Tag: fantasy

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

But David, there’s another thing and it’s a real mystery.” She described the telegram that had been sent from Kazan. “That was a dreadful day trying to avoid Chopyk’s sheep herding efforts, trying to see the Gorky Museum and not think about Paul, all at the same time. Did you…?” But David was shaking his head.
Jennifer felt a wave of fear again. “You were one of the few who broke away from the group so I thought it must have been you trying to surprise me. Please tell me it’s not someone else trying to pull a fast one. ”
“I didn’t send any telegram. If you think about it, it would have to be someone who knew Volodya’s address—and knew the code words.”
“No, it didn’t have the code words in it. He thought I’d forgotten them and came anyway.”
“Natasha? She would have quick access to telegrams…she knew his address from the telegram he sent you…”
“Natasha—it has to be her.” Jennifer was stunned. “But why? I don’t get it. You know I suspected her back when the other telegram came in. She’s from Leningrad, you know, and they might have known one another while he worked for Intourist.”
“I’ve thought there’s more to her than what we’re seeing. That’s gotta be it, but you won’t get a chance to ask her because we’re trying to avoid her like the plague right now.” David began to sort through the closet for the jacket and shoes. “Do you know if she caught up to us here at the hotel?”
“Oh, for sure, but I don’t think she knows what rooms we’re in. If you hadn’t told me your room number, I’m sure I couldn’t have got it from the desk clerk. They seemed terminally uninterested.”
“Listen, why don’t you ask Volodya if he knows Natasha? Let’s sleep on this matter,” he yawned politely, “and get you-know-who fixed up with clothes in the morning.”
But when she returned to her room, Volodya had fallen into a deep sleep sprawled across the utilitarian single bed. His pack was open, contents spilled onto the floor, with his clothes hanging neatly on the racks. Coaching would have to wait.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Poodie James

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Sam thought about the trajectory of his own career, the comfort
of his retirement, the adventure of his new work on the bench. He
wasn’t sure that he could trust words to say what he felt. He offered
his hand to the big man sitting in the coppery sunshine on the
stoop of Poodie’s cabin. Engine Fred grasped it and smiled.
“I talk too much,” he said.
As Sam backed his car around and headed down the lane,
Engine Fred shambled up the path through the bunch grass
toward the jungle. Poodie hefted the three boxes of reds into a
stack next to the cabin. He would put them on the wagon and take
them to Ralph Gritzinger at the market. With his apple money,
ten or twelve dollars a week from newspapers and bottles and what
he made stocking shelves and doing odd jobs for Gritzinger, he
was all right, he thought. He had a place to stay and people who
helped him. The YMCA let him swim laps in the indoor pool now
that the city pool was closed for the season. He wondered what
would happen to a man like him in another country, another time.
What would the Egyptians 4000 years ago have done with an
undersized deaf man whose talk was hard to understand, who
walked badly? Would the Pharaoh’s master builders have wanted
him to work on the pyramids? Maybe, he thought, if he was lucky.
Most likely, he would starve. He walked out into the field where
the orchard used to be and turned to face his cabin and trees. If he
was from a nice neighborhood in town, wouldn’t he think the
cabin was too small, too run down and dirty for anyone to live in,
with no running water and no bathroom? If he were an Egyptian
slave from 2680 BC, wouldn’t he think that living in such a place
would be a blessing?
He was blessed, he told himself; a lucky man. He would hate the
jobs the school for the deaf wanted him to take, fixing furniture,
repairing shoes, inside all the time, stuck in a routine. Poodie
thought about how hard most folks in the valley worked to pay for
their houses, buy their cars, raise their children. He thought about
Dan and Ruth Thorp losing their orchard and their house.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

The Unquiet Land

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Republican Army, and the British forces. What Sinn Fein calls ‘the forces of occupation.’ Nora is worried sick. The reports of killings, of arson, of intimidation and repression: they terrify her.”
“They’re always talking of war in Dublin,” Michael said.
“It’ll come soon enough, I’m sure,” Caitlin murmured half to herself, “and we’ll all be involved in it.”
“And yet it’s so peaceful here,” Michael said, listening to the silence that enclosed them and watching the lazy drift of turf smoke from the farmhouse chimneys. He let his hands slide down over the sides of Caitlin’s breasts and lowered his lips to the cool flesh of her cheek.
Caitlin shivered with the thrill of his touch.
“Are you cold?” Michael asked. He raised her to her feet, placed both arms around her waist and pulled her to him.
Caitlin circled her arms around his neck and gazed with longing into his eager, blue eyes. “No, I’m not cold,” she whispered. She was frightened. Things Padraig had said were beginning to struggle to the surface of her consciousness.
Michael kissed her lips lightly, then with more and more pressure. She felt his tongue and opened her mouth. She quivered all over.
“Thou shallt not commit adultery.” Padraig’s words sounded distantly in her ears like the echo of waves in a seashell. “One of the ten commandments from God Himself to his servant Moses. You cannot disobey God’s explicit precepts with impunity, Caitlin.”
Michael’s feet shifted as he pressed his body even more tightly against Caitlin’s. His breathing was uneven. His heart pounded.
“A sin is a word, deed or desire contrary to the law of God.” Padraig’s fierce, dark eyes and passionate, white face appeared in Caitlin’s thoughts like a nightmare figure in a child’s uneasy sleep.
Desire. Desire. Desire.
Michael was seized by a passion that tightened every fibre in his body and found release only in the kisses that he pressed on Caitlin’s mouth and face. Caitlin responded with a passion as consuming as his. She pushed her body against his muscular frame with an eagerness that almost fused them into one.
“The flesh lusteth against the spirit.” The priest’s black eyes, bright as coal, burned into her own eyes with the fierce heat of fanaticism. “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. These are the works of the flesh. These are the Devil’s works. Not God’s.”

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

The Unquiet Land

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…that rumour either—in fact Caitlin thought she would more quickly believe the other—and she was annoyed that Caitlin might be about to ridicule religion as she had ridiculed Padraig.
“No, it doesn’t make me laugh,” Caitlin said earnestly. “It happens to be true. I’m joining the Church.”
Nora turned and looked in disbelief at Caitlin. Her face showed her astonishment, but as the truth of Caitlin’s words became apparent, Nora broke into a radiant smile, and her eyes lit up with a joy such as Caitlin had never seen before.
“Oh Caitlin,” Nora cried, grasping Caitlin by the shoulders and staring into her eyes in rapture. “I can’t believe it has happened. I’ve so much longed and prayed for this day.” She leaned toward Caitlin and hugged her tightly as tears glimmered in her eyes. She straightened up, dropped her hands into the lap of her pink summer dress and asked, “When did you reach this momentous decision?”
“It’s something that developed gradually and not without a lot of heart-searching,” Caitlin said. “I think it was Joe-Joe Carney’s illness that started it.”
Nora looked serious again. “That incident with young Joe-Joe did Padraig a lot of good in the village. He needed that miracle badly. A lot of people were not at all happy about Padraig coming back among them as their priest and confessor. They remembered his background and they didn’t trust him.” Nora paused and glanced awkwardly at her hands. “You won’t be angry if I say something personal?”
“No.”
“These latest rumours of an affair between you and him are destroying all the goodwill Padraig earned from Joe-Joe’s recovery. People are saying unkind things about him again and gaining credence. You have to let it be known what’s happening, Caitlin. For Padraig’s sake.”
“Another miracle for the Father,” Caitlin said with an edge of sarcasm. “Very well, Nora, you have my permission, as not just my twin sister, but as my closest friend in this village of spite and vindictiveness, to broadcast the truth. Caitlin MacLir has accepted the One True Faith.”
“Does Daddy know?”
“I haven’t actually told him in so many words,” Caitlin replied, while a guilty shadow flittered across her face. “But he knows.”
“Or just suspects.”
“No. I believe he knows what’s going on.”

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Prairie Roots

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…watched her eat all the things that “were good for us”. Thank
goodness he liked perohy or we may not have acquired the fondness
for them that we did.
In fact, every Friday morning was perohy-making time, since,
as Ukrainian Catholics, we observed the meatless Friday rule.We
were roped into the perohy-making assembly line whenever we
were home from school. It was usually fun, invariably initiated
one or two squabbles about who was or was not doing how much
of what, but also included listening to Mom telling a story or singing
us songs. When she ladled those delicious little creations out
of the hot water into the cooling pot and then onto our platters,
and covered them with melted butter and crisply fried onions, a
morning’s work was known to disappear in short minutes! They
were so good!
I certainly well remember mother’s songs and stories that she
had brought with her from “the old country”. As she worked
away in the kitchen she forever sang those wonderfully sad
Ukrainian soul songs or told us stories of her early life. So many
times the tears would gather in her eyes and we would feel sad
with her, not really knowing what had made her sad in the first
instance. We must have been a comfort to her though, she being
so far from her family and almost certain that she would not see
any of them again. She at least had us to occupy herself with, leaving
her precious little time for self-pity.
I also recall the concerned exchanges between my parents as
World War II ravaged their birth areas and then as communism under
Stalin’s fist tightened its’ vicious grip throughout eastern Europe,
I wonder now what conflicting thoughts they had to endure. Their
life was not easy; however, what little news came through, devastating
as it must have been, would certainly have made them feel
thankful for getting away from that tormented region.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897920

The Qliphoth

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Lucas:
Grand Junction
The light filters through a drifting barrage of cloud, early evening mist blurs a
green froth of trees and Lucas doesn’t know anything any more. Now that he’s
walked out he feels uneasy about his paternal rescue mission. No one stops for
the lone hitcher. The B-road wanders everywhere and nowhere. All the signs
are overgrown.
He staggers into Abbotsburton railway station. At least he can dry out and
ponder. From the doorway of the deserted waiting-room, he studies the slant
of the rain. No way back to the motherland now. He gazes along a curve of single
track. Squat oaks crowd the edge of the trackbed. They bulge with
growths, puffs of whiteness.. The dankness of this landscape might dissolve
the sticky molecules of his identity.
The waiting room window is pointed, forming pseudo-gothic lancets with
small leaded panes. There’s a peculiar stained-glass armorial motif at the apex,
a stylised flash of green lightning bursting from blue-tinted clouds, with initials:
WGJR.
This must be the privately-owned ‘restored’ line, probably run by enthusiasts
in woolly hats and anoraks. Perhaps they’re hoping to reconnect
Abbotsburton with the local coastal resorts, miles away across the moorlands.
Yet their steam-age revival has apparently failed already. The cracked canopy
leaks, and this room is a sparsely furnished shed, offering a slatted wooden
bench, scarred with ancient rune-like graffiti. The faded adverts for
Brylcreem, Park Drive cigarettes and Philco Radio-Grams are the kind of
time-capsule memorabilia his father used to sell.
He is atomised, all his bits and pieces are in free fall. Best not to think too
hard about past, future, any time at all. Of course, he has left his bleeding
watch behind.
Lucas turns up the collar of his black bomber jacket and walks out to the far
end of the platform, where nettles split the asphalt. There’s no sign of a timetable
or platform staff. He scans the rusty rails. They curve in from the woods
and continue out into a steep cutting, between slopes of thick wet bushes.
On the far side of the track he can see a low windowless red-brick building,
overgrown with creepers. A derelict sub-station; or a wrecked trackside
memorial to some defunct moorland industry?

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Poodie James

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“What’ll it be?” he said.
“Can of Prince Albert, please.”
Gritzinger walked to the shelves. Sam looked over at the big
man. Something about that voice.
The man glanced at him.
“Pardon me, sir,” Sam said, “is your name Clarkson?”
The stranger turned and looked steadily at him from behind
rimless glasses that imparted an air of orderliness to a man otherwise
in dishevelment.
“Why do you ask?”
“Years ago, I spent time in a courtroom with a lawyer by that
name, one of the best I was ever up against. He whipped me. That
rarely happened. I didn’t forget it.”
The man’s gaze softened a little as he continued to study Sam’s
face.
“Condolences on your loss,” the big man said at last. He handed
Gritizinger a few coins, slipped the can of tobacco into his jacket
pocket, dipped his head and said, “Good evening to you both.”
“Glad to see you after all these years,” Gritzinger said.
“And I you, sir. Good evening.”
Sam watched the man’s back as he walked out of the market and
headed north. He turned to Gritzinger only after the door closed
and the sound of the bell interrupted his musing.
“You know him,” he said.
“Used to”, Gritzinger said. “Haven’t seen him since before the
war. He’d come through here on freight trains and stay in that
hobo camp down by the old Thorp place. Poodie James brought
him around. Did a few odd jobs for me. Spent a day once stacking
two cords of cedar in the woodshed out back. Called himself Fred.”
Fred, Sam thought. Fred Clarkson?
When Darwin Spanger walked into the showroom of Torgerson
Packard, the proprietor was conducting a couple on a tour around a
black sedan. With a nod of his head, Torgerson directed Spanger…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

The Qliphoth

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Version 1.0.0

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…wheeler-dealer in twentieth century wreckage, the magus who re-discovered
the Lore of the Brazen Head.
Even now I must pay for my faery-land humours, for Jago will be soon lumbering
over with his medical mafiosi, to wake up the sleeping beauties; to make
a special brain check on ugly old pseudo-Rabbinical Freakbeard.
For fuck’s sake, Wolfbane! I’d only just got Jago off my back. And then you
came across to peer over my shoulder, you burst into a sniggering fit, your
greaselocks whirling . . .
“Why waste your time inventing a new religion?” you shouted, so that the
whole Day Room could hear, even poor Eamonn, who looked up anxiously
from his week-old Catholic Herald, thinking more new sins for Eamonn,
omigod . . .
“The teachings channeled via the Order of the Brazen Head are not a religion.
They’re fragments of a system for magically transforming reality. I’m
well on the way to rediscovering it.” I was angry but remained in full control.
He obviously wasn’t accustomed to dealing with an authentic adept.
“Sounds like Harry Houdini to me. All these old blokes in robes climbing
into magic compartments. The disappearing cabinet gimmick. Mummy case,
magic casket, fakirs in igloos, it’s all the same. Ancient stuff. I’ve been doing it
for years. Watch me now. I can mash potato, I can do the twist . . .”
He did a little sing-song dance routine, not the head banging heroics everyone
associated with the Hrothgar videos, more like a twirly number from some
old Motown tour. He spun so fast he was a blur of hair.
“Why are you in here, Wolfbane? ”
“It was headline news,” he muttered, “and everybody in the business knew
about it.” He seemed offended that I didn’t know. “Anyway, I know all about
you now. You’ve abandoned your wife and child, right? Abandoned them, to
be lost in space, on the dead planet, to be eaten alive by robots. While you
bummed off to write letters to aliens. What kind of an alibi is that, I ask you? I
was a dragon-slayer. You were just a worm . . .”
He’d never suffered under PP, the All-Devourer, She Who Hath Gnawed
Out the Sweetness of My Entrails.
“When you see the finished Book of the Lore, Wolfbane, you’ll see I was
given no choice, I made the best decision in the circumstances, and when I’ve
finished my life’s work, you’ll see . . .”
“You’ll never finish it. That’s your bloody alibi, isn’t it? Just do it to death.”
He repeated it several times—do it to death—wrote it across the wall…

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Arrows

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Arrogant and stupid, that’s what I was. And being what I was, I
failed to stop the last great war. I hesitated. I waited too long.
One night I was startled awake by drums in the small hours
before dawn. Indians used hollow tree trunks that were remarkably
loud, hitting them with sticks of about the length and diameter of a
forearm. The women started a hellish racket that would have
awakened Lazarus.
I went outside and found the fires blazing and a sizable group of
women walking rhythmically about in single file, each with a hand
on the shoulder of the next in the firelight.
Some men stood while their women painted their bodies with
crushed onoto seeds mixed with ashes and adorned them with
feathers. Others were ready and gathering their weapons. There was
tension in the air. I made my way through the confusion in search of
someone who could explain what was happening.
I went to Guacaipuro’s hut and saw him standing very still at the
entrance, his gaze lost in the distance. Beside him, Baruta, painted
and feathered, waited unobtrusively. Someone tapped me on the
arm. Pariamanaco was breathing fast, a stern expression on his
boyish face.
“What’s happening?” I asked him.
“War.”
“Who? Where?” I asked.
“The city they founded.”
“Santiago de León de Caracas?”
He shrugged, curving the corners of his mouth. Those words
meant nothing to his ears.
“I must talk to your uncle.”
“He ordered to be left alone. He doesn’t want to talk. All caciques
will bring their men. They will meet at Maracapana. It is too late for
talk.”
“Maracapana?”
He shrugged. He didn’t know where that was. He had never been
more than a few miles from the confines of the village.
Gaucaipuro stood while Urquía ceremoniously placed a jaguar’s

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562848

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Water in the Wilderness

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He stroked her cheek. “Rachael’s in the hospital here. She has hypothermia and frostbite but she’ll be okay.” He took a deep breath. “We brought Bobby and Ronald here, but they had to be transferred to Calgary.”
“Why? Morley, tell me. Is Bobby …?”
He squeezed her arm. “Bobby’s very sick. He … he was unconscious when we found him. It’s too soon to tell ….” Morley buried his face in her shoulder, and when he raised his head, Tyne could see tears coursing down his cheeks through the stubble of his beard. He swallowed hard and wiped a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, Tyne, I was going to be strong for you. We have to believe he’s going to be all right.”
Tyne reached over to touch his cheek. When she had swallowed her own tears, she said, “Where did you find them?”
“Ronald had made it to Matt McDonald’s farm, but he’d just got as far as the outbuildings when he collapsed. Matt was going to the barn after the wind died down, and that’s when he found him. He was able to tell Matt that Rachael and Bobby were in a granary, and he begged him to hurry and get them.”
Morley paused and looked down as if trying to collect his thoughts and get control of his emotions. “Matt guessed the granary was his own, not very far away. He called me, and I put the word out. Several of us were just getting ready to go out and search again. When we found them in that building, I thought … I thought ….” He sniffed and took a deep breath. “They were holding each other, and Rachael woke up and saw me, and she smiled at first, then started to cry, and she told me to look after Bobby. But he wouldn’t wake up.” Morley put his head down and sobbed.
Tyne wanted to hold him and comfort him, but somehow she couldn’t seem to lift herself off the bed. Her tears flowed freely with his.
Morley reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his face. “I called the hospital from Matt’s place to tell you we’d found them, but Inge said you were in surgery.”
Tyne gave him a puzzled look. “No, why would she say that? We didn’t have any more cases.” Then suddenly, she knew.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X