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Thread: Steve's Written Works

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    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Steve's Written Works

    Billy Said Keep Going

    The Sax Man's Rebop : A Short Story

    THE TWILIGHT COUNTRY : A screenplay

    In the Dead of Night : A Zombie Screenplay

    The Scalphunters (A short Story)

    In the Land of Hope -- A Novel of Prohibition

    In the Land of Hope (Foreword)

    In the Land of Hope - Prologue

    In the Land of Hope - Chapter 1

    The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin' (Cast of Characters)

    The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin' Act I Scene I

    The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin' Act I Scene II

    The Rain, It Comes A-Burnin' Act I Scene III

    At First Light: An Excerpt by Stephen J. Davis

    Smite the Land: A Short Vignette

    My First Play - Scene I

    My First Play - Scene II

    Through A Glass Darkly (A Short Story)


    ARCHIPELAGO: A SERIAL NOVEL
    Copyright Page

    Dedication

    Table of Contents

    Chapter I

    Chapter II

    Chapter III

    Chapter IV

    Chapter V

    Chapter VI

    Chapter VII

    Chapter VIII

    Chapter IX

    Chapter X

    Chapter XI
















    Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you can help me. This is the latest chapter of my novel, "Billy Said Keep Going," ready to be R&R'd. After the roadblock in the Katrina story I found out that this story is indeed acceptable for the Faulkner Grant (after being told otherwise by someone who thought I was writing nonfiction), I decided that this story would be better to submit as a "debut novel."

    I hope you can tell me if it is a.) well-written, b.) readable, and c.) publishable. Set in a small coal-mining community in rural West Virginia in the years between the two world wars, this novel is about the industry and the union wars that took place there.

    Anyway, please tell me what you think of it. I hope you enjoy it, and please give me your thoughts as a reader and a friend (but don't be afraid to give it to me good).

    -- Steve


    ************************************************** ********


    WHEN HE WENT TO work in the mines for the first time Billy was not much more than a baby and the bones of their mother had been locked in the frozen earth in a grave little older than he. There were no photographs of her in the house so the boy’s memory of her was vague. Billy had no memory of her at all. Their father brooked no questions of her. The older boy would not speak to his brother at all even though they bedded in the same cold room in the loft and he would lie awake at night and listen to the wind crackling in the eaves and he would cobble together a ghostface of what he called his mother before sleep would take him.

    On a winter’s night in that year 1913 he woke to a ghastly throbbing pain in his chest as though the hollows had been filled to bursting with ground glass and he whimpered softly at first and tears stood in his eyes but nothing else. He lay there with his bare feet propped against the footboard of his bed which was already too small for his growing body and he stared up at the dark outlines of the rafters which lost solidity in his blurring sight and he listened to his brother snoring softly from the other side of the room and as moonlight spilled through the sootcolored window he cursed God for this agony he’d wrought upon him and after a while he rose and climbed down from the loft.

    When the bleak dawn touched the sky his father found him at the foot of the stairs. He lay curled fetally on the cold floorboards hugging his body with hands which were already large as a man’s. His father helped the boy to his feet and kissed his forehead and told him all would be righted and soon the growing pains passed as they often do but the boy never took back what he’d said the night previous.

    On a day not long after he was scooping away the black snow from the path while Billy stood watching from the terrace bundled up in a heavy wool jacket when his father came. He stood looking out at his older son who bent forth with his sunmottled and ropescarred hands pale and ungloved against the cold and looking out toward the horizon where the Appalachians stood gray and eroded as a cougar’s teeth and his father called to him but he would not meet his gaze.

    It was very cold. He waited. Billy looked at his father with eyes keen and shining with fear and excitement. His father called to him again and this time he looked at him.

    Get some sleep tonight, his father said.

    I guess I will.

    You and me gettin up early tomorrow.

    You and me.

    Yes.

    How early?

    Early.

    Before dawn.

    Yes.

    The boy stood there. He punched the spade down into the snow so hard the haft quivered and he looked where his father stood there like a priest offering a benediction. He thought he knew what he was saying to him and a feeling of dread welled up in the pit of his belly and he stood there with the snow falling all around them.

    What are we goin to do?

    You’ll see.

    We goin up to the mines?

    I said you’ll see.

    What about Billy?

    What about him?

    The boy hesitated.

    I asked what about him.

    Well who’s goin to watch him if I ain’t here?

    Nellie will I expect.

    Nellie.

    Yes.

    What am I goin to do up there then?

    What did I say?

    The boy slung the shovel over his shoulder and stood looking across at his father and at Billy.

    What did I say?

    The boy spat. I guess I’ll see when I get there, won’t I? he said.

    I guess you will.

    You don’t have a problem with that, do you?

    No sir.

    Then go ahead with your digging and come get some supper.

    I will.

    I want you to go to sleep early tonight.

    Yessir.

    You best be ready to go when I am, you hear?

    Yessir. I reckon.

    Make sure you get somethin to eat first. I want you fit and ready to work.

    All right.

    You goin to go to bed early then?

    Yes.

    All right then.

    His father turned and went back in. The boy hadn’t moved an inch from where he stood. Billy, he said. Go on in.

    Billy stood on the top of the porch looking at him.

    Go on. It’ll be dark soon and you don’t want to get sick.

    Can’t I stay?

    Do what I say, Billy. Now git.

    He put his hands in his pockets and looked at his older brother.

    Go on now.

    He turned and went back to work spooning the hardpacked snow from the path and when he turned a moment later he saw the porch was empty and he went back to work.

    . . .


    He ate supper that night and went to bed early as he’d given his word he would and when he woke Billy was still asleep and the pagan moon silvered the loft. He sat up in his bed and got slowly to his feet. The floorboards creaked underfoot. He pulled his checked twill shirt and his breeches from the foot of his bed and dressed in the faint light of the moon. In the cold garret he drew his boots on and stood there for a moment looking at the sleeping boy in the cot across from him and for a second he felt something akin to affection. A feeling alien to him even now. As though the child were something that he could never strive to be. Lastly he turned and pulled on his heavy leather gloves which were frayed at the fingertips. Then he went downstairs and found his father waiting for him. Then they went outside.

    Outside it was dark and the flurries blew in from the wolf’s moon. The snow crunching loudly like ice between their teeth. We best get a move on then, his father said.

    When they reached the edge of the slagpit an hour later his father hobbled his horse and the boy climbed from his own and did the same.

    They started up the grade with the wind blowing at their backs and the fresh flurries drizzling onto the gravel. The boy felt as though he were on the edge of something unimaginable and yet somehow material to him as though it granted him life.

    As they trudged uphill he saw the mouth of the mine ahead. He stopped. He could see it there blacker than the night like the nest of some ribald beast that tunneled into the earth and burrowed into the deepest recesses of hell and he felt a sense of trepidation despite himself. He stood there a boy with large hands and feet clothed against the wind and already dusted with soot looking out at the entrance of this great warren which bored into the side of the rock face and where small scullery fires boiled in the faint new morning and his father turned to him and he stood watching his son until the boy looked to him. Then they continued on.

    He followed his father to where three or four people stood carrying lanterns and long torches. Mornin there, said his father.

    Mornin.

    As the boy watched his father took a gaslantern from one of the men and blew the guttering flame to life and held it up as though a beacon in a storm. In the flickering light of it the boy saw his father’s face and he felt a sudden surge of feeling he could not put a name to as they walked on. A crosseyed giant of a man fell into step beside the boy’s father and nodded down toward him.

    Mornin, Paddock.

    Mornin.

    I see ye brought the boy, he said.

    Yes I did.

    Did ye bring him to help?

    No I didn’t, he said.

    You didn’t?

    No.

    Then why?

    I brought him to be baptized.

    The giant nodded. In the grained light of the morning the snow had stopped falling and others were coming up the slope.

    . . .


    When they reached the vast and yawning mouth of the mineshaft the wind was much abated and the sun rose faint and muted from the east. He followed his father through the spits of snow which blew down like dust and they had gathered all at the entrance like parishioners after a service carrying picks and shovels. These enclaves huddling together for warmth against the weather and it did no good. The boy looked to his father but his father did not look back at him. When enough of them had arrived at the lip of the cave a few of the gathered took their torches and sojourned down into the tombstone darkness.

    The boy stood alongside his father amidst this battalion of irregulars. The wind cidering in the valleys and amid the junipers and the sun rose gray and elliptic over the reefs of coal around them. The day rawborn out of the ungoded sky like a bastard child out of a long line. His father spoke in whispers with a man great in stature and girth who bore a great knobbed shillelagh in one hand like a crutch. He pointed to the boy and the man looked at him and nodded. The boy did not ask what they were talking about nor did his father tell him. Instead he stood watching this handful of ragtags as they surfaced two or three at a time bowlegged and stooped from years of laboring in the mines. A few women. All of them pledged their lives to the collieries in vows deeper than bloodoaths and he began to realize he himself had done the same. At what point in his life he did not know.

    His father turned to him and beckoned the boy to follow and follow he did. They lumbered up the graveled path burdened with wellworn tools like fairybook dwarves in the forges of their mountain keeps and they descended into the darkness following the faint glow of the fires.

    They followed the faint glow of the torchfires and he listened for the sound of their footsteps on the hard ground. Strong yet brittle. Glittering blackly in the gloom. He looked for his father but his father was only a shapeless mass ahead. The boy held out a hand like a blind man and staggered forward. Once or twice he nearly tripped over a stone in his path.

    Sooner or later they came to the coalface. No light save the fire from the davy lamps and torches but these were choked by the dustclouds. The boy saw this the beetleeyed hide of what they had come for and he could see the soul of it burning within cold and intestate.

    He stood there in the dark. His father and his father’s men fanning out to hew at the coalface. The ceiling smooth and humbling overhead by the rock from which the coal had been plucked like a dead eye. Deep stone flues flowing with water. The same rock below to encompass them all in mute silence. The boy fancied a creature long dormant and sequestered in this lair staring into their souls with eyes dead black and filled with an ancient evil never to be equated. It bored into the hearts of the ones who sought to blind it slowly as it had when the stoneage men had come to seek shelter in caverns like this one all in the long ago.

    . . .


    Now come days of labor, days of drudgery. Days of toiling deep in the black where he sees no soul clearly. His first notion which supplants all at first is the endless darkness which falls here like a reaper’s scythe and a cold wind sets his teeth to gnashing. The light of his torch sprent with coaldust that there is scarcely enough to see at all in this bitter dark but he can see the numbers of halfnaked men kneeling like penitents on either side of the tunnel.

    He joins these men in driving their shovels under the mounds of shakendown ore and flinging it promptly over their shoulders into the carts which are yoked to mules and small ponies which stand hobbled in the darkness with lanterns around their necks like shining lockets. A glittering lake of coal in each haul. When these carts were full they were set towing it off to the surface before returning for a fresh load.

    He sees these fillers at work at in doing so feels a bitter kinship for them. They struggled hard in this terrible task in moving great loads of coal but they did so in a position that made it thrice as hard. To kneel the entire time whilst ladling the coal into the drivecarts like illformed amputees in their graft. They drive the spade forth pistoning with their thighs to break the rock as rivulets of sweat pour down their naked backs. The cold of the day a memory in this purgatorial heat. The coaldust clogging their noses and throats and weighting their eyelids. The rattle of tools a machinegun chatter.

    The dim light of the matchlamps coppering his face. The rank and volatile air like flatulence in this agonizingly cramped burrow. The black and gnawing fear inexorable of a great avalanche of stone and swarf and olden soil to crush the life out of them all. In this heat he shucks his belt and shirt and now and again looks askance through the heavy deadly cloud of grime at his present company. None of them look back at him.

    . . .


    After countless hours picketed amidst these stooped and lowly laborers the boy’s father surfaced from a lower circle of this hell to collect him. The boy picked up his shovel which has caused his hands to blister and crack open in bloody clefts and follows his father toward the shaft opening. It was worse clawing out of this pit as the journey took them uphill at a slant. They squatted low like men with rickets and with their lamps held out before them like gravekeepers’ lights they pushed forth.

    This crossing took some time as they scrabbled through the rich sediments and compacted earth. The boy’s knees seemingly collapsing within themselves after the hours spent at a bow. The davy lamp feeling heavier by tenfold and his arm felt like it were to buckle as he held it out before him. His head tucked into his shoulders like a frightened tortoise to avoid the lowhanging buttress struts. His father was adept at moving at a brisk pace down here and yet the boy saw him curse with pain as he clouted his spine against one of the beams.
    And when the gray circle of light appeared at the end of the tunnel the boy felt relief surge through him and he almost sank to his knees in elation but the elder Paddock kept him on the move.

    The sun they greeted when they found their way out of the darkness was the color of raw steel. Their shadows fell behind them like murder victims. His father wore on his head a helmet made of wood and pith and he looked like a hysterical soldier of a foreign land wandered from some nameless battlefield where his comrades had fallen.

    Here the boy stopped and stood watching the pregnant sky. The winter wind blowing from the sun onto the land strange and heartless as an alien planet, rattling the thatch of dead trees around the mine. The sun wreathed in a sulphur corona over them. The wind that blew could easily be taken for the timpani beat of the stormshaken canvas billows of a great ship. He watched while his father stood holding a lunchpail and sitting on a cindered deadfall white and monstrous like a beached whale. Then he turned and sat next to him.

    They had biscuits and jelly foldovers wrapped in butcher’s paper and a tin flask of water which his father handed to Ben first who took a long pull. Then he meted out the boy’s lunch which he set in his lap. Ben sat watching a threelegged dog as it staggered into the encampment blind and whining with patches of fur falling off in clumps. Once in a while he would cough stertorously until he’d hacked up phlegm black with dust. He could see his breath in the cold. Then he saw his father look up and at once a look of anger passed over his face. Ben watched him as he rose from the deadfall. Other men followed him out across the gravel wash and not a few of them holding their picks and spades like clubs. There was tension in the air. The path they walked was rutted and muddied with sleet.

    Oh here they come, someone said.

    Ben stood up and watched his father and the men gathered around him as they stood beneath the squalid sky. As he watched he saw coming from below the grade another wave of people. Men and women alike. All were armed like ancient barbarians with crude weapons of all sorts. Knives and pitchforks. Planks hackled with rusty nails. Not a few carried clapboard signs which bore misspelled slogans and runic mottos.

    His father shouted out across the rise to them, and Ben was happy with the sound he’d made. The common words lost hold of what was wrong. The vowels long and loud. He called on them to stand and listen with all the noises that his lips could make. He called with all the voices in his throat.

    Listen to me now, his father called. We want none of that talk of unions, Charles Dorsey.

    The man he’d spoken to stood smoking a cigar and he leaned slightly forward and produced a switchknife from somewhere in his leather duster and he smiled goodnaturedly at his father and then looked at the men and women congregated before him and ran the blade along his tongue one side first then the other and stropped the blade on his belt in a slow staccato motion.

    Why now Paddock, he said.

    Turn back now.

    Turn back? We just wanted to talk.

    What talk can ye do with knives and clubs?

    Dorsey bent and picked up a chunk of coal between his fingers and tossed it lazily in his hand like a burned baseball.

    Can’t you spare a moment is all I‘m askin, said Dorsey.

    For what?

    Just to hear what we’ve got to say.

    A moment to listen to your bullshit, you mean.

    Dorsey stood there smoking and took the knife and snapped the blade closed and then slipped the knife into his pocket and stood there watching with his hands clasped behind him like a backwoods preacher giving a sermon and eying the crowd before him on the hillside.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 11:45 AM.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  2. #2
    Numenorean ManOfWesternesse is on a distinguished road ManOfWesternesse's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Wow!. Bloody good Steve - it's dark, and it's bleak, and it's damn well written. Best of luck with it and with the Grant.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:53 AM.
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    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Thanks, Brian. This novel required a lot of research of early coal mines, unions, and the lifestyle of the 1910s-20s. I'm glad you liked it.

    Now if guys like Jean, who don't like my style, would look at this.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:53 AM.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  4. #4
    a ghost? a ghost. Rjeso will become famous soon enough Rjeso will become famous soon enough Rjeso's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    The run-on sentences give me a bit of a pause, but persoanlly, I actually like how you handled the dialogue here. It's different, but you know what's going on with it, and surprisingly, the unusual style didn't throw me off one bit. Some of your descriptors are a bit too flowery for me and can be pared down (which would also help with the run-on problem), but I like the story so far. I'd keep reading had I the book in hand.

    Best of luck to ya, Mulder!
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:53 AM.
    you're solid gold // i'll see you in hell

  5. #5
    Gunslinger Apprentice Callahan From Salem's Lot is on a distinguished road Callahan From Salem's Lot's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Gotta love it ! Wow ! Congrats,Steve ! It's a lot more than readable !
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:53 AM.

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    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Well now, Cal, that's very kind of ye, boyo.

    And Agent Scully, here I was thinking you were just some brainy beauty. Now I find you actually have good taste.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:54 AM.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  7. #7
    Numenorean ManOfWesternesse is on a distinguished road ManOfWesternesse's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve View Post
    And Agent Scully, here I was thinking you were just some brainy beauty. Now I find you actually have good taste.
    ... or a tasty beauty, who's got good brains?
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:54 AM.
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    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Archipelago: A Serial Novel


    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  9. #9
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Copyright Page

    Copyright (c) 2007 by Stephen Davis.

    All rights reserved. This publication may not be
    reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
    transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
    mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
    without the prior permission of the publishers.

    Typeset in Georgia No. 1

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  10. #10
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Dedication

    The author wishes to thank the fine
    people of TheDarkTower.net and its
    sister sites for their steadfast dedication
    and of course, to Leanna Reeves for
    her love and support.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  11. #11
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Last edited by Steve; 09-24-2007 at 09:26 PM.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  12. #12
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Chapter I

    I





    Across the wastes -- Loomings -- The wagon --
    Taking passage -- Unwelcome questions -- Stopping --
    Spooking the horses -- An ambush -- The naked savages -- Fights --
    A horror -- The blood moon.


    ===============================================




    See the world as once it was. The moon hung in the west dead as a blind eye and the long flat shapes of the clouds passed before it like a skyward fleet of deathships. Down the broiling river the reefs of ash and rubble sat in the gloom like a phantom wreck. As if the horizon were only gauze. To denote a oneness in this vision.

    He sat on the sagging buckboard of the old rickety wagon with his head cocked to one side as though listening to spectre voices in the wind. His hatbrim caked in a fine drizzle of ash. The head flattened in places. He held the roughleather horsereins in his callused hands, the bullskin blanket cowled around him like a friar's alb. The gaunt and pellicle horses shuffling along in their brokendown gait amidst the deadplains. Their snorts stuttered in the cold.

    He turned back to look over his shoulder at the conestoga wagon. The canvas stripped and laid bare in places by the wind. A gaslantern hanging from a stanchion dripping with kerosene. The flame guttered to no more than a spark. A cloth draped in curtain over it. He sat back and listened for their stertorous breathing. Soon he heard it. A lowing moan cidering from the wagonbed.

    How much further?

    The wagoneer tightened his grip on the reins and shoved back the flap to look in the carriage. Eyes blinking at him from the murk. Slumped and bundled in stinking rags and blankets like peasants. Three of them. Their young faces lined with worry. The one who'd spoken leaning forward. An infant suckling at her breast within this fleabitten chrysalis.

    What's that ye said? he grunted.

    I asked how much further.

    How many times I got to tell ye? Dont ask me that.

    I just want to know.

    How in the name of God would I know that? Aint no tellin.

    Well dont you think we ought to stop for the night?

    Well ye want to go to Californy dont you?

    You know we do.

    Well then shut up and bundle yerself up. Dont want to get sick n die before ye see the ocean, do ye?

    They all shook their heads no. They did not risk to speak further, for fear of breathing in the ash. Veils of ragcloth over their mouths like the masks of lepers. The old man peeled back his cracked lips in a blacktoothed grin. His chin flecked with spittle like drool.

    Good girls. Now ye hush up and enjoy the ride.

    Well when can we at least stop? the mother asked.

    What ye want to stop for?

    The baby's poorly.

    What I tell ye? said the wagoneer. I dont like bein bothered with dumb questions like that. Cant you see I dont like talkin?

    Sorry.

    The wagoneer shook his head and ash fell from the brim of his hat like dandruff. Ye woulda done better to of left that chap back where ye come from anyhow. That's what I think.

    The woman said nothing but only looked at him. The old wagoneer cocked his head again and smacked the canvas flap closed so the ash would not blow into the wagon. He hunched forward and peered through the blizzard of soot like a man on the jakes. To glass for a landmark of some sort.

    He sat that way for a while until one of the horses listed to one side. He jostled the reins but the horse only reared its gaunt and welmish head to the sky. Its tattered ears pricked and its eyes rolling redly in its sockets. The other horse seemed to observe its mate doing this until whatever scent had attracted the first drifted to the other. Soon they were pawing at the earth and nickering worriedly.

    The mother poked her head through the flap when she heard this. She held the veil to her mouth with her free hand as she watched this peculiarity.

    What's wrong? she asked.

    The wagoneer shook his head again. Dont know. I reckon somethin's out there got the horses riled up.

    Can you see what it is?

    He stood up in the buggy with the reins slack in his hands. Hell no I caint see. Gimme my pistol.

    He turned to reach for it when there was a sudden snap of bowstring, almost too sharp and high to hear in the whine of the night. An arrow prickling from his gut. He toppled back against the wagonframe with a pained cry. His fall tearing loose the canvas and exposing his cargo to the elements. Two of the women crying out in terror. The baby's howls muffled against its mother as the man snapped the shaft in twain. Tossing it to the floor of the wagon beneath his feet in disgust.

    Goddamn it. My gun. Goddamn it.

    He turned to reach for the weapon sitting behind the buckboard. One of the women handed it to him. A 54 caliber singleshot flintlock. Ancient as the metal from which it was forged. He used both hands to cock the heavy pistol when they saw the figure lurch out from the murk. His bow nocked back and face blackened with ash and clay. To paraphrase a grinning skull. On his feet tattered black shoes bound together with raw horseleather.

    Oh goddamn you, the old man said.

    Another snap of the bowstring. The old wagoneer brought the gun up with the barrelstock resting on one knee. Another arrow sprouted from his chest with a sick thud. One of the women in the back let out a banshee shriek. The wagoneer leveling the gun and squeezing the trigger. The report a thundering crack to split the night apart. The 54 caliber ball knocking the attacker back into the darkness with a gurgling shriek.

    You bastard. Goddamn you. Goddamn you.

    Then there were three more of them from the gloom, tangled hair slicked back with grease and bristling with feathers plucked from some bird long since extinct. Their faces daubed with circles and stripes. Red, white, black. Only colors of meaning in this miscarried world. Their bodies nude save for their shoes and a few strips of cloth. Denim, polyester. Names of no meaning. The horses shrieking and tangling themselves in the traces.

    The mother in the back positioning herself in front of her baby. To shield it from the attack. The child's cries clogged with a colicky drizzle. The old wagoneer still had the fulllength arrow ticking from his chest. No time to reload. He turned the pistol around as the first of the attackers clambered onto the wagon like some mindless acrobat. He swung the weapon in a heavy downward arc. Cracking the attacker's forehead apart like soft brick so the brains dribbled from it like mortar.

    The mother reached for the horsepistol she had bundled away in her gunna. Pressing the baby to her with her other hand. Another man was advancing with a club in his hand. Prickling with nails crusted with rust. Ancient words spelled on this twisted shillelagh. She looked over the barrel of the gun. Pulled the trigger with a shattering shot. The assailant dropping like a grainsack with a smoking hole in his heart. His hands stretched out for clemency.

    Good, said the mother. Good.

    The wagoneer scrabbled across the buckboard with his pistol. His eyes blazing at the third warrior. Ready to swing like a club. The warrior seeing his friends dead across the wagon. An ironblade tomahawk in one hand he backed away toward the horses. Babbling a pidgin english the old wagoneer could not make out, nor wanted to.

    Git away from there. Goddamn you git away.

    He pitched forward once like a drunken sailor in a storm. He sank to his knees whilst grasping the arrowshaft. He tried to break it but the chiselstone point was lodged deep in his sternum and the pain was electrifying. Too much to snap the plastic shaft.

    Oh God, he bemoaned. Oh God. Oh goddamn you. Oh God.

    The warrior saw this and hurled the tomahawk at the wagoneer. The bit notched itself deep in the old man's skull between his eyes. The wagoneer toppled from the buggy and landed in a heap in the ash, his tongue poked bizarrely between his rotted teeth. Dead before he hit the soft crozzled soil on which they traveled. All he had ever known or thought or loved a mealy trickle pooling in the dust.

    The women were cowering in the wagoncab now shrieking with terror like madonnas in a slaughter. The child wailing in the arms of its mother. The mother herself had no time to reload and so she drew the heavy skinning knife from her gunna and held it before her as the last warrior hoisted himself onto the buckboard. Hate and violence burning sickly in his eyes. The woman's breasts dripping with thin milk between her legs while she brandished the knife in wide arcs.

    Stay back, she hissed. Go and leave us alone. Dont you try it. Stay back.

    The man stood there looking at her. Not understanding or pretending not to understand. His eyes flickering as two shadowmen lunged from behind the wagon without a sound and garrotted the two women huddled there with wirevine. Stifling their screams while dragging them to a dark and violent end in the blizzard. The baby's crying grew to a crescendo with the rising wind. The woman turned to see what had happened just as the warrior standing before her kicked forth viciously. Knocking her back into the wagonboard in a daze. The baby and the knife both spilling from her hands onto the floor of the wagon. Before the mother could rise the infant was in the warrior's hands. He held the child out before him like a heathen priest before a baptism.

    Oh no, she breathed. Dont. Please dont. Oh please God, dont do it.

    The warrior drew the baby to his breast and stood like that for a moment. His eyes on the mother's own. Boring into her. The child's cries stopped as it looked curiously at this apparition which cradled it. The warrior looking at it like a man who had never seen a creature of its like before. Then without a word he had plucked a cattlebone knife from his beltloop and in a single fluid motion had cut the infant's throat from ear to ear. A bleeding grin on the baby's front.

    The mother let out a single ululating wail that could have been to lament the fallen world in which they found themselves. Her progeny's lifeblood dripping on the planked floor of the conestoga like red rain. She lurched to her feet and launched herself at the murderer of her child. The warrior kicked her again in the midriff which knocked her off the wagon onto the dusty soil. One of the other warriors who had spirited off the other women returned to pinion her arms from behind and force her down on the ground. Then he twisted his powerful arms around her throat and cut off all but a little of her air. Her head throbbed like a bloodfilled drum and she felt as though she would pass out.

    The warrior on the wagon stood there with the small and bloodied carcass dangling like a throatcut calf by one leg. Then as the mother watched with tears stinging her eyes the warrior lifted the dead baby over his head, tipped his face up to the sky and let the blood trickle into his mouth like nectar. The mother saw this injustice and struggled against the man holding her down but she could not break loose and so she just lay back and wept while the man climbed down from the wagon and forced her legs apart. His grinning teeth stained with the blood of the innocent.

    He squatted over her and when he pulled his grimed and stinking leggins down all the while chanting in that hideous godless language she turned her eyes to the scorched nightsky. The idiot moon brooding down from its invisible perch as her child's blood seeped from the savage grimace onto her face in grotesque tears. As though the blood of her child had been returned to the one who had given it.

    And as he raped her, again and again, she sought the hand of her dead child but could not find it.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  13. #13
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Chapter II

    II





    What once was -- A figure -- A shallow grave --
    Abagail -- The burial -- A child's cry -- The crib --
    A refusal to stay -- Suggestions -- The way the world works --
    A mother's sorrow -- Looking westward -- Departure --
    A nameless child.


    ===============================================



    Now come days of reckoning, days of misery. Days where no soul would be seen aboveground at all. A country dormant and passive. To travel this burned country beyond the endless landscape and dark falls here like a reaper's scythe and a cold wind sets the world to hiding. The night sky lies white and scorched as there is scarcely place for bitter stars and it is so that none recall what lies above the clouds.

    The figure stood that way with his bootprints tracked and heavy into the soft clay earth around the tiny groundwell like pictographs from his relentless pacings. His hat pushed back on his head. His powerful arms slimed with sweat. At one end of the fallow patch they called a garden he had dug a shallow grave in the barren soil. Now as the blackened sun crested over the horizon like a blind and cauterized eye over the land he bent forth to the bundle lying at his feet. He dragged the dead girl to the pit in the sheet she had lain in whilst she'd given birth. His roughstitched clothes smeared with her lifeblood and with the dark poisoned earth in which he'd been digging.

    From the open doorway of the stonework hovel Abagail watched this with silence. Her heavy face pleated with lines of exhaustion. It had been a long and harrowing night. She had done what she could but it was all for naught. The girl had been ailing for weeks, months even. Most of what energy and life she'd once had lost on the rough three weeks on the king's road to this tiny settlement. And the exertions of the birth had taken what was left in her. Soon after the baby had come into this earth the mother had taken leave of the same earth with a sigh which might have been relief.

    Even now in the bleak silence of this perverted dawn she could hear his curses and rants of anguish. His voice hurt and wrought with a godless anger. The words of blame which had at the time been aimed toward her. It was her fault. Always her fault and never his own. So it had always been and always would be. An old chronicle.

    When he had spooned the last of the toxic soil over the face of his dead bride he stood there with the spade in his hand like a graverobber of old. Then with a howl of rage he hurled the tool into the dark as though it were whitehot. Then he turned and looked up at her still standing in the door of the hovel. No love to be found here. Only seventeen he was. Still a boy yet an age where hate and rancor were as familiar as old friends. His cold gaze boring into her.

    Well? she asked wearily.

    Well what.

    You know what. Will you stay?

    He shook his head once. A brisk declination. Almost belligerent in its tersity. He thundered across the churned mire that was once her garden, oblivious to what he was doing or perhaps knowing and not caring one way or the other. She watched him as he knelt beside the groundwell and in her heart she knew she could not feel anger towards him. Her son. For all he'd done and said he was still her flesh and blood. She knew what he must be thinking. To lose that focus.

    She looked down at her hands which were frothed with the blood of her son's wife and sighed. She could not have helped it any. It was the will of whatever god directed their fate. He had known his wife was sick. He had not wanted to come but desperation makes men do what they do not wish to. He had taken her to his mother carrying his pregnant wife in his arms like a patient to a pesthouse seeking a miracle from the great deity she prayed to. But he had come too late. Too late for the girl anyway.

    She raised her head when the infant began to cry. She stretched and turned into the hovel, ducking beneath the lintel which was adorned with beads and trinkets of a time forgotten. Coins chipped and cored through with twine. A key whose lock was long gone. The baby lay in a pinewood crib in the corner. She crossed over to the crib and bent over as its cries grew urgent.

    You poor thing, she said as she bent to lift it from the crib. A tiny thing castory cradling against her bosom. She kissed its raw neck and forehead. It blinking up at the world with eyes dark and soulful like her own. Oh you poor thing.

    And so she went back outside and stood in the shade of the doorway again. Her son was bent over the lip of the groundwell. He was sousing himself with water from a swollen cedar bucket. She could see how the wellwater was muddied. A precious thing brought to ruin. She noted the carelessness in what he did and the manner with which he flaunted her with impunity. Thoughtless. Senseless. But she would not speak against him for now was not the time to mention such things.

    The child.

    He gave no sign that he had even heard. For a moment she thought perhaps he had not even done so. She held the infant close to her chest.

    Shall I dress her for the journey?

    He did not answer but he turned to look at her and she saw the cold flint of hatred in his eyes. She flinched under that hard steel gaze.

    Keep it, he said. I dont want it. Bury it with its mother for all I care. I dont want anything to do with it.

    Abagail bristled at this for she could not think that what he was saying was true so she held the child out to him over the gap.

    This is your daughter. Your daughter! You gave her life. You must take care of her. That is how the world works.

    Yet he said nothing and he only turned away. Abagail drew the baby back to her breast and once more it began to cry. She rubbed its back soothingly while never taking her eyes from her son. He who trod across the roiled earth and stalked past her into the hovel without speaking to her. Roughly shouldering her aside as he did so. A moment later he had returned with his old flintlock rifle and a rucksack.

    Where will you go? she asked.

    He turned from her. Looking toward the ruined wastelands of a country that had once been a land of opportunity. The slaghills just visible from where they stood.

    Where will you go?

    West, he said.

    West?

    Yes. West.

    When he spoke it was quite chilling and she said no more. She looked down at the child in her arms. Skin the color of terracotta. She would be a beautiful woman someday. An innocent. Not knowing at the moment what was best.

    She made to give the child to her son but he only brushed past her and stepped out into the ruins. Within the shadow of ash the earth was fractured and crevassed. There in a crack some distance from the hovel the darkness was black as the deepest pit of hell. A godless murk from whence beasts misbegotten and ripped from the womb of the earth lay in wait like trapdoor spiders. A wall of stone high as a man. In a moment he was gone with a dreamy slowness like a specter stepping out into oblivion.

    You didnt name her, she said quietly as she held the baby tight against her. You didnt even name her.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  14. #14
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Chapter III

    III





    A doctor pays a housecall -- Spreading the news --
    Meeting -- The task ahead -- A diagnosis -- The boy in the bed --
    Gangrene -- A mother's love -- Preparations -- A surgery --
    The aftermath.


    ===============================================



    The girl saw from the window the buggy trundling up the high street through the mud. The flurries of ash drifting slightly at an angle so as to settle in drifts on one side of the wagon itself whilst leaving the other side almost bare. Seated in the spring seat was the grimlooking town doctor. He did not see her but she saw him. She watched as the man driving the buggy checked the reins and ground to a halt in front of the house. That was all she needed to see.

    When she ran downstairs the front room was dark save for a candlelight. The cauterized coin of the sun gave no light but for a corona like some hoop of godless radiance. She went into the kitchen where her mother bustled at the woodstove whilst looking out the back window.

    Mama, she said. Mama.

    Dont run in the house, Becky.

    Mama, I seen him.

    Seen who?

    The doctor, said the girl. He's here.

    She stopped and her blue eyes were filled with anxiety. She looked at her daughter closely. He's here already?

    Reckon so.

    Well saints preserve us. He aint come in has he?

    Not at the moment he aint.

    Well then I reckon he can just stay out there for a while.

    She stood where she was, harriedlooking and flustered like a rustled hen in a rainstorm. She looked around at the state of the house. Pawing at her hair distractedly.

    Well damn it all girl dont you have any sense? she asked. Run out back and tell your daddy.

    Yes ma'am. You want me to go tell Bart?

    Just go and do what I told you to do.

    Yes ma'am.

    The girl went out the backyard where her father was tending the horses in the clapboard livery they owned. She called out across to him.

    Papa! The doctor's comin.

    He looked up. A strong powerful man with a full flowing mane like golden water. His eyes sharp yet somehow faded in his forlorn face. He aint here yet, is he?

    Not yet he aint.

    Well that's fine. He can stay out there long as he likes.

    Mama told me not to tell Bart.

    Well damn it girl why dont you yell it a little louder so's they can hear you in heaven?


    . . .



    When the doctor came in the family was seated at the long wooden table in the kitchen. A candle with a long wick burning in the center on a saucer and them eating their supper. Salted jerky mostly. There had been a knock on the door and Becky had been charged to open it. When the sawbones came into the kitchen the father had risen, his wife struggling to her feet beside him.

    You Cooper? the doctor asked.

    Yessir. I'm Cooper. He extended his hand and the doctor took it. A perfunctory shake wishing it were under different circumstances. They nodded silently at one another like rival knights on a battlefield of old.

    I came to see about the boy.

    I reckon you are, said Cooper.

    We sure do appreciate that, his wife added.

    The doctor nodded. He looked about the room for a moment. Where is he?

    He's upstairs.

    Upstairs.

    Yes. Becky, would you show him?

    Yes, Mama. The girl left the room and a moment later the doctor had followed whilst shifting his satchel from one hand to the other as he left the kitchen. When they were gone the husband and wife looked at each other with solemn silence. Soon they heard the cries from upstairs and looked up in alarm.

    No. No, goddamn you! No!

    I'll poke up the fire, said Mrs Cooper, heading for the stove.


    . . .


    When the sawbones came back down to the kitchen he looked somewhat embarrassed but also very determined. He offered a smile to them but they could not smile back.

    Now I sure do appreciate this, doc, said Cooper. I know that boy aint goin to go easy.

    No he wont. It's going to be hard on him.

    I know it.

    The sawbones took a seat at the table and at once the wife and mother looked back down the hall as though what sat before them was some dark doppelgänger and that the real man would arrive at any moment.

    I fear he wont take to it at all, he told them all by the light of the candle. But there's no sense in not trying, so say I. Might I have something to drink, please?

    Mrs Cooper nodded and went to the pail and dipper on the sideboard to fetch a glass of water. Cooper himself leaned forward and locked hard eyes with the physician. Tell me the truth, doc. Might it not mend?

    Mend?

    Mend.

    No, it wont mend. No chance of it. I am sorry, Cooper. I really am.

    So you have to operate.

    Is that what you're asking?

    That's what I'm askin.

    The sawbones took the glass of water and took a swig and set it down before him and looked at them both. Finally he nodded. Yes. If you want your son to live.

    Mrs Cooper began to sob and her husband moved to comfort her. The doctor nodded as though he'd expected this. Perhaps he had.

    It's the sepsis, ma'am. Your boy's got it bad. Real bad.

    Yes. She stifled a sob. I understand.

    Dont you think it might mend anyhow? This from Cooper.

    A sigh from the doctor. There is no chance of that, sir. Not in God's world. You're talkin about gangrene. His leg's rotted to the core. If you left it that way it's just as bad as the pest, or if you stuck a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It's the will of God.

    Cooper grunted. Aint no God in this house if He takes my boy, sawbones. Never will be.

    Another sob from his wife. The doctor shook his head. Doesnt matter anyway. If the boy's to live the leg must come off. I am sorry about it but it just has to be done.

    And my son? Mrs. Cooper asked tentatively. My Bart? How will you . . .

    There's nothing to be done for that. I am sorry. No chloroform or anything to be had. There's laudanum, but very little.

    Laudanum.

    Yes. The best we can do.

    Mrs Cooper rose from the table and looked up at the ceiling. I'll speak to him.

    The doctor got up as well. Now ma'am, he said. I dont think that'll work. He's crazed. He swore at me. He aint in his right mind.

    He'll not swear at me, she said. He'll not swear at his own mother.


    . . .


    When they entered the bedroom where the boy lay on his small bed like a quivering doll they saw he was drenched with sweat. Glaring hatefully at them in the doorway pale and angry. The mother walked directly to the bed and sat down on the corner of it. She looked down at the boy with whom she'd given life.

    Bart, she said.

    She regarded him but he would not speak.

    Bart, she said again. The doctor is right what he says. He has to operate.

    He turned away from her. A tall boy whose mature body would be taller yet than his father who was a large man himself. I'd rather be dead in the ground than have that sawbones at me.

    Hush now, his mother said. Dont say that.

    Why not? It's true, aint it?

    She looked at him. She could not understand what he meant or what he felt.

    Think of us, then, she said. Your father and me. Becky here. I'd rather have a son with no legs than no son at all.

    No answer from the boy. Only glaring out the sootblack window at what might be. She looked down the bed to the humped shape of his legs beneath the quilt. You looked at it?

    Looked at what?

    Your leg. You looked at it?

    Hell no. Why'd I want to see it? His voice lilted with rising terror.

    Let me see it.

    No.

    Let me.

    Bart was very much fearful now. He shook his head violently in negation. His mother a strong woman nonetheless. She seized the thick quilt which she had stitched long ago when Bart was little more than a baby and jerked it back to reveal the horror beneath. Her son sat up in bed for one lastditch effort to stop her but by then the damage was done. His legs lay that way for all to see. The injured one loosely bundled in gauze through which bruisecolored stains bled through. The lower leg utterly black like bottled ash. A swarm of maggots feasting over the wound.

    Oh my God, she gasped falling back at the raw stench of rot.

    Go away, Bart said. He fell back to the bed sobbing. Go away.

    I know it's hard, his mother said. I know. But I'll stay, son. I'll stay with you because I love you.


    . . .


    When she entered the kitchen the doctor and the family were gathered there waiting. Both men rose when they saw her.

    I think you can go in now, she told the doctor.

    Thank you kindly, said he. And with that he started for the stairs.

    Perhaps Becky here would assist you with your things, Mrs Cooper suggested. The doctor stopped on the risers and turned and she in turn looked to the girl. Would you like to help the doctor, Becky?

    Her daughter shrank from her shaking her head fervently.

    Oh that's quite all right, said the doctor laughingly. I can manage it just fine.

    You dont think nothin will go wrong, do ye? the father asked.

    At this the sawbones paused in midstep and turned to look at the man. In my career, Mr Cooper, I have removed over a thousand limbs. Arms, legs. Feet. I was called in on some of the most difficult cases you'd ever seen.

    That wasnt what I asked.

    I know it wasnt.

    So tell me.

    I have every confidence in success, sir.

    Well then that's fine.



    . . .



    He had set up his equipment in the corner. He had the father fit the pump for the carbolic spray but mainly he did it himself. The mother came to the door and saw them drawing butcher's aprons on themselves. Her husband taking part in this debauchery. She saw her son whom she had given suck to as a babe lying there stricken in fear as a rabbit is when caught in a snare. He turned his face to the window.

    The doctor approached him with something in a silver flaskbottle. He held it out to the boy who took it but did not look at him.

    Drink this, he said.

    What is it?

    Drink.

    I asked what is it.

    It's laudanum, said the doctor.

    Lauda-what?

    It'll make the pain go away.

    The boy held the flask up and tilted it so a little of the honeycolored liquid dribbled out. The doctor grabbed him by the wrist and tipped the flask upright again so no more would spill. Dont waste it, boy. You'll want it, believe me.

    Bart looked at him finally with eyes of molded stone. I'll decide what I want, thanks.

    He looked and saw his mother standing there at the doorway and he held the flask to his mouth. He drank it till there was no more and gagged. It tasted foul like liquor that had gone over. Yet he struggled to keep it down and keep it down he did. His mother's face a peculiar expression of concern not untouched with a salacious albeit terrified curiosity. The doctor laying out his surgical instruments in a poker hand in a crockpot filled with a weird watery substance. They glittered in the guttering candlelight in a fanshaped arc.



    . . .



    It lasted almost an hour and a half. Of course this meant nothing for time had become a concept irrelevant since all the clocks were stopped. Stopped with their hands pointing at six past the hour of eleven. It was not known if it were at A.M. or P.M. because those who remembered those days were dead. Dead or did not wish to remember. And what would it have mattered anyway?



    . . .



    Young Becky Cooper sat motionless at the kitchen table in the darkness. She'd snuffed the candle out and now sat there with the threadbare doll that was her prized possession. Wringing its ragbody in her hands like some cruel torture device of old. She had listened to the screams muffled by whatever they had jammed between his teeth to stop them but they were not any less heartwrenching. When she heard footsteps coming down the stairs she did not want to look up and yet she did. Her father emerging like a ghost ship in the darkness with something tucked under his arm. The girl saw it was bundled up in a bedsheet. Little fireblooms on the fabric. She knew what it was and she hurried from the room without a word.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  15. #15
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default

    IV





    After the sandstorm -- The mountains hazed gray --
    A view -- The caravan -- Voices in the wind -- A barter made --
    Exchanges -- Out of hiding.


    ===============================================



    The sandstorm had scoured the plains of hardpan and asphalt clean of ash and dust. Now, all along the cracked creviced landscape, shadows fell upon the hard rock like a thousand frozen spectres. The crumbled ridge of what had once been buildings were adorned with faces and eyes, arms outheld as though begging for mercy and heads tilted to the sky as though looking for some divine intervention. A myriander of unseen and beautiful lifeforms crawling from the sanctuary of the rubble only to be ensnared by the dead sunlight.

    The girl lay staring out across the great ocean of sand and rock and hardtop that lay vast toward the mountains hazed gray in the yonder. The only thing to rival it in size the great scorched sky above.

    The girl was concealed from eyes that might have sought her out. Her very existence hidden from the caravan of peddlers who had stopped out on the great flat black snake of a road to greet the old crone. The patched and timeragged clothes she wore a dusty nocolor which made her seem but a fragment of this shambled landscape. She lay perfectly still taking in every minute intricacy of the caravan.

    The storm which had blown scraping blasts of rock and sand had held them up for almost three days. Three days which was not a long time in this tuneless hell of salvage and rubble but an eternity for the girl. For weeks before the caravan was due to arrival she would dream of it from dawn to dark. Closing her eyes to conjure up cloaked peddlers carrying their wares on their backs or riding horses thin as slats into ten thousand worlds of their choosing.

    These dreams she had frequently and more often as she grew older yet she told her grandmother nothing of them. For what end would that serve? She knew how the old woman fussed and clucked over her even without having to worry of unscrupulous traders coming into the night and stealing her from her bed. To sell her into slavery in one of the bazaars to the south. And so that is why she hid when her grandmother told her to. She minded her tongue when it came to the dreams. Not to add to the old woman's worries.

    Right now the girl's eyes were on the face of the leader of the waylayers down below. The face she often found herself looking at. A dark man with a face carved from licks of a hatchet within the folds of his cloakhood. His beard clipped close to his face like fuzz.

    Perusing the stopped caravan the girl noticed that there had been changes since they'd last been through here. There were nine horses and four mules to make a total of thirteen. Three more than last time. This not the only sign. The men not looking concerned or anxious here as they haggled her grandmother. They peeled back their lips to reveal rotblackened teeth bearing credence to an addiction to something they peddled.

    The girl drank all this in with her eyes while knowing that her grandmother would come to her later.

    Raquel.

    Yes.

    What did you see?

    She saw the one whose face looked to be badly chiseled by a blind stonemason as he reached into his saddlebag which was made from a cloth she had never before seen before. Straps dusty from the trail with words too fine to read from this distance stamped on the sack. He turned and held something out to her grandmother. A tiny object which seemed to sparkle in the harsh deadshine.

    Raquel leaned forward to attempt to see what it was her grandmother had bartered for but she could not make it out. She saw her set it upon the stack of other things she was bartering for. She lay that way for a while trying to see what this latest purchase was but it was no use so she looked to her grandmother.

    Abagail stood there facing the peddler who looked to be in charge. Her forlorn yet loving face bleached almost pallid by the constant storms of ash and sand. Her gray hair the exact shade of the cinders that rained like flurries from the gehenna sky. The hood of her cloak down to expose her to the rough elements but she did not care as was her custom. Such she did with no thought for her health. She did it to convince these traders of her resilience even though she did indeed suffer for it. For even an hour out in that burning black sun was enough. Not to speak of the arduous journey back to their rundown shack weighed down with heavy sacks of flour and salt and clothbundles and other objects in her possession.

    And here she lay, powerless to help her.

    It helped a lot now that she could help her tend the groundwell and the languishing garden. Yet at times such as these she felt helpless. Impotent if anything.

    When she looked again she saw Abagail had almost finished. Raquel saw her hand over the items she had grown in the fallow garden which hardly ever birthed anything of any use and what little it did was mostly inedible. A few herbs. Acacia. Other trinkets. She felt something akin to wonder at how inventive Abagail was. She had lived with her twelve years. Twelve years in this crumbling ruined land and never once had they gone starving.

    She knew that in itself was a gift from the God she saw Abagail pray to at night. Not because she told her so but because she had seen with her own eyes the ways of this world they inhabited. How unforgiving it was. Each night they survived was a night to give thanks.

    She could not hold back a smile as she watched her grandmother gather up what she had bartered for. Yet none of the peddlers offered to help her but she did not need their help. It was respectful of her independence. Love in its purest form.

    She stood there hunched over like an ancient immigrant who had arrived in this land on one of those boats like in the stories of old. She nodded her thanks to the peddlers as she shouldered the sack and turned around to held back to the ruins from where the girl watched.

    Raquel lay there longing to scramble out into the hard baking landscape and help her but knowing that she could not until the caravan had trundled out of sight. She cupped her hands around her eyes like a pair of binoculars which of course she had never seen before. The line of men on horseback moving stertorously off to the north.

    Raquel.

    Yes?

    Great cities to the west beyond the vast oceans untouched by these ruined skies. Where the sun shines white and pure like God's touch. And we will see them. We will see them someday. Do you believe? Yes I do.

    . . .

    As Abagail came around the great tentacle of rock coming into the sight of the cleft the girl walked over to her. She was wellhidden from the sight of the peddlers' eyes if any had taken the notion to turn back. None did. And so Abagail would stop and let Raquel take a few of the bundles from her but on this day she headed onward under the weight of the sacks. When she neared Raquel saw the old woman was smiling despite the burden.

    When she got to the southern end of the rock midden she stopped and stooped low so as to slide the hefty load from her tired shoulders. The girl climbed into view.

    Here, said Abagail softly. Take these down to the cellar.

    With dutiful silence, Raquel turned to do as she was bid. She scrabbled over the crumbling wall like some desert spider and standing on the narrow ridge silhouetted against the burned coin of the sun she held her hands out for the two burlap sacks Abagail now handed to her. She took these and slung them over her shoulder unmindful of the chafing her hands bore. She then slipped down from the broken wall and scampered at a low run to the storeroom cellar.

    . . .


    See the end as it was. The clocks had stopped with their hands six minutes past the hour of eleven. It was as though all time and all concept of it had been nullified in one single moment. The gavel of judgment day on the benchmark of this celestial trial--a trial from which all were defendants and all judged guilty by whatever callous being presided over them.

    It seemed to happen all at once. A sharp dry crack issued from somewhere deep in the heavens and deep in the earth as well. A tremor both above and below to coalesce in the middle. It was a calm windless night weighed with heat and so the sound had an ominous hint about it. There had been a long creaking sound like a nail being wrenched from an idiot board and again the sharp fracturing of wood being snapped in half. A valkyrie's throes. There followed a dead and motionless silence that would become in time the symphony of the world.

    The atmosphere seemed to seethe and roil with a violence inchoate to all. The terrified masses, torn, crushed and ragged, panting loudly and pouring with rivulets of panicked sweat. Outrage and insanity tabernacled within each other to be witness to what was to come. These denizens clawing at the air in mute supplication only to be struck down one by one and there they lay with stricken looks eying what had come to pass. The sky became red with blood as though some sanguine god's saber had split apart the pregnant belly of the heavens and spilled its placenta out upon the world in which they inhabited. This horror fell upon the earth murderously and that was all. This last made the parable. Not to create heaven on earth, but to unmake the hell we have made and lie prostrate in.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  16. #16
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    V





    A task for a cripple -- Slow going --
    A shadow in the yard -- A broken rifle cock -- A lesson in manners -- Gun repairs --
    Ray Boot -- A scalphunter -- The boy in wonder --
    What country lies west -- A prayer for paradise -- A father's suspicion --
    Talks of St. Louis -- Meeting up with Captain Wilkins --
    Impossible wages.


    ===============================================



    Stand still, damn you.

    While his father and his father's men had taken leave for their noon meal, Bart had been left behind to shoe the plowhorse in the corral behind the barn. The old horse was as tame as could be but Bart was left feeling quite frustrated nonetheless. He bore a crude crutch shaped of birch and bone and though it was only a month since the surgery he moved with a fluid grace and agility unsupposed by one in his condition. He leaned on the crutch and looked at the horse with a sort of dissatisfied anger that seemed to cede all disdain.

    Well I reckon you're a son of a bitch then, he told the horse.

    He had tried to hurry the job but that only succeeded in him cutting the heels too deeply so now it was taking twice as long as it should have. Bart now spent most of his time shaping and molding to the right shape on the left foreleg. The hoof cupped between his legs. His mouth bristling with shoenails and sweat coursing down into his eyes as he tried to keep the hoof in place while he steadied the iron shoe and rammed the nails home all at once. It was such that Bart continued cursing at the horse in a litany almost melodic in its tempo.

    Oh you bastard. Hold still, damn you. Hold.

    The horse snorted a plume of dust in a thick sneeze and Bart grimaced yet did not see the shadow coming up the yard behind him and standing at parade-rest there at the gate.

    Well now.

    Bart looked up. Well.

    The man standing there decked out in fringed buckskin like latticework. A longbreech rifle cradled in his arms. His hair ragged and matted to his shoulders. A growth of beard lush and tangled. Around his neck a leather bootstring on which a silver medallion hung dull and lifeless. A white hangrope scar trenched his forehead. That there hoss dont know ye had a bad day, kid. Reckon ye ought to take a break fore he kicks yer other leg off from under ye.

    Bart hobbled to his feet yet moved quickly out of range. I can get around same as ary man.

    I dont doubt ye could, the man said. Ye seem right capable of gettin around on that crutch of yours. Though I do have some doubts to yer ferryin ability. Reckon ye could do better with this?

    I reckon so.

    He held out the gun as though for inspection. Needs a new rifle cock.

    Bart wiped his hands on the apron he wore around his waist and held out his hands for the gun. The man gave it to him. It was a fullstock 54 caliber rifle. Forty inch barrel. Stock of maple. A moonshaped buttpiece and a slender supple cheek. A chunk of flint wedged in the harnessleather but the pan wasnt primed so the gun was safe. Bart thumbed the hammer down and drew it back but the safety snapped loudly. He tried it again yet the result was the same. He looked back up at the man who now stood watching him keenly.

    Reckon ye can fix it son? the man asked.

    I can.

    Sir.

    What's that?

    Didnt your father learn you to sir to yer elders?

    Sorry. Sir.

    What's yer name?

    Cooper.

    I meant what's yer other name.

    Bart.

    Bart?

    Bart, sir.

    That's better. My name's Boot. Ray Boot.

    Can I ask you a question, Mr Boot?

    Ask away, youth.

    Well sir I was wantin to know how you come by that scar.

    Boot grinned affably. Bit of a tussle with a savage out on the plains, he said. The sumbuck thought my scalp look great hangin from his stinking belt but I begged to differ.

    The boy looked at him with a dawning look like heroworship. So what happened then?

    Boot drew back his buckskin jacket and Bart looked and saw what the man carried there like bizarre graft. A glistening blackhaired scalp slicked with grease and dried blood. Bart reached out almost unconsciously but caught himself. The older man chuckled.

    Now go on and finish shoein that hoss now, he told him.

    Yessir.


    . . .


    When he had finished nailing the last shoe on the recalcitrant horse Bart hobbled to the shop inside the barn where they cobbled the wagons that gave them their name. The big man Boot followed him inside as the boy spread a soft goathide on the roughsanded workbench, took down a couple of tools. He set the broken rifle on the bench and began to take the lock apart. He kept glancing back at Boot's belt but he could not see the scalp anymore. A feeling of fascination and quiet disgust boiled in his belly.

    And yet he could not bear to keep silent so he spoke. So what's it like out there?

    Out west, ye mean?

    Yessir. Out west.

    Well. Depends on what ye heard.

    Bart bit his lip then dared to go on. Well, sir, I heard tell it aint much of nothin out there. Just one big wasteland.

    Oh it aint that, boy, this man Boot said. Aint that at all. It's wasteland. It's an ocean of grass. It's rivers as far as the eye can see. Lakes the size of seas. Mountains that touch the sky. Forests that never end. It's like what the Garden of Eden must of been like.

    As the man went on in this vein the boy looked at him in growing awe and something akin to heroworship.

    Then ye got the Pacific, Boot went on. I swear, you aint never seen a sight like that. Vast and blue and with ships ready to take you on to paradise.

    My pa told me there aint no ships. That the sea over there's as dead as the one here.

    Well son has your pa ever been out there?

    Bart hesitated, then shook his head once. He aint never been out of the county, sir.

    Well then how would he have a notion of what's out there? I been and I seen. It's God's country out there, young Master Cooper.

    Bart shook his head. It sounds like heaven.

    That it is, boy. That it is.

    Bart turned back to look at the rifle on the bench and bent over it. He slid out the lock and set it down. He saw the problem immediately. The sharp edge of the sear had been cracked and so it caught on the halfcock cog but not the lesser fullcock which meant the gun would not work properly at all.

    I can fix it, he said.

    You said that already.

    I know it.

    Bart went and stoked the forge in the corner which was roaring quite nicely a short time later and he poked the sear into the flames. When it was scorching and white he plucked it out with tongs and started hammering the knife edge back into shape on the anvil. The blows of the hammer sounding off in groups of three as he coaxed life back into what had been lifeless. Only temporary. He did this for a minute or so as his father had taught him. Then he scooped it up and dumped it in a swollen cedar bucket brimming with dirty water and steam billowed out as it cooled. Then when that was done he slid the sear into a vise and started filing the edge razorsmooth with a chisel.

    What's goin on here?

    It was his father. He and his hired hands stood in the doorway returned from their break. The big man Ray Boot looked up at him with a familial smile. Boy's mendin my rifle cock. He's a fine youth, sir. Your son, aint he?

    That he is, said Cooper. He strode over and brushed his boy aside to examine the work being done. Bart had to grab the workbench to avoid falling over. Why dont you let me finish this fore the boy ruins it. He aint really reliable when it comes to smithyin.

    Even though he'd said this Bart knew that his father was nervous of this large knifescarred man with the scalp hanging from his jacket and so he'd used the excuse of finishing the job so he wouldnt have to talk to the man. Such as it was as it had been before.

    Before Bart could turn away Boot took him in with an easy glance. Say there sonny. Suppose ye might be able to put an edge on this? He reached behind his back and pulled from a leathersheath an eighteen inch long knife of heavy steel. He handed it over to Bart who took it and weighed it in his hands. He sat down at the grindstone and ran his fingers across the wickedlooking blade. Gauging the steel. The tips of his fingers pressed against the blade and when they came away he saw they were faintly stained with dried blood. Perhaps from the owner of the scalp hanging from Boot's jacket.

    Knife that big aint for pickin yer teeth, boy, said Boot.

    You're far from home aint you? Bart's father asked.

    Growed up down the road a piece. Thought I'd have one last look at me old homestead fore I moved on for good. Regret it now.

    You're homesick.

    Rightly so, but it aint for here. My home aint some miserable little township. It's out there in the mountains. My larder's the prairie and my bed's the meadows.

    Westward, you mean.

    Yessir.

    Where you headed now, sir?

    Saint Louie, said Boot. Off to make my fortune and meet with Cap'n Wilkins.

    Bart glanced up from the grindstone. Who's Captain Wilkins?

    Boot looked at the boy and then at the boy's father. Well now son, Cap'n Wilkins is the man what blazed the south pass to the territories out west. God made only a handful of men for us to look up to and he's the best of em. And now I hear he's lookin for some of God's chosen men to head out west to blaze the biggest trail of em all. Expedition leaves come spring.

    How much can a man make on the trail? Bart wanted to know.

    I dont know rightly, but I reckon upward of five or six thousand a year. Just as long as people keep headin west to those great golden ships to take em to the promised land, that is, and I reckon that'll be just about till judgment day.

    Mr Cooper fitted the sear back into the flintlock and sealed it shut with a snort. Hell fire. No man earns those wages in a lifetime.

    Some dont, said Boot. That's true. But there's those who do.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  17. #17
    Numenorean ManOfWesternesse is on a distinguished road ManOfWesternesse's Avatar

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    Re: Archipelago Chapters I - V

    WoW! - nice bit of re-organisation Steve.
    I read the whole thing through again, start to finish.
    I definitely like the new style Chapter Sub-titles.
    The name-change I dunno about - but then I was probably just attached to the old name...
    The story flows well when read in it's entirity. Great sense of adventure building up in it.
    Great work! & I look forward to more of it.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:28 AM.
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  18. #18
    Big Pants; Little Feet Candice Dionysus is a jewel in the rough Candice Dionysus is a jewel in the rough Candice Dionysus is a jewel in the rough Candice Dionysus's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Eek. I'm not used to that style, so reading any of it for any length of time hurts my head. Sorry I'm not of much use in that respect.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:54 AM.
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  19. #19
    Gunslinger Apprentice The_Nameless is on a distinguished road The_Nameless's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    I actually enjoy your writing style, myself. The run-on sentences were a bit disruptive to the flow. Perhaps cutting them down to a smaller number could help.

    I feel one of your greatest writing strengths is atmosphere. You give a great atmosphere with this story. The land, their home, seem to laden with despair and gloom. It sucks you into the surroundings and story.

    I have one question, though. Are you going to add the part with the birth to the story, or have you cut it out?
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:54 AM.
    "Help me out here
    All my words are falling short
    And there's so much I want to say"

  20. #20
    Gunslinger Apprentice The_Nameless is on a distinguished road The_Nameless's Avatar

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    RE: Archipelago Chapters I - V

    This is probably my favourite piece of your work. I also enjoyed the way you had the chapters linked, in case you had to leave at a certain part.

    It sort of reminds me of a Richard Jessup apocalpyse, haha.

    I look forward to the next installments.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:28 AM.
    "Help me out here
    All my words are falling short
    And there's so much I want to say"

  21. #21
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    No, it's still part of the story.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:54 AM.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  22. #22
    Gunslinger Apprentice The_Nameless is on a distinguished road The_Nameless's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve View Post
    No, it's still part of the story.
    Good, good. Which chapter are you on, at the moment?
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:55 AM.
    "Help me out here
    All my words are falling short
    And there's so much I want to say"

  23. #23
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Re: Billy Said Keep Going

    I'm on Chapter VI.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:55 AM.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  24. #24
    Gunslinger Apprentice Steve will become famous soon enough Steve's Avatar

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    Default Chapter VI

    VI





    ASigns in the west -- Raquel goes hunting -- The coming of a storm --
    Abagail's laughter -- Water from the sky -- A breeze and a gale --
    Raquel sees lightning and hears thunder -- A deluge -- A quagmire --
    Standing in the rain -- Steam from the caldera.


    ===============================================



    It came from the west this time. A darkening cloudline far to the horizon high up. It was not where one would expect such a thing. A storm of soot and sand brewing. Raquel was inspecting the northern tip of the village under the harsh dead eye of the sun, picking through the sands as she hoped to find precious rocks and crystals that were sometimes there to be found. Artifacts on occasion. A coin crusted with age. Rectangular plates with numerals and letters stamped on the thin tin. These she sought to give to Abagail for her birthday.

    It was while she was dredging that she first saw it. A long thin trace of black against the steady solid gray. She was not sure for a moment what she was seeing. A mirage perhaps. She tilted her head hoping that it might be so but she soon saw it was not.

    She turned back to the ground and the task at hand and yet she looked up again. It was still there. Still there and growing. As she watched it continued to swell and blacken. Seeing this Raquel felt something stir within her that was vaguely like unease.

    She turned away from this sight and made her way back over the crumbling midden of ancient rock that ringed the desert camp like the keep of some dead castle. She hurried through the open stretch of sand between the inner cleft of this wall and the hovel. Her heart thundering and her mouth dried from the heat. When she reached the shadow of the hovel she cried out a warning to Abagail.

    The old woman herself ducked out of the stone house. Her eyebrows croggled with confusion when she saw her grandchild's affray.

    Raquel.

    Something's coming.

    What is it? People?

    The girl shook her head. Something in the sky. High up. It's black.

    A sandstorm.

    No, Abagail. Not a sandstorm. The whole sky is turning black.

    Abagail turned and looked to the west and her reaction was at most unexpected. She laughed heartily, a bit shakily. Well now, she said, almost as if she'd expected the coming of this black cloud. I think we ort to get ready then.

    Ready?

    Ready.

    What is it, Abagail?

    It's a blessing, said Abagail. If that's what I think it is then we'd best make the most of it. We hardly see it these days.

    Raquel knew not what she spoke of nor even how to respond.

    Come now, said the old woman. You must help. Fetch as many jugs and bowls from the hovel as you can. Bring them out here and set them all around the place.

    What for?

    Just do what I asked for, girl. It'll be here very soon.

    Still not seeing what her grandmother spoke of, the girl nonetheless did as she was bid. She ducked into the hovel and came back with her arms heaped with hard clay urns and bowls they had molded together. She ferried these in a semicircle around the stone hut like sentries. When she was finished she turned back to Abagail. The old woman stood near the rock wall gazing to the horizon. Her eyes faded iron and glarestruck as she cut her eyes from the deadlight. Raquel went and stood beside her, already as tall and barely in the blossoming years of her young womanhood.

    What she saw was an enormous black swath veiling the horizon like a looming plague. It seemed to swallow heaven and earth alike in its endless ravenous maw. From where Raquel stood it seemed like the darkness of night had somehow escaped the chains that bound it as the sun traveled across the sky and now came to conquer them all.

    What is it, Abagail? she asked again.

    A storm, said her grandmother with a kindly smile. You see that, young one? It's a huge black raincloud. And if God is good we will see that rain fall here.

    What is rain?

    Water. From the sky.

    From the sky? A look of disbelief on her face. Water from the sky?

    Yes. And with that, Abagail held her hands out in silent glorious supplication to the advancing blackness. This is what I dream of at night, Raquel. I've dreamed of it all my life.

    . . .

    When it came it rode in on a gentle wisp of wind like a rider on the vanguard to herald the coming of a great phalancial army. The girl stood in a daze as she watched the black mass billow closer and closer to their hovel. She fancied great diseased steeds riding down from heaven to bring pestilence and ruin down on them at long last. She would turn her gaze heavenward once in a while fearfully, as though she expected the wrathful face of Abagail's God to break the clouds and strike her dead.

    When they sought the shelter of the hovel they stood in the doorframe looking out at the storm that was almost upon them. The open sands roiling black at their feet. The ashes and sark of a ruined country. She looked to Abagail but Abagail merely seemed indifferent to the whole thing. At the very least unconcerned. She just stood there beneath the lintel watching that vast inkspot of blackness consume the scorched flesh of the sky. The breeze that had warned of the storm had by now crescendoed to a great gale akin to the sandstorms.

    Raquel.

    Yes?

    This is the mercy of God.

    She stood there to behold what there was to behold. A great black stormfront like a massive pulsing wall. A deathbag. Somehow solid in its coming as it filled the sky before her. It ripped the sands from the earth as it went in great billowing runnels. There was a low and threatening rumble courted by the sudden searing flashes that flickered like firelamps within the clouds. Raquel squinted up to better see these occurrences when there was a great rending crash in the sky.

    Here she lay trembling on the floor, her teeth clenched in fright. Then the rain fell upon her like the tears of some mourning celestial being. She and Abagail both were drenched in an instant. The rain pattering, drumming against her bare flesh and clothing with such briskness that she thought she would collapse under all its weight. She gasped with shocked surprise at its coldness and at a new sound amidst it all. Abagail's laughter.

    She looked down past her feet at the ground past the doorframe and she was struck by how it had been transformed. A second before she had been standing in fine ashen sand. Now her feet were sinking in a squelching quagmire that sucked at her as she tried to step from the swirl.

    Abagail!

    The old woman hobbled over cackling like a young girl overhearing secrets in a playyard. The sudden rain had soaked her hair so that it lay plastered to the crown of her head like paint. Her clothes sagged wetly from her bones like shedded skin.

    Isnt it glorious! Abagail exclaimed ecstatically. Oh close your eyes, sweet girl, so you can feel it on your face.

    Once more she obeyed by beating back her instinct to run and hide in the deepest cranny of the hovel. She let the stinging rain beat down on her bare face and throat. After a while her face felt numb as though she had been drugged by ether. And then in a way she could not even begin to explain she felt a sudden joy at the sensation.

    It's all right.

    She ducked her head low and peered through the curtain of falling rain at her. Abagail was doing a strange thing she had never seen before. Dancing slowly and to rotate in the same quadrant with her hands spread to the sky as if in greeting. Raquel did the same not knowing if it were the right thing. The rain falling and falling. The noise like the heartbeat of some monstrous sightless beast so loud as to bring a deathly silence in her temples.

    And then with a abruptness that shocked her to a shriek it had gone. She turned to see the stormfront undulate across the great barren lands like a solid gauze of water that left the ground dark and damp behind it.

    Raquel looked out beyond the hovel and saw how all the bowls and urns she had set out were filled to brim with water. Shuddering mirrors to reflect the blackened sky above. She opened her mouth to speak when there was a sudden hissing rush of air from the caldera. Great billowing plumes of steam jetted from the caldera as though whatever throbbed and pulsed beneath had roused in the storm.

    Dont be afraid, Abagail told her soothingly. That's only the rain dripping down into the vents below.

    Raquel nestled against her grandmother like a frightened kitten. Yet she was no longer frightened at all. Instead there was another feeling kindled within her. A feeling of elation. Rarely experienced in these bleak lands.

    Well now girl, the old woman said softly.

    Well.

    What did you think of that?

    Where did it come from? she asked as the wall of black surged into the distance and into memory.

    From the great western sea, said Abagail. It has traveled hundreds and hundreds of miles to get here and will go hundreds more before it meets the sea of the dead.

    Raquel nodded at this yet her thoughts were on the great shining rush of curtaining rain as it swallowed her and devoured her like a myriander of tiny blunt needles. She wondered if ever she would experience this feeling again.

    "I aim to misbehave."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds

    "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -- Hoban Washburne

    "What does that make us?"
    "Big damn heroes, sir."
    "Ain't we just."
    -- Malcolm Reynolds and Zoe Washburne

  25. #25
    Numenorean ManOfWesternesse is on a distinguished road ManOfWesternesse's Avatar

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    Re: Archipelago Chapter VI

    Bloody great chapter Steve. Kudos man.
    Last edited by Odetta; 01-21-2014 at 10:25 AM.
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