56) I don't know. I mean, it was bigger than the whole block, but it didn't crush anything. It sort of materialized around us, so that our whole house was inside it. And the whole street was inside it too.

57) No. But what else could it have been?

58) A sort of pale blue. They didn't pulse, either. They twinkled.

59) More than six, less than twenty. It's not that easy to tell if this is the same intelligent blue light you were just speaking to five minutes ago.

60) Three things. First of all, a promise that Nerys wouldn't be hurt or harmed. Second, that if they were ever able to return her to the way she was, they'd let us know, and bring her back. Thirdly, a recipe for fluorescent bubble mixture. (I can only assume they were reading Mum's mind, because she didn't say anything. It's possible that Her Immanence told them, though. She definitely had access to some of "the Vehicle's" memories.) Also, they gave Pryderi a thing like a glass skateboard.

61) A sort of a liquid sound. Then everything became transparent. I was crying, and so was Mum. And Pryderi said, "Cool beans," and I started to giggle while crying, and then it was just our house again.

62) We went out into the back garden and looked up. There was something blinking blue and orange, very high, getting smaller and smaller, and we watched it until it was out of sight.

63) Because I didn't want to.

64) I fed the remaining animals. Roland was in a state. The cats just seemed happy that someone was feeding them again. I don't know how the chinchilla got out.

65) Sometimes. I mean, you have to bear in mind that she was the single most irritating person on the planet, even before the whole Her Immanence thing. But yes, I guess so. If I'm honest.

66) Sitting outside at night, staring up at the sky, wondering what she's doing now.

67) He wants his glass skateboard back. He says that it's his, and the government has no right to keep it. (You are the government, aren't you?) Mum seems happy to share the patent for the Colored Bubbles recipe with the government though. The man said that it might be the basis of a whole new branch of molecular something or other. Nobody gave me anything, so I don't have to worry.

68) Once, in the back garden, looking up at the night sky. I think it was only an orangeyish star, actually. It could have been Mars, I know they call it the red planet. Although once in a while I think that maybe she's back to herself again, and dancing, up there, wherever she is, and all the aliens love her pole dancing because they just don't know any better, and they think it's a whole new art form, and they don't even mind that she's sort of square.

69) I don't know. Sitting in the back garden talking to the cats, maybe. Or blowing silly-colored bubbles.

70) Until the day that I die.

I attest that this is a true statement of events.

Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsey.

A Calendar of Tales.

January Tale.

WHAP!.

"Is it always like this?" The kid seemed disoriented. He was glancing around the room, unfocused. That would get him killed, if he wasn't careful.

Twelve tapped him on the arm. "Nope. Not always. If there's any trouble, it'll come from up there."

He pointed to an attic door, in the ceiling above them. The door was askew, and the darkness waited behind it like an eye.

The kid nodded. Then he said, "How long have we got?"

"Together? Maybe another ten minutes."

"One thing I kept asking them at Base, they wouldn't answer. They said I'd see for myself. Who are they?"

Twelve didn't answer. Something had changed, ever so slightly, in the darkness of the attic above them. He touched his finger to his lips, then raised his weapon, and indicated for the kid to do likewise.

They came tumbling down from the attic-hole: brick-gray and mold-green, sharp-toothed and fast, so fast. The kid was still fumbling at the trigger when Twelve started shooting, and he took them out, all five of them, before the kid could fire a shot.

He glanced to his left. The kid was shaking.

"There you go," he said.

"I guess I mean, what are they?"

"What or who. Same thing. They're the enemy. Slipping in at the edges of time. Right now, at handover, they're going to be coming out in force."

They walked down the stairs together. They were in a small, suburban house. A woman and a man sat in the kitchen, at a table with a bottle of champagne upon it. They did not appear to notice the two men in uniform who walked through the room. The woman was pouring the champagne.

The kid's uniform was crisp and dark blue and looked unworn. His yearglass hung on his belt, full of pale sand. Twelve's uniform was frayed and faded to a bluish gray, patched up where it had been sliced into, or ripped, or burned. They reached the kitchen door and- Whap!

They were outside, in a forest, somewhere very cold indeed.

"DOWN!" called Twelve.

The sharp thing went over their heads and crashed into a tree behind them.

The kid said, "I thought you said it wasn't always like this."

Twelve shrugged.

"Where are they coming from?"

"Time," said Twelve. "They're hiding behind the seconds, trying to get in."

In the forest close to them something went whumpf, and a tall fir tree began to burn with a flickering copper-green flame.

"Where are they?"

"Above us, again. They're normally above you or beneath you." They came down like sparks from a sparkler, beautiful and white and possibly slightly dangerous.

The kid was getting the hang of it. This time the two of them fired together.

"Did they brief you?" asked Twelve. As they landed, the sparks looked less beautiful and much more dangerous.

"Not really. They just told me that it was only for a year."

Twelve barely paused to reload. He was grizzled and scarred. The kid looked barely old enough to pick up a weapon. "Did they tell you that a year would be a lifetime?"

The kid shook his head. Twelve remembered when he was a kid like this, his uniform clean and unburned. Had he ever been so fresh-faced? So innocent?

He dealt with five of the spark-demons. The kid took care of the remaining three.

"So it's a year of fighting," said the kid.

"Second by second," said Twelve.

Whap!

The waves crashed on the beach. It was hot here, a Southern Hemisphere January. It was still night, though. Above them fireworks hung in the sky, unmoving. Twelve checked his yearglass: there were only a couple of grains left. He was almost done.

He scanned the beach, the waves, the rocks.

"I don't see it," he said.

"I do," said the kid.

It rose from the sea as he pointed, something huge beyond the mind's holding, all bulk and malevolent vastness, all tentacles and claws, and it roared as it rose.

Twelve had the rocket launcher off his back and over his shoulder. He fired it, and watched as flame blossomed on the creature's body.

"Biggest I've seen yet," he said. "Maybe they save the best for last."

"Hey," said the kid, "I'm only at the beginning."

It came for them then, crab-claws flailing and snapping, tentacles lashing, maw opening and vainly closing. They sprinted up the sandy ridge.

The kid was faster than Twelve: he was young, but sometimes that's an advantage. Twelve's hip ached, and he stumbled. His final grain of sand was falling through the yearglass when something-a tentacle, he figured-wrapped itself around his leg, and he fell.

He looked up.

The kid was standing on the ridge, feet planted like they teach you in boot camp, holding a rocket launcher of unfamiliar design-something after Twelve's time, he assumed. He began mentally to say his good-byes as he was hauled down the beach, sand scraping his face, and then a dull bang and the tentacle was whipped from his leg as the creature was blown backwards, into the sea.

He was tumbling through the air as the final grain fell and Midnight took him.

Twelve opened his eyes in the place the old years go. Fourteen helped him down from the dais.

"How'd it go?" asked Nineteen Fourteen. She wore a floor-length white skirt and long, white gloves.

"They're getting more dangerous every year," said Twenty Twelve. "The seconds, and the things behind them. But I like the new kid. I think he's going to do fine."

February Tale.

Gray February skies, misty white sands, black rocks, and the sea seemed black too, like a monochrome photograph, with only the girl in the yellow raincoat adding any color to the world.

Twenty years ago the old woman had walked the beach in all weathers, bowed over, staring at the sand, occasionally bending, laboriously, to lift a rock and look beneath it. When she had stopped coming down to the sands, a middle-aged woman, her daughter I assumed, came, and walked the beach with less enthusiasm than her mother. Now that woman had stopped coming, and in her place there was the girl.

She came towards me. I was the only other person on the beach in that mist. I don't look much older than her.

"What are you looking for?" I called.

She made a face. "What makes you think I'm looking for anything?"

"You come down here every day. Before you it was the lady, before her the very old lady, with the umbrella."

"That was my grandmother," said the girl in the yellow raincoat.

"What did she lose?"

"A pendant."

"It must be very valuable."

"Not really. It has sentimental value."

"Must be worth more than that, if your family has been looking for it for umpteen years."

"Yes." She hesitated. Then she said, "Grandma said it would take her home again. She said she only came here to look around. She was curious. And then she got worried about having the pendant on her, so she hid it under a rock, so she'd be able to find it again, when she got back. And then, when she got back, she wasn't sure which rock it was, not anymore. That was fifty years ago."

"Where was her home?"

"She never told us."

The way the girl was talking made me ask the question that scared me. "Is she still alive? Your grandmother?"

"Yes. Sort of. But she doesn't talk to us these days. She just stares out at the sea. It must be horrible to be so old."

I shook my head. It isn't. Then I put my hand into my coat pocket and held it out to her. "Was it anything like this? I found it on this beach a year ago. Under a rock."

The pendant was untarnished by sand or by salt water.

The girl looked amazed, then she hugged me, and thanked me, and she took the pendant, and ran up the misty beach, in the direction of the little town.

I watched her go: a splash of gold in a black-and-white world, carrying her grandmother's pendant in her hand. It was a twin to the one I wore around my own neck.

I wondered about her grandmother, my little sister, whether she would ever go home; whether she would forgive me for the joke I had played on her if she did. Perhaps she would elect to stay on the earth, and would send the girl home in her place. That might be fun.