The Noween is a prehistoric monster that wants everything to happen immediately. Every time a child says “in a minute” or “later” or “I’m just going to . . .” the Noween bellows with furious force: “Nooo! IT HAS TO BE DONE NOOOW!” The Noween hates children, because children refuse to accept the Noween’s lie that time is linear. Children know that time is just an emotion, so “now” is a meaningless word to them, just as it was for Granny. George used to say that Granny wasn’t a time-optimist, she was a time-atheist, and the only religion she believed in was Do-It-Later-Buddhism.
The Noween brought the fears to the Land-of-Almost-Awake to catch children, because when a Noween gets hold of a child it engulfs the child’s future, leaving the victim helpless where it is, facing an entire life of eating now and sleeping now and tidying up right away. Never again can the child postpone something boring till later and do something fun in the meantime. All that’s left is now. A fate far worse than death, Granny always said, so the tale of the Noween started by clarifying that it hated fairy tales. Because nothing is better at making a child postpone something than a fairy tale. So one night the Noween slithered up Telling Mountain, the highest mountain peak in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, where it caused a massive landslide, which demolished the entire peak. Then it lay in wait in a dark cave. For Telling Mountain is the mountain the enphants have to climb in order to release the tales so they can glide over into the real world, and if the tales can’t leave Telling Mountain the whole kingdom of Miamas will suffocate, and then the whole Land-of-Almost-Awake will suffocate. For no stories can live without children listening to them.
When dawn came, all the bravest fighters from Mibatalos tried to climb the mountain and defeat the Noween, but no one managed it. Because the Noween was breeding fears in the caves. Fears need to be handled carefully, because threats just make them grow bigger. So every time a parent somewhere threatened a child, it worked as fertilizer. “Soon,” a child said somewhere, and then a parent yelled, “No, nooow! Or I’ll—” And, bang, another fear was hatched in one of the Noween’s caves.
When the warriors from Mibatalos came up the mountain, the Noween released the fears, and they immediately transformed themselves into each individual soldier’s worst nightmare. For all beings have a mortal fear, even the warriors from Mibatalos, and the air in the Land-of-Almost-Awake slowly grew thinner. Storytellers found it increasingly difficult to breathe.