A New Look

Whenever my wee sister got bored, she would rearrange the furniture in her bedroom. I’d open the door and immediately be lost. The bed would be here, the chest of drawers there, and she’d be standing at the window, wondering if the bookshelf would fit beneath it. Just as I got used to the arrangement, it would change again. I was amazed at how many options she discovered for placing a twin bed in a 10 x 12 square room. She found more than four, she was that clever.

Yet no matter what the layout, it was always her room. It felt like her, smelled of the incense she burned, reflected her essence in the dog calendar on the wall, the Stephen King paperback on the bedside table, and the jacket hung on the closet doorknob.

I don’t move furniture around, but my preferences change with the season. Now that fall is here, I drink sweet creamy black tea, wear slippers instead of bare feet, and want the house to smell of cinnamon and apples. It’s a good time to change up the setting at Comfortable Rebellion, too, but while the colours change and a new photo reigns, the spirit remains the same: creativity, philosophizing, and with the NHL season about to begin, the occasional rant against the referees. A blanket is recommended for sitting on the verandah, but the welcome is warmer than ever.

Bundle up and stay a while.

"Four Legs and a Tale (Part VII)"

 

Your answer dwells at the manor. The children’s mother spoke the truth; he knows it by the strange chill that flickered over his hide when she said the words. The manor. He doesn’t remember being there, but there is where he was last a man.

Mine …

The children come by on the brink of full dark. They have brought food gathered in the wild: berries and mushrooms and an armload of apples, and Joel has replenished the waterskin. Sian wonders why they have not offered him meat, until he realizes that the notion of eating flesh repulses him. It was not always so … but he has not always been half-horse, either. He consumes what his equine organs can digest and deposits the waste in like fashion. The children have been more aware of it than he is. Their innate love of horses has given them the know-how to treat him where anyone else, including himself, might have done more harm.

Joel throws the blanket over the manhorse’s back and motions a promise of grooming come the morning. Sian solemnly nods. He would like a bath and a brush. The fever and old unguent have left him tarnished, but he must be gone before the boy returns.

He puts out a hand. Joel lays his small palm across Sian’s wide one. They look together at Roanne, who stands removed after delivering the apples. Joel murmurs confidentially at the manhorse’s side, but the words mean nothing to Sian. The boy’s tone indicates some droll amusement concerning his sister, and when Sian smiles, the effort is genuine. He likes Joel. He likes Roanne as well, but when he turns his smile on her, something in her eyes freezes it in place. She whispers a word, and the smile slowly melts.

It’s a name. Is it … ?

Mine.

Joel squawks indignantly at her. She disregards him. Her luminous dark eyes are fixed on Sian, watching for something to sign recognition. A hint, a twitch, a spark, anything. He stares back at her, knowing the word yet not knowing, unable to place when he last heard it, or who had spoken it. 

* * *

It means something to him; she can tell by the way his eyes go inward, searching. Her brother, who gets angry when he’s confused, demands to know what she thinks she’s doing. It’s late and they have to get home before Da comes looking—and since Mam knows about the cave, the cave is the first place he’ll look. “We don’t want Da finding Sian, do we?” he reminds her.

Roanne has known from the beginning that Da will take Sian to the manor—but the manor, if Kev knows what he’s yammering about, is where he belongs. Only he doesn’t belong there; not if he and his brother fought over Lady Alarice and Lord Derrick did something wicked to punish him.

“It’s not safe here anymore,” she says.

Joel flaps his arms in irritation. “It’ll be fine if we’re in time for supper. Let’s go, Roanne. You can teach Sian some words in the morning.”

“It’s not just a word, Joel. It’s his name.”

“His name is Sian.”

“No. It’s Blais—isn’t it?” she asks, her eyes steady on his. “You’re Lord Derrick’s little brother. You’re in love with his wife and he found out, so he turned you into a manhorse and tried to kill you with a poisoned arrow.”

He can’t understand her, but Joel can. His jaw drops and his eyes pop, and he utters a mewling squeak that he intended to be a derisive scoff. “What? Is that what the manor oaf told you?”

“Lord Derrick is a magician,” she says to him. “Mam knows.”

Joel gapes, horrified. The Lirosi are known seers and such, but marauders are disbelievers to the point of forbidding the natives from using their talents for any reason whatsoever. For one of them, for one of the highest order among them, to practice witchery himself, is impossible. Yet if Mam believes otherwise … “How would Mam know?”

“She has the sight, just like—” Roanne stops abruptly, biting her lip.

“Just like me,” Joel finishes, grimly.

That isn’t what Roanne had been about to say, but she lets him think it was. He does have it, after all, and he hardly remembers Norra.

She slowly approaches Sian. He has been listening to the exchange, unable to interpret anything but the tone of their voices, and a worried frown has wrinkled his beautifully smooth brow. Everything about him is beautiful—she saw it right away, yet she has favoured the beauty of the horse over the beauty of the man. She has appealed to his equine nature, speaking softly, moving slowly, touching gently, and he has responded as a horse will respond, with trust and benevolence. She must remember that such traits may not exist in his nature as a man … but when she looks up into his eyes, she sees someone wronged. Someone betrayed. Someone unjustly punished—and yet, someone loved. Someone treasured. Someone given the gift of greater beauty than he had on two legs. Dark magic did not make this glorious creature. Dark magic seeks to destroy him. 

* * *

She is quiet through supper. Da asks what’s got her tongue, and she sticks it out to show him it’s still there. Mam’s attempt at a disapproving frown is weakened by her poorly concealed smile. Da simply grunts with mild amusement and takes Joel’s bread to sop up the last of the gravy from his bowl. Joel protests and Da looks hard at him. Hard, but with pride. Da loves his children in a taciturn, roughspun sort of way. Roanne adores him almost as much as she fears him—he has a temper as black as his hair, but horses would have nothing to do with him if they sensed anything truly mean about him. He is more proud of his son than his daughter, probably because Joel is the only boy of three to survive beyond infancy, but it may also be that he has more faith in the boy’s resistance to the marauders’ conniving ways. Losing Norra hurt him deeply, and when he looks at Roanne, he cannot help but see the resemblance to her older sister. Mam says that’s why he dislikes her to visit the manor without him. Every day, he asks her if she’s seen that fool boy, and while Roanne always answers honestly, Da is notably relieved when she says no.

“He came to the camp today,” Mam says casually, dishing up the stewed fruit.

A muscle twitches in Da’s jaw. “Why?”

“He burned his hand and wanted me to tend it.”

      “Don’t they tend burns at the manor?”

“This was an odd one,” Mam says. “He said he’d picked up an arrowhead that scorched him, but there was no blemish that I saw.”

Da glares at Roanne, who, along with Joel, tries to look as if her throat has not closed about her windpipe and is threatening to choke her. “Were you with him?”

“We both were,” Joel answers. Da won’t hit him as hard as he’ll hit Roanne, so he often speaks for her when their father’s ire is roused. “He told it true, Da. He did pick up an arrowhead and it did scorch him. I think it was magicked.”

Da looks to Mam. “Is that what you think?”

She nods.

“The lord?”

      “Someone,” Mam says. Some Lirosi mothers use Lord Derrick’s name to frighten their badly behaved children, but Mam won’t use it to frighten hers.

“Where is this arrowhead?” Da wants to know.

“In the cave off the north creek trail.”

The children exchange frantic glances. Mam is sending their father straight to Sian!

Da smacks Joel’s head to get his attention. “You left it there?”

“We buried it. It won’t do any harm in the earth.”

“Did it burn you, son?”

Joel wags his head in a non-committal manner. “Only when I touched it. The longer I held it, the worse it burned, but as soon as I dropped it, my hand healed. Magicked,” he concludes with a shrug.

Roanne watches her father’s face. Like her, Da lacks the knowing shared by Mam and Joel, so he must rely on their word when magic is mentioned. It seldom happens because of the marauders’ rule against the mystic arts, so talk of this bespelled arrowhead has him more interested than his daughter would like. He decides to visit the cave in the morning, with Joel along to show him the spot where the object is buried. Roanne demands to go with them. Da refuses. She pleads. Da still refuses. A third attempt makes him suspicious, so she abandons the hunt.

She impatiently waits until her parents are asleep and the whole camp is quiet. Joel wakes as soon as her skin rasps against the blanket. “Are you crazy?” he whispers, knowing instinctively where she’s bound.

“I’m Lirosi,” she whispers back.

He starts to get out of bed. She stops him with a hand on his head and a promise to be back soon.

She returns sooner than either of them expect, with news that alternately relieves and worries her brother.

The manhorse is gone from the cave. 

To be continued …

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig

Auto Biography V

“Blue Silver”

       “Only you would spend more money to buy a car that’s older than the one youʼre giving up.”

“But, Dad, it’s a ’66 Mustang!”

 

I mean, really. I was 26 years old, I was working fulltime. Thunder was packing it in ... and it was a ’66 Mustang!

My brother-in-law co-signed for me and the deed was done. I got behind the wheel to take her off the lot and the salesman said to me, “Don’t let your boyfriend drive.”

Who needs a boyfriend? I thought, gleefully. I have a ’66 Mustang! A creampuff V6 automatic with 66,000 miles on the odometer (this was in 1987), that came to me by way of a divorce where the wife tried to kill her ex-husband by selling his baby.

She was absolutely ripe for the name “Blue Silver”, taken from Duran Duran’s song The Chauffer, which features the phrase “sing blue silver”.

When I was laid off from my fulltime government job, Silver took me up and down Vancouver Island in search of radio work, then over the Malahat and back during the summer when I landed a weekend shift at the Duncan station. Finally, I nailed the graveyard shift at an AM station in Victoria. For a year, Blue Silver stood out all night on Douglas Street and was only towed once—I am convinced because she was a classic Mustang and the tow asshole couldn’t stand that she wasn’t his.

My wee sister cheekily called her a “character vehicle” – with good reason.

The carburetor iced up in winter. At 6:00 every morning after my on-air shift, I had to run the engine curbside until the temperature needle reached halfway up the dial or she would stall at a traffic light; if the traffic lights were with us, we could cruise 12 blocks without stopping and charge up Hwy 17 to home just as Ter was getting up to go to work.

The driver’s door clunked each time it was opened. I lubed the hinges with vegetable oil, to no avail.

Our happiest speed was 70 miles per hour, when I could lift my foot from the gas and the far rear wheel would squeal like a delirious hamster galloping for its life.

I got my first and only speeding ticket in that car, peeling off the highway and racing through a residential area on a mission to collect Duran Duran concert tickets from the mall outlet. The cop gave me points and I think there was a fine, but I was in a hurry to get where I was going so didn’t pay that much attention.

The AM radio was usually tuned to a classic rock station in Vancouver that featured “Beatle breaks” every weekday at 11:00 a.m. Classic tunes seemed more fitting with Silver’s style, but there were other, more current, musical moments to be had. Ter chauffeured me home from the dentist after I had survived some horrifying procedure and couldnʼt sit up let alone handle the wheel – Bruce Springsteenʼs new song was released on that day and I swear to this one that it’s called “Burger in the Skyˮ. I was on the road at Thanksgiving when DD’s new single, I Don’t Want Your Love, premiered and I damn near drove off the road at how good the song was. And once my Christmas present stereo was installed, I sang Make Love Like a Man with Def Leppard when their “Adrenalize” album was released in 1992.

Good times.

Alas, the car of my dreams fell into my lap at the wrong time in my life. A year after I got the graveyard gig, the station went automated from midnight to 6:00 a.m., so there went my radio career. I wound up on social assistance and Silver wound up on the street when Ter bought her first car in 1990. Newer and therefore more reliable, the Camaro got the driveway and Silver was housed elsewhere, changing locations whenever the vandals found her. A front tire was stabbed. A Halloween pumpkin pitched overnight struck and dented her rear quarter. Keys were dug along her near side. And one day, when the continually-clunking driver’s door opened, a god-awful POING! preceded the spring shooting skyward from between the hinges. That door swung free forever after, so turning your back on it guaranteed a shove in the butt.

And then the steering began to go.

I couldn’t afford to keep Silver safe from vandals or safe to drive. My dad – he who had advised me to “get off the moon” when I surprised him with my proud purchase – generously put up the cash to get the work done, but the end was nigh.

Ter and I moved to a costlier flat downtown. Keeping Silver was now completely impractical. I was only working half-time. I had nowhere to park her, no money to maintain her, and once in town, nowhere to drive her. Five years after I bought her, she was sold to a unit supervisor with the BC Ambulance Service for half of what I paid. I handed over the keys, got into Ter’s Camaro, and dared not look back.

In hindsight, I adored my Pony, but I didnʼt fully appreciate the jewel in my possession. If I had, I would have made one decision differently with an eye to keeping her … but even then, success was no given. Character vehicles are expensive when you have a full time paycheque to spend on them. It happened as it was meant to, but the single nameable regret in my life is letting Blue Silver go.

For my birthday that year, Ter gifted me with an 8X10 photo of my parents and me taken in happier times with the Mustang as a prop. I opened the package, burst into tears and cried, “I love this picture! Silver is in it!”

 

 

Mum, Dad, Ru and Blue Silver 1990

Still A God

Sting’s new album – the first collection of original material he’s produced in a decade (?!) – was released this week. On Tuesday night, I lay in the candlelit Ocean Room and listened to The Last Ship.

Magical.

I may be prejudiced, therefore this is no surprise, but the man can do no wrong. From the days of him heading up The Police, I have listened to him narrate Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, sing Elizabethan madrigals, play jazz-infused reggae and reggae-infused jazz, and seen him front everything from a three-man rock band to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I have read his autobiography, his book of lyrics, watched his films, bought his winter album (can’t call it a Christmas collection because it really isn’t), and snapped up all his solo work. I admit, I gave away Mercury Falling, but like his guitarist buddy, the inimitable Dominic Miller, I neither understand nor share his fascination with country music. That album sparked my fear that his genius had peaked with The Soul Cages, which remains my favourite of his albums and, in a funny way, was his first step on the path to writing the soundtrack to his first musical, set to premier on Broadway in September 2014.

Magical.

He has always written poetry and put it to music. Now he speaks for characters more than for himself, and that’s what makes the story songs so powerful. This album is a story about people, about leaving home and coming home, about love and loss, and smack in the middle of it is the heart that kept his hometown beating for so many years: the shipbuilding industry. It’s wonderful and beautiful and romantic and sad and ancient and elegant and thoughtful and exactly where Sting as an artist is meant to be. Even his liner notes are inspiring! He talks about what moved him to write this album and how he’s grown as a songwriter. He even mentions The Soul Cages as being coldly received except by a group of particularly fervent fans to whom he fondly refers as the “recently bereaved or the chronically melancholy” –neither category into which I fall, by the way.

It’s not a car stereo album. It’s not a housecleaning album. It’s not a background music album. It may not even be a writing album. It’s a lie-in-a-candlelit-room-and-picture-it-in-your-mind album. It’s a dance-though-you-feel-like-crying album. It’s an is-it-over-already??? album. I was transported by his voice and his music to another time and place, and experienced something deeply profound as a result.

Magic.

Writer's Conundrum

A Scribe’s Skirmish

writer’s conflict

the impossibility

of writing with

magnificence

contrasted with

the impossibility

 

of

 

abandoning

the challenge

writer’s conundrum

            © Nicole D. Myers 2013

What do you do when neither version is working? You dump the whole project. Except that there is something in a writer’s makeup that refuses to quit.

My personal poet laureate, the exceptional Nicole D. Myers, wrote this poem a few weeks—yes, weeks—ago, and has kindly given her consent for me to share it here. I asked because dang if she didn’t nail the universal quandary square on the coconut. I loved the poem from the get-go (it’s posted on my office bulletin board) and came face to face with an example of “the conundrum” last weekend.

The angel story isn’t working. Shifting perspective temporarily fooled me into believing otherwise, but as Ter observed following my latest grouchy rant, I have emerged from my room unhappy and dissatisfied each time I’ve tangled with it. She recommended that I bag it for the nonce, adding that I can always go back to it when the time is right. The story is good. It’s just not meant to happen right now. So I skulked back to my room, opened chapter 18 of my stalled Castasian novel, and actually finished it (the chapter, not the novel). At least I worked on something, even if it evolved from admitting defeat on another count.

Only admitting defeat does not come easily to this writer. While I was distracted with the tale of Reijo and Jannika that afternoon, the other part of my brain was pondering the problem with Cristal and Shade. It is a good story. Why the %^$#*&^ isn’t it effing working????

The answer came, as usual, at bedtime.

It’s not one story. It’s actually two. Two different freaking stories about angels. This explains why Cristal and Shade in her version are completely different from Cristal and Shade in his version. I mean it. The characters in one POV (point of view) are polar opposites of the characters in the other, hence my garment-rending angst over getting anywhere. Clearly I have four characters using two names. I’ll fix that forthwith, but the relief I felt at discovering the potential for a whole new pair of stories set in this angelic realm was akin to the relief of discovering that the headache you’ve endured for weeks is finally gone.

The impossibility of writing either with magnificence remains. Okay, so does the challenge of crafting two separate stories when I’d anticipated a single piece. If there’s any good news here, it’s that I have a whole new world in which to play ... assuming I can relax enough to accept what comes when it comes and quit forcing it when it won’t.

Writer’s conundrum indeed.

The Importance of Tea (Part VI)

“Safetea”

The first day of autumn blew in on a strong wind complete with rain and a stormy sea. It also coincided with the Tour de Victoria, which happened to roll past my window en route, one hopes, to someplace warm and dry. At midday it occurred to me that I was missing an opportunity to see a bunch of crazy people cycle by, so I carried my tea tumbler full of Persian Apple to the Ocean Room and settled on the sofa to watch the race for a bit.

I love wild water. The sea at its feistiest is a momentous sight. Grey-green waves laced with foam, pounding the beach right across the street. Rain coming sideways, driven by the same wind that has the trees dancing to its music. Part of me yearns to go out in it, to experience firsthand the smells, the sounds, the sights of Nature doing her darndest to remind us that, ultimately, she rules and we’ll just have to work with it.

Problem is, much as I long to stand in the teeth of it, those teeth are cold, wet and sharp. Only a fool would willingly succumb to that longing. Or, in the case of racing cyclists, a number of fools.

Nope, a sensible person curls up in a warm room with a steady supply of tea on the steep and watches the show from a safe haven.

Yes, I am immensely grateful that I have that warm, safe haven. I can afford to rhapsodize about stormy weather because I have the good fortune to be sheltered from it.

The vibe indoors was no doubt influenced by the energy outdoors; I had real trouble wanting to write, let alone knowing what to write. I spent most of the morning reading over things, trying to get a bead on something that would trickle into flow. I get rattled and restless when the wind is up – a reminder that I, too, am a creature of Nature and susceptible to the same energy patterns as everything else on the planet. It’s a harder fight on that sort of day, to be content, to be creative, even to be optimistic. So it was good for me to take my tea into the OR and observe the conditions from a happy place. It made me grateful and even a bit creative, ’cause that’s when I saw the paradox of heinous outside, peaceful inside, and the importance of tea in the situation. I grabbed the Canon, set up the shot and hit the button.

Instant post.

Life is good.

Twins Ten Years Apart

Mum holds the bairn while a diligent older brother looks on - 1964

Most boys probably want a bicycle for their tenth birthday. A bike or hockey equipment or airplane models or some other boyish-type nod to their boyishness, especially when one already has a younger brother and two little sisters.

When he turned ten, my older older brother got a baby sister. In truth, we all got her, but for him, as good a soul as he is, it would be fair to imagine he was a little dismayed. Until that day, September 21 had belonged solely to him. From 1963 onward, his birthday was a shared event.

It was also closure, in a way. My parents started their family on September 21, 1953, and finished production exactly ten years later – a notable credit to my mother’s organizational skills. Five kids in ten years. Nice and neat and tidy, unless you count the log jam with my older sibs, who were born within four years of each other and were known collectively by my wee sister and me as “the Big Guys”. I shudder to think how they referred to us when the parents weren’t looking. Managing a litter takes some doing, but Mum and Dad pulled it off like professionals. Sure, we indulged in the usual sibling scraps, vying for position and attention within the pack, but to this day, whenever we see each other and no matter how much time has passed since the last meeting, we always embrace warmly and pick up right where we left off. There is great affection among the kids in our clan.

But back to the ten year twins.

Today, my wee sister turns 50. That means my older older brother is 60. She is here on the west coast. He lives on Prince Edward Island. When we all lived in the same house, he was the best older older brother in the world and she was … well, she was “the bairn” and 50 years later, she still is. I’m less sure how she feels about that than how my folks must feel knowing their youngest is now a half-century old and their firstborn is this close to qualifying for CPP. Physical age means nothing, though, except when the aches and pains set in: get the gang in the same room at the same time and we fall into line in the order in which we were born. He has four younger siblings and she has four older siblings. The three in between love them both from different vantage points, but I’m pretty sure we’re all glad we have them.

I know I am.

“Four Legs and a Tale (Part VI)”

      Mine.

The word beats in time with his heart.

Mine mine mine …

Why can’t I remember?

The children’s mother has stayed at the cave. She sits with her son, watching Sian test his injured leg by pacing circles around the fire. Joel’s head swivels as the manhorse passes behind him, but his mother waits for him to reappear in her line of sight. Her eyes follow him, moving from right to left, her face motionless, until he disappears to become a series of footsteps at her back. After a few rounds, Joel motions for Sian to change direction. The far hind bears up well enough; better than it has since the arrow first struck. He also feels more comfortable with all four legs though he still expects to see boots when he looks down at his feet.

Boots? Yes, boots. If he closes his eyes and tips his head forward, he can see them: soft doeskin boots, worn and supple in the style of a favourite pair. And leathers, equally worn and supple, snug inside the boots at the knee. My knee. My legs. A man’s legs. A man, not a horse. Not a horse!

A strangled moan rouses him. His eyes open and the boots vanish. The leathers and legs vanish. He stares down at smooth pale hooves and listens to the heavy thudding of his heart.

Mine mine mine …

Joel’s mother watches. She is solemn and silent … knowing. Sian can’t name why he believes it of her, but he does believe it. She knows him as the boy Kev knows him, but while Kev has run from the knowledge, the Lirosi woman is thinking. Pondering. Assessing.

Sian steps toward her. His intent is more apparent to Joel than to him, for the boy promptly jumps up and roars in his face. The tactic works; Sian rears back on his haunches and retreats to the far side of the fire, where he wheels in small circles while attempting to gather his thoughts. He didn’t mean to threaten her—did he?

“My son has no faith in manor dwellers.”

Sian stops his restless pacing and lifts his head. Joel is gone and his mother has risen to her feet. Hers is the voice that came like a velvet caress from across the cave. She smiles at his bewilderment. It is not a particularly pleasant smile. He makes himself stand firm against it, against the distaste in her tone when she explains that the oppressed must learn to communicate with their oppressors. She speaks with an accent that makes poetry of harsh words. He is as much lulled by the music as distressed by the lyric.

“Have I oppressed you?” he asks, genuinely dismayed.

She studies him with her dark, omniscient eyes. That she mistrusts him is obvious, yet she is capable of compassion else she would not have tended his hurt. “No,” she says, slowly. “You have not.”

He steps forward, eagerly. “Then you know me? You know who I am?”

“I do not know you myself. I can only guess.”

“Then guess.”

She smiles again. Though this one is less unpleasant, he is yet chilled by it. “There is one who can say for sure.”

“Who?”

“The one who magicked the arrow that wounded you. The one who shot the arrow … the one who made you.”

Sian takes another step. “Do you know him?”

“Your answer dwells at the manor, not with me or my children. If you go tonight, I will not betray you. Be here in the morning, and you may live to regret it.” She retrieves her bag and walks to the cave entrance. Sian lunges after her, reaching with his hands. She whirls, her eyes flashing, before he can grab her. “Your wish, my lord?”

Lord? He lowers his hands, baffled and hurt that she has misperceived his intention. “I only wish to thank you for your kindness. Your children, too. Without them, I would be in far worse despair.”

She runs a meaningful gaze over his legs, back and quarters. “My people have an innate love of horses. The children will do all they can when they find one in despair.”

Yet Roanne held his hand while he was being stitched, and he had felt Joel stroking his hair during the fever sleep. They have each responded to the man as much as the horse. They have befriended him, fed him, sheltered and cared for him … Roanne has even named him prince in her native tongue. “They see me as I am,” he declares, defiantly enough to coax a cynical smile from their mother.

“Did they speak to you?”

“They did.” With gestures and a few indistinct sounds that he had deciphered with repetition.

Their mother knows better. “Do you wonder why the children of parents who have learned your language do not speak to you in your own tongue? They have refused to learn it for themselves. My son will not bow to it, and my daughter will not be seduced by it. If they show you kindness, it is because they are kindness itself. I will not have them tainted like the arrowhead that struck you.”

Sian nods once, respectfully. There seems no point in saying anything more. 

* * *

 It’s getting late but Roanne insists on walking Kev as far as the orchard. The boy is so badly shaken that his teeth chatter in the silence and she fears he might get lost beyond familiar landmarks. She would take him to the house proper except that she’ll be expected at home for supper and she must stop at the cave before then.

Lord Derrick’s younger brother. She knows that the lord has a brother, but she spends so little time at the manor that she’s never seen him. Kev says his name is Blais and he’s years younger than Lord Derrick—the last child of older parents and thus more indulged than his brother. “The resentful firstborn and the spoiled baby—you can imagine how well they got along,” Kev says. He sighs, frowns, and stops talking.

Roanne prods him. “ ‘Got’?”

“Blais left the manor after a huge big row with his brother that almost came to blows. Apparently,” Kev hastily adds. “I wasn’t there. I heard it from someone who knows the maid who was sweeping the hearth in the next room. Lord Derrick was in a rage so cold that the ashes in the grate turned to ice crystals, she says.”

“What was the row about?”

“Lady Alarice, of course.”

Roanne is quiet, reflecting on her last sighting of the lord’s lady. It was during the spring progress, when the noble couple rode through the land, stopping at villages to grant favours and pardon indiscretions. The children in the Lirosi encampment had strung along the roadside to watch them go by. The bannered escort had come first, garbed in livery of green and gray, mounted on dark horses. The lord and his lady had followed, riding side by side on their matched blacks. Their heads had been high, their shoulders straight and their eyes fixed front despite the ragged applause from the onlookers they passed. Joel had narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists, muttering, “They could at least look,” under his breath. Roanne had laughed—too loudly, as it happened. Lady Alarice had turned in her saddle and seen the scruffy little girl standing barefoot in the dirt. Her eyes, a soft, liquid brown, had hardened along with her face, and she had begun to turn her horse toward the child. Lord Derrick had grabbed her mount’s bridle and hauled the animal back into line, but not before Roanne had been seized by a queer woozy sense of dread. Lady Alarice hated her; she knew it though Joel had dismissed her by saying that Lady Alarice hated all Lirosi. “Lord Derrick likes us better,” he’d scoffed, “and he sets leg traps to stop us hunting in our own woods.”

“She doesn’t hate the Lirosi,” Kev says now, offended on his lady’s behalf. “I told you, she’s miserable with her husband.”

“So she hates everybody?” Roanne is skeptical, remembering the lovely face growing taut atop its bones and an errant lock of pale hair slipping from the lady’s hood. The memory alone makes her woozy again.

“I guess she didn’t hate Lord Derrick’s brother,” Kev remarks, sloughing through leaves of red, yellow and brown. His foot finds an apple and sends it flying into the dusk. An indignant yelp follows a wet splunk and Joel emerges from the trees, pawing irritably at a fresh stain on his tunic.

“Good shot,” Roanne commends Kev, who beams.

Joel scowls. “Mam sent me to fetch you home, Roanne.”

“You go,” Kev tells her. “I can make it from here.” He waits with her, though, while Joel moves soundlessly toward them. Kev is reluctantly impressed. “How do you walk so quietly?”

“I’m Lirosi,” Joel replies in a tone that adds, stupid.

Roanne rebukes her brother. “He’s not that stupid if he can learn Lirosi just by listening.”

Joel makes a face but has no argument. His sister is right. Kev has learned the natives’ tongue and respects them enough to use it in conversation with them; that’s why he’s been made welcome when others of his kind are shunned.

He stands sullenly silent as Kev takes his leave. Then he says to Roanne, “I think he loves you.”

She laughs as if it’s a joke, but Joel can tell that she’s hopeful. She turns shy and girlish on the way home, her eyes misty with dreaming as she idly kicks at the leaves.

 

To be continued …

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig

Full Moon Follies

Moonrise September 19, 2013

Every time things go pear-shaped, I check the calendar to discover that the moon is invariably full. This week was no exception. It culminated on Wednesday, when my world seemed so dark and distorted that I almost closed my office door to isolate myself from potential murder victims.

I got through the day by telling myself that the day was neither longer nor shorter than any other day and it too would pass. That said, I retired to bed at 8:00 with a massive headache and hope for a better tomorrow.

It worked. I woke feeling more stable, had a pretty good day yesterday, and when the sun went down, an opportunity to try some night shots with the Canon appeared in the swollen form of September’s full moon:

Playing with the camera settings to get these shots was fun, but truly, the best pictures were seen with the naked eye.

 

Today is my day off – gee, wonder if that had anything to do with my mood improving?? – and the moon is on the wane. The sunrise this morning was glorious, blue sky streaked with cotton candy ribbons and melting gold light pouring through the Ocean Room windows. No photos; I was still in my jammies while Ter got ready for work.

I plan to work with Shade some more, but I’m a little intimidated by an unforeseen twist in his story. It revealed itself this week and while it appears plausible, my job is to make it so. The trouble is that I know about it, but he doesn’t. Keeping the character ignorant for the duration is tricky because I can’t let it leak into the narration. It’s like discovering a shattering secret, dying to tell everyone, but being unable to tell anyone. My left brain has seized on the secrecy factor and is screwing with my creative function as a result: You can’t write that or That won’t work or What’s on HBO this morning?

Well, the best defence is a good offense, so I’d better go get offensive.

Happy Friday!

Everybody into the Pool!



"I get Voracek if you get Giroux"



Monday, September 16, 2013:

San Jose 3/Vancouver 2 - snicker

Philadelphia 3/Toronto 2 (S/O) – sigh

Washington 4/Philadelphia 3 (S/O) – what the???

The NHL games may only be exhibition for the next two weeks, but I’ll take ’em. Sort of. Ter and I watched the Canucks host (and lose to) the Sharks on Monday because we live in BC and are held hostage by the network assumption that all BC residents are Vancouver fans. I go with that because I like specific Canucks, just not the team as a whole.

Speaking of wholes (we’ll get to “holes”, as in the digging of same, during the regular season), Philly has bought enough talent to send two teams into separate rings and still cancel themselves out by winning one game and losing the other in a pair of shootouts. Here we go. Shootouts are fun, but they’re also a cheat. If you can’t win in regulation, then you should get nothing. If the game is tied after 60 minutes, split two points between the teams and move on. Something in me fears that shootouts teach the players that they have 65 minutes to get to the lottery and win on a lucky shot. It’s like handing out participant ribbons in the peewee league – makes the boys feel like they contributed even when they lose. That’s fine for six year olds on an allowance, but professional millionaires should be mature enough to suck it up ... like the fans do!

I miss old time hockey.

I know, I know. Time enough for whining after October 3. The office poolies have begun making noise about the season starting and I received an email on Monday from pickuphockey.com to advise that the online pool manager is now available. Nice of them to notify me, but I didn’t win the pool last year, grumble grumble. The guy who did will be managing this year’s, so while I await word on the office draft, I must wrest the Hockey Pool Guide from the bears and pick my 2013/14 dream team.

Maybe this year I’ll score Claude Giroux before a rackinfrackin Maple Leaf fan can nab him ...

Romantique, Moi?

I sneer at romance. Chick flicks make me nauseous. Lusty males and swooning heroines send my eyes rolling heavenward. Pink hearts and bridal shows give me migraines. I dunno. Maybe itʼs my Virgoan hardwiring, but what many folk – particularly women – call romantic is what I call cause for a diabetic coma. Kill me now.

So, if I am so adverse to romance, how is it that last Sunday, when Will McAvoy chased down Mackenzie McHale during an election night newscast and clumsily asked her to marry him, I damn near burst into tears? Once I dried up, I had to think about that. Maybe I have been mistaken about romance.

It isnʼt about new love or young love or even strangers exchanging glances across a crowded room. For me, romance is the reward of a punishing struggle to overcome hurt, of lovers who fall out of each otherʼs arms and find their way back again. Romance is an elderly couple holding hands as they walk across the mall parking lot. Romance is the reunion of those parted by war or misadventure or misunderstanding. It is deep and passionate and painful and gorgeous and triumphant and enduring. It is not fluffy or silly or a comedy of errors. Romance is seriously potent stuff. It deserves respect because it overcomes. It surpasses honeymoons and arranged marriages to become something rich and pulsating and radiant. Romance is epic. Legendary. Unstoppable.

True romance is also on the endangered species list because these days love is disposable. Too few couples make the effort anymore. I recall a saying from years ago – I donʼt remember who said it: Love never dies from natural causes.

I am almost always working with lovers in my writing. Julian is my most romantic character, but my most romantic lovers are probably Lucius and Analise. Theirs is the eternally flaming passion that will not die because it has survived loss, conflict, separation and a somewhat volatile reunion. Romance is not for the faint of heart. Romance in its truest form takes time to reach its full potential.

Sometimes, it takes a recovery from the blow that shatters it. Will and Mac were broken for years, but they never stopped loving each other. They cannot go back, but they can certainly go forward. And if itʼs right, if it is a true romance, they will emerge the stronger for it.

But Iʼm not a romantic. Honest.