“As for courage and will – we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.— Andre Norton
Category: Writing
Andre Norton Female Pioneer, plus Patricia McKillip: It’s All about the Name, and Victor Hugo: Social Injustice Warrior, oh and in honor of Hugo, a Hugo Worthy Random Tangent…
I actually misplaced one of my lists so that is my excuse for missing Andre Norton, who influenced me a great deal. One could argue that without Norton, women and science-fiction would be mutually exclusive. She was the pioneer unless you want to count Mary Shelley. But Shelley had no idea that there would be a genre of Science Fiction, she was just writing a weird little short story on a dare. If it failed, oh well, she had a good time with her friends. Since it succeeded of course, that makes it a defining event in the history of Science Fiction and women writers.
Ursula K LeGuin I would argue is also a pioneer because she was perhaps the first, the first that I know of, that didn’t have to hide her gender behind initials or a pseudonym. She was unashamedly female, and it was obvious, blatant and there for all to see. Not many men named Ursula. I don’t know any, but who knows.
Andre, who was actually in real life named Alice Norton, used a male first name. She was the first female to be inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy hall of fame. She was a pioneer. Sadly she passed away in 2005. One of my other favorite authors, C.J. Cherryh used initials to hide gender, although I am sure everyone knows C.J. is a woman nowadays as well as Andre Norton, but when they were starting out in the fifties and sixties and even seventies, it was thought that most science fiction readers were male and would balk or not be as likely to read or purchase work written by a female.
I would argue the stereotype of sci-fi readers is still a largely white male base. Whether that is reality or not, I have no idea. But I grew up reading Andre Norton, C.J. Cherryh, Ursula K LeGuin and Anne McCaffery and Patricia McKillip. Katherine Kurtz was also big in the eighties, which by then gender wasn’t considered a bad thing or anything to worry about. Ursula had managed to knock that assumption of what readers would do to a female genre author completely out of the water with the success of her Earthsea Trilogy.
Vonda McIntyre is another one that I can recommend, and there are many, many more. Some of them wandered into historical fiction like Morgan Llywellyn and Colleen McCollough, some went to fantasy like LeGuin and Cherryh. I will say though, for these last two, I adore their fantasy, but I love their science-fiction even more.
Margaret Weiss who wrote many many fantasy novels with a fellow writer Tracy Hickman, called DragonLance which were largely inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, eventually tipped her toe into the waters of science fiction and wrote one solo trilogy plus one. Four books total, a planned trilogy and one additional book. They are called the Star of the Guardians books, and if you haven’t read them, you should. They have been at the top of my list for so long, and there is even a spin off series that I had to hunt down to find. I think I still might be missing one.
They deal with genetics, monarchy versus democracy, politics, and even transgender type issues in the spin off series mostly. They are phenomenal, and are so much better, sorry Hickman, from anything she wrote with anyone else.
Random Tangent Worthy of Victor Hugo…
Her sci-fi was what Hickman affectionately termed “Galactic Fantasy” what I have heard termed space opera in the past, basically if there is a divide in science fiction and you had basically two bins to place them into, one would be Star Trek, and one would be Star Wars.
And yes, I am simplifying it immensely. In reality there are dozens of sub-genres from Cyberpunk, to dystopia, to hard sci-fi, space opera, alternate history, and I am sure several I am forgetting. But if you have to, you can condense it into two bins. Star Trek, okay, you have some science in there. Here is your Heinlein, your Asimov.
In the Star Wars bin, you would have your Battlestar Galactica, your Stars of the Guardians would go here. Sure, it is in a futuristic place, and people seem to go places in space, things are mentioned but not too much. Basically, people use a light saber type of weapon, and it is all about the drama and the people and what they are doing.
In Star Trek, there are people, a few core indispensable characters but it is mostly about the situation. It is about the futuristic problem that they have run into. The plot is driven by the reactions to the futuristic environment or the situation they are in.
In Star Wars, it usually is a situation that is good versus evil and fate and destiny, and it is about how the characters find a way to come out on top.They typically aren’t reacting to the setting, the setting is the window dressing or the background, the problem usually revolves around a dictator, king, emperor, or evil guy, and the good guys must rally and find a way to free their planet, or people.
Basically, you can take this plot to Earth in the far past, or to a Middle Earth type setting, and voila, it still works. If you take Star Trek and do this, you get Star Trek 4, A Voyage Home. Not a bad movie, but it essentially is making fun of Star Trek, showing it as funny and ridiculous and contrasting it with the known world.
The science fiction becomes the joke, the part that is silly. It becomes soft sci-fi as opposed to hard sci-fi. The science is there, in how they explain how they get back in time, and go forward, but like most science fiction that needs to gloss over things, you don’t focus on how it works, it just does and you just assume the writer must know what they are doing.
/end of rant. Now, Back to the Post…Yes, Hugo does this in Les Miserables, he says, and now back to our characters….after going on a lengthy diatribe about society…talk about author’s presence being felt. Not subtle, at all.
So to sum up, Andre opened the door, and Ursula knocked the door completely off the frame, and any genre writer who is also a woman, should be grateful to these two because if they hadn’t broke free who knows when it would have happened. They made what Weiss would do later possible.
I happen to think it would have happened eventually, but so much great fiction in genre or speculative fiction was published in the eighties. It would have been a tragedy if none of that had happened. So, I for one, am very grateful to these two, and the others who came before and have come since. We all make it easier and more possible for future generations of writers.
Part 2 –McKillip
Now, the other birthday I missed I was about to do a post on, and I let myself get distracted. I am blaming Mardi Gras. Although, it is really just poor planning. Patricia McKillip’s birthday was right at the end of February. Her Forgotten Beasts of Eld for a long time was one of my favorites. I had a rare edition, which I lent to a friend. The friend got the impression I gave it to her. And, it disappeared into the nether. I believe it got re released and I bought the new edition, but of course it isn’t the same. The picture of the cover art in the quote post is from the edition I originally had. One thing I learned from this, I have not lent out a book that I care about since.
If I let you borrow a book, trust me, that book isn’t precious to me. I believe McKillip also wrote the Riddlemaster of Hed, and I used to have an edition of this, I think it got lost in the great paperback trade in fiasco. It was also an old edition. I do have some old paperbacks still that survived.
Off the top of my head I still own The Gormenghast novels from the sixties, 1984 an edition from the 50s that unfortunately is falling apart, Cards of Identity which I believe is from the sixties, my LOTR editions which are from the sixties, and my Jack Vance books that are from the seventies or early eighties. First edition Lyonesse? check. Green Pearl? check. And an Avon edition of the Grey Prince from the seventies. I need to go through and see what else remains.
I live in a small apartment, so my paperbacks have been in storage, and so, knowing what I have isn’t something readily available to me at the moment, but maybe someday I will have it organized. That edition of Forgotten Beasts of Eld was from the late seventies and for a while would have been worth considerable money depending on its condition. A pristine copy could easily go for over seventy dollars. Considering i found it was the Salvation Army for maybe 50 cents at the time, it was a great loss.
Unfortunately, I had a fair amount of rare books that I gave away without realizing it. It is a lesson that I hope I have learned for good now. McKillip was a good writer, Forgotten Beasts reminds me of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn. Both deal with exotic beasts, and the importance of having an identity. McKillip focused on the name. The name of something had magical power, and knowing the name of the being could give you power over it. The power of a name is an old one in fantasy. At least back to Tolkien, and I would say back to the original tale of Rumpelstiltskin; names and knowing names have always been a big deal.
LeGuin’s Tombs of the Atuan also largely dealt with the power of a name, and naming things. So, this is a well tread idea, but McKillip makes it the most important feature of her magician, his power is in knowing the names of things. I would need to re read it to do a fair review of it, since it has been years. But, her books taught me a lot, in more than one way.
Part 3– Victor Hugo, Moral Crusader of the Nineteenth Century
Another birthday I missed was Victor Hugo. I all ready went on a rant about Les Miserables, which I have read, unabridged, translated into English. His style is the typical style of the nineteenth century. Nowadays we like our authors to be hidden in the background. A good author will blend in the background and not draw attention to his or her presence.
Well, Hugo’s hand prints are all over his work. His presence is very much there, and he stops the narrative more than once to go off on what he sees as the decadence of society and how this moral depravity affects the downtrodden. He was a lot like Dickens in that he saw it as his duty to show society what it was doing to the less fortunate. He used his platform to expose and highlight the problems in society. Les Miserables deals heavily with several serious issues among them, poverty, prostitution, homelessness, and injustice.
The main character is imprisoned for stealing bread because he was starving. This simple attempt at survival follows him like his own shadow, he cannot escape this fate. This act always hangs over this character.
Fantine’s fate made me cry more than once. A girl who is in love with a boy. She falls in love, the boy was just playing around. She gets pregnant and is abandoned. There is no safety net back then, and being a single mother is not considered okay. Back then some women were even put in sanitariums for out of wedlock births, and often babies were put into other relatives care or orphanages, or into a baby minders’ care which often did not bode well for the baby.
In this situation, Fantine does everything in her power to take care of her daughter, she cuts her hair off, and sells it, she has her teeth yanked out, and sells them, she eventually sells her body and eventually gives up the daughter because she cannot take care of her.
Cosette ends up in a bad place but eventually she meets up with the main character, Val Jean, and he ends up adopting her and they go by another name and she ends up getting a schooling with some nuns and eventually ends up marrying and being okay.
But, it is her mother that always makes me so very sad. In today’s world, Fantine would have had some recourse; some way to get assistance. In her world, she made a mistake of believing her lover would marry her. Hugo seems to feel bad for her, and shows step by step how she was forced into this awful life and how circumstances just kept getting worse. He doesn’t seem to condemn her for her actions but seems to blame society for allowing it to happen, and he doesn’t seem to believe Cosette deserves that fate and intervenes to prevent it.
He puts a spotlight on this problem as well as later on when there are many gamins running around wild. Gamins are street children who have no family and just fend for themselves, often they survive by begging or pick pocketing, and he seems to describe a ton of these, and these groups of children also appear to exist in Dickens’s world as well, so I can only assume that this was typical of the city during this time period.
No mandatory school, no welfare, no programs, you just ran about looting, and stealing and hiding from the police. Cosette breaks out of this cycle because Val Jean gets her an education. Most of these gamins would not have access to this and outside of a charitable institution and occasional assistance, they would just be a drain on society as a whole for their entire lives, growing up into the criminals that must be jailed.
All in all, I found Les Miserables a dreary tale, but I suppose in the end there was light in the tunnel but it seems like sheer chance, and I can’t help but think had this been a true story, Cosette would have ended up Fantine Part 2. Being a fictional novel the author could get her out of that fate. Reality isn’t always that pretty.
What I learned by reading Hugo is also what I learned by reading Melville, and Dickens. There are more than one way to tell a story. And what may be fashionable now as far as language and structure, does change over time. Not everyone can read these books. I can but it takes serious dedication and work. You have to want to read them. In contrast, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are relatively easy to read.
So, it isn’t necessarily the era but perhaps the overbearing style of these writers. You get the feeling they know better than you and they have the moral high ground. They come across a little pretentious. Who knows what the future readers will think of our current works? Which ones will stand the test of time? Who will get taught in school? Will future students be studying Stephen King, or something more obscure?
Inspiration and the Idea of the Muse
I am sure all the writers out there have different ways for finding inspiration. It isn’t a one size fits all type of thing. For me, I often use headphones and music to help me get in the mood. For action scenes I often use tunes that are taken from soundtracks. These soundtracks are often movies, but also video games or even television shows. Defiance has an amazing score that I can listen to looped. Bear McCreary also did the soundtrack for the Battlestar Galactica Reboot, and I just love how he uses instrumentation with synth type sounds. It just says, “this is sci-fi, buckle your seats.” Defiance Soundtrack.
If I want a more fantasy style drama, anything Lord of the Rings will do. Or Enya, or Yanni, or anything by Yasunori Mitsuda, the composer responsible for the unforgettable and unbelievably amazing ChronoCross score. For those that are not into video games, or older video games, ChronoCross was a game for the Playstation, a Sony console that came out around the same time as the Nintendo 64. This was the system that launched Sony into gaming and finally gave Nintendo some competition other than Sega.
Mitsuda often mixes almost Celtic style sounds with American Indian, mixed with Japanese and a hint of new age. And it works. Amazingly well. So well, you can still get the soundtrack even though the game itself is not that popular, plus it is like twenty years old or more now. For those that may be curious : Chrono Cross OST
There are a few orchestral versions out there as well, that are very well done. Video Games Live put out a Through Time and Space compilation that has a beautiful version of Scars of Time, one of the defining songs of the game. Of course, Final Fantasy also has a ton of amazing music that I listen to as well, especially orchestral versions of FF7 and older. I just prefer the oldies. But Chronocross has a special place in my heart perhaps because it is a little more obscure. Video Games Live Scars of Time.
Now, if I want something like a tragic love scene, I listen to everything from Adele, to the Carpenters. I have a sad love song playlist just for this. And, a happy love song list, and a dramatic list, and a more action like list. The headphones also help block out the distractions of the television, the cat and whatever else may be going on. It kinda makes me focus and set aside time that is undivided and just for writing which I find useful.
How do you get inspired? What helps kick start your writing? Do you believe something or someone can be your muse? I have been inspired by people more than once, sometimes they don’t even know they actually inspired me. Actually, that is usually the case.
Overhearing bits and pieces of conversations at coffee shops or in the laundromat is why I love writing in public spaces. But sometimes, a certain person will inspire me more than most. That is my muse, and the music of course always helps. I find I am most inspired when I get inspired by people and the music and life experiences. It all helps. I would say not one person or thing is my muse, but the collective environment around me is usually my muse.
“When you put your hands and mind and heart into the knowing of a thing … there is no room in you for fear.”
—Patricia A. McKillip
Early February Birthdays — Dickens and Verne
Again, we have a couple classic authors who have influenced literature, sci-fi and fantasy.
Charles Dickens wrote many novels of which I have read David Copperfield and some of his short stories including the A Christmas Carol, as well as a few others. I think I read a part of Great Expectations but I would have to read it again. I have seen so many movie versions of it that the novel would be obscured for me, and I’m not sure I currently own a copy. My David Copperfield is pretty old, I think it is a paperback from the fifties or sixties. One of my finds, and I have read it a few times adding my creases to the ones it had before.
His characters in the stories I have read were often over the top and had at times bizarre sounding names. He also dealt with in his writings, the many ills of the early industrial era, most notably, work houses, debtor’s prison, homelessness, child labor, and poverty. He wrote with a purpose. Bleak House was another of my favorites as it had spontaneous human combustion in it, which alone would make it interesting, but also dealt with the ridiculousness of British bureaucracy and the insane albeit exaggerated, amount of time and money to collect an inheritance from the courts.
Sadly, Dickens experienced a lot of these situations first hand. He had to live with his family in a real debtor’s prison, and he eventually was sold into an apprenticeship doing hard labor as a child so his family could eat. If he didn’t end up with a benefactor, he would not have gotten the education or had the ability to become a journalist, and eventually, a writer.
The modern equivalent of a benefactor would be something like the National Endowment of the Arts in the United States that allows some writers to actually survive working as writers. It is slated to be de-funded by the current administration and seen as a waste of tax payer’s money. I do not know if we have many patrons around that will replace this, but hopefully, some well-to-do philanthropists will step into the void. Otherwise, some potential Dickens will be working two part time jobs and in debt to his eyeballs trying to scrape together money for community college tuition. And just not make it. This kind of thing can make someone believe in their dream and succeed, or give up on it and settle for the day to day grind.
As far as influencing sci-fi, unless we count the spontaneous human combustion in Bleak House, I have to say Dickens has not influenced it much. However, he has considerably influence in fantasy through his direct influence on Mervyn Peake.
Peake’s characters in Gormenghast and Titus Groan have the dickens like quality in their names, and their over the top nature. At the time they were published, and I have editions from this time, fantasy wasn’t really a label. Most published fantasy was directed at children. This was the late sixties, Tolkien was changing the whole market, but it hadn’t happened quite yet. Peake’s novels which were called “Gothic Novels” for lack of a better term, were fantasy as we think of it today but not much like the Tolkien variety or the C.S. Lewis version.
Peake was an atheist. And, he had some shorter works included in my omnibus edition of the Gormenghast novels that use heavy allegory with a lamb used in a sinister way. I would say being that these authors were all British that this was a direct attack toward Lewis, or a rebuttal to Narnia of sorts. The villain in the novels, Steerpike, is based on several characters. Satan for one, but also Steerforth, a character from David Copperfield, and the Phantom of the Opera as well. Steerforth isn’t evil like Steerpike, but, he is reckless, ambitious, and doomed in the end. But, Dickens influence in the characters and their exaggeration has made its mark on the Fantasy genre through Peake.
Jules Verne who was born on February 8th, 1828 is one of the founders of science-fiction. He along with H.G.Wells is often given credit for making it a viable genre. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea introduces Captain Nemo for the first time, one of my favorite characters. Nemo is Latin for no one and is an alias for a man from India. That conjures a bit of a different image of the character when you consider his background, he experienced colonialism first hand, at least in theory. Verne leaves Nemo very mysterious, the story is told from the viewpoint of a visitor or prisoner on the Nautilus, and Nemo is left an enigma. He is re-used in Mysterious Island as well. Around the World in 80 Days is another Verne classic. The fact that he used submarines before they were a viable technology, which at the time they were thought a far fetched idea, is what science-fiction would be known for in the future: attempting to predict the future.
1984 is a good example of this, attempting to show what a future totalitarian state may be like, also Brave New World, and most dystopia novels you may find. Now, this is being considered a viable sub-genre with the recent surge in popularity that it is enjoying due to the fear of the future many have right now. I would say venturing into this genre right now would be a good idea, although soon there may be an over abundance in this category like Vampire Fiction experienced some years back after Meyer’s Twilight success.
To sum up, both writer’s were ahead of their time, dealing with possible technology on one hand, and using writing to detail society’s issues with the other, and both heavily influenced future genres that had not existed when they were writing, at least as we think of them today. I would easily add any book from either of these authors to my collection without a second thought. They are both easy to read given they were writing in the nineteenth century, and they both hold up today unlike many of their contemporaries.
A belated Birthday post for Edgar Allen Poe and Philip Jose Farmer
Both gentlemen were born in late January. Poe on the 19th and Farmer on the 26th. Both have influenced the genre of Science Fiction, and both were very interesting individuals.
The real cause of Poe’s death is still unknown, although alcoholism is the one that I hear the most. Still, his short stories along with his contemporary Nathaniel Hawthorne, influenced my own quite a bit. Most of them tended to be “Gothic” a precursor to horror and suspense. But he did write a few that could be called science fiction-like and actually he did influence Jules Verne. Poe was actually more popular in Europe than America. He was a literary critic, so he made some enemies of his fellow American writers. Longfellow was an example of this.
I once edited the science-fiction section of an E zine which no longer exists called Nevermore Magazine, named after the line in his poem The Raven, probably his best known work still. Even “The Simpson’s” covered it in a Halloween special. His contribution to genre fiction extends to the detective genre as he influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories.
I always found his short stories, another thing he popularized in America, to be dark, brooding and a little bit melancholy. “The Fall of the House of Usher” has always been one of my favorites. It is just haunting, and tragic, and it is like all the characters are destined to this final ending, which they can’t avoid. They are all stuck, inexorably drawn into the destruction of the house and the family all in that one moment.
The Raven is also rather sad. Death is a frequent theme in his work. I think the reason I like Hawthorne, is a lot of his short stories in “Twice Told Tales” are a bit more light-hearted, or magical. They aren’t all doom and gloom, although some deal with ghosts and the like, his writing tends to be more hopeful. Less dark. When there is darkness, it is mostly attributed to the Puritans, and their religion interestingly.
Poe seems to have this darkness in the background, this sadness permeating most of his Gothic stories. I have to assume he influenced Lovecraft with the idea of making the setting itself creepy, the family residence of Usher and the town in The Shadow Over Innsmouth both take on a creepiness beyond any action of the characters themselves.
The Masque of the Red Death is another classic, dealing with the plague and how death once let in, chooses its victims at random. Of course the Pit and the Pendulum and The Black Cat deal with suspense. Using the sound of scratching in the wall to reveal the body buried in the wall was pure genius. Poe often used sounds to further the horror and action.
In Usher, the scratching of the lady of the house on her coffin attempting to get out, causes the suspense. Perhaps his background of reading and writing poetry caused a preference for sound instead of merely sight being the most important driving force of the action in these works.
Premature burial was a common thing he used to instill horror and suspense and it actually did happen back then as people could be presumed dead and buried and not actually be dead. Sometimes the most horrific fictional things can be inspired by actual events.
Part 2: Farmer, a modernizing influence on Sci-fi.
Philip Jose Farmer wrote in the sixties and seventies and beyond. He died in 2009. I have bought a few of his books in the past but I think they were all lost in my paperback trade in fiasco. He is known for introducing sex to science fiction. He also would deal with religion and would write stories under pseudonyms of fictional characters, most infamously, he used Kilgore Trout for Venus on the Half-Shell.
He had originally got permission from Vonnegut to use his character, but offended him in the end, so he couldn’t use it again. There is a daring in his choosing to write this way, and he also did mash-ups of genres, blending Melville’s Moby Dick into science fiction, using a descendant of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Nothing was sacred. He used Jesus as a character as well.
Heinlein thanks him in the forward to A Stranger in a Strange Land, which deals with sexual themes as well, and that makes sense as I learn more about Farmer. I read Stranger, and when I first read it I wasn’t sure I liked it, when I read it again, and then read Left Hand of Darkness again as well, it all sort of clicked with me. Farmer opened some doors that were closed to sci-fi before. He broke barriers on what was considered off limits or taboo.
Some considered him a great writer in the genre, others just another sci-fi writer among many like Frederick Pohl, Lester Del Rey, and half a dozen others who some may know or not know today.
I think I read part of one of his paperbacks before the great trade in fail, but it has been so many years. I may have to venture to my local library and see what I can find. Or perhaps find one of those awesome anthologies of works that I adore. I feel like learning about Farmer helps fill in some of the many gaps in my science fiction education between H.G.Wells and Jack Vance. So much to learn, so little time.
We are all just adding our own stories to the human story, and the more we know where we came from, the more we can know where we are going. The pioneers of the past assist the pioneers of the future. I truly believe knowledge is power. We are influenced by the past and we influence the future and I believe additional knowledge and resources into past writers actually inspires us to push the envelope and to keep on creating this tapestry of many ideas and colors and people. I believe speculative fiction is the key to understanding the human psyche.
Speculative fiction is the descendant of philosophy or the step child of literature and philosophy. That infamous red haired step child that causes so much turmoil and activity. Causing people to think and use their brains to further thought to see what we are doing and where we are going. Not peacefully but with all the voice raising and shouting that has to be done in times like these. Keep the ideas flowing and keep writing my fellow writers.
Any of you could be the future Poe, or Farmer, or Heinlein, or Verne, or Le Guin. But best of all, you can be the best version of You, and I would like to think there will be an aspiring writer maybe writing about me and what I accomplished someday, or maybe one of you that is passing this way. I have great hope for the future. For all of us. For humanity.
Minor Update–plus writing prompt:The Resilience of Children
*Inspired by James Mascia’s Other Worlds Writing Prompts.
I like to give credit to him because it is a book of sci-fi/fantasy writing prompts, and I am working through them to get the rust off so to speak, and help spark my creativity for my new novel which has hit a wall.
So, in a sense, I am giving away his content for free if you can figure out the prompts which is pretty easy to do. So, the least I can do is give him the credit so that maybe someone else will buy his book and get inspired. Or at the very least he will get the recognition for the prompts as any writer should get recognized for their work.
As far as the new novel is concerned, I feel like I am reaching the big important event a bit too early. It is kinda like setting up a fireworks show; you have things go off at certain times to really make it work. Same with this novel, and if it hits its stride too soon, it may be a hard thing to organically fix.
I can add events and lengthen it, but my worry there is that it won’t flow properly. It will seem stretched out, which is bad pacing. I am a bit stuck, trying to figure out the best path to fixing this, or altering it now, so hopefully, I won’t have to make a Frankenstein’s monster later. I all ready have one of those in my fantasy series. I’ve got six books sitting in binders, some need to be entirely rewritten. So yeah, trying to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them.
*Anyway, this prompt :
Candice lay still in the hospital bed, eyes closed, drifting out of a deep sleep to beeps and steps in the hall way and birds chirping out the window. A TV was blaring on the other side of the room and she could hear a fan going someplace nearby. She opened her eyes slowly, adjusting to the artificial fluorescent lighting.
She looked at the side table, propping herself up with her arms, glancing at the pink carafe and a small plastic cup of water and a multi colored bouquet of flowers that seemed relatively fresh. She saw a bench along the wall, a coat left draped on it lazily, one of those thin grey jersey hoodies. Her brother was here recently, or maybe he would be back soon, she thought recognizing his coat.
How long have I been here? Which hospital was this? She craned her neck toward the window, concrete parking lot, street lamps, cars parked here and there. No remarkable landmarks from there. She looked around the room, no neighbor next to her, just an empty bed. She hit the call button and waited.
A nurse walked in and nearly stumbled from shock, taking a seat on the bench. Candice looked at her startled by the reaction. “Nurse? Where am I? What happened to me?”
“Oh you don’t know poor child? It was awful, so many children didn’t make it, so many people. Everyone thought it was the common cold, but then people would fall asleep, and just not wake up. And, then a few started to, but not many. But a few. Least that is what I heard, but, you are the first of the fallen ones I have seen with my own eyes. Your family will be so happy, especially considering…Well. I better let them know. Are you hungry?”
Candice nodded. The nurse left and Candice reached for the water, taking a sip slowly. She felt the water go down cooling her insides. She suddenly felt very thirsty, refilling the glass and taking another gulp. She grabbed the remote for the TV turning it down. She heard steps down the hall, hurried steps. She glanced toward the door just as her mother and father ran in. Their faces were wet with tears and they looked a little scared. They ran in and hugged her tightly, kissing her roughly. “Stop. I’m okay. Where’s Jeremy? I see his coat over there?”
They both took a seat on the bench slowly. Her father grabbed the coat into his arms, clenching it in his hands. “Jeremy fell ill right after you did, but, he didn’t make it. Seems mostly children were affected by this virus, and the elderly, and people who were all ready sick, but even some healthy people came down with it in the end, and most people that fell asleep, never came out of it again. You are lucky, Candy. We were losing hope, you seemed to be drifting away. They don’t know what changed, it is just all so sudden. We are just so glad we still have you, we never dared to hope, or dream. It was just too much to bear. To lose you both like this.”
“Jeremy’s gone? I can’t believe it. He was my older brother. I can’t imagine a world without him in it.”
“The city is also under quarantine still. They don’t want this spreading, so you will have to go to school when you are deemed fully recovered in a special place for other kids like you. They don’t want to take any chances, because they still don’t know what this is or how it happened here. Right now, you just have to get well, and eat, and get strong for us, okay?” Mom’s voice sounded worried and confused, and didn’t seem reassuring at all. A special school? Quarantine?
“What about my friends? Becky and Josie? Did they fall ill, are they okay?”
Her parents remained silent a moment, looking at each other before her dad spoke. “They did fall ill. They didn’t make it, Candy. You are the only one at this hospital. The children’s hospital has a few others. There might be a few more who are being treated at their homes because for a while there was no room. The sick lined the floors, it was terrible. Then, people started to die. Now there is room again, but, the whole city seems empty, and food is starting to run low. The government sends some in, of course, but just the staples. No luxury items, basic stuff like blankets and food. Things are looking up now though. They halted the disease here, so it could have been worse.”
“New victims are down, and have been falling every week, so, pretty soon the city will be declared safe, and things will go back to normal,” her mom adds forcing a smile, her eyes still appearing kinda vacant.
A doctor came in saying, “Sorry, for interrupting, but we would like to watch her for 24 hours, just to make sure, and then we can see about discharging her to home care. Watch for signs of a new onset, if she gets the all clear, as I expect she will, we can release her into your care. But, we want to make sure, before we send her out. So, we’ll give you as long a visit as you need, but I would like her to get plenty of rest.”
The doctor gave her parents some paperwork and nodded at Candice, leaving abruptly again. She can hear his shoes as he walked down the hall. She can hear the nurse at the nurse’s station tapping at the keyboard, and the birds chirping loudly. She can hear her mom fidgeting with her hands, rotating her wedding band, and her dad cleaning his glasses for the tenth time, the slight sound of microfiber cloth on glass.
“Honey, why do you have the TV so quiet? You can’t hear it.”
“Oh, I can, please, leave it.” Her mom looked at her, and puts the remote down. “Okay, dear. Maybe we should let you rest, I am just so glad you are okay.”
They got up and reluctantly leave, her dad turned to her and says, “We are just going to take a nap downstairs, we’ll be here if you need us. Okay?”
“Okay.” She watched them leave, and shut the door quietly behind them. She looked back to the window and saw a boy’s face in the glass. She got up and opened the window to let him in. “Thanks, the name is Charlie. I came as quickly as I could. I am a survivor too. I came from the other hospital, we are going to break out. Are you in?”
Candy looked out the window, and saw that it was a long way down. “How did you get up here, by my window? I’m on the third floor, at least.”
“Same way you could hear me coming, and Abbie knew you’d be here. We are special. When we awaken, we awaken different. Thing is, the adults won’t understand it. They will try to study us, they will hurt us. I know, my sister Mirabelle, she was the first. She had a special gift, and it was discovered pretty quick. So, now they have her in some special facility. I know they are doing bad things to her. Abbie can feel it. She can feel things, and sense feelings. I can fly.”
“Like Peter Pan?”
“Sort of, see.” The boy lifts himself a foot into the air, hovering. “It gets tiring though. So, I cannot do it all the time, and I can’t keep myself up for too long. Besides, we can’t let them know.”
“Them?”
“The doctors, the nurses. They are in on it. They did this to our city on purpose. They wanted to test something, they had this planned. That is what Abbie says. Abbie is our leader. She is fourteen. The oldest survivor so far, and so very wise. You will like her. She is a red-head, very tall and thin. Kinda freckly. But she knows the adults, she knows what they are about.”
“My parents are downstairs, and they would be worried sick about me. I can’t leave them. They all ready lost my brother.”
“They will lose you anyway, as soon as they figure out you can hear things so well, and who knows what else, they will take you away, like Mirabelle. Mirabelle can move things, like that water, she can move it all around without touching it. Or she could, I don’t know what has happened to her.”
“I will help you find your sister, but can I leave a note for my parents? I don’t want them to worry.”
“Sure, but don’t mention me or where you are going. Just say you are helping a friend and stuff.”
Candy takes the hospital stationary and writes a letter carefully, making sure it was legible, stating her love and how she hopes she can explain and they understand she loves them.
“I don’t know if I am making a mistake by leaving, or if I should stay.” She looks at Charlie’s eyes. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time, the Doctor will be back, and who knows what he will do. He will be looking for something special, he will know about this, and if he discovers you, I don’t know if we can break you out again.”
Candy hears the door make a clicking sound, Charlie dives under the bed, Candy forces out a loud cough to cover the noise, a nurse comes in with a tray of apple sauce and crackers and some apple juice. “We want to start you off slow, since it has been a while since you had a real meal.” The lady smiled at her, smoothed her bedding and left closing the door again. Charlie scooted out from under the bed as soon as the steps receded.
“She seems nice, are you sure they are all in on it?”
“They are probably watching us, we better go, now.” He looks around the room suspiciously looking for cameras. Candy shrugged. “That seems a little crazy.”
“Come with me, if you change your mind, I promise I will help you come back myself.”
“Okay.” Candy got out of the bed slowly, and her legs wobbled on the floor. “I can’t seem to walk.”
“It’s because you have been in bed a long time. Here, let me help you.” He put his arm around her and walked over to the window. She opened it again, looking back at Charlie with concern, gulping and breathing in deeply. “Here goes nothing.”
“Just hang onto me, we will drift down.”
He helps her scramble onto the sill, “I’m scared.”
“Think of Peter Pan, okay? Or Superman, that’s okay too.” And he pulls her out into the air with him drifting like clumsy birds. “How is this even possible?”
“I don’t know, I’m only ten.”
“I can’t look anymore.” She felt some of her crackers coming back up and her head feeling strangely light.
“We’re almost there, just stay with me a little longer.” When their feet touch the ground her knees buckle, and he attempts to break her fall and they both fall in a heap. “You’re heavier than me, sorry.”
She elbowed him. “Hey now.”
“It’s the truth. Sorry.” He got up brushed the grass off his clothes. “Can you get up, I’ll help you walk, the others’ aren’t far.”
“I’ll try, but I feel like all rubber.” The boy again put his arm around her and gently walked her in a direction away from the hospital.
“Trust me, I know where I’m going. If they were watching, they will be after us, but they won’t know how far I drifted, so, we may have a little time, plus, I know this town pretty well. I’ve got a map in my head from riding my bike tons.”
“What am I doing? My parents are going to be so worried.”
“Look, you would be disappeared one way or another. That special school, yeah, no one goes there and hears about the people again. We are trying to locate it through Abbie’s power. But, there are still a lot of people around, and she can’t choose what to tune in or out of very well, she is still working on it. She found you because you just woke up and she says it is like a beacon, a flare goes up when one of us wakes up. It is like, we are part of something, a plan, something bigger than everything else. And when one of us wakes up it is like it sends a message to the others.”
“What about those that didn’t make it?”
“Well, whatever experiment this was, we were phase one, the kinks weren’t worked out yet. I guess that is what they call collateral damage. Cost of doing business, sort of thing?”
“How far do we have to walk, I’m not used to it?”
“Hey,I’m doing most of the work here, don’t worry, it isn’t far now.”
A car pulled up beside them, slowing down to a crawl, a door opened. “Come on, get in.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it is Abbie’s mom, she is with us, they tried to take Abbie away, so, she is on our team. We can’t waste time.”
“For someone that is suspicious of things, you are asking me to trust a lot of strangers.” Candy got in the car reluctantly after Charlie. The woman driving seemed anxious, eyes darting; hair a mess, with a crumpled blouse. Another girl was in the car. A tall girl with red hair and freckles.
“You must be Candy. I am Abbie. You have met Charlie. My mom is driving, she can be trusted. She saw Mirabelle taken. She knows what is happening with us, or at least that much. There is still a lot we don’t know. Please, don’t be frightened. None of us chose this, this was thrust upon us, and we must come together. We are each others’ family now.”
“Easy for you to say, you still have your mom.”
“My dad died from the virus. He was sick all ready, and he got it from me. So, I do understand. I know about Jeremy. I feel your pain, and your loss. And the loss of so many here. I feel it every minute, every hour, all the time. I am tired of the pain, but I know, I have a purpose. This was no accident, and until I fulfill that purpose, I must live with this pain, and this knowledge of everyone’s pain and frustration and fear, and hatred. I must bear it all, do you understand what that can be like?”
Candy said nothing after this, Abbie’s mom locked all the doors from her driver’s panel and sped away taking a circuitous route to wherever they were going. Eventually they end up out of the city proper and in a quiet suburb area. “Who lives here?”
“This is the property of a friend. They gave us permission to use it, me and Abbie. Abbie and I cannot go home, they will take us for sure, we cannot stay here long, because they will find us, but we have a temporary headquarters in the barn over there. We use the house sparingly, just in case. Mostly at night, but can’t get used to routine too much. That’s how you get found out.”
“Has someone been found out, before?”
“Yes, we lost a couple kids, that way. Mirabelle didn’t get to leave the hospital, but there have been others. The special school isn’t a school. It is a laboratory. The government is behind all this. For military purposes I am sure. We aren’t people to them, we can be stated as dead from this illness at any time. That’s how they cover this up.”
“Does that mean, that when they say someone is dead, they may not be?”
Everyone looked at each other and looked back at Candy.
“Could Jeremy be alive? His coat was in my room, if he had died, how would his coat have gotten there?”
“Child, there could be a lot of explanations, your parents could have kept it as a memento and left it there, perhaps he visited you before falling ill himself and left it there. I would assume him to be dead, if he isn’t then he is being experimented on some place, and I am not sure I would wish that on anyone.”
“Abbie, can you search for him?”
“Hope is a dangerous thing. It can make you do crazy stuff. He fell ill after you, so, it is possible they could be declaring him dead to move him someplace else, early. But, if he woke up, surely I would have felt that.”
“Well, even if it is a slim possibility, I’m in, if finding Mirabelle means possibly finding my brother. I need to know for certain. I feel like I would know if he were dead.”
She unfastened her seat belt with a click as did the others and quietly got out of the car heading toward a large barn with one light burning brightly.
The light beckoned and called to her, flickering as the sky started to darken a little and she could hear the crinkle of the grass beneath their feet and the hooting of owls in the trees, and the animals scurrying in the brush. She could hear the others’ breathing and hear other cars in the distance crunching gravel.
She knew in her heart that her brother was alive. He had left his coat to let her know this. Her brother would never leave her unless he had to. Maybe it was crazy, but she could not believe he was dead, the coat was there for a reason, just like she woke up for a reason. Candy smiled, someday her family would be reunited.
In her heart she knew this and it felt real, almost like she would find them all happily waiting for her in the barn before her right in this moment.
Excerpt from my fantasy novel Part 2–On War and Difference
Minottir had gotten to know Oshbury Beldurkit of the Rabbit People the best during their journey because he had been the most open and friendly.
“Oshbury, what do you think awaits us in Caeter? I wonder what the land will be like? I’ve been to the Great Forest, and the North, and now Smethille. This is a beautiful land, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it is. I had not been to Anthella before this. We live near your land, just further east. We war with our cousins, the Hare People. They are arrogant, and presumptuous. They hold nothing but contempt for us. But I have heard tales of your people’s fury.”
“Oh, indeed. Us and the Dragon Folk are always at each others’ throats. It does seem that way all about us, doesn’t it? For every people, there is another to fight them. Peace is a foreign concept on this world of Babalae.”
“It is the dream of the hopeless idealist, nothing more.”
“What if one day, it is more than a dream, Oshbury?”
“On that day, there will be only one race on this world. That is the only way I see.”
“That would be truly monstrous. All this beauty, and variety? This difference no more? I hope not.”
“Then do not wish for an end to war, my friend. Differences are the stuff of war. My brothers and I used to fight, and it was war on a different scale, but the same. There would be times of peace, but these would be stopped by a fight of some sort eventually. The only way we stopped fighting is when we went our separate ways. They left the household. It was the only way. And that is the way of the world, Minottir. Are you a dreamer, my friend?”
“I suppose, I am what they call an optimist. Because if this world cannot be redeemed, then what are we doing this for? Why don’t we just shut our eyes, and wait for the Andred to come? If it’s so terrible, then why is it worth saving?”
“I am not sure. But I feel it is my duty, all the same. War may be cruel, but non existence is surely worse.”
They were silent the rest of the ride to Caeter, and even Minottir’s optimism was shaken by this idea of non existence. He couldn’t truly conceive of the great void consuming everything and leaving nothing in its wake. He shivered, and his thin rubber-like arms felt like bones for a moment. Beyond mere death. Non existence. Yes, that was worth war, he thought to himself in a desperate mood.
Excerpt of a scene from my fantasy novel
This scene is one of my favorites from my novel, because part of me loves sadness, and I find it moving. I’ve been thinking of just pulling scenes out and re writing the rest of it. It is such a massive mess, over 250,000 words written many years ago, 2001 to be precise.
Still Telmishei is one of my favorite characters. I tortured this poor guy in a couple novels actually, I seem fond of torturing him. I almost feel bad. Actually, I added clips of several scenes just for some context. There is another chapter I’d like to find, and excerpt here because I doubt it will actually make it into the final draft. Tertiary characters at best, but it has some philosophical discussion that I like, but, otherwise is too much of an outlier unfortunately.
So hear goes..
“You mean to you, Telmishei. Our time was years ago. I’m flattered you still remember. I found you, not much different from Diamtur. In a family that would have killed you as a child had they known. I have never met a family that hated magic more than the Razshai’s. Your first talent was the portal of worlds, was it not? How old were you, Telmishei? Maybe seventeen, sixteen?”
“How old were you, that was the question. I remember. I offered to marry you, and you turned me down. A rude awakening for a boy heir.”
“To the most powerful clan in the land. Yes, that was sweet. This is no different, only I am the one getting turned down.”
“How old are you?”
“It is rude to ask a lady her age, Telmishei. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”
“Don’t tease me anymore, or I might show Lorune how it is done.” With this he laughed, for he and Jannhilae had known each other for so long.
He kissed her lightly on her soft chocolate colored hair and went to his horse. He’d kept the King waiting too long as it was.
#####
“Good night, Telmishei. We will meet again tomorrow night.” Shaih left with the King, Diamtur left in the other direction. Telmishei turned to Jannhilae.
“My offer still stands. Give Lorune a break. I am all alone here, and I miss you. There is no one here, not even Shaih.”
“Telmishei, you had no interest in me until a few days ago. Are you really that simple? Find another girl, you’ve never had trouble before.”
“I took you as a given, and for that I am sorry. We have always been there for each other. Spare him this night, and we can remember old times.” He saw she was tempted despite herself. What woman didn’t dream of having men fight over her? Lorune didn’t want her, but Telmishei did. In the end she turned away.
“Telmsihei, I like you this way. Perhaps I will consider your offer some other time. I wouldn’t want you to take me as a given.” Telmishei watched her leave reluctantly. Maybe he was still the boy to her, thinking that being a lord was enough to get the girl.
####
“Jannhilae, come with me to my tent. I would like to speak with you.”
“Why, my lord, of course. Excuse me, Lady Orshei.” Jannhilae stood up slowly and walked to the exit toward Telmishei.
Once they both were in Lord Razhshai’s tent she glared at him.
“How did you know Arousei was Lorune’s?”
“His thoughts aren’t guarded. He was always obsessing over Daemia, who hadn’t loved him.”
“Ah, the tainted blood, and so on. So, why were you with him, Jannhilae?”
“Oh, Telmishei, do you not have sight behind those violet eyes of yours? Aren’t I more lovely than you remember?”
“And, Lorune has aged considerably. He is always tired.”
“Yes, he hasn’t noticed at all, but when he is with me, he feels young, but after he is older I’m afraid.”
“The secret of your youth? How much have you stolen from me, I wonder?”
“Telmishei, you are one of us. Stealing from you, would only hurt us. I have from time to time, not meaning to, really.”
“Yes, I am not much older than Lorune, yet I look much older. He does seem to be catching up to me, though. I ask again, how old are you Jannhilae? You seemed the same twenty something maid when I was sixteen.”
“I was a little older than you are now, perhaps. Now, I am older still, and it takes more energy to keep up my maintenance than it used to.”
“Lorune isn’t here. I have realized that I love you, because you are like me. Others fear me, you understand me.”
“Would you still, if you saw my true age, Telmishei? Would you have still loved me at sixteen, if I looked older, with grey in my hair?” Telmishei had to admit to himself, that he wouldn’t have. Not at sixteen. He wouldn’t have seen her that way.
“That was then, we are here now.”
“Very well,” she reached out, and took his hand. He felt the energy course from her into him, and he saw her age speedily. Her hair lost its curl, turned grey and thin. Her skin grew taut and stretched tightly over her bones. She looked like a worn wooden doll ready to break apart with the smallest breeze. Her teeth were long and yellow.
Instinct made him want to recoil from her, and tear her hand away from his, but he resisted. Instead, he bent over her, and kissed her on the mouth. He felt the energy start to course in the other direction and felt her lips plump and her cheeks soften. When he pulled away, she was beautiful again, perhaps even more so.
He heard someone shout outside his tent. ‘They will go away,’ he hoped but they did not. “The King summons you, Razshai.”
“I must go, but please wait for me. I will be back soon.”
####
He entered his tent to find it empty. Hadn’t he told her to wait? he walked over to the women’s tent. “Jannhilae, I thought you were going to wait for me.”
“I will return soon, Lady Orshei. Good bye, Kalowen.” Jannhilae stood reluctantly it seemed, and went to the exit of the tent.
“Telmishei, I am sorry. Shaih has told me of my doom. Years ago, understand, I made a pact with Keltorill, the God of Death. I may retain my life and youth through others’ life force. If I didn’t now, I would surely die in moments. You saw how I was. There is a price for everything, Telmishei.”
They entered his tent, she seemed uncertain. “Telmishei, I am sorry. My price was that I could use others, but not truly love them.”
“Does it matter? One more time, for the years we’ve had.” He saw that she was crying, and he had never seen her cry before. “Oh, Telmishei, but I do love you. You kissed me, as I was when I thought no one would. If only I..”
They were on his blankets, and he loved her. He kissed her, and had her, and when he was done, he noticed she was quiet. He moved away from her to see what was wrong, when he saw that her hair was grey and brittle. It was coming off in his hands in clumps. Her skin was like clay, and crumbled when he touched her. Before his eyes her bones cracked and broke into a fine grey powder. Where she had been was nothing.
He kept trying to find her in the powder, calling her name over and over. “No, where are you? Jannhilae! Jannhilae. Come back, come back. Where are you?”
He frantically searched his tent, and found her clothes. They still had her scent on them, and he hugged them to him in a tight embrace. The tears wouldn’t stop. She had tried to warn him, had avoided him for quite some time. Shaih had known. Had told him to stay away in fact. Told him, that it was his flaw. If only she had told him, but she had. And it was too late.
Time passed, and yet he just stayed where she had been, not knowing what else to do. He saw light coming from the bottom of the tent flap. It was day and he would have to move, but he didn’t want to.
“Telmishei, Telmishei, we had best be going. We cannot keep the King any longer.” It was Shaih. He didn’t know what to say. He took down his wards so that Shaih could enter his tent unharmed.
Shaih entered, and didn’t seem too surprised. He had probably been expecting it. “Telmishei, let me have a look at you. Jannhilae made a pact with Keltorill, sooner or later he claims all. She only put off the inevitable.”
“I loved her, I killed her. Why hadn’t you told me?”
“You wanted to decide your own fate. You didn’t want to know, and I did hope I was wrong. We could have used her in the war. Come over here, Telmishei. I could see what she saw in you, now. She has given you a parting gift. You don’t look a day over sixteen, my lord. Like when she met you, I’ll bet. She was a little sentimental it seems. All that energy has to go somewhere. That does leave us with some explaining, I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about? Nothing matters anymore.”
“Now, that isn’t the proud lord I remember. Telmishei, wake up. Look at your hands. Your hair is thick and black, you are a very pretty boy. It’s too bad you like women.”
Telmishei did look at his hands. They were young, and his voice was smoother, and he knew it was true. Many men would have loved a second youth, but Telmishei would have traded it all for Jannhilae.
“What will we do, Shaih?”
“Let’s make up something. You can be one of your bastards, and we’ll say Jannhilae ran off with Lord Razshai.”
“The King is bound to look for Lord Razshai.”
“The King will know the truth tonight, Telmishei. I’ll even give you your own horse. And, we’ll call you Telmishei. Common enough for a mistress to curry favor with her lord by naming her brat after him.”
“As you say.”
A Writer’s Prompt– Future Earth
*This is inspired by James Mascia’s writing prompt book Other Worlds
The sun glinted off the cracked lens on the top of a knitted basket. She went to pick it up, the seller grabbed her wrist harshly. “What do you got to trade for that, kid? No touchy til I see it.” The man’s voice sounded hoarse and threatening, his grip on her wrist tightened slightly.
“You expect me to buy without a closer look? What kinda fool do you take me for?”
“Not everything that glitters is gold, miss. Let’s see it.”
She sighs. She pulls out her pockets, counts the little coin she has, and other odds and ends that she has found on her travels. A spool of yellow thread, a needle, a couple plastic things, including a plastic soldier with a menacing expression and a helmet.
“You got nothing. Just as I thought.” The man spits at her feet, an ugly wad of brownish gunk.
“Let me go, then. You got me, I just wanted a look see, no harm. Honest.”
“Hmm. No harm indeed.” She saw his eyes cloud over briefly, mulling something over or in reverie perhaps. “Well?” She said giving her arm a jerk. He finally lets go, she rubs her sore wrist giving him a dirty look.
“How old are ya girl?”
“Old enough.”
“To remember what? Clean air, clean water? A time before the return of the great diseases? The ones we thought we had licked. Boy, were we wrong. They are sneaky things, super bugs. They find a way to beat the vaccines, boom, all our technology and fancy dew-dads, they don’t do us no good. All for nothing.”
“So we are done here?” Her green eyes flashed defiance. She was young, how young hard to say. Mal-nourishment had a way of making someone tinier than they ought to be. Plus, looking younger than one was could be an advantage. She was used to being underestimated and had to grow up fast in this cold world.
“You got any kin left? Where are you from?”
“Why do you care, mister?”
“I had a daughter once, and a wife, and even a brother. Brother died in the war with China. Daughter and wife, well, TB got em. So, here we are. Alone, selling what we find on the road. I got an old cart and a mule. and I just venture looking for treasure and to trade stories with other survivors. Hoping to find some information. You see, I had another daughter, that was taken away, years ago, when we were all confined, in the TB ward, she was taken from me. All I have left of that one is this.” He holds up between his thumb and forefinger a tiny blue button.
“How old was she? When you last saw her?”
“She was about three, almost three years old. She would be somewhere around 13 I reckon, now.”
“Well, she ain’t me, Mister. I am older than that. Besides, I know where my family is. They are all under the dirt someplace or other. Some died here, others over there. I have been traveling for a ways now. And, I lost a lot along the way. Been alone a couple years. But, now I am out of anything to trade, except of course my labor. I can trade that well enough, if someone needs something fixed, or a rabbit caught. I have gotten good at rabbit and rat catching.”
“Are you offering your services? Whatcha want the glasses for?”
“Makes it easier to make a fire, I broke my last lens.”
“You aren’t near sighted then. Can you see that sign over yonder?”
She squints in the direction the man points. It is a hand painted sign an old woman is holding. “Looks like, maybe, I’m not sure. Have you seen…so and so, or something.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Here. A gesture of good will. I will accept your services, by the way, because, my last traveling companion took ill and died. I think I may be a carrier of the TB. But, then, if you have lasted this long, you may be as well. Besides, I can see no fear in your eyes. You are ready to die, aren’t you?” The man’s eyes glint in the sunshine, a smile crosses his face as though being ready to die is a novel concept.
“Been fighting to live for so long. Maybe I have had it all wrong this whole time. Maybe accepting the final destination. Maybe that is the point. Maybe there is some wisdom you can teach me yet.”
She catches the glasses, shoving them on her face, still squinting.”You talk a lot of nonsense, stranger. If you got some food, I would appreciate another good will gesture. Been a while since I caught a rat. And well, I could use the strength to catch another.”
The man motions behind his cart where he has a little fire going and a cast iron pot boiling some kind of vegetable soup. He grabs a hunk of bread breaks it in half, handing her one piece, offering her a metal bowl and spoon. A small rickety table with a couple of beat up travel chairs with a faded green fabric material sat nearby. “Normally I charge for a seat at my table, but considering you are going to be my companion here, I will offer you a seat for free.”
“How kind of you.” She eats the bread with one hand, sloppily dishing out the soup with the other hurriedly. She sits down with a thud, and proceeds to devour the bowl.
“Don’t rush. You gotta make it last. Savor it. Otherwise you will get a tummy ache.”
The girl glares at him. “Don’t tell me how to eat. I know how to eat.”
The man smiles sadly. “Of course. You know everything. This is your world. This is what you know. All of this, its your castle, your home.”
“I am going to stop talking to you. You are crazy.” The man chuckles. “Perhaps. I very well may be crazy. I am caught between worlds. Remembering what was, and existing here. I feel like I was in heaven, but now I am in purgatory, waiting, to finally go to hell.” His eyes go all distant and the girl refocuses on the soup.
She didn’t care what was actually in it at this point, she just had to eat something to stop the growling gnawing inside of her. The constant need to satiate her hunger was the driving force behind her day to day life. It was the reason to keep going, the reason she found to keep going in order to not think or remember the faces of the others.
The others that hadn’t kept going, the ones that fell before the sickness or the bombs or both. She had to survive for those that couldn’t. Someday, she could tell their stories to others, if there was a day where one could tell stories again and live to see a brighter day. Where one could safely sit and dream and not worry about hunger, and death, and destruction. It was her turn to go distant.
She could hear the man’s snores, as he fell asleep in his chair. She could hear foot steps and animals rustling in the grass. This was life now. Tiny moments among tiny moments, not knowing when the end might come, only that it would one day.
The Infamous Jennisfora Strikes Again...or something like that 