraph, the pointer at Engines Standby. All peaceful stillness.
     Within her was no such quiet. She watched the fire, yet behind her eyes flashed scene after instant scene?the patterns, the clues, connections between the known and the possible.
     Miss Shamrock Ferret earned her living by imagining possibilities, and now the images tumbled like a runaway slide show. Scene after scene rose and fell, possibilities slanting at the wrong angle, near misses, pictures out of match with the portrait of a mystery.
     Now she lifted the disk of felt, and holding it gently between her paws, she closed her eyes, opened a door of imagination.
     How I love this job, she thought, breathing the scent of Mandalay. How I love finding out!

Continues . . .