WISCON FRIDAY: In Which the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Crashes A Zeppelin Into the State Capital
It was a partly cloudy day in East Dundee, IL.
There we were, three youngish women, frolicking in the flower garden, drinking tea and entertaining toddlers, when all of a sudden, a shadow moved over the sun.
It was Black Gate’s zeppelin, the Harold Lamb, on the descent.
“Ef!” Ms. Templeton twirled her stealth parasol in alarm. “The Gee-Dee thing’s coming down on the roof!”
“Not my roof!” Ms. Redding shouted, a baby on one stylishly jutted hip and a chaenomeles speciosa (a nasty and ubiquitous shrubbery, recently uprooted by dint of chain and pickup truck from her front garden) brandished high in her free arm.
For myself, I was convinced Ms. Redding was set to hurl the shrub (or, at the very least, the baby) at the Harold Lamb in an effort to knock it off its fatal course. Thankfully, at the last moment, the zeppelin veered, mooring itself between two surviving elms. A rope ladder unfurled. A familiar voice over the loudspeaker boomed down:
“Will the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood please climb aboard?”