The Styx. Patricia Holland

was presented with a Wuku bride—the greatest honour bestowed on a non-Wuku—which meant he was immune to The Wall’s curse. They weren’t too worried that he already had a Mrs Northampton. Perhaps he didn’t tell them. What probably happened is that Northampton made sure he always had a Wuku companion, so he was never in danger of becoming lost. As he was recognised as a Wuku, he was also never in danger of being harmed, which is another possible explanation for the disappearance of everyone else. Wuku idolised and held all animal life sacred—all animal life, that is, except non-Wuku people.”

      Shakespeare (my great-grandfather, not the playwright, hey) would no doubt, these days, be diagnosed as being on the Autistic Spectrum, the previously named Asperger Syndrome. He learnt to read and write English in a very short time and his resulting speech was, even for the times, oldfashioned and formal. He could remember word for word everything he heard or read. To test him out, Northampton gave him some of the real Shakespeare to read. My Wuku grandfather had an obscure sense of humour and from then on, in retribution for being treated as an amusement, he forever more, until the day he died, regaled them at every opportunity with quote after Shakespearean quote. That’s how he got his name, hey.

      “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.” “Cowards die many times before their deaths.” “Nothing can come of nothing.” Northampton loved this wicked side of Shakespeare, and bestowed on him a beautiful hand-tooled, leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare and a set of huge historical dictionaries. Shakespeare cherished these books and passed them on to my grandmother, who gave them to my mother, and then on my eighteenth birthday, they were to go to me.