Snotty Saves the Day Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  THE HISTORY of ARCADIA

  First Edition

  A Note from Dr. Alan Fallaize

  Foreword

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter I - SNOTTY

  Chapter II - AT THE CROWN AND MITRE

  Chapter III - IN THE SEVENTH GARDEN

  Chapter IV - DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

  Chapter V - SNOWFLAKE

  Chapter VI - ALADDIN’S TREASURE

  Chapter VII - SNOTTY THE SUN GOD

  Chapter VIII - IN THE FORTRESS OF THE GNOMES

  Chapter IX - MEANWHILE, IN THE MOUNTAINS

  Chapter X - KIDNAPPED!

  Chapter XI - DAWN IN THE MOUNTAINS OF RESISTANCE

  Chapter XII - SNOTTY FINDS THE KEY

  Chapter XIII - THE BATTLE DRAWS NEAR

  Chapter XIV - WAR

  Chapter XV - THE TOP OF THE WORLD

  Chapter XVI - MEANWHILE, ON THE PLAINS OF DESOLATION

  Chapter XVII - A DOOMED ATTEMPT

  Chapter XVIII - ALL IS LOST

  Chapter XIX - A ROYAL FEAST

  Chapter XX - SNOTTY’S CHOICE

  Chapter XXI - LILY AND LUC

  Chapter XXII - SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY

  Chapter XXIII - A STARRY NIGHT

  Chapter XXIV - DESPAIR, A BLOODY STUMP, AND A GLIMMER OF HOPE

  Chapter XXV - CHRISTMAS DAY

  A Note from Dr. Alan Fallaize

  An Incomplete List of Publications by Arcadian Scholars

  Praise for Dr. Alan Fallaize’s

  Excerpts from Dr. Alan Fallaize’s classic work,

  Copyright Page

  More praise for SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY

  “Tod Davies has produced an imaginative book that will make readers think twice: do they know the meaning of fairy tales and of their own lives?”

  —Jack Zipes, author of Why Fairy Tales Stick

  “The Arcadians know that real wisdom is found in fairy tales. Look inside this world and find wonder. Thank goodness for Tod Davies, who knows we need fairy tales.”

  —Kate Bernheimer, editor of

  My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

  and Fairy Tale Review

  At EXTERMINATING ANGEL PRESS,

  we’re taking a new approach to our world.

  A new way of looking at things.

  New stories, new ways to live our lives.

  We’re dreaming how we want our lives and our world to be…

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  EXTERMINATING ANGEL PRESS

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  3 DEAD PRINCEs: An Anarchist Fairy Tale

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  with illustrations

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  DIRK QUIGBY’S GUIDE TO THE AFTERLIFE

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  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 T
HE 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

  First Edition

  Published by

  OTTERBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS,

  at Wrykyn, in Arcadia,

  in the year of Sophia the Wise, 83

  A Note from Dr. Alan Fallaize

  As Arcadia knows, the late Professor Devindra Vale, at the end of her life, was at work on the final proofs of an annotated edition of SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY. This book, on the surface a mere fairy tale of the adventures of a very unappealing boy, was originally found, though missing key chapters, in the archives at Eisler Hall, as the ancient Legendus Snottianicus. Professor Vale, along with Professor Joyanna Bender Boyce-Flood and the students of Bel Regina College, spent years translating the text, only to find the book in its entirety, translated, in the papers of our late queen, Sophia the Wise.

  At the time of her death two years ago, Professor Vale was giving the book a further, final study, adding her own scholarly footnotes. Though they are incomplete, we believe they are important enough to warrant inclusion. We have also included an early draft of a foreword that was found among her papers.

  May this book move her—our—work forward. May it lead to more answers in this crucial line of inquiry.

  I would like to thank Shiva and Walter Todhunter for their support and assistance in preparing this edition. Also thanks to Professors Joyanna Bender Boyce-Flood, Chloe Watson, and Malcolm Sivia for their invaluable comments on the presentation of the manuscript, as well as their aid in compiling a bibliography.

  Most especially, my thanks go to the late Professor Devindra Vale, who taught me—at times, in spite of myself—to stay on the side of Truth.

  May the side of Truth, always, win in the end.

  Alan Fallaize

  In the year of Sophia the Wise, 83 AE

  St. Vitus’s College

  Foreword To SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY

  by Professor Devindra Vale

  Years ago, before the civil war that presently devastates our country—before, even, the fatal events that led to it—it was my honor to be tasked by our first queen, Lily the Silent, to undertake the immense task of restructuring our educational system. A task indeed! But one which all in Arcadia were aware had been long overdue.

  It took more than thirty years. Those of us on the committee were young and idealistic, but by the end of the process we were old. Both Lily the Silent and her daughter the Great Queen, Sophia the Wise, were dead, and our country stood at the brink of disaster. This disaster, we now know with the benefit of hindsight, could have been prevented. But we were blind.

  It is the vocation and the duty of the educator to educate. To what purpose? This would seem obvious: to provide a better life for the community. Yet this did not seem obvious to us when we began this task. It does not seem obvious to some of us now.

  As is well known, there was one point on which, after laborious research and exhaustive discussion, we all agreed. All of us, scientists, historians, classicists, rhetoricians, mathematicians, and theologians involved in the New Subjectivity, for too long and quite artificially had divided up the world into the parts that formed our disciplines. A series of discoveries in both the sciences and the arts (see Prof. Chloe Watson, An Elegant Theory of the Contiguity of Theater Arts and Neurobiology [year 14]; Prof. Joyanna Bender Boyce-Flood, History or Physics: A False Dichotomy [year 17 after the Heavy Rains] and Journey to the Center of an Illusion [year 25]; Dr. Malcolm Sivia, Connection: A Personal Journey of Discovery, Love, and Loss [year 59], and many more) proved beyond a doubt the essential unity of our world. And this discovery comes in spite of—or perhaps because of—the determined opposition of the followers of Prof. Aspern Grayling (Twelve Points Against the Existence of Unity [year 41]). Alas that the search for truth should have been subordinate to political considerations, but perhaps this is always so, in every world. Perhaps this, too, is a biological truth. It deserves more study, and all of us, all New Subjectivists, should be grateful to the Neofundamentalist school for providing us a whetstone on which to sharpen our thought. And we have thought. We have thought, and we have discovered.

  We have discovered through hard data that by studying the world by its parts we had missed the larger truth of its whole. But this discovery may have come too late. There are many who believe that we work in an Ivory Tower that has nothing to do with politics or international affairs. But the new discoveries disprove this. As is usual, the cautious and precise work of the academic world goes too fast for the so-called Men and Women of Action.

  If we are too fast for them, we have always been too slow for the world of art. Another key discovery of the First Reign, the key discovery, was this now well-known fact: stories, especially those told to children, hold the greatest secrets of our universe. This is a point I need not belabor, it having been so often and so definitively proved, most concisely in Dr. Alan Fallaize’s classic work, On the Discovery of Biological Truths in Fairy Tales (year 61). (Note: see particularly his work on the biological need for equity.)

  I myself have spent the last sixty years of my career studying these stories. Of late, my studies and my theorizing have taken on an urgency they lacked in more peaceful times. Long hours, late nights, spent poring over the most ancient texts to be found in the libraries of such bastions of Arcadian civilization as Mumford, Eopolis, Amaurote, and, of course, Wrykyn, have led me to believe, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the only possible solution to our present social breakdown is to be found in the old books. The Legendus Snottianicus, found in fragments in the archives of Eisler Hall and translated by Prof. Bender Boyce-Flood, hinted that it held a key. When it was discovered that the copy of SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY found in the library of Sophia the Wise after her death was a whole, translated version of the same legend, I knew it needed study of the most profound kind. I have attempted such a study.

  Expecting little response from a population in an uproar of xenophobia, fundamentalism, and obsession with a sterile technology (alas that my Neofundamentalist colleagues are included in this condemnation), I nevertheless have decided to publish my findings. No attention will be paid now. But the book will be done, will be distributed in no matter how limited an academic manner, will be there. It will be there for the next generation, no matter how battered, maimed, and small, to read, to use as another tool in the onerous task of digging themselves out of the mire to which we, the present custodians of Arcadia, have led them. The thought of this goes some small way to assuaging the awful guilt that keeps me awake most nights of what should have been a tranquil old age.

  If it is not tranquil, it is my own fault.

  I should have seen. I should have known. I should have spoken. But, like the rest of us, I was a coward. I was afraid to be wrong. I was afraid to be laughed at. I was afraid to be seen as a fool.

  No more.

  Here, then, is SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY, long thought to be a minor work by an unknown writer, a story not entirely successful, mainly because of the horrid nature of the hero, the Snotty in question. He is a rep
ellent brat, and what little criticism there has been of this till now mostly ignored work has focused on the difficulty of relating to such a child as the protagonist.

  Subsequent scholarship has found, unsettlingly, that it is just the story of this child that is the foundation myth of Arcadia. Just as—in another world we’ve discovered lies close to our own—Romulus and Remus founded Rome, as King Arthur lies at the bottom of the story of their England, so Snotty is at the bottom of our story. What happens to him is what happened to us.

  This is the place to say I suspect more. What I suspect, but cannot yet prove, would rock our foundation. And can I, despite my duties as a scholar, take that responsibility? It is difficult, if not impossible to know. What I will say here is: Snotty is Arcadia. Until we know him, we do not know ourselves. Until we know ourselves, we can never free ourselves from the cycle of vengeance and terror that ravages our once beautiful land.

  My heart is heavy with sadness for Arcadia as I read the final proofs of SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY, the book that is, in truth, the first book in the history of Arcadia. The footnotes are meant to be of use to my academic colleagues in further research, but may be ignored by the merely curious reader who wants to see what happens next in the story.

  I urge the reader: don’t give up on Snotty. His adventures prove that if even one person knows who he or she really is, whole worlds can change. Ours did.