Jarful

A The cartridge on the Slopbox. Three jars on the Slopwright’s bench have something in each, a dust bunny, a teacup snail and a loose screw, and the apprentice keeps one. Out in the long grass of the yard, in spilt flour on the larder floor, in the puddles of the drain under it and in the drifts of dust in the attic, the workshop’s creatures live, and a jar thrown at one worn down enough keeps it. Twenty go on the jar list, which the Tallyman counts, on the principle that counting a thing keeps it where it is.

Every creature is one of four kinds, and each kind beats the next in a ring: dust soaks up damp, damp rusts tin, tin shuts out a draught, a draught blows dust away. Some grow into something else: the dust bunny into a dust hare, the teacup snail into a teapot snail, a Glob into a Batch, the loose screw into a loose bolt, a Draughtlet into a whistler. Four keepers test the apprentice on the way: Mr Plinth at the end of the yard, Ferrule sitting on the drain with things she caught, the Tallyman at the bottom of it, and Mrs Steep in the attic, whose creatures have been in the draught all morning. Last comes Mr Hollow, who keeps his jars empty and whose creatures are not in anything. The Drawer sells jars, and a Slopaganda poster on the workshop wall asks for every unslopped object to be reported.

It is not Vat Duty, where the same creatures are fought; here they are kept, and the list is the point.