The Last of the Gullivers by Carter Crocker

forth.”
    â€œBut what exactly,” Michael asked, “is this thing?”
    â€œWe don’t
exactly
know,” one answered. “It’s a mystery and that’s the point.”
    â€œOh, we tried to get in there, to take a look, but we couldn’t,” from another.
    â€œIt’s locked, you see,” added Philament Phlopp, the one with no eyebrows. “Not even Mumraffian Rake, greatest locksmith in all Lesser Lilliput, can open it.”
    â€œBut if you never saw what’s in there,” Michael went on, “how do you know for a fact what it is?”
    The Grand Panjandrum stepped in to explain: “You ask the wrong question, Brother Ninneter. We know nothing for a
fact
. Facts are fungible, troublesome things. We don’t put much faith in them.”
    â€œAnd neither should you,” said another.
    â€œWe know it holds the Answer, because we
know
it holds the answer,” this from one named Fammel Plushes.
    â€œAnd just because we haven’t gotten the vault open,” the Grand Panjandrum went on, “doesn’t mean the Answer isn’t there, isn’t real. A shoe, cat, sunset, heartache—these things are real, we know that. It takes no particular effort to accept them as such. But the unseen and un-seeable and never-known things, those take a bit of working at. And those are the things most worth believing.”
    It was late-autumn now and the days were dropping away as fast as the beech leaves, the nights stretching cold and windy. The boy kept at his job and was mostly happy: he liked the work and liked harmless Mr. Fenn. But Myron was something else. Myron hated Michael and did everything he could to make the boy quit the market.
    Michael just ignored him and that made Myron madder still.
    And when, on a wet Tuesday in early November, Myron found that his uncle was going to raise Michael’s salary, he grew dizzy with rage.
    â€œ
I
ask you for a raise and you say you can’t afford it!” Myron screamed at his uncle.
    â€œThat’s right,” replied Fenn.
    Myron thought he would pass out or throw up or both. “Then how can you afford it for
him
?!”
    â€œEasy,” Fenn answered. “I’m takin’ it out of your pay.”
    This couldn’t go on, Myron knew that. He unwrapped another peppermint stick and decided to get rid of that boy, one way or another.
    The People of the Garden City held a competition, open to everyone, to find a design for the Great Hall. Soon, blueprints and models began to arrive and these were shown in a tent in the town center. There were submissions from Artists, Accountants, Daydreamers, Professors of Engineering, and these were impressive things, like castles, cathedrals, mammoth structures of stone, with heavy buttressed walls.
    The Lesser Lilliputians came each day to marvel at each new design and none of them looked more closely than the little peasant girl, Burra Dryth. She had been born to the poorest family in the village; for her first ten years, she hardly spoke, but only watched. And as she watched, she missed
nothing
.
    Everyone waited for the last model, from the Dean of the Architects. When it arrived, the whole village came to see. His design was remarkable, spectacular,
nantwuzzl’d
to use their word, a building for the ages!
    Burra studied the model and listened to the People praise it. But she wasn’t as sure; she wondered if it wasn’t a monument to the Architect himself, not a place for them all. A new dream began to take hold in her young head and she hurried home to sketch it on paper. Burra knew nothing of designing buildings, but set to teaching herself. She read every book, studied every structure in the city.
    And then she went to work. She started making that dream in her head.
    Word got around what Burra was doing and the People of Lesser Lilliput shared a few laughs. Burra Dryth, imagine! The odd little rag-girl! What was she