Canto 126 – Enter the Spider
The Black Wolf snuffled along the streets of Kiro, past apartment complexes, Shinto shrines, manga cafes, noodle shops, child-care centers, accounting firms, Zen Gardens, and the once-famous clown college where the zaniest members of the Harlequin Brothers that Gaijin entertainment had once been saturated with.
Phoenix and Rocket Rogers in his conspicuous white cowboy hat followed at a discreet distance.
Finally, they arrived in front of a run-down athletic shoe factory.
“Is this it?” Phoenix asked.
“You don’t remember it?” Rocket asked.
“They obviously moved locations after Alec and Taffy and I became White Spiders. Too risky to keep using a place we could take all of you directly to.”
“How did Alec know where to go, then?”
“Good question. Do you think the rat might’ve been betraying us all along?”
“No. I think it was the helmet.”
“My nose says they are inside this building. Jackie was very afraid when they entered,” said the Black Wolf.
“We are going in, but we will split up inside. Freddy, can you find Alec and Jackie for us? Maybe even set them free if they are imprisoned here?”
“Yes, I can Phoenix-kun.” Phoenix nodded, and the Black Wolf disappeared around the corner, sniffing out a possible entrance for a small black wolf.
“And what’ll we do?” Rocket asked.
“We see if we can locate the Avenger helmet. But carefully so we don’t fall under its spell.”
“Right! We definitely need to find out what that evil thing is up to.”
“It will mostly likely be in Fangwoman’s greedy hands. She is the highest-ranking Black Spider after Jinjiro’s death and Bres’ banishment from the planet. But be warned, she is not the most evil one there. You need to leave Bone Daddy to me.”
“Bone Daddy?”
“He’s a wraith, not a humanoid. His people have see-through flesh that makes them look like walking skeletons when they’re naked. And they can alter their density to be stone hard or phase through solid walls. Oh, and anything in between, so never let a wraith have a chance to grab any of your internal organs by hand.”
Rocket visibly shuddered. Of course, Phoenix knew that Bone Daddy would be the critical fight for him. He would have to beat him in single combat or all the White Spider students would eventually die at his hands, not just Freddy, Rocket, and Phoenix.
Catch a Falling Star 
Ending the Story
The first chapter of the story of my life does not open with my birth. It begins with my first memories around the age of three or four, when I first really became aware and my mind began seriously pulling itself together. Similarly, it will not ultimately end the final chapter when the lights go out and I pass away. I myself will not be able to write that particular sentence because, as I die, I probably won’t be in the act of writing about it.
This topic comes up because I have been thinking long and hard about how my AeroQuest series is going to end.
The original story in my terrible first-published novel has been divided into five different parts. Admittedly they are not as stand-alone in nature as I had originally intended.
Of course, since it all evolved from an on-going role-playing game, it was never really supposed to have an end point. And if I manage to finish this number-five novel, I already have a story to fill the number-six novel. It will be called Galactic Fire and the story is already tied to the other five.
At the same time, I am rewriting and updating Stardusters and Space Lizards. This too is an ongoing story. As a sequel to Catch a Falling Star, it takes up the tale of the aliens who tried and failed to invade a small town in Iowa. It takes them to a dying planet where the population of meat-eating lizard people are determined to make themselves extinct.
So, naturally, this book has the problem of the need to kill characters who are not the villain. Characters I have come to love. One of the characters shown on this new cover was supposed to tragically die during the climactic battle of the book. It began my awareness of how I can’t seem to end a novel without killing characters.
Of my fifteen existing novels, only Superchicken and A Field Guide to Fauns make it to the end of the story without killing a character.
I am lucky society doesn’t charge authors with murder for killing off characters in their books. After all, we fiction writers are a murderous lot. And characters are real people, at least to the author.
But, life as a story, is like that. Nobody that we have photographs of makes it out alive. And all the exceptions to the general rule may be highly metaphorical in actual reality.
The character in my initial Paffooney, Orben Wallace from The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, is a good example of the ongoing nature of life’s story. I call that book a prequel-equal-sequel because it tells a story that begins before Catch a Falling Star, includes some of the same story as that book, and ends with a story that occurs well after the other story departs for outer space.
I fully expect my own life to end its story like that one did. There is a story that comes both before and after. Birth-to-death stories are always part of something larger. And it is all connected.
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