Category: Fantasy

The Legend

There he was, in all his lacy glory. I’d heard of the viscount, of course, from every local in every cafe and bistro between Paris and Calais. Quite the legend, apparently, that no one outside of France had ever heard.

No one remembered his full title, or even his family name, only that he was a viscount. A fact that had only fueled my dismissal of the story as a joke on gullible tourists, until now. Who could scoff with semi-transparent but gloomy dark eyes boring into one’s soul over the longest cascade of a collar ever seen in 18th century portraits?

“Je vous maudis, traitre!” The voice was bitter, but the lips set and motionless beneath the oddly unstyled black hair that streamed down both sides of a gray face. I glanced around, a shiver uncalled for in the warm summer night air setting my teeth chattering. Even my abominable French understood the word traitor.

“Th-the revolution is over,” I quavered in English. “I’m just a tourist.” Not that there was any point in speaking English to a dead French aristocrat, I thought. Even one that had managed to escape the guillotine only to be thrown from his horse into that widely spreading tree I could see through his face.

“Je vois maudis!” he shrieked, suddenly inches from me with his fist blending with my throat. My breath turned to ice in my chest and for a moment the world became as transparent as the viscount. Then it was over. I smiled with grim satisfaction, quickly twitched the lace on my cuffs back into shape, and turned back toward Paris. The traitors must die under their own cursed blade.

Vlad

How long had it been? One hundred years? Two? Locked deep within the castle vaults, skin burned black and then white by the silver of his sarcophagus, thirst that would not be assuaged by his own blood turning his mind to enraged madness. How long since his screams of pain had turned to bitter silence, how long since the silence had been broken by his own maniacal cackling?

He remembered companions. Barely. What companions had they been. Women whose blood slaked his thirst and woke already fading emotions. Sycophants who pleased him for what he could offer – wealth, the illusion of power, eternity. Dust all of them. Worth less than that in life. No matter, he no longer cared for companionship.

He remembered children. Children of blood who hunted with him in the night, children who had filled the earth with their fascination and their hunger. Children who had fallen to the mobs who would not bow to their new gods. No matter. There would be more.

This one who had freed him would be the first. She stood before him, unbending, unyielding, unworshiping, unafraid. She would turn, oh yes, and she would be a queen such as had never been. They would rule a world of their own remaking. The crumbling throne before him waited for the liege lord, and all others would soon bow before it or die.

Book Teaser: Chosen – The Sprite

With my first full-length novel tentatively releasing this summer, I will be sharing a teaser from the unpolished manuscript every couple of weeks until release. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

Laughter like the tinkling of a wind chime drew my attention to a small copse. I approached slowly, my heart fluttering, peering closely into the shifting branches. A delicately pointed ear nearly escaped my notice until a merry eye the color of deep indigo followed it around the trunk of a tree. It disappeared the instant I saw it, but the chiming laughter rippled through the leaves. I followed it, forgetting the strange path entirely as the mysterious creature led me deeper into the forest.

   The laughter suddenly ceased, and a heart shaped face dropped from the branches overhead, inches away from my nose and upside down. Green hair hung like Spanish moss from a pale impish face, and slim fingers sprouting tiny pink flowers prodded my eyes and ears and pulled my hair. I tried to back away but my heel struck a root that had inconveniently pushed its way above ground behind me, and I crashed into the underbrush with my arms and legs flailing awkwardly. The creature laughed again, tumbling out of the tree and somersaulting through the air as it clutched its belly that shook with mirth.

   I stared at the creature from the flat of my back, too astonished to even be irritated at its mischief. “What are you?” I asked, my heart skipping with excitement.

Fantasy Woman Golden Mythical Creatures Forest

Doorman

The floor undulated beneath me, its checkered waves lifting me although I could not feel a surface under my feet. I wasn’t sure I even had feet; I couldn’t seem to find myself. The door hung from nothing, stood on nothing, with light streaming through it from some unidentifiable source. A Fedora sat on top of it, incongruous and yet belonging.

“From where have you come?” The light flickered with every word that hung heavy in the blackness like a star.

“What are you?” I would have gasped, but could not find my lungs.

“I am the Doorman. From where have you come?” The stars increased and yet lit nothing.

“Um, Earth?” I would have swallowed, but could not feel my tongue. “Small town USA?”

“What is your purpose here?” The stars began to coalesce into nebula, filming the blackness with cloudy light that could not obscure the Doorman.

“I don’t know.” I would have shaken my head but the muscles had vanished. “You tell me, I don’t even know what here is.”

“Where are you going?” The light behind the Doorman intensified, searing into my unprotected soul.

I would have covered my eyes with my hands if I had possessed either. “I wish I could tell you. Where do you lead?”

“You have asked correctly.” The checkered waves froze, the fedora vanished, and the door opened.

Frozen

The elementals stood in time suspended, shadow almost entirely consumed by the union of water and light. Locked in the the throes of their own battle, they had gradually drifted to the surface of the watery wasteland. Thousands of years of forgotten emptiness parted as the blue ice pierced the sky, dusted with the snow of an antarctic spring.

The elementals reflected the frigid sun like the facets of a jewel. The glancing rays stirred the fringes of their battle, sending swirls of radiant blue dancing over the jutting rocks of broken ice wedged against the elementals. Within the swirls the shadow’s tendrils stretched and grew.

The seamless blue of the sky clouded with ice crystals as the elementals cracked. The shadow’s tendrils crept from every crevice, spreading slowly to darken the horizon. The crystal shattered as light and water drew from the ocean beneath them to explode the sky, banishing shadow into the darkest trenches of the sea. There it gathered, seething with resentment, as the world above drowned in brilliant fire.

The Dust Siren

“Come with me, my lord,” she whispered in his ear. She was perfect, enchanting in her beauty. She laughed, silver notes of music, and caught his fingertips with hers as she danced lightly away. He followed, allowing the touch to remain. She twirled with delight, the hem of her robe indistinguishable from the dust on the path for one distracting moment.

“Where shall we go, my lady?” he asked, held captive by the gray that seemed to whirl in her irises. The city faded from memory, the path disappeared beneath his feet. He cared nothing for where his sandals carried him so long as that laughing smile flashed before him.

“Eat with me, my lord,” she crooned, leading him to a gray couch beside a laden table. She sat beside him as he lay back, a bowl of sweet plums in her hand. Her lithe fingers slipped one between her teeth, rosy lips closing over it just as its juice began to flow. His own mouth parted, and he leaned toward her, his hand reaching out to touch her arm with reverence. She blushed winningly and popped another fruit into his mouth with a giggle.

“Stay with me, my lord,” she pleaded, running a hand through his hair. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, her scent of earth and dried grasses filling his senses. Her fingers stroked his forehead as he drowsed with his head in her lap. His own hands played with the folds of her gown as it seemed to flow through his fingers.

“I must sleep, my lady,” he whispered, arms drooping weakly from the couch to trail in the dust. She wailed in anguish, slipping from beneath his head to kneel beside him. He felt her arms around him, as if her skin blended with his. Strange, he thought as he fixed his eyes upon her face. The color faded from her cheeks, leaving nothing but gray that matched her eyes.

“Come back to me, my lord,” she wept to the skull that lay alone in the dirt. The tatters of her robe formed furrows in her skin as she buried her colorless face in one crumbling hand. The wind blew across the bare ground, lifting dirty clouds into the air to obscure the ruin of his city in the distance. She knelt there, cracked and crumbling, in the accusing gaze of his empty bones.

The Flower Girl

FB_IMG_1590179770886She was my friend, but no one knew about her. She said no one would believe me anyway, so I never told anyone. Until now. Maybe you won’t think I’m crazy.

Her name was Daisy, but I called her my flower girl. She was so pretty in her white dress with a clover chain draped around her head. I thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world and my eight year old heart was smitten.

Daisy didn’t talk much. Mostly she smiled, giggled, ran away, and buried her face in every flower she found. She loved flowers and I could always find her hiding in the trailing roses at the edge of the cemetery.

I met her one day when I followed a lizard into the bushes. She had crouched behind them, watching the people pass by, she said. My lizard escaped while I stood and stared at her. She laughed at me and told me to chase her.

I had never been inside the cemetery before. It was an ordinary one, I suppose, but my child’s imagination had conjured all sorts of evil existing there. That day, with Daisy glancing over her shoulder at me as she ran, I forgot to be afraid. She led me a merry chase, up and down the rows of headstones, ducking behind trees and slipping away before I could catch up to giggle at me from behind another.

When the factory whistle reminded me of supper and my mother, she blew me a kiss and told me to come play again. So I did. Every afternoon, so long as it wasn’t raining, I ran to the cemetery to find her. She was always there, hiding under the trailing roses, and she always greeted me the same way. Every afternoon we played tag among the stones.

Some days, she would stop for a while at this grave marker or that, pointing at the words engraved there. I would stumble through the names and epitaphs, wondering what held her attention so long. Sometimes it would be a child’s grave, sometimes a soldier’s. Usually it named just an ordinary person. Some were new, some were so old the inscriptions were all but illegible. She never told me why they were important to her, and she never stayed long.

I never questioned that she was always there beneath the roses. I never asked why she never changed her dress. I never thought about the fact that her clover chain never faded or was lost, or her bare feet never dirty no matter how long we played. She was my best friend and the love of my young life.

Eventually other interests claimed me. The neighborhood boys recruited me for football practice with scraps from construction sites and dumpsters as goals, bicycle helmets and wadded newspapers in our shirts our only protection. My third grade teacher, a pleasant looking woman with a will like iron, believed in homework to keep idle hands from mischief, and thus stole many of the afternoons not devoted to “the game.”

Fewer and fewer days found me at the cemetery. When I did go, I found that playing chase and staring at headstones soon grew monotonous, and I would say goodbye to Daisy. She still blew me kisses and told me to come again, but she seemed different all the same.

One day, I followed her slowly into the graveyard instead of chasing her as usual. She stopped and turned to look at me, her smile gone. “Goodbye,” she said simply, then ran away. I went home to do my homework, and although I went to the cemetery for a few weeks afterwards, I never saw my flower girl again.

The Mirror World

FB_IMG_1590121467061All his life he had watched the world overhead. All his life he had wondered what it felt like to be surrounded by trees and green things. His own world was barren, a world of ice and rock. The two mirrored each other only in position.

There had been tales of adventurers who tried to climb the ice cliffs to cross the mirror. The few who returned had done so cruelly maimed or altered. None had reached the mirror and lived to tell the tale. None of the missing had ever been found.

Those attempts had been driven by curiosity, by restless individuals unsatisfied to observe from below. He identified with the feeling, but his uncle had kept him on a tight sinew. Adventuring didn’t pull fish from the ice or render whale blubber. So he had gazed at the green sky with its teeming life in longing.

Now the whales were growing scarce. Several years of bitter storms had thickened the ice and even the seals struggled to reach food through its layers. In recent cycles half of his village had sickened from starvation and exposure, and many had died. The Ice Elders had convened an emergency council and called for volunteers for an expedition to breach the mirror.

Not even his uncle could stop him this time. This attempt would be successful; he could feel it. He raised his hand as if to touch the trees. Soon enough, he thought, he would know. Soon enough he would have the answers he had always longed for.

His supplies lay at his feet, arranged carefully on a blanket of whale leather and tied with cords of sealskin through slits in the leather. He made a last check of picks, heavy leather ropes, leather repair kit, dried fish, and seal jerky. He lacked nothing, and rolled the blanket tightly before sealing the ends with more cord.

He looked around to find his uncle glaring at him from under the thick fur of his hood. The old man would never understand. He was angry with the Elders for their decision, refusing to believe the truth that the world was dying. Most of all he was angry with the boy. This was an act of defiance, an unforgivable offense. The boy could only hope that when he returned with wealth from a new world his uncle would see things differently.

He hefted his pack, fastening it securely to his shoulders. There would be no luxury of polar bear sleds on this journey. Most of it would be straight up where the bears could not follow. The Elders would be waiting at the village center. The time for goodbyes had passed. The new world called.

The Moth Princess

FB_IMG_1590103491783The day had come. The entire insect kingdom had gathered at The Willow for the official Emergence ceremony. The bees buzzed with excitement, their song rising harmoniously under the gently drooping limbs. Dragonflies swooped from branch to branch, their vibrant colors and crystal wings creating quite the show for the waiting audience. Beetles clicked and clacked around the roots, while ants scurried busily about carrying leafy trays full of good things to eat and drink.

Above all of them, the showy Atlas moth and his queen, the delicate Luna, flitted beneath the branches followed by the wise Polyphemus and the feathery Gypsy moth. They perched on the princess’s branch, two on each side of the cocoon, and waited while the undermoths quieted the crowd. When everyone was silent, King Atlas fluttered his crimson and orange wings, the carefully rehearsed pattern telling the story of the Princess’s time in the egg. When he had finished, Queen Luna danced the slow, beautiful story of the child’s days as a caterpillar, of how she had excelled in mulberry leaf eating, growing larger and more lovely than all the other caterpillars.

Prime Minister Gypsy fluffed his feathers to regale the audience with the presumed virtues of the soon to emerge Princess. Owl-marked Counselor Polyphemus waved his eyed wings in a stodgy explanation of the Princess’s royal duties. Finally, the preliminaries dispensed with, the cricket chorus tuned their legs and began the song to signal the Princess to awake.

With bated breath, the entire kingdom watched the strands of the cocoon began to snap. One by one they fell away until the Princess, wet and bedraggled, crawled out into the shaft of sunlight lying across the branch between the king and queen. For several long moments she rested, the circulation reaching every new vein and the bright sunlight drying her iridescent wings. Finally, when the watchers thought they could bear no more waiting, she spread her wings and looked down upon her kingdom.

She was as lovely as Gypsy had foretold. Enormous black eyes slanted upward into points above a pure white face, impossibly long black and white antenna waving gently above them. The tops of her wings gleamed like silver dust, while the bottoms sported delicate black pinpoints on a breathtaking greenish-white. The insect kingdom let out a collective gasp and bowed in awe.

The Princess was just beginning her welcome dance with the king and queen when a commotion on the ground interrupted the ceremony. Around the base of The Willow marched a great army of spiders, their long legs tossing any hapless insect in their path. Above them flew a silent horde of wasps and hornets, stingers at the ready. Horrified insects scrambled aeay from the invaders as ants deposited their refreshment trays and formed ranks against the spiders. Honeybees, bumblebees, and even the slowmoving carpenter bees joined forces against the flying army.

The battle raged fierce on both fronts. The spiders were larger and much better equipped, but the ants had strategy in their side. One after another the eight-eyed monsters fell before the organized defenders. The bees sacrificed themselves with admirable devotion, though only their numbers gave them victory in the end. When it was over, the victors surveyed great carnage, enemies and defenders lying dead alike between the roots.

The beetles rallied themselves and set about removing the bodies of the dead, while the crickets struck up a doleful lament for those who had paid the ultimate price for their sweet Princess. She peered down at them all from the safety of her branch, nodding her head in approval and thanks. When all evidence of the battle had been removed, she fluttered close to the ground, her wings glimmering in the fading light, including every insect in her welcome dance. Then her moth retinue surrounded her and bore her away to the treetops, her Emergence complete.