Just a little more than two days later, the plumpins emerged from the more heavily wooded northern portion of the Hillocks and into the denuded south, where most of the trees had been felled long ago and the Bramble’s invasion remained somewhat in its infancy. Here, in a little pocket of paradise within paradise, the pig farmers made their homes and the pigs were plentiful.

They were also, to many an outsider’s eye, very strange.

In the centuries following the pig’s arrival in the Hillocks and its subsequent adoption by the plumpins, the species had come a long way in a relatively short time and gone in many surprising and even startling directions, both aesthetically and evolutionarily. Much of this came from a short-lived, delicious and more than a little misguided attempt by a small sect of monastic plumpins who, after falling into a chance discussion on philosophy at a nearby tavern, devoted the rest of their days and those of ensuing generations to a multigenerational breeding program designed to bring about the purest and piggiest form of pig that could be. Of course, with little agreement as to what the core characteristics and determining factors of a pig were—and even less patience—the “program” amounted to little more than a frantic orgy of pig sex that endlessly woke the neighbors and more resembled a drunken battlefield than anything that could be said to be scientific. If there was any overriding benefit to the operation, it was that the pigs had more sex in this time period than all of their ancestors put together and the species had, as a whole, seemed relatively good-tempered since.

“Wow…” Mullaby said, and Philbert hadn’t even gotten to the bit about pigs having orgasms that lasted for hours and even days. Ultimately, he decided to skip that part altogether. And as for what had become of the pigs, with their evolutionary tree branched so forcefully and haphazardly in odd directions, the little fellow would see for himself soon enough that they did not all look like Rufus.

The sun was shining high in the sky above them and the land fell away before them in rolling hills to the Hogwash on the far horizon as they crested a small rise and looked out over the domain of the southern pig farmers. Long ago, the land had been divided amongst rival farms who fought fiercely and it retained a certain patchwork quality from this vantage, with the remnants of the old stone walls tracing uneven and ghostly lines through the grasses like fading scars. Today there were no recognized borders or boundaries, and the southern pig farms of the Hillocks were perhaps more accurately described as one giant farm, with the generations of farming families moving as freely as the pigs they took as their charges. Philbert thought maybe he could see the smoke from Gusly’s chimney and his stomach gurgled. He prodded Rufus on and swung the dangle-bob down the hill and towards what he hoped would be a fine dinner of garlic squirrel and roasted acorns.

Rejoining the stream, they continued south along its banks where the boughs hung heavy over their heads and the air was cooler. Rufus left deep tracks in the loam of the water’s brim, his hooves making loud squelching noises in the quiet noontide. In the flowered underbrush, great poofy bumbly-bees bounced from blossom to blossom in explosions of bright yellow pollen, hastening from the claws of darting dragonflies with broad prismatic wings that flashed in the speckled light pouring through the leafy canopy. And wading down the middle of the stream, massive and bloated and impossibly round, a full-grown pufferpig.

“What’s that?” Mullaby exclaimed, pointing to the hairless brown balloon churning its legs in the water.

“That’s a pig,” said Philbert.

“That is not a pig.”

“Sure, it is. And look, piglets.”

Philbert pointed and there on the far bank a litter of pufferpiglets rolled and tumbled down the incline to splash in the water like a handful of shaven coconuts, submerging with a squeal only to pop back up again squealing even louder. They bobbed and tossed in the current for a moment, stubby legs kicking in the air as they righted themselves, and then began paddling after their mother in a single-file line.

Mullaby spent the rest of the afternoon wide-eyed and slack-jawed with his head on a swivel as they passed through the richest part of the southern pig farms, where all sorts of piggish prototypes still thrived. There were fearsome boars that seemed more tusk than pig, blobular mud-pigs that wallowed through the dew-bell paddies like perpetual manure machines, and even a thriving colony of short-haired forgefurs—little blonde furnaces who grow hotter the longer they sleep and make excellent pets on cold nights. And when the plumpins left the stream to cross the open fields, they were surrounded by little pink pigs the size of squirrels who trotted through the clover at Rufus’ feet and whined for treats. Philbert fed them bits of toadstool from his sack and offered some to Mullaby, who had gone unusually quiet in a substantial mental effort to expand his working definition of the word “pig.” All told, the little chap wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t eaten another bad toadstool.

By the time they reached Gusly’s farm, dusk had settled its sleepy blanket over the Hillocks and Rufus and Mullaby were yawning both.

“We’re almost there, fella,” Philbert said, giving Rufus some sturdy pats. “And then it’ll be a feast for both of us.”

“I want a feast too!” Mullaby’s small tired voice piped up.

“We’ll see what’s left,” Philbert teased and smiled at Mullaby’s scowl.

They had entered a large clearing and Gusly’s farmhouse stood on the far end of the meadow like a ramshackle mountain of questionable engineering abutting the forest behind. It sat under the broad canopy of a great tree whose trunk had long been subsumed into the sprawling architecture and whose leafy reach shaded all like a verdant dome. Not unlike a toadstool, thought Philbert. Fireflies made their nests there and flitted through the long grasses as the weary plumpins made their way through the evening chill to Gusly’s front door.

“What is that?” Mullaby asked, and Philbert realized that the little chap had most likely never seen a proper house. Considering the context, this could still be said to be true.

Gusly’s house was something of an oddity not just in the Hillocks but within the conceptual framework of “house” itself. It began simply enough, with Gusly making a modest excursion into modern domesticity by arranging three walls around a particularly sturdy tree that he was particularly fond of. That a ceiling would follow was only natural. But once housed, Gusly found that he could barely bring himself to stop. Tearing down that first flimsy façade, he set about engineering in earnest, adding room after room, experimenting with different types of doors and door shapes, installing ladders and windows, building with wood and stone and anything that he could lay his hands on. He still tended to his pigs every morning and every evening, but all waking hours besides were consumed by this newfound passion. Several of his fellow farmers thought Gusly had lost his marbles. More than a few said as much. But as word of the endeavour spread, and as Gusly showed no sign of abandoning his ways and, if anything, seemed happier and plumper than ever before, plumpins came from every corner to see and maybe even sleep under a real roof. All were welcome and Gusly even encouraged his guests to try their own hand at housing during their stay, adding a room or a feature or perhaps just a simple lean-to and seeing if it struck their fancy. The only rule is that you couldn’t take it with you. And like a pot boiling over, the Cuttel farm built up and spilled across the vale.

Deep in his cups, Gusly liked to describe its creation as the blossoming of a beautiful flower outstretching its petals, but he had actually, though accidentally, invented the first plumpin hotel in the Hillocks and simply forgotten to charge his guests.

And as Philbert could see from the warmly lit windows and was now beginning to hear, Gusly certainly had guests.