Well, it would have been Horty if Zena hadn’t gotten to him first. Monetre has traveled the country, collecting ‘one jewel’ creatures, and planting plagues and infestations throughout, seeded by a jewel he is constantly searching for a two-jewel human which he can control to wreak vengeance on humanity. When two jewels mate, their combined dream pervades a living creature, and recreates it as something more than what it ought to be. These ‘jewels’ dream, and when a single jewel dreams, it creates a duplicate of a living thing, flawed to varying degrees: a tree that is stunted, a cat with two legs, a man with no limbs or sweatglands…a midget. In this first portion of the book, there are clearly dark elements largely pertaining to Monetre’s antipathy to humans, but we have to wait until about halfway through the book to learn the underlying cause: on this planet, there are thousands, perhaps millions of alien lifeforms, which resemble, at least to humans’ limited perception, clear crystals.
One of the midgets, Zena, takes him under her wing, and he travels with them for ten years, posing as Zena’s kid cousin 2. (The Bluetts took him in rather as a publicity stunt during the husband’s failed run for office.) With more luck than he realizes, Horty is taken in by carnies, members of the sideshows of Pierre Monetre’s traveling circus. The primary story arc begins as Horty flees his adoptive parents’ house, taking only a handmade jack-in-the-box called Junky 1, after the husband smashes Horty’s hand in a door frame, severing three fingers. No, despite what lurid conclusions many modern readers may leap, nay, pole vault into, Horty was caught eating ants. He’d been doing it for years.”Ĭouldn’t resist starting the review with that first line! It’s one of my favorites, along with the first line of 1984.
“They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high school stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street.
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