The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

Hallormsstada Forest ignore the carcasses. It’s probably not long until the forest will start to visually show the consequences of the leak.

With peering eyes Nyradur skims the forest and the calm river. From under the hat and the collar of his jacket his wrinkled skin shows. He has shaved off all his beard and tries to play a role as a small person; as a dwarf from The Hidden World he tries to hide in ours.

‘So, if you don’t find anything,’ he adds, ‘what then?’

Like him, I take a glance at our stage. The sun’s reflection illuminates the withered lupine horde that will live again when summer draws near, stretching its edges all the way down to the beach.

‘Then maybe they’re right,’ I sigh. ‘Maybe it has vanished. Maybe it’s dead. Or worse: maybe it has never existed. My research will go down the drain and most of my material will be utterly useless. Then I will have no chance of getting a position at The Cryptozoology and Wonderbeast Research Center. On top of that, my general chances of funding will shrink to nought, and they were not high before.’ Through my desperation I utter, ‘Doctor Aldis Audunsdottir will need to find herself another job.’

‘Another job? That’s so cruel!’ Nyradur scoffs.

Roguishly he waddles to where I sit on a bench with my back against a worn wooden table, half-dressed into my new drysuit with the safety helmet and the specially designed scuba mask by my side; a thick rubber balaclava with goggles attached and an air hose leading from a diving cylinder I will later attach to the suit. The mask should be completely isolated, no water ought to reach my skin.

‘So, isn’t it time?’ he asks, suddenly impatient. ‘Don’t the stories say that the serpent should wake from its slumber around this time of day?’ He points at my thick folder on the table. From its edges, yellowed, ragged corners of paper stick out.

‘Some stories do, not all of them.’ Standing up, I heave the suit up over my waist but struggle with dressing myself into the sleeves, for it demands dexterity to get these long limbs into their respective places. As I do, I mumble, ‘Couple of those accounts tell of how people saw the serpent during night or very early in the morning.’

‘But nothing has ever been proven regarding the serpent – if I understand it correctly?’ Nyradur half says, half asks. ‘No one has ever really Seen it? There isn’t any proof that what they saw was it?’

I nod to verify. ‘You want to go over this again?’ I don’t really expect an answer, he should know and remember this. I open the folder, leaf through it and begin to quickly recollect all the important topics and details before we head down.

*

Various creatures have found their way into our world through The Shroud, willingly or unwillingly, and haven’t been able to return. Cryptozoologists’ common goal is to find and research them in order to map and understand better the fauna of The Hidden World.

After the dwarf Nyradur became my assistant I’ve had the rare option to enter The Hidden World but such an expedition would be extremely dangerous. Besides, when a human goes there it’s with the risk of distancing oneself from the life in The Human World, not wanting to go back, gradually forgetting it, eventually becoming one of the hidden people. I have no desire to be one of them. Maybe I will risk an expedition later but then I would have to have better resources, probably a team of people with me. Moreover, Nyradur is here because he is interested in our technology and he finds it fascinating how beasts from his world have adapted to ours, the same fascination I have.

Us cryptozoologists talk about Seen and Unseen beasts, the former known as wonderbeasts and the latter as cryptids. A beast is Seen when its existence has been proven, and CWRC, The Cryptozoology and Wonderbeast Research Center, has strict standards regarding that. In order for a cryptid to be considered real, not an imagined creature from folklore, two or more reliable witnesses have had to see them at the same time, their reports must match and an undoubtedly authentic photograph or video of the cryptid must be shown. The final and most important proof is a biologic specimen which is analysed at the CWRC headquarters. Only then is a cryptid considered to be a wonderbeast.

In the Lagar Serpent’s case there haven’t been enough reliable witnesses when it has supposedly shown itself, reports vary and no one has ever developed a good photograph of it (an authentic one, that is).

Convenience and circumstances usually determine when the public chooses to put cryptids on a pedestal and consider the stories to have truth in them, for instance when bragging about a town’s, region’s or district’s differentiae and particularities to get tourists to dip deeper into their pockets. The Lagar Serpent is the most famous creature from Icelandic folklore but no one comes to Lagar River anymore due to pollution. The story of the serpent has both lost its charm and attraction. It has been written off.

People rarely recognize that folktales are often founded on real events; accounts that have been orally preserved and undergone changes on the way. Many find it unpleasing when the tranquillity of their everyday life is disrupted, and in this fast modern present, which revolves around wealth and overexploitation, few are interested in confronting the uncanny. Thus most of what is seen as different is pushed aside, even though the supernatural has become a professed part of our society.

In comparison with the hundreds – or even thousands – of tales and accounts about elves, dwarves, hidden people or draugurs and other undead beings from The Beyond, there are very few written and oral sources about cryptids. Cryptozoologists reckon the main reason is that many of them shy much away from humans and have therefore seldom been noticed throughout history; but also