The Penslayer

Bookmarks!

2012-03-05T12:14:00.004-05:00

For a long while after that the only sounds were that of Skander’s book falling to his lap and he was quite asleep, and the tinselly rustle of the fire that was slowly putting Margaret to sleep as well...
Plenilune

I'm sure you have at least once in your life experienced that awful moment when, in a hurry, distracted from your book, trying to accommodate the haste of another, you let your book drop shut. Without the bookmark. I'm sure you know that awful moment in which you stared paralyzed at your tome, willing the bookmark to be in the book, unable to actually believe what has happened. Then you click into motion again. Nothing else matters. The scramble for the bookmark ensues, the scramble for your place, the hopeless wailing in your head which only you can hear. You had been wrapped up in the story: you can't remember what page you were on, or what chapter number you had just passed. All that mattered before was the story. Even the book itself had ceased to exist until that fateful moment when you let it close (like locking a door with the keys on the wrong side) without its bookmark in place.

Bookmarks get very little press or appreciation, yet they are so very important. You never appreciate them until they are suddenly not there, and then the fate of the entire world hangs upon the recovery of a small card of paper which your mother may or may not have slipped into the trash, mistaking it for...trash. Nobody else understands, of course. The world is a very hard-hearted place. This is a terror which must be experienced to be understood. Poor little bookmarks. I love them so.

Bookmarks come in a variety of breeds, and they are not a very proud or pompous lot. You can find them in many shapes and sizes. Some are three-by-five index cards. Some are ripped-off pieces of college-ruled paper. Some are napkins folded over and severely crumpled. Some are those sheeny, odd advertisement bookmarks that Amazon and Alibris are fond of stuffing in along with your order. Some are sticky-notes. They could be disused coin sheaths, or a letter from a friend. In short, anything small and remotely papery may or may not be recruited into the ranks of bookmarkery. Oftentimes bookmarks are whatever comes easily to hand when you need to put your book down. They are usually unassuming and not always very pretty, which fact is largely responsible for their being so thoroughly taken for granted.

I have quite a horror of laying books open on their faces. It isn't good for their spines and I like my books to be well looked after and to last long. So I use bookmarks, and I am very proud of my bookmarks. They aren't expensive or grand (in fact, they are a little eccentric), but they do the job and I love them. The one which looks like a calling-card for Hollister Jeans had been keeping my place in Howl's Moving Castle, but having finished that it is waiting for a new book. The advertisement card for Twinings chai tea is matched up with Of the Imitation of Christ right now (the reds and golds look so nice together). The bookmark with the red tassel and the painting of King Peter (the Magnificent) is keeping my place in the first chapter of God the Center of Value, and the tasseled, Celtic bookmark is holding my place in time and bookishness within The Golden Warrior. I discovered that the brand tags for jeans make excellent bookmarks: Red Rivet Jeans is a thick, card-stock fellow with pretty type and a black ribbon: he holds my place in The Art of Medieval Hunting; my grey L.E.I bookmark with its tattered white ribbon is holding place in Blood Feud, and my lace-woven L.A.L. tag is waiting patiently in David Copperfield.

I know them all and I am very fond of them. I am heartbroken when any of them gets misplaced, but thankfully they seem to love me too, since they always turn back up again. They are as dear to me as the books I read, and very much like companions, always there reading with me (though I fear they get a very disjointed view of the content of my books, as I don't insert them in every page as I go). There may be no frigate like a book, but without The American Practical Navigator of bookmarks sailing would be rough.

Appreciate your bookmarks!

Skander's Tone Was Mild But Peeved

2012-03-01T08:53:00.003-05:00

God grant every gentleman
Such hawks, such hounds, and such a leman.
With a downe, derrie down...

It's the first of March, which is hard to believe. I was a little turned about on the matter of the Leap Year - I could not recall if it gave February a day or took one away, and how many days February had to begin with, and it all seemed very high-handed and unfair to February, even if February is the Monday of months. Also, I finished a book around 12:30 last night and could not decide if it should belong to February or March... I decided February had got enough books and gave it to March.

Now, to the matter in hand. Katiebug hasn't put up her link to her monthly snippets game just yet, but I'm afraid this is the most leisurely time I will have to participate in it. I have a notion that you might be getting tired of the sheer amount of Plenilune which has been populating The Penslayer lately. Of course, Anna was wrong on that score about The Brew, but people do like change... Unfortunately, Plenilune is what's going, and thank goodness it is going and not spinning its wheels. Now, without further ado (because I can make ado in much quantity) here are pieces of my scribbles:

March Snip-Whippets
(that is to say, snippets from February that I'm posting in March)

...she was joined at her right hand by another woman who had left the dance. Margaret did not recognize her; underneath the plumage of white feathering and chiffon and masque of black velvet and swan’s-down, she did not think she would have recognized the woman if she had been her own mother. She swooped close, paused a moment like a bird stalling in mid-flight, and finally alighted soundlessly in the next chair. Two pale gold, owlish eyes blinked at her out of the masque. Margaret’s face felt naked under that stare without a masque of its own.
Plenilune

Margaret lost sight of him for a while after that. The crowd came between, moving out of the ballroom and down a long, high, dark passage which was full of draughts. Margaret shivered and wished for a wrap, but there did not seem time to get one and she would not have asked Rupert. She went with him silently, shiveringly, until they reached a high beaten copper door, tabbied with red glint and verdigris, and were let out into the dark, windy garden. The wind rushed at Margaret, sending her red skirts dancing, and she clenched her fists to keep from recoiling or being carried off on the gale. What a wild night on which to light bonfires!
Plenilune

They stepped out into the long colonnade along the south wall of the nave and followed it with the fresh, green-purled garden rushing wave-like up to its stone walk; somewhere in the lower barberry bushes a starling was singing, and very strongly, as if it would sing out its heart with its notes. It was always windy at Lookinglass, but the south colonnade was more sheltered than the rest of it and for few moments, as they walked along, Margaret had the sense of being in the curling inside of a whelk-shell, cool and white and flickering with pale colour while the sea-roar of the wind boomed around them.
Plenilune

“He comes because I bid him come, and there are yet men who come when I whistle for them. Do you bide quietly now and we will all come up again to see you this evening and fuss and make much of you. Sleep, now.”
Plenilune

To her surprise it was unlovely, a serviceable but battered thing, the sheath plain hard leather casing, its chape and locket of half-heartedly decorated metal; the cross-guard was plain, the pommel sported a mere unimaginative sunburst which seemed mockingly incongruous for a man who might have been Overlord of Plenilune. But the potency had been there—was still there—and the shining of it which Margaret could not see but could feel was glinting on it yet.
Plenilune

"Nay, but it is at high tide that the tide begins to turn."
Plenilune

He appeared that morning, not in grim costume to reflect the fate of Plenilune laid out of the blade of a sword, but in a jacket of sparkling white, pristine, supple, comfortable, and stitched with bravado. The smell that came from him—or was it more of a sense?—was of mingled thunderstorm and spice which made the senses and smells and colours around him pale in comparison.
Plenilune

No doubt he felt her gaze, for presently he turned on one bare heel, very smoothly and like a dancer, and caught her eyes with his—the hypnotic sort, she thought with another little panicked flutter where her heart was: so pale blue they were nearly silver. For a moment his face was only eyes, those witching-blue, hypnotic eyes, and then, suddenly, he smiled—a gash of a smile across the lower part of his face, that was like a spate of rain and a spate of sun at once, a mirthless sort of humour. And about his eyes, when she looked back at them, there were sudden thin, deep wing-lines that were like grief and laughter both at once, so that she could not decide if the light look of mockery was in earnest or only from long habit.
Plenilune

She stared at him carefully between the light-laced edge of the curtain and the amber-coloured background of the room, stared into his harlequin face, half in light, half in shadow…and somehow she knew that it was not merely to settle a score that he chose to stay. She had stayed then because they had both been something like exiles, and so something like friends; and now that the exiling was over—for him, at least—the friendship had remained. So he stayed, and she knew why...
Plenilune

"Is Plenilune a hollow cup for you with which to hold your wine?"
Plenilune

Ere the Sad Gods That Made Your Gods

2012-02-27T15:49:00.004-05:00

I have been working somewhat eclectically but nonetheless diligently on Plenilune, and for the past hour I have found myself scribbling the following piece. It belongs before Plenilune, and pertains to one of the various 'shires,' which has some pertinence in the novel proper and puts in its obligatory appearance at social gatherings, etc. (I say some pertinence, by which I mean I think it may have rather a lot, only I haven't made that part up yet.) At any rate, the following section is a stand-alone, a mere novelized history blurb from the Honour of Thrasymene. I hope that does not sound too dull to you. I found it rather thrilling, myself.

"What have the strong gods given?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on the hero's throne
And asks if he is dead?"
The Ballad of the White Horse, G.K. Chesterton (again)

* * * * *

“Will you not stand down?”

“Nay, I will not stand down! Is it in your mind that your lord rose to his height and made Thrasymene what she is by the womanish notion of standing down—do you think?”

Feyfax’s words and tone cut deeply into me and I turned hotly to check him. No one spoke so to Mother—save Feyfax, of course, which thought checked me in the act of running my head into the lion’s mouth. I watched the two of them, Mother every bit and more a match for her red-blooded son, Feyfax looking down at her serene, drawn face with the light of rage in his eyes. For a long while they stared at each other, neither moving, neither speaking—I am not sure, now, that either even breathed. I think Feyfax at least did not, for after a long silent spell he let out a long, low breath and asked gently,

“Will you stop me, O Mother?”

A thin arch of brow rose on Mother’s face and I knew, as Feyfax did not know, the horrible aching that its supercilious appearance was masking. “Will I stop you? My bull-voiced son of thunder, who in our Honour or all Plenilune will stop you from your course when once you have set your sails with the wind? Not I. Ring, perhaps, but not I.”

At mention of me my brother looked round—swung round, really, like the bull she likened him to, and stared at me from underneath his black brows. I do him a disservice to paint his portrait all in rage. Fury, often mistaken for ill-temper, was never far from Feyfax, but he was a goodly-looking man, better than I and with more presence: such a man as others are wont to follow. He took after Father in that regard, while I took after Mother more, yet Feyfax had not Father’s cool head for council—and I had coolness from Mother and Father both.

“Ring?” His voice lay down upon my shoulder like the naked blade of a sword. “Ring… Will Ring set himself at cross-purposes with me, who is as much my father’s son as me?”

I tell you that I have my sire’s cool head for council and for knowing what words to say to a man which will turn his heart in my hand as one turns a chess-piece on the chequered board. But I tell you that since I got the awful word of my father’s death—the killing death, and not by accident—it had rushed upon me that this moment between Feyfax and me would come. Now it had come, and I did not know what to say. By habit I frowned and grasped back in my memory to the moment of the news and the things which had rushed upon my mind then.

It had been a shock. Underneath my frown I thought that I must have taken it as Mother did, quietly, stone-facedly, a moment unmoving as the images whirled like the mistral through my mind: Father and my uncles hunting in Gottgovae, which are Carmarthen runs, which the Carmarthen call the Place of the Holy Dark, (for the nomadic tribes of the steppes are pagan and make gods in hidden backwoods places as men make dreams in the hidden backwoods of their minds); I saw the flickering of light-and-shadow dappling the horses’ flanks; I saw the dogs arranged in rank with their boys, strung out through the deep woodland at the base of the hills where the highlands dropped and became the easy, endless, rolling expanse of the steppes. The nomads had found them and shot them without warning, and thrown them back over the Thraysmene boarder with the brand-mark of the infidel on their brows. This I had been told, I had not seen myself. I was really not sure I could see without feeling ill, for when I did feel rage I only got sick, so that Feyfax had that much over me in constitution. I did hate him a little for that, for it was a raw soreness below my belt which I was painfully conscious of, which neither of us ever mentioned, which always lay between us.

But now was not a time for soreness and sickness and rage. I came back, looking out of my eyes once more, feeling rather stark pale in contrast to Feyfax’s angry colour. For a moment it did not quite look like Feyfax’s face, then it came back into focus once more and I knew what to say.

“I put myself at cross-purposes with no one, Feyfax, for I run sails-with-the-wind with our father.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mother look away as if to hide her face: I did not see her expression.

Feyfax flung up his head, nostrils distended, a growling snort in the back of his throat like that of an angry stallion. “Do the dead make their own vengeance! I will honour our father and I will not allow his death to go unpunished, his name to go besmirched. He will have his vengeance. They will pay the blood-debt.”

“In blood?” I asked softly.

He cut off the word with his teeth: “Yes.”

I left the moment in silence for some time, looking over the hard, uncompromising lines of Feyfax’s mouth and handsome brow, looking at the pale yellow and amber radials of his eyes. He would be a hard man to win, I realized, if he would be won at all. And suddenly my shoulders felt very weary under the weight that was settling on them. I felt rage turn over once in my belly and then become that horrid sickness; but I was careful not to let it show in my voice when I spoke.

“Look at the thing thus, as Father would have looked at it, and consider. Thrasymene has never been great among the Honours: her land is poorer than others, her griefs greater than others, with the sea on our right hand and the steppes on our left and she caught between them. Mind you what work Father has put himself to making a voice worthy of hearing among the gatherings of the other Honours, at the New Moons and at feasts and in judgment. Perhaps our soil is poor and our wind smells of salt, but he gave us a voice. He gave us respect. He knit us so that we are not so many manor houses and petty lords as we once were, but an Honour in our own right.” I swallowed back the bile in my throat and steadied my voice again as it was time to drop from the rhetorical thunder to the soft entreaty. “The wicked live long in bitterness, but to the good heart comes the arrow at noon. Let us take this murder as testimony to our father’s greatness and make his memory that of a martyr. Do not undo the labour of our father through war, for how could we know who did the deed?”

Here Feyfax interrupted me. “How could we know? Perhaps we could not, but we could be sure if we killed them all.”

Mother never said a word, but out of the corner of my eye I saw her whip her head around, her face white, sheer white, and the steel disbelief was in her eyes as her son’s words hung heavy on the air.

I forced myself somehow to go on as if my thoughts had not been broken. “So. And it would be fitting, would it not, if we think in terms of blood-debt, for them all to die—for where is there a man of worth like our father? Surely every drop of blood in Plenilune would just atone for his murder… But will it soothe the bitterness? Will it bring comfort to our mother, will it bring more children to this bower; will it solace and guide our Honour? Are we heathen gods—” my voice rose in rhetorical pitch “—that we drink the blood of our foes and are thus satisfied?”

The owlish eyes flickered over my face. The other’s face darkened under my own gaze, darkened and grew distant and strange. “What man are you,” asked Feyfax softly, accusingly, “that war is so distasteful to you?”

For a moment I was dreadfully afraid Mother would rise to my defence, which would have been to add injury to insult, but thankfully she made no sound or movement. Indeed, I think the three of us made no other sound or movement for some time, and then I heard my own voice saying, perfectly levelly and with a tone I did not recognize,

“How dare you dishonour our father with such words?”

The tawny eyes flashed. “Dishonour? At whose door is this dishonour, when you will not lift your hand to avenge our father? Father! Does the word mean nothing to you?”

“It means the world to me, Feyfax, as you cannot believe!” I retorted. I was losing my grasp on my rhetoric. “And it is thuswise that I choose to honour our father’s life and living, not his death and grave! I will not see his work torn down and cast sunsetward into the sea as if it were nothing for the sake of spilling blood out of someone’s heart—blood which cannot bring his blood back into his own! The life of our father is gone, Feyfax. Take not the life of our Honour in your quest for vengeance.”

We were both panting now, the sound of it throbbing in the little light-flecked bower which belonged to our mother; our heads were lowered, our fists were clenched—I did not recall closing my own, and what a tiny fighting cock I must have looked before that bull which was my brother!

“So,” said Feyfax, very quietly, as if he had finally reconciled himself to the thoughts in his mind; “you will set yourself at cross-purposes with me.”

“Oh, my sons,” our mother groaned, and hid her face behind her hands.

Beautiful People - Margaret Coventry

2012-02-23T06:53:00.006-05:00

In terms of wit and jollity I can't compete with Anna and Abigail, who can put their tongues in their cheeks and make a pretty verse around them. I'm slower and blinder and more like the harper, but they put up with me. Now it is time for Beautiful People (hurrah!) and though I get more enjoyment out of hearing about Anna's and Abigail's (Abigail hasn't posted hers yet, but we talked about it, and that is much the same thing), I got some fun out of my own answers. I hope you do too. Goodness knows they were difficult enough this time!

"That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory
Than we are tired of shame."
The Ballad of the White Horse, G.K. Chesterton

Margaret Coventry, Precocious Chit

1. If your character could be played by an actor, who would it be?

I’m afraid I simply don’t know. It isn’t as if I am totally ignorant about actors, I’m just a perfectionist and I haven’t found Margaret. This is a perfect portrayal of her physically, but this is only a model.

2. Does your character have a specific theme song?

This is a very curious question. I haven’t been on the sharp look-out for theme songs, and consequently nothing perfect has popped out. I think the Fox would insinuate himself into a private joke of my family’s and sing her “Bad Day,” but the only song which has come up for Margaret thus far as been Audrey Assad’s “Show Me,” which is very pretty, and probably rather apt, but less jolly and light-hearted than one might have wanted. So sorry. You may keep the Fox’s company for that.

3. What's her worst childhood memory?

Can she remember? There were too many unpleasant memories to pick out a worst one, but they all involved her sisters. I think Adamant wasn’t the only one half-glad to leave them behind, even if it was in the company of—but I spoil.

4. If your character had a superpower, what would it be?

She would wither with a singular glare beam. In fact, she gets so much practice that it’s just as well that she isn’t a witch (I don’t quite go in for these modern mutants and scientific superheroes) because several people would have been withered into a flaky skeletal heap by now, otherwise. She does have grit and high ideals, though, which, in a pinch, can work for a superpower.

5. If your character crashed on an island with a bunch of other people, how could your character help the group survive?

It depends on who was in the group. Her high ideals are not always that high. As for helping, she probably wouldn’t be much of one even if she wanted to be. She is not an out-doors sort of person, nor does she know much about the elements, but she at least has pluck and dignity, and she would not make a nuisance of herself.

You could raise me like a banner in a battle
Put victory like a fire behind my shining eyes
I would drift like falling snow over the embers
But for now just let me lie
"Show Me," Audrey Assad

6. Is she married? If not, does she someday wish to be?

Yes, that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? At this point, no, Margaret is not married; and at this point she might marry Skander, if he asked, just to spite Rupert—though she does like Skander well enough. (It would be the most enormous bit of spite, you see.)

7. What is a cause she would die for?

None that I can think of—none that she has told me of. There will be things, presently, and people, to which affection will have grown so strong and the knowledge of value will have grown so strong for which Margaret will be willing to do that extreme a deed. But not yet.

8. Would she rather die fighting valiantly, or quietly at home?

This is a difficult question to answer. It does not follow that Margaret would not die fighting valiantly for her home, or die quietly in her sleep somewhere else. Such is life. Or, rather, such is death. But the old Coventry Saxon in her has a strong appreciation of fate and the rightness of things. She would probably like to make a pretty and momentous gesture before the end.

9. If a stranger walked up to her and told her she was the child of the prophesy, would she believe him?

Probably not, but she isn’t a violent cynic. If it were true, she would probably be brought round to the idea at length. She would ask to see the prophesy and inquire into its validity, perhaps, but unless you were really in earnest she would most likely pass you off as a charlatan or a lunatic—and probably be right.

10. Does she prefer the country, or the city?

Margaret prefers the country, but this does not mean that she has any knowledge of it. But having gone from one cage to another all her life, standing on an upland path gives one at least the illusion of freedom.

* * * * *

“Are you afraid?”

He turned to her, eyebrows flyaway as if in surprise. “Of pain?” Then he fluttered his shoulders. “Nay, it takes a braver man than I to fear pain. I am just a fool.”

Margaret looked away and sighed as a pigeon sighs at the start of a long wet evening. “Sometimes you laugh,” she remarked, half-reproachful, “and there is no laughter in it.”

He turned to her again, quite suddenly, and very surprised, and stared hard at her for some time. “Yes,” he mused at last. “I see why he chose you.”

Plenilune

Anthologia: My Favourite Things

2012-02-20T22:20:00.006-05:00

I am not always sitting here with a cup of tea, but I frequently am, and I am now: I am sitting here at my desk with a concoction of camomile and mint, and lots of other things that sound pretty, like orange leaves and hawthorn berries, and I am wrapped up in my blanket - not really because of my cold, but for the comfort of the thing. I am glad for the tea, warm down my throat, for the long shadow of the wearying weekend is still over me, and today has been long and I pushed myself perhaps ill-advisedly to be productive. So the tea and the blanket are very welcome just now.

Abigail just wrote a post about her favourite things. It was a short post, a sweet post, as to the point as Abigail can be, yet with plenty of eloquence, as is her nature, and it was a real treat to read because Abigail is a cool cat and does not always make herself easy to know - which is part of her charm - even for me, and I have known her all her life. She is cool and grown-up, calculating and logical, a no-nonsense kind of person at times (would you have guessed it?) so to get a peek at the dear things of her heart was like being invited into someone's own private garden. You can learn a thing or two about a person by observing the things they most love...

So what about me? What are my favourite things? I asked myself. We are always following the other, Abigail and I, and this time it was my turn to follow her. Some months ago I followed Megan's example and wrote a post about the things that make my life sparkle; but what about my favourite things? Just this morning I was asked in an email by Rachel if there was a quote from any book I had read (or perhaps a movie) which best described my personality, and as she is reading The Eagle of the Ninth presently and I am reading Blood Feud, and as Sutcliff is always at my elbow, I had a long and agonizing time trying to explain to Rachel that I didn't know, but that I could have said any of the things Cottia in The Eagle of the Ninth said, and at the same time I shared an understanding with both Marcus and Esca over the matter of the dagger pattern and the shield boss... And the problem, I think, is that my favourite things get so drawn into my own heart that they cease to be themselves, but are myself; and I do not always know they are my favourite things, my particular things, until something arises to bring us apart. Then I know they are mine to me because of the awful wrench I feel in my chest. But I will do my best to translate the unspoken language of myself which even I do not wholly understand, and tell you about my favourite things.

they are

a girl from Oklahoma // my copies of my books (Beowulf, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, Simon, The Great Divorce, The Worm Ouroboros...) // the stuffed cat I was given when I was nine and in the hospital for surgery // my betrothal and engagement and wedding rings // my pilot razor point pens // Saturday evenings // the sting of the wind on a high open hillside // November // Kipling's poems (The Land, The Roman Centurion's Song, Dane-Geld, Norman and Saxon...) // my two cats Minnow and Aquila // my family // my amber necklace // letters // my writing and my reading // surf-sound of the wind in autumn trees // my cherry-wood notebook // the primrose-colour of the sunset // the preaching of the Word // sun on my skin // freckles // my husband, who understands my unspoken language better than even I do

These are my favourite things, which is to say these are my things: which, in some ways is obvious (as with my family) and in other ways I find it harder to explain (like the sunset and the wind and a whole month that is usually stormy). Some things are childish, some things are loyalty, and some things speak the same language I do and conjure the awful viking-longing in me to go after them, or before them, or on the wave of them, beyond the rim of the world altogether.

Sarah, take me by my arm
Tomorrow we are Canaan-bound
Where westward sails the golden sun
And Hebron's hills are amber-crowned

The Rim of Our World

2012-02-16T11:19:00.004-05:00

I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that though Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full of what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at source from which it comes. But this is near the stage where the road passes over the rim of our world. No one's eyes can see very far beyond that: lots of people's eyes can see further than mine.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

I think most of you have read Mere Christianity at some point already. I admit I started the book back in high school and, for whatever (probably bad) reason, I was unable to "get into" it. I put it away for some years, knowing I would pick it up again some day. And now I have, and I am blazing through it, just chapters from the end. And I don't know why, and I feel very guilty for it, but at first I was not so enamoured with it as it thought I would be, as I thought I should be. Not unlike his book The Abolition of Man (and he actually references that work in Mere Christianity) Lewis started out with the barebone facts that reality gives us about Morality and the telltale way that People Act. Because these were talks delivered on the air, I saw the sense in this, and it was nice to get "outside" Christian thinking for a moment. But as we went on and Lewis tried to explain theology to the unbeliever and the believer (and I know he knew he was no theologian) I began to get fidgety and cross because I knew the answers to some of the questions he was postulating, but he wasn't around for me to tell him so. Furthermore, I stumbled across and was shown several mistakes in his own lines of thinking, which was a nasty turn for me, though I by no means consider Lewis to have been infallible. I'm well aware that one has to go into any work making sure of its truth, but I was as full of humph and phooey at that moment as I was full of Thera-flu.

Well, that's what I didn't like, and that doesn't amount to a great deal. I did thoroughly enjoy his chapters on "Forgiveness" and "Charity." That is to say, I enjoyed them for this deliberate truth and frankness. "Forgiveness" and "charity" are both virtues which I hardly possess. From my earliest years I have had the ability to hate long and to hold a grudge forever. But Lewis, very deftly, showed me that forgiveness and charity are not nearly so hard to have when one has Christ. I have been trying to have forgiveness and charity. I never stopped to let the hatred, the grudging, the forgiveness, and the charity go, and take hold of God and my neighbour the image of God. When you've dropped the frantic race after the virtue and taken hold of the one who possesses all virtue, it suddenly isn't so hopeless and dependent on man - because anything dependent on man is hopeless. Alexander Pope says that "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and that's true, but I find more often than not that hope is mere delusion. If hope is not fixed on anything faithful (and even virtues are faithless without any Life) then it will make the heart sick.

Lewis is the same as always. I walk softly into his works with a big stick and, having beaten the crows off the bush, I glean a tasty crop of berries. And Mere Christianity, despite the crows, has helped me in my quest. As I mentioned in my previous post, I know what is required of me: to do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. And my quest, as I see it, is now to know God. I want to know what he is like, what his heart is, what he delights in, I want to know his Person. I know what he requires of me, but if I ever want to know myself (and am I so very much worth knowing?) I need first to know my God. I think this must have been my quest all along, but I got caught up in all the turmoil of doing what Christians are supposed to do, and the Body of Christ, and the law of grace, losing sight (though never forgetting) that we are all derived from him. All I had been doing was well and good, but I had put the cart before the horse. We are all of us going back to Eden, to walking with God in the garden, to unhindered communion with him. I am reading Lewis, but my quest is beyond mere Christianity.

"Sir, we would see Jesus."

The Hound and the Hart

2012-02-13T12:08:00.005-05:00

The message of My song will always be true;
Mi corazon, my heart, belongs to you.

I am sitting here at my computer, listening to "Saviour: the Story of God's Passion for His People," trying to find the words for something which has been in my mind for some days now. Back in January I wrote a post about learning God's nature not only from the things he blesses us with, but also from the things he withholds from us. From the age of hellfire and brimstone, teaching has swung to the extreme of (shall I say?) an "overly" good God, one which is not holy but indulgent. Reality, not to mention Scripture, does not support this view of God, and I dealt with this in my own small way, in my own small soul, in my post in January. But my own thinking has not allowed me to stop even at that. On the one hand I have the things which God in his wisdom has seen fit to give me, on the other I have the things which God in his wisdom has seen fit to not give me. (It does not go without saying, for it is so uplifting to hear it, that all these things, given and not given, are done in the uttermost love as well as the uttermost wisdom.) I postulated with these two that one can learn something of God from them both, and this led me up against yet another fallacy of common thought.

My position in life (my twenty-one years of it) has allowed me a front-row view of people in the church. I am also rather a great listener, by virtue of being a bad orator, and I have heard many times people strain (with great conviction, and perfect sincerity) to "know the will of God" in their lives. At first you might suppose there is nothing wrong with that. And why not? Any God-fearing individual would naturally want to know his Father's will. But first off, as time went by, I noticed a curious specificity about this striving. I have seen high school students drive themselves to rags and shreds fretting about getting into the one college in accordance with God's will, as though there were something inherently sinful about all other colleges. I have seen people worry about getting a single job which God wants them to take, as if putting one's hand diligently and God-fearingly to any job was not what He wants. I am inclined to believe this rampant specificity about God's will a product of a society glutted with prosperity. There are so many options! What if we picked the wrong one?

While this is not the main thrust of my topic, I will deal with it for the sake of moving on. I am aware that people are willing to pray ardently for God to show them his will, and by all means, do pray! I have written a post on that, too. But I am told that there is a collection of written works that are God's revelation to his people, and I believe what I am told is true. And the more I believe that these works are God's revelation of himself by himself to his people, the more the grubby blue-covered book lying on the floor next to me takes on a fantastic aspect. God (let the definition of that sink in a moment) speaking in ink (a language I know well) to me (who am I?) in that book. God, taking the time, taking all time (literally) to sketch out his nature by lives and ink. I am not sure people really grasp the enormity of this gift. So many people, far from consulting this book which wrote itself, go instantly and rather ignorantly to their knees and implore God to show them what he wants them to do.

It is a very good thing that God is long-suffering, for we are shallow, stupid people, as a rule, but I think a lot of this stress of "doing what God wants" can be relieved by going and getting that manual and attending to it from time to time. If I had children (which I don't yet) and I wrote down on a paper what I wanted them to do while I was out (clean the bathrooms, sweep the kitchen, fold the laundry, etc.) and then came back only to find all those jobs undone and the children asking me piteously what I wanted them to do so that I might be happy with them, I should be put out instead. I left them instructions! In fact, I homeschooled them so that I could be sure they could read! In light of this analogy, it is a very good thing that God is long-suffering, for we very often go to him with piteous wails seeking to honour him and know his will without having taken the time to read his instructions. I read such very broad and general instructions in his manual, like praying for those in authority, and honoring one's father and mother, and building one another up, and living quiet and peaceable lives, and, in whatever we find our hands put to, doing all to the glory of God. So very broad, so very general; in fact, the sort of instructions that can thrive in any age, in any culture, in all time, with the ease of a ship passing through the sea. But no, Heaven help us, we are a practical lot, a materialistic, practical lot, and we must have out bullet-points and our outlines, for we feel very naked and vulnerable in the wide fields of God's freedom.

Now that I have said that I will approach my main point. It is all very well and good (and I mean that sincerely) to want to know the will of God. But what seems to be lost in the eagerness to turn faith into "religion" (this is an age-old and fatal eagerness) is a quiet but persistent plot-line in the Story of Redemption. It comes out sometimes, as in the backward memory of Eden, in a man like David, in Jeremiah's dictation of prophecy...in odd people like a Canaanite woman and a Roman Centurion. The plot-line, and the revelation, and what these people did, and ourselves should, really seek, is

the heart of God

I have this thought heavy in my own heart and I listen to this "Saviour" album, and the music seems only to echo my own thoughts. What good is there in flying higgledy-piggledy after someone's will (and someone so living-close to us as our Father) if we know not his heart? And when we know his heart, will we not also know his will? How many of us, rising in the morning and facing the future, think, "What is the heart of God?" rather than "What is God's will?" There is nothing wrong with asking the latter, but without the former it is devoid of that filial adoration incumbent upon God's children. If I seek the latter I am only a servant, only a servant, in the House. If I seek after the former I am child - and I can't tell you what doors open up at that thought through which I see glimpses of the most splendid, the most comfortable, the most living riches of my Father. There is such a sense of safety and belonging in seeking after the heart of God which fretting after his will cannot seem to ever give.

So I put this to you. In this whirlwind hunt of the Hound of Heaven and the hart that panteth after water, this hunt which goes round and round upon itself, be after God's own heart. Never fear. The Hound and the Hart will catch each other in the end.

Touched Mad

2012-02-10T21:16:00.009-05:00

Between Chesterton and The Lays of Ancient Rome (which I was poking through again) and Kipling (who is never far from my consciousness), words have been running through my head with more cadence than usual lately. I can't say it is very good cadence, and as my cold has nearly completely stolen my voice away I can't possibly put any of my lines to music, but there is something splendid and shining and stirring, all the same, in a good clear shaft of poetry.

This is largely for Anna, because of the Chesterton which is still running in my blood, and because Anna has Chesterton in her blood too.

* * * * *

There’s something a bit happy, and something a bit sad
In the faces of the men that God touched mad:
For they know Hell’s torment and they know Hell’s fate,
Though they come not to Heaven’s doors too late.
They shan’t look back, but they still bear
The wounds that Earth and Hell dealt them there.
They know Heaven’s laughter, which sounds like tears;
They know all eternity is shorter than years.
They are the mad ones, laughing sorrow’s laughter,
The motley fools and jesters due to rule hereafter.
They build a house of people, and mortar it with blood,
And make an ark of stone-work for a fiery flood.
You can crush them and they’ll laugh at you—break them and they’ll sing.
Burn them into ashes, cinder—they’ll only mount on wing.
They are the everlasting ones, the ones beyond the grave;
The ones Hell killed a God for, the ones God came to save.

England, Which Was Tinder

2012-02-07T14:44:00.004-05:00

Thank Heaven! At last the trumpets peal
Before our strength gives way.
For King or for the Commonweal -
No matter which they say,
The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel
Changes the world today!
from Edgehill Fight, Rudyard Kipling

This is for Abigail and Anna and Rachel and Megan and all ye other peeps. It fell into my head the other night like chess-pieces falling out of a chess-box when I was pretending to not be awake. Whether or not it belies my fragile state of mind during those hours only you can tell.

* * * * *

Despite that it was summer the wind was up and chill-sounding in the eaves, and the accustomed place before the fire was as comfortable as ever with the old, familiar mahogany shadows gathered round and the old, familiar black kettle humming a tom-cat’s tune on its hook. There was a peep through the east window of the night sky: a blurred, watered image of brindled grey and peacock-blue, which was all the night sky would be at the height of summer. The blot-whir of a bat flashed across the pane and was gone in an instant; the kettle hiccupped and continued humming on the fire.

Never before had she thought of these things as old and familiar. They were so old and so familiar that she never gave them any thought at all. But all day long something uncanny, like the darting of the bat, like purple thunder, had hung over her. She had sought her familiar pallet before the fire as a child seeks a familiar toy and had waited with formless but painful anxiety until Mew had come in—Mew, who was the life-form of all old, familiar things. But even he had not quite dispelled the feeling of thunder which had hung over her. He had not asked, though he must have seen it in her eyes. With clockwork precision he had carried on, washed, eaten supper, read, and now sat with her by the fire with his pipe in his hand, the flame of it matching the colour of his hair, the brooding of his eyes.

She stirred and whined softly under the hum of the kettle. Without looking round Mew’s hand moved off the arm of the chair and brushed her head in an absentminded gesture of comfort. So—he did feel the thunder in the air. She searched his face, but he was too far gone away inside his own thoughts for her to read his mind. She only knew that he was troubled and that she could not take the trouble from him.

The summer wind gusted strong against the house, and in the lull that followed the back of it there came the soft triple splutter of hooves. The tension was so great that she started—though it could have been only a post-rider, and nothing more, for the old High Road ran close by Mew’s place—but Mew put out his hand more strongly on her head and said,

“Sa, sa, Simple. Swef, my heart.”

He pushed back his great dark bog-oak chair and rose, hesitating a moment as the wind cast the sounds of horses wildly about, hesitating until the sounds became sensible amid the wing-beat of noise while the firelight cast its warm mantle about his shoulders. He seemed to catch the direction of the noises at last for, with a little shake of his shoulders—to get the mantle just right, Simple thought—he went away out of the room. The sounds of his boots echoed back to her dully on the hardwoods, out of the room, down the hall, toward the front door.

With a pathetic whine she gathered her legs under her and rose, crouched a little, listening, then stole after him, too unwilling to leave him and his firelight mantle alone with the sense of danger that was lingering overhead. The wood cool underfoot, her fingers groping half-consciously for objects in the dark, she followed the scent of the pipesmoke and the scent that was, inexplicably and indescribably, Mew’s smell alone.

When she reached the hallway there was a confusion of suppressed noises coming toward her from the door. Horses, men on foot, someone calling—and underneath the pipesmoke she could smell the mustiness of thyme. Still whining low, half to comfort herself, half as a sort of confused warning, she inched closer until she could make out Mew’s shoulders dark against the muted grey of the night sky. Then a light flared in the dark beyond, jagged and painful in Simple’s eyes, lashing with it the squeals and turnings of the horses.

“Bartholomew!” a voice cried.

“Richard.” Even with the uncanny light in his hair, making him look like a candle, and the deep night on whose threshold he stood, Mew sounded as level and disinterested as if chancing upon acquaintances in the middle of the night were a common—an everyday sort of thing. “ ‘Tis late, man. What do you out at this ungodly hour?”

There was a splutter of outraged laughter in the yard. Simple, stealing closer, caught a sidewise view of Dick Tumbrel’s face with its finely pointed beard, a little worse for wear and tense with news.

“Have you not heard?” the man asked, taking an abbreviated step forward. “The King has raised his Standard at Nottingham! We’re to him. Do you come also?”

Behind her, hidden in the shadows, but oddly sweet and silver in this atmosphere of tension and torchsmoke and firelight, the old clock chimed the hour.

Mew turned his head as though taking in a greater scene which Simple could not see. “At eleven o’clock in the night?”

“At any hour of the night!” cried Tumbrel.

The flame-haired young man seemed to consider this for a moment very gravely. “Nay, I think not,” he said at last. “The King has not invited me. I should feel awkward going without an invitation.”

This was met with a profound dumbness. Mew’s words seemed to have struck the other men a blow disproportional to their pensive, idle tone. It was several moments before anyone could find his tongue again, and at last someone blurted out,

“Good God, man, you don’t—you can’t—of course you jest!” Then, in a lower, more surly tone, added, “But it is a jest in bad taste.”

But it was Dick Tumbrel, in a voice as surly but by far more dangerous, who answered. “Nay, Bartholomew Grant is not a man to jest. He knows not humour in his grey-clad bones.”

And Mew, as if to spite him, but to spite him gently, said, “God seems fit to have clad the summer night with such a grey. Who am I to scorn such a colour for my own dust?”

“Do you come,” pressed Tumbrel with the voice of a bear at bay, “or do you not?”

And Mew, ever more gently, replied, “I do not.”

Again the profound silence, again the darkness and torchlight lifting the hairs on the back of Simple’s neck. As if from far away across that silence she was hearing Mew’s voice, deep and tuneful as he read aloud.

“Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, ‘Whom seek ye?’ ”

At last Dick Tumbrel gave a rattling sigh, as if he had just made up his mind and it had not been easy. “So, you will not come with us. Is it, then, that you do not think of the King as we do?”

Mew looked down at Tumbrel—Mew looked down on everyone from his height. “I am free to think of the King as I choose in my own mind and my own house. The King, not having asked my opinion, will not be otherwise troubled.”

“I think he must needs have leisure to ask you your opinion, Neighbour Grant,” growled Tumbrel. “Best you come with us all the same.”

If Mew said anything more to let the conversation tumble as it were so many pebbles out of his hand, Simple never heard his words. To the left of him, clear in the torchlight, she saw the movement of two men toward Mew, ready with the obvious intent of catching him and taking him away. She never heard Mew, nor Dick Tumbrel, for in a flash she was across the hall, ducking low and springing up under Mew’s left elbow, full into the chest of the foremost stranger. She got half a mouthful of sweaty white collar and half a mouthful of soft, stubbly flesh and to both she clung while the world upended and came crashing down with a jarring impact on the gravel yard. There was a splurge of yelling overhead, a storm of torchlight, and out of the storm blows began raining down on Simple’s head and sides. For some time she hung on, worrying at the stranger with a caterwaul shriek in her throat, until she heard Mew again and realised it was he who was walloping her as a man would whip a dog off another.

“So howe! so howe! Get back! Hark you—back into the house! So hoo arere!”

And with one last mighty blow he struck her hard enough to dislodge her grasp and send her pitching wide, shoulder to the gravel, while the torchlight made a riot of the sky and faces above her. Light mazed her vision; her tongue tasted blood on her lip.

“Nay, get back!” It was Mew again, but not, this time, to her.

“What—what is this? She would have had Addison’s throat open in a minute! Addison?”

There was a bleary spluttering of oaths from Addison as he was helped off the ground. Simple’s vision cleared a little and she saw with faint surprise that she was outside the house now and that, whatever great things loomed on the horizon under the colour of twilight grey and purple, a very real war had broken out on Mew’s doorstep. He stood by her, brow weighted down by darkness and fury, and Dick Tumbrel stood across from him, a hand on his mate Addison’s shoulder.

“I’ll put a bullet from my horse-pistol into your malkin’s brain, Grant,” said Tumbrel thickly, “only you come away now quietly and no more harm done.”

And Mew said, as clearly and calmly as Tumbrel was thick with wroth, “The chit is addle-witted and knows not what she does. Friend Addison, jump not a dog’s master if you want not to feel the dog’s teeth.”

“Dog’s teeth—!” choked Addison, and staggered forward with his arms outstretched.

But Tumbrel hastily caught him by the shoulders and shoved him back among the others. “Never you mind!” he growled, and turned back on Mew. The point of his beard quivered like a little dark fighting cock. “Bide you here, Neighbour Grant,” he said warningly, “and mind before dawn that the kingdom hangs in the balance—and just you mind where your allegiance lies!”

“Well I mind it,” Mew replied, level and terrible. “Good night, Neighbour Tumbrel. Mind that you light a lantern so that your horse does not deposit you in a ditch on your way to Nottingham.”

With remarkable dignity Dick Tumbrel reasserted his position on horseback, gathered his fellows like a cloak about his shoulders, and was away back down the long, winding, hawthorn-hedged lane, down into the throat of summer’s night, with his face toward a place called Nottingham. Simple did not wait to see the last horse-tail flicker into the dark, but tried to slink behind Mew’s legs and into the safety of the house. But before she could get by him his hand dropped heavily on her shoulder, stopping her.

She glanced up into the shadow of his face. Where his eyes and mouth should be the night made only dark, featureless holes, but there was a relieving softness in the pressure of his hand and the way his voice sounded to her.

“Good pet… Good God, this wind blows harder and faster than I had reckoned.”

She whined and turned her blunt button nose into the flat of his palm.

The paleness of his face flashed down at her. “It was a fool—fool thing to do, Simple. They might have let us be, else.”

He was angry with her in a formless, exasperated, distracted way, more like now to splutter at her and ignore her than to cuff her and berate her. Just at that moment she was horribly afraid he would go, and found she preferred the cuffing and berating more than lonesomeness. She pushed in close against his side, arms around his middle, and whined singsongly, long and high, her teeth sunk harmlessly but determinedly into the mouse-grey of his doublet.

For a moment his arms rested heavily across her shoulders, one hand pulling the strands of her hair gently through the fingers as one might idly pull at a dog’s ears…then he stirred, saying with gentle gruffness, “Nay, lay off, chit. Lay off. Lay off and come by inside to your bed. The tinder of England will lie another night without going up in flames. We have a little time. But what are these things to you, eh, my mazy-headed chit...?”

Simple did not know. She only knew that she followed after Mew with her hand lost in his, stumbling with a sudden blind weariness after him in the dark toward the fire and her pallet. She knew it as she knew an old, familiar thing—but she knew with a painful, irrational clarity after he had bedded her down and given her one last tousling pat on the head before turning away to his own room, she knew she was going to lose the old, familiar things after this. She did not know how, or why, and it seemed unfair, but as she lay on her pallet watching Mew walking away with the dark slowly closing in about him she knew it—she knew it as surely as she tasted thunder in the air.

She lifted herself up on her pallet to call after him, but already he was gone. With a sigh she lay back down, a dry face nestled in her arms, and stared squint-eyed into the low hot smoulder of the fire.

Whatever this thing was that was England, which was tinder and would go up in flames soon, Simple vowed in the primitive law of her heart to keep Mew safe from the flames. Meanwhile—she shifted longwise and settled into the rough warmth of her blanket—she had one more night of the old, familiar things.

You Got Burn'd

2012-02-06T16:52:00.007-05:00

"Wilt thou egg me on so much?" said Juss.
"Ay," said Brandoch Daha, "if thou wilt be assish."
The Worm Ouroboros

Having given it some thought, I am willing to admit that languages not only grow but, like snakes, shed lengthy carcasses of dead skin and leave that skin behind as they move on. And I am willing to admit the futility of trying to go back to a time in the past and live it out, word for word, definition for definition. This will make you absurd, irrelevant, and universally misunderstood. Words move on. Words die. Words are born. But neither do I subscribe to pessimism or fatalism or nihilism. There are some words that ought not be given up. There are words which, though of past ages, give a renewing spice to current ones. There are concepts of reality that have built higher than even Babel could reach, and need, therefore, new terms to define them. If I might be so bold to say, a good writer can bring out of his storehouses words both old and new.

I said once that a writer and a reader is caught up in a sort of unspoken conversation which stretches across all of history (we have but the mute charades of prehistory, and they say nothing), and I had the delight of being privy to such a war for words as made me laugh on several accounts, on accounts not merely that of diction. Upon hearing that some of his poetry had been written off by a critic as containing an abundance of "obscure language" and "imperfect grammar," Robert Burns replied with the following letter.

Dear Sir:

Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.

(signed) R.B.

To know half the vocabulary in this little letter (which I'm relieved to say I do), to have half the wit in wielding it (which I'm ashamed to say I do not), would be a thing of game skill and humour. What an art! what an art, which we must not let die.

Hail, Robbie Burns. We salute thee.

Here It Is...

2012-02-04T13:44:00.002-05:00

...the moment you've been waiting for! The New Year Writing Contest for The Penslayer and Scribbles and Inkstains has come to a close. We had gobs of beautiful entries and we had difficulty picking only one to take the cake and only one to be second-place.

the ice cream: sky-glory (Yaasha)

“What is it?” Aron covered his eyes with both hands. The image of it still burned in his eyelids, shooting pain through his head. It was delicate, like a butterfly’s wings or a column of smoke, yet in the delicacy lay perfect design and order, which indicated a strange resilience. It appeared to be formed of several strands, each with its own quality, each lending its unique radiance to the whole. Like hair, Aron thought.

He dared a glance between his lashes, trembling, and the pain seemed to explode behind his eyes, but he could not look away. In a way, even the pain accentuated its beauty, proving that it was more than a fragile apparition. And its size! It filled his vision, one side licking the dark river that flowed to Aron’s right and the other touching the clear purple mountains in the distance on his left. The entire sky seemed to blaze with its glory and to brush the bottom of the rainclouds with many colors.

“What is it?” Aron asked again, clutching his sister’s hand.

Nura stood, transfixed and breathless for a moment, then whispered reverently, “It is a rainbow.”

The delicious ice cream side to our writing contest was this piece by Yaasha, sporting a breath-taking new look at rainbows that was, for Abigail and me, completely unexpected. Thank you, Yaasha! I will never look at a rainbow quite the same way again.

* * * * *

the cake: time (Alex)

I know who you are.

It took me a while to figure it out, but now I know. When we first met, you came into our house, to see my father. He was drunk again. You stole his wealth, you stole his reputation, and you stole his kindness, and eventually you stole his life. I didn’t cry, because you had stolen my family’s affection for him, too.

You were a strange looking man, very old and yet very young, dressed in garb from about every era and every culture that there has ever been. I counted at least ten pocket watches and thirteen wrist watches, so I could hear a distinct ticking sound whenever I went near you.

You turned to leave, but you said you would be back one day, and that we’d better be careful about what we allow you to take. I asked what your name was.

“In time, you will come to know it,” you said.

Those words puzzled me at first, but now I know your name was hidden in your words all the while. I know who you are.

You are Time. And I’ll be ready for the next time you come to call.

This one took the cake and made off to Wonderland with it. Alex's piece is both fascinating and eerie, and one of the rare occasions Abigail and I have seen second-person employed so poignantly. Chilling, Alex, very chilling, and also beautifully defiant. We enjoyed this one immensely.

* * * * *

Huzzah to you both, girls! Heraldic emails await you both to make sure you get the happy news and remind you of the prizes. And thank you, all who entered. This was a treat for Abigail and myself and we hope to do it again someday. Meanwhile, keep up the scribbling! May your pens never lack for ink nor your imaginations for light.

Words Run Like Greyhounds

2012-02-01T17:19:00.002-05:00

"I will speak daggers to her, but use none."
Hamlet

I have had a very busy, rainy day with very little scribbling and gobs of reading. Honestly, between Chesterton and The Golden Warrior and a years-belated reread of The Golden Goblet (which was unexpected but not unpleasant) I don't think I did much else today besides a walk and three cups of tea. Three cups is highly unusual. Don't judge me.

But to keep wayward scribblers like myself in line Katie has graciously taken it into her head to host a monthly snippets bout. "Snippets" sound to me a lot like "whippets," which in turn remind me of greyhounds, so the following is a pack of words which I have written and wouldn't they just love to break lead and get away from me and hunt down your imaginations!

February Snip-Whippets

With an upward rush of his arms, a ring somewhere among his fingers glinting like starfire, his voice suddenly became like thunder, like power, and it stung Margaret horribly. “Welcome the Hollow Moons, my friends! Welcome the Hollow Moons!”

And the room gave back the cry, “God rest the Hollow Moons! God rest the year!”
Plenilune

“For being flagrantly unsociable,” mused Rupert, “he can deliver a stirring speech when the occasion requires it.”
Plenilune

...before she could resist against her better judgment, or do anything rash, she was pulled in by Rupert and they were striding out into the middle of the room while the crowd and music whirled like compass-needles around them.
Plenilune

[Mark Roy]turned his head away and looked after the baron, his own face clouded by thoughts, the muffled sound of thunder in the lift of his shoulders and the gold-traced dragons that were depicted there.
Plenilune

In the dark wings of the north end of the ballroom the players sat, tiered on their benches, like a jury of angels. They were all in warm, dark colours and seemed to melt into the shadows, illumined only by their single candles. It was a strange, eerie thing to sit just below them, looking up into their shadows, while it seemed the candles, not their fingers, played the light upon the strings. It was a strange, eerie note they played, a minor key which seemed to conjure the formless, painful longing in her soul and give it a kind of voice. Margaret sat in her seat, her hands gripping the arms of it until her knuckles turned white, and suffered the mournful song to wash out of the high dark down over her.
Plenilune

“Rhea,” he purred at last, a panther-smile curling on his face. “Mine own familiar Rhea, who starved me and took all the light out of my world, what does she here? She knows her cunning and beauty. What need has she of a lookinglass?”
Plenilune

It was not like a reaper’s sickle, it was like the sickle-curve of ocean sweeping at her, for her, to overwhelm her and her alone—as if no other soul but hers was meant to soil that inexorable blade. Her eyes fell shut against the impact.

God, take my soul. I dare not die without thee.
Plenilune

“Really?” Centurion raised a brow. “The game moves on apace."

Plenilune

Beautiful People - Lord FitzDraco

2012-01-29T08:40:00.004-05:00

“Three riders there are in all Plenilune none other man born of woman can match—Lord FitzDraco of Orzelon-gang, my own Lord Skander Rime, and Dammerung War-wolf.”

Plenilune

I already did a Beautiful People post for January, but I have done multiples before and I will undoubtedly do multiples again. There aren't any rules about that kind of thing and I should like to dig about in this gentleman's character a little and get to know him better, for he is "flagrantly unsociable" and isn't easy to know. Hmph.

Before all that, here's a reminder that we're coming up on the end of The New Year Writing Contest for The Penslayer and Scribbles and Inkstains. Rules (and prizes!) can be found on the contest's page. If you feel like joining, you still have time before the end of the month to brainstorm and scribble!

Lord FitzDraco of Orzelon-gang

1. If his house burned down and he was left with nothing but the clothes on his back, what would he do? Where would he go?

Lord FitzDraco makes for a grim master, but a good one. If his house at Gemeren (which he holds in fief to his king Mark Roy) were to burn down, a good part of the burning would be spent getting people and things out. Because he is a knight of the king he would seek residence and succour (and get it) at Orzelon-gang, but the journey would be spent in a kind of private agony over the loss of the house he had built and the difficulty of finding lodgings for his people and making sure they were cared for.

2. Is he happy with where he is in life, or would he like to move on?

Happy is not a word one could use for FitzDraco. His natural demeanour is grim, his preference solitude. He is not frequently moved to either happiness or anger; his emotions can best be described as a steadfast monotone of contentment and loyalty, loathing and hatred, depending on who is the recipient of these emotions.

He holds a fine manor at Gemeren, built by himself and named after his father; his people are unquestionably loyal to him, and he is the king’s closest friend. He is perfectly content with his position—though, even without all this, I fancy he would be unmoved by fears of future or desires for betterment. He does not merely take life in stride: he stands unmoved.

3. Is he well-paid?

He has no wants, that is certain. His manor largely sustains itself and brings in a good profit by trade, his king is very generous, and from his own conquests and those of his father the spoil of war is always rich in Gemeren.

4. Can he read?

Yes, oh yes. FitzDraco is a wolfish reader: he positively devours books, though without the slightest ruffle in countenance either for or against the content. The library at Gemeren is very extensive. I shudder and my head fairly turns to think of the tomes he has read—and understood—and retained. I think he must remember everything his reads, though one of his faults is being miser-like with it all. He very rarely divulges his accumulated knowledge to anyone. But I don’t think he does it out of spite, so perhaps I forgive him. I probably wouldn’t understand him anyway if he did try to tell me.

5. What languages does he speak?

Only his own with any luck, and that very rarely. Though Mark Roy looks to him for guidance and council, you are hard-pressed to find the man putting more than four words together in a conversation, and hard-pressed to find him putting more than four conversations together in a day.

6. What is his biggest mistake?

I don’t know what he thinks is his biggest mistake, but a fair lot of people think it was an unwise move of his to take a woman by hand-bond, and that from among a lower class. Herluin is a good woman, and as much a lady as any born among the nobility, but the fact of the matter is that she is not nobility and, though they probably wouldn’t shun her, they consider it unorthodox, and she and her husband choose for her to stay quietly at Gemeren overseeing the manor.

7. What did he play with most as a child?

FitzDraco is the sort of fellow you don’t consider as ever being a child. He seems at first glance to have always been older, with grey hairs among the brown at his temples and the cares of years in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. He grew up at Gemeren and worked more than he played, and his play often looked like work. For all his grim, unruffled demeanour, he is a very driven soul, bound and determined to be circumspect and blameless before his people, his king, and his God. So nothing that he did ever looked much like play.

8. What are his thoughts on politics?

He is Mark Roy’s man to the last. You never have to worry about his loyalty, you never have to worry about him being discreet (he hardly ever speaks anyway). He is foremostly a council for his king, secondly a sword at his king’s side. As for the question of Overlord, he knows who he does not want, but looking round has yet to see a man he trusts can fill the role to step forward.

9. What is his expected lifetime?

I would expect FitzDraco to live a long, full life and die a warrior to have his body carried back to Gemeren and buried under the elms. Anything can happen in a fight, and no man going into one thinks he will come out again to see tomorrow (though he will hope it with bravado), but FitzDraco is renowned enough in war that he has a good chance of seeing many days before a chance spear sees him.

10. If he were falsely accused of murder, what would he do? How would he react?

If he were accused of murder, FitzDraco is the sort of man you could almost believe could have done it—but the next moment after you could be sure he had not. Because the man has no reactions to anything his countenance would be the same, and I dare say such a cat’s grim stare would knock a person out of sorts after a few unblinking minutes. Besides, one should have a care of accusing people who are the right-hand of a king. One might start a war.

"Quite," he said.

"No Lace!"

2012-01-23T18:06:00.005-05:00

"No lace, Mrs. Bennet, I beg you!"

I blame this bit of fun on Rachel. A lot of my blogging fun can be blamed on Rachel. I don't know how she feels about that. I dare say in a year or two she'll have got over it tolerably. For her story The Scarlet-Gypsy Song she charted out clothing styles, as her story is a fantasy set in another world. I know that makes it sound terribly cliche, but her story has a lovely quirk and twist to it which gives it a fresh dimension. Abigail did this sort of post likewise in "Let Us Be Elegant or Die," and while I am pretty poor sport at coming up with original clothing, I thought I, too, might regale you with the trendy fashions of Plenilune. My post from last August, "What a Deal of Starch!", gives you a peek into my general views on clothing. Now I want to be specific and (Megan) alleviate a tiny bit of the mystery that seems to surround Plenilune.

The woman sat foremost among those in the orchestra, and in her pomp and quiet, smothering splendour, Margaret knew she was only gracing their company: she belonged among the lords and ladies. Her hair was caught up with pins of blue amber—which the light behind her was making into a furious cluster of fractalled flame—but if it had been let down it would have been long and tawny-striped like honey and a tiger’s coat, and Margaret almost hated her for the beauty of it. She was in a gown of peacock-blue, the same colour as the drenched night blue outside the windows, and her gown was chased over and over very heavily by gold threads, as if the golden harp-strings of her instrument were tied to her, and she to it—and when she glanced up across the audience from attending to her harp and the light of the chandeliers illumined the look in her eyes, Margaret was certain of it.

Plenilune

Throughout the different Honours of Plenilune and the varying tastes of peoples and individuals, there is one common element. The society of Plenilune likes to put on a show. They breathe heavily with pomp and splendour, colour, jewels, metals. They like to look good. Even FitzDraco of Orzelon-gang, whose most lavish colour is a hunter green, sports a heavy ring with an equally heavy aquamarine stone which (legend has it, and he has not stirred himself to debunk the legend) will turn hot-white when the wearer is righteous in fury. Even those who wear black as a habit (and there are a few), they have a way of wearing black as if they wore the very void of the universe. No matter what they wear, they wear it with style.

They like velvet. Nothing purrs quite like velvet. It can be light or heavy, solid or printed, and it has just the amount of easy pretension the Plenilune elite like to wear. This is ideal for late autumn, winter, and early spring, of course, but you can wear it in the warmer months if it is handled delicately. Furs too, furs are a splendid accessory - horsehair and fawnskin are very light and typically worn by the ladies, panther-skins are very rare and greatly admired. You are not likely to find any English floral prints in the crowd: Plenilune prints tend to be heavily organic, particularly those influenced by the nomadic antipodes, which take embroidery and brocade to a whole new level of intricate. They are almost alarmingly lackadaisical about where normal people put gems and will set them in almost anything, so long as the setting is grand enough for the jewel. Their love of bold colours is rivalled only by the nomadic peoples, who don't believe in darkening or muting and aren't the best judges of which colours ought to go together, and which oughtn't. Plenilune society may love its overwhelming show, but it is always classy about it.

And throw in some feathers! - in a lady's hair, on a lady's dress, on a masque, on the cord of a doublet-tie - make a peacock jealous! Swan, grouse, pheasant, raven, blue-jay, cardinal - anything with a plumage to show will be plucked and wind up sported at a Plenilune social gathering. Conversely, they may be particular about their cloths, but they aren't selective about their gems. If it cuts well and throws a good shine, they don't mind if it is "precious" or not.

This is all very minute. In general Plenilune style could be described as medieval hurled very hard at Victorian, and Victorian coming out the worse for it. You will not spot pantaloons anywhere (thank goodness), but trousers, though you will find variations of the doublet used with extreme flippancy. Dresses tend to be close-fitting and layered under the skirts; necklines vary with taste. Buttoned coats are not uncommon, especially among hunting paraphernalia. Hats are, however, almost unheard-of. Hoods are used for inclement weather and a woman might wrap a light shawl over her head, but it is a mark of dignity (among those who care to think about it this deeply) to go about bare-headed. And something they all wear, which cannot be cut out of stone or cloth, is that sense of dignity, of potency, of splendour and the splendour of humanity of which their heavy embroidery and rich clothing are only the bare fringes.

When I said it was like a crazy tapestry of colour and action, I was not joking. It is a giddy business, trying to write all this, and not unlike inducing a constant fever in my brain and vision. What a people to be hurled among after living twenty years in anemic, industrial, Victorian England!

She could not remember England very well, though that might have been only because her vision was running riot with whirling colours, peacocks’ feathers, light, movement, and music. All she could remember was a broken sense of hoary discontentment, a sense of living drudgery, of fighting against small, insignificant shadows of things—when here in Plenilune lived and walked the sharp-edged real things of a higher plane: the gods and demons in their palaces, dancing together on the eve of winter.

Plenilune

Beautiful People - Margaret Coventry

2012-01-21T17:38:00.007-05:00

And Guinevere - call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness Time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament...

I've been busily working on Plenilune, typing and brainstorming (more brainstorming, I think, than typing), and I've been a little melancholy that I haven't been able to share much with you peeps. It's a terrible balance of keeping you informed and not giving too much away. Well! well! we get on, Margaret and I, and all the many, merry rest of us. This Plenilune cast seems to grow larger by the day. You ought to see my "wall" of notations - and I do not mean Facebook walls. My mother-in-law purchased a pack of violently pink, heart-shaped sticky-notes for me on which I have been jotting down bare thoughts and pasting to my wall so that I don't miss them in the rush of writing. My favourite notation is the single word WIDOWMAKER which, on a pink heart, is hilarious. But I digress.

Beautiful People! After a long holiday hiatus, Georgie and Sky have picked it up again. I think I will continue this January edition with Margaret Coventry still, as she is certainly a harder character to crack than her sweet-spirited cousin.

Margaret Coventry, sometime Lady

1. If the character's house burned down, and she was left with nothing but the clothes on her back, what would she do? Where would she go?

Margaret would probably understand intuitively that she had lost everything and manage from day to day with a chilly persistence at surviving. She has never not known money, but though she would not acclimate herself to scant means willingly or even joyfully, she could do it gracefully. As for where she would go, the most logical choice would be Lookinglass.

2. Is she happy with where she is in life, or would she like to move on?

Margaret is not happy where she is. She has spent her whole life not being happy with where she is and wishing to “move on.” But she is now a very grown-up twenty years of age and it has come home to her, with a very nasty clarity, that not only can she not possibly be happy with where she is, but there is nowhere for her to “move on” to.

3. Is she well-paid?

Being a lady of leisure and comfortable in society, Margaret is used to an allowance but she is never paid. I suppose the question can be best answered by saying Margaret has never lacked financially.

4. Can she read?

Oh yes, and though (as I have mentioned before) reading has a tendency to put her to sleep, she has occasion to find solace in the familiar Englishness of Shakespeare.

5. What languages does she speak?

Probably stronger than a lady ought, but Rupert provokes it. Oh, you mean foreign languages. She speaks French passably and a little German (enough to call for tea and coffee and ask where the next rail station is) and even less Italian. She did try at her language studies and French was not hard, but German, perversely, resisted her attempts to be understood.

6. What is her biggest mistake?

I don’t think I could tell you that. I don’t believe she has made it yet.

7. What did she play with most as a child?

Two dolls from Greece and a worn-out hobby-horse that had one stark brown button for an eye. The other stark brown button had long since been lost.

8. What are her thoughts on politics?

Margaret hardly knows anything about Plenilune politics. She hardly knows who is who and what office does what, or where anything is. The only two things she is clear on at all is that she hates being in them (the politics) and that Rupert must be got out of them.

9. What is her expected life time?

I don’t know whether to laugh at this question or not. Around Rupert, Margaret is never sure. She knows what sort of a man he is, but she is not certain he could actually be brought to the point of killing her. This open-ended coffin definitely keeps her on her toes.

10. If she were falsely accused of murder, what would she do? How would she react?

Margaret would say nothing, and she would maintain the most perfectly cold silence until the accuser was removed from her presence, and then she would turn to someone—probably Skander Rime—for assistance. But that seems hardly likely an occurrence. I don’t think anyone would dare accuse Rupert by association that way.

"The cow!" he growled derisively as the comitissa withdrew. "The cow would think to jump the moon!"
Plenilune

I Always Mistrusted His Appearance of Goodness

2012-01-17T09:44:00.002-05:00

"Whosoever is overcome of desire and turns his gaze upon the darkness, he shall look on hell
and lose the thing he loves."

After a brief discussion between my sister and me, Abigail wrote down a good post on romance in literature. I highly recommend it, because it bears considering, and I will only summarize it by saying that she holds (as the evidence supports) that romance can be written wrongly, but that there is no one right way to do it. But let her post speak for itself. In light of that brief discussion, her post, and my own novel, we thought I ought to write a companion post on the wrong sort of romance.

Don't misunderstand me. Abigail handled romance being written right and romance being written wrong. I want to wrestle with the beast of writing, not Romance Wrong, but Wrong Romance. We are all familiar with the girl who makes some bad calls and falls for the wrong sorts of men - we hope that, in the course of the story, she learns from her mistakes and finds a good bloke to look after her. But just as it is important to know how to write villains convincingly, flesh-and-bloodly, it is important to know how to write those bad calls, those wrong romances.

Two examples came to my mind, both of them very similar. In fact, it was this idea that brought the similarity to my attention. Those examples are my own heroine and antagonist (not very well known to you just yet) and the famous example of Hades and Persephone. Now, there was a match made in hell if ever there was one. You'll find the story of the kidnapped princess everywhere, of course, but Hades is really master of them all. Riding in his chariot pulled by his fell black horses, he comes upon the flower goddess wandering a little too far from home. In one swoop he grabs her by the wrist and hauls her into his car, whips up the horses, and plunges irreparably back into his abysmal realm. It's a well-known story. But they tell me familiarity breeds contempt, and it has been such a very long time since those black horses pricked through the meadow, leaving dead flowers in their wake, that the whole story doesn't really catch us by the throat anymore. We know how it ends, even if we hate Hades for doing it. It's boring. It has no dimension anymore, warped out of life by the sheer volume of time that lies between it and us.

So how, without violating moral laws that we all hold to be self-evident, do you catch your reader by the throat? How do you write such a persistent, unswerving, inexorable passion on the part of the antagonist, or the heroine fighting him every step and turn of the way? How do you make Hades and Persephone (who only wept, stupid woman; I would have kicked and bitten him on that downward drive) - how do you make Hades and Persephone real?

You're not allowed to be missish. My antagonist really does love the heroine, but in a twisted, dark, self-centred kind of way that shows a horrible kind of mercy and a hard kind of tenderness. Just as a villain won't consciously think "I am going to do this because I think it is wrong," just so a passionate antagonist will not try to woo a woman just to hurt her. Somehow, in some confused, fallen, violent way, there is something like attraction and love in the antagonist. And it is when something good is so totally warped out of decency that it really jolts you. Margaret and her suitor, far more than Hades and Persephone, make you fear for life and limb and light because the suitor stands closer to the attention than distant mythical gods, and he really means business.

You all know how to write good characters. You know how to give them dimension, depth, purpose. You know how to make a really good hero and a really good villain. But I'm throwing another ball into the cricket match (because doesn't this all defy explanation?), and that is the depraved romance. That, too, is a fact, and that, too, as with everything else, is something we ought to be able to handle well. And to make it come alive, this often necessitates a dangerous journey into very abysmal realms of the heart. What drives the antagonist, and how much will he risk to get what he wants? How strong is the heroine, and what can she take before she begins to crack? Once you start pumping life-blood back into such stories as kidnapping, manipulation, dark, hell-bent affection, the long perspective of Hades and Persephone begins to grow some dimension - and begins to be frightening again.

That is a dour note to end on, don't you think? Even the pagan story, which was more concerned about the fact that Demeter had shut off spring and summer, didn't end there. If you ever find the need to write such a romance I am sure your motives and methods will be different. But I do hope that there is one thing similar: I hope there is a white knight with the motto tertium quid stamped on his shield to bring in the right sort of romance. But though the right romance should be that much better, and is that much more important to be sure, make sure the wrong sort doesn't suffer from missishness or neglect.

[She] laughed softly, bitterly. “You are fit to be a king,” she said, lifting her eyes to his. “But you would be a tyrant.”
Plenilune

As My Whimsy Takes Me

2012-01-15T16:53:00.009-05:00

Sky and Georgie and Finvarra have been hosting a giveaway on their blogs for the past week or so and have posted several writing-related questions on their blogs. I don't intend to enter the giveaway because I'm not much of a contest person (thus improving others' chances of winning). But the questions looked like they would be fun to answer anyway and, as I am not in a position to tell you any updates on Plenilune but would still like to keep you all informed as to my movements, I thought I would yoink the questions and answer them for the mere whimsy of the thing.

Which author do you aspire to be like?

Well, myself. Naturally, I suppose I will be like other authors - Sutcliff among the foremost of these. If a writer is worth his ink he will not be too proud to take lessons from others. There is a kind of constant conversation going on between authors across all ages, an unspoken conversation, which covers reams of pages and numerous languages. I am a part of that conversation, but though I am perfectly willing to listen to the voices of others wiser than myself, I hope my voice will always be my own.

If you could meet any author from any time period, who would it be?

Oddly enough, it would probably be Jane Austen. I say 'oddly enough' because she is not my favourite author, but I somehow think she and I would get along more companionably than other authors I read. I feel as though we could talk about more than merely writing (which gets dull after awhile), and perhaps converse on more humane things, like clothing and the smell of books and the state of the social mind. I have a vague idea which might, if allowed to be a reality, be detrimental to me, and that is to get all the Inklings together (honorary et al) and be allowed to listen to their discussions. I fear for myself, however, because I rather think Chesterton would accidentally kill me with one of his violently excited gestures in the middle of a particularly heated speech.

Who is your favourite literary character, and why?

To answer self-centredly, I might have to say Rhodri. I have never written a character I liked so well as he, and though he is my own character I think plenty of people understand well enough the independent existence of characters to allow me to be that fond of a character I made. Less self-centredly, and in, perhaps, the true spirit of this question, the answer to date would probably be Tiberius Lucius Justinianus - Justin for short - and Marcellus Flavius Aquila, because the two are one and the same in everything. Yes, I dare say the hero-cousins of The Silver Branch are probably still, after all the books I have read, my dearest and most familiar literary characters.

There was a golden aura about Eikin where he sat in the last patch of light, but Rhodri had not moved in all the time they had been sitting, and there was a faint greenish hue in the shadow where he sat, his wings limp about himself. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his head back, and he seemed to be asleep. It was strange, Adamant reflected, gazing at him, how ill at ease he could appear,
even when he was unconscious.
Adamantine

As for why, that is a difficult - almost an impossible question to answer with any adequacy. For Rhodri, I fear I would give too much of his story away. And besides, Rhodri is not an easy man to know. He does not make himself an easy man to know. There is a moody grey mystery and dependability about him, but that is hardly a satisfactory summation of him. As for Justin and Flavius, they too describe themselves best by their own actions, their dual quietude, loyal nature, fire and determination. To describe them would make me sound sentimental, and them like pieces of poetry. But if anything is worthy of high sentiment or worth being the subject of poetry, I suppose true men must be. Funny odd thing, isn't it, how those men who are closest to the long-lived, elemental patriarchs of our race are those which words fail to describe...?

'So. It is good,' Constantius said. He looked from one to the other. 'I am told that you two are kinsmen; but I think you are also friends, which is a greater thing. Indeed, that was told me by the Primus Pilus here. Therefore I hope you may not be ill satisfied to find yourselves once again posted together.'

The Silver Branch

I am told, by people who were closer to the beginning of the world than I, that Atlas was in the habit of holding the world up on his shoulders. My giddy Athena! I have worlds in my head! I think the Titan, child of those patriarchs though he may have been, has nothing to boast about.

One Thousand Disappointments

2012-01-10T08:24:00.005-05:00

The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured
by the object of its love.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man, Henry Scougal

For some time now I have seen the exercise about called "One Thousand Gifts." I know my mother has the book. At least, I assume she has the book. I have seen it floating about her house, so naturally I deduce that she owns it. I have not read the book nor do I follow the lady's blog who first instituted this exercise, but I understand that it is to help believers recall the small mosaic-piece graces that God infuses into our lives every day. Now I am sitting here listening to Audrey Assad's song "Show Me" and Laura Story's "Blessings" (songs that, I think, are well-known) and my thoughts are running in the other direction. I am not going to write a book about this or start a challenge because I think my thoughts don't deserve that level of attention, but I hope that, in conjunction with the "One Thousand Gifts," these thoughts might also be helpful.

we pray for blessings, we pray for peace
comfort for family, protection while we sleep
we pray for healing, for prosperity
we pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering
and all the while you hear each spoken need
yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

It is always very moving in the Scriptures when someone has waited long and long and begged hard for the Almighty to grant a request to get what they desire. What comes to mind especially are those who longed for a child: Abraham, Hannah, Elizabeth, among a few. Leah, too, though she did not wait long for her answer: she received a double portion of a blessing of children. It always moves me to see God's gracious hand work this way. He made a way for the righteous through the flood, he heard Abraham on Lot's behalf, he raised up Ruth and put her in the lineage of Christ. So many blessings to see, they choke me with emotion because the image that they produce is that of a just, gracious, merciful God whose heart is bent especially to the widow, the orphan, and the alien.

'cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
what if your healing comes through tears
what if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know you're near
what if trials of this life are your mercies in disguise

But I think I am moved even more so in the narratives when God says no. When he shuts up the Garden, when he refuses Ishmael, when he does not heed David's plea, when he refuses any more petitions for Israel, when he does not grant relief to Paul. It is very easy for us to remember God as benevolent toward his children, full of grace and mercy, because he is. But I think we get an uneven view of his nature when we focus only on the gifts. What about the things he has refused us? All is his to give or to take, to bestow or to withhold. Are we not told as much about him by what he does not give as with what he does? What was it that he told Paul? "No - but my grace is sufficient for you." Sometimes his refusals are more poignant than the gifts because they force us to look beyond what we ask for to the reason in the Divine Mind. If not what we ask, then what? If not our will, then whose?

what if my greatest disappointments
or the aching of this life
is a revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
what if trials of this life
the rain, the storm, the hardest nights
are your mercies in disguise

He gives graces lavishly, and it is in his nature to be gracious, but he does not give contrary to his just nature. This is not to say that all refusals preclude some sin on the part of the asking believer: was it wrong of Paul to ask the Almighty for relief? Well, perhaps that is between Paul and the Almighty. But there was a deeper lesson to be learned there: that God's grace is abundant and sufficient to be drawn from for the present distress.

you could raise me like a banner in a battle
put victory like a fire behind my shining eyes
I would drift like falling snow over the embers
but for now, just let me lie

This is a lesson that has warmed the hearts of believers time out of mind. It is not an easy lesson to learn and, unlike "your Father knows what you have need of before you ask," it is a lesson that must often be taught again and again, to each and every Kingdom-citizen. Mark what you are not given as well as what you are, and see how both attest to the person of our Lord and his dealings with his people. Whether or not it is a comfort, I do not know, but I recall Jesus himself wrestling with the horror that lay before him, asking if it might pass from him, and saying all the same: "Not my will, but Thine be done."

bind up these broken bones
mercy, bend and breathe me back to life
but not before you show me how to die

Time Seems Relative, and Dual

2012-01-09T11:13:00.007-05:00

when owls call the breathless moon
in the blue veil of the night
when shadows of the trees appear
amidst the lantern's light
the sounds of the birds seem to fill the wood
and when the fiddler plays
all their voices can be heard
long past their woodland days
"mummer's dance," loreena mckennitt

It happened to me for the first time last spring, nearly summer, which made it all the more ridiculous. I was on a walk in the swimming buttery heat, which really should have helped my sense of reality, but evidently the psychological impact of my writing is more than skin-deep. That was back when I was seriously ploughing through editing Adamantine and, as tends to happen in the due course of seasons, it was winter (or very nearly) in the story, and as I was walking up a particularly warm street it dawned on me that I had, unconsciously and otherwise happily, assumed that the season physically around me was winter too. It took me a moment of serious reasoning to convince myself that it was spring-almost-summer not autumn-almost-winter.

Oddly enough, I took this as a good sign. I had become so wrapt in my work that it had, to a small degree, ceased to be a manuscript and had become a world into which I plunged daily, interacting with and guiding the characters - a world which dragged backwash with me when I returned to this realm. The nursery magic had turned it Real. It was an odd, pleasant discovery.

Now I am working on Plenilune, a story closely tied to the turning seasons. As I am working on the first draft this mental quirk is not so liable to happen, but on occasion I do find myself wrestling with January and November, trying to figure out which one belongs Here and which one belongs There and which one it Really Is Now. There is no hope of my catching up to the Real Month, so I expect this fight will continue until I slowly succumb to my story's view of things. It is not really helped much by the fact that the middle of January Here is feeling a lot like the middle of November There.

One could get a lot of birthdays out of this, I dare say: real ones and literary ones. But I somehow doubt anyone would fall for that.

“Time enough for sharp swords and bright spears when the cherries put on their gala gowns.
Winter is an hour of high fires and warm company.”
Plenilune

Now I See The True Old Times Are Dead

2012-01-06T16:41:00.006-05:00

But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,
Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walk’d,
Larger than human on the frozen hills.
Morte d'Arthur, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Having finished reading Harry Blamires' The Kirkbride Conversations, my interest took a little turn and I pulled Hope Muntz's The Golden Warrior out of the stack of books I want to read. It is a good, sturdy-looking book, hardback and royal blue, dedicated (to my heightened interest) to none other than "The Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchill." I plan on reading such works as The Conquering Family and When Christ and His Saints Slept, so I thought it would be logical to start the race off with Harold and William. I am told that the beginning (which this is, strictly, not) is a very good place to start.

This is strictly not the beginning of the saga. Enormous figures have already strode across the haunted hills of England and the prologue, which I am in the midst of, is summing up the imprint of those giants. I have a suspicion that, if anyone cared, you could do a sort of Godfather-styled retelling of Earl Godwin and his family, but perhaps that is a proposition for another day... Now, in the Earl's confiscated hall at Guildford King Edward and his cousin Duke William Bastard (an un-charming if accurate appellation) have sat down to dinner and, under the natural genius of the hall's former owner, have fallen back on accounts of Godwin's heavy-handed dealings. I already know a little bit of all this so I was jigging slightly in my chair, reading along with an eye to get to the Hector of the tale (don't hit me, Abigail), when the Norman Achilles, a dark, terrible kind of figure, says darkly of the exiled Godwin:

"He is a man who will dare all things."

I am always on the look-out for inspiration. You never know where it might show up and you have to be ready for it. This, on the other hand, was a summing-up (far better than I could have done, though I tried) of my own Plenilune antagonist. Across nine hundred forty-something years I could still feel the fear, not of some over-bearing villain, but of a foe to be reckoned with. As I pen-stab at my own story, trying to translate it out of my own mind into ink, I feel among the lords of Plenilune that same worry: that the wolf, which does not sleep, will come out of the dark, and will dare all things.

So here is to Hope Muntz, and Duke William, and Earl Godwin for that matter. What a horrible time of horrible men! They make good models for stories, even if they made bad men. Well, with histories like these, who needs novels?

"I smell a rat."
Centurion of Darkling-law, Plenilune

An Opportune Time

2012-01-03T17:50:00.004-05:00

how wearisome
eternity so spent in worship paid
to whom we hate
Paradise Lost, John Milton

This detached, experimental piece of writing is for Daddy (who knows what I am about, I think) and for anyone else who might like to see what rumblings of writing lie beyond Plenilune. Indeed, these rumblings are so far beyond Plenilune that the following is highly subject to change, but he told me to start writing the little pieces that were coming into my head, so...dig one's own grave, you know, and all that. Cheers!

* * * * *

“Ai Ring.”

Time, like claws, dragged agonizingly by while the Endless bent solitary over the tabletop, watching the riot of feverish motion before him, watching as from a very great height and from a long way off the heaving movement of kingdoms under his hands. His left hand, pale as the featureless walls of the room and as white-lit, was splayed over Cormontium and Iber and their shared sea: between two fingers was the effigy of the very man who stood just within the doorway, waiting his attention.

“Ai—”

He slid his white gaze to the side; the movement of the table came to a halt. His hand closed over the little figure.

Jewel’s eyes, never quite willing to meet Ring’s, never quite willing to be wholly afraid, dropped to the same figure—a perfect likeness—and then moved upward again, nearly looking back into the Endless’ eyes. The Endless did not like the look he saw on the man’s face: a sickly, uncertain sort of look, as if there was something too good and too horrible going on inside that man’s mind. Almost he strode forward, impatient with a man’s need to search for the right words, and conjured the words by force out of the lisping mouth. But he did not. He waited, the chess-piece figure of the priest weighing with a tell-tale lightness in his palm.

In the wake of a deep breath Jewel began. “Sir, you told me to keep good guard in case he infiltrated our order. You told me to keep watch and to listen for any sign of him, for the least sign of him. Well.” He touched his tongue to his dry lips. “The long and short of it is—we found him.”

Oh, the sweet rage of joy! Ring strode forward three paces before he knew what he was doing, the bird-rushing thunder of his movement rattling at the fabric of the air; towering white over the little man, trailing red after himself through the air where the clock-glass had cut him and the cuts had not healed. From a distance came to him the tiny sound of Jewel’s piece falling, falling, rolling across the world’s tabletop. Jewel himself shook under that advance but, foolish and human-like, he did not back down.

“How many people know?” the Endless demanded.

Jewel risked a short bark of laughter. “No one. After the rebellion no one dares believe anything. It is far too dangerous. No one much wants to die.”

Ai Ring looked back at the table, head canted to one side, an almost tender expression playing at his mouth. “Whether by design or by foolishness, I think he could not have picked a more opportune time to walk into my hands.” There was a crack and splutter like lightning and he held up a hand, the hand which had held Jewel, to display a new effigy.

“A good likeness,” said Jewel.

A good likeness! Was there anything good about so hateful an appearance? The hair was red like flame, not blood, the countenance full of mockery even in lifeless pantomime. If Ring could he would have pressed the little thing out of life between his palms and, if it were possible, have pressed him out of life as well.

Jewel said gently, “What would you have me do?”

Ring came back out of his disquieting thoughts. “Do what you like for now. I will come in my own good time. I give you leave and power to do with him as you please, only do not touch his life,” he added, his tone so warning and awful that Jewel blanched as if in the force of a gale. “I hold that in my hand and it is mine.”

“Yes, Ai Ring.”

Janus

2012-01-01T16:39:00.006-05:00

"Yes," said the Lion in a very quiet voice, almost (Jill thought) as if he were laughing. "He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have."
The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis

For some reason - no, rather I should say, for some intuition I feel this is for Rachel. I say that because I could not tell you why this passage and this girl ought to go together. Perhaps it is merely because it is high time the girl got something specially from me. How odd a thing it is to dedicate one's dreams to another!

* * * * *

I realized that for a while I had assumed he had fallen asleep, for he was so motionless and quiet, and it was the perfect place for a cat-nap. I looked up from my notebook, my left hand automatically clicking the cap shut on the pen in my right; I looked up at his face, to see if he was still with me. He had his head back against the tree on which he leaned, his face turned away. I could not tell. After waiting a moment to see if my gaze might leak into his consciousness I gave up and looked away again.

The landscape was worth the pause. We sat together on a little hillock under a bare crab-apple, a place mostly of sunshine with little swallow-tail lancings of shadow, and all around us under the warm pale sun was the gently rolling spread of an ancient cemetery. There were no roads through it, only double-wide trackways for the hearses and little stone foot-paths around the graves and mausoleums. I took in a deep breath and tugged my knees up against my chest, squashing my notebook close, pulling in the fresh scents of autumn. Everything was a flame-colour around me: green and pale blue, ruddy, rich, wine-bright. I breathed the colour in and felt the flame of it flicker through my veins.

“It is very peaceful here.”

A gust of wind blew through my hair, obscuring the world in bars and streaks of chocolate and copper. “So, you are not asleep.”

He turned his head to me, still resting it on the tree-trunk. I saw in his eyes the same as I felt: the languid sleepy richness of the open, the quiet open, which was to us like sleeping while awake. It was a good, comfortable, familiar thing to us, and he was happy—happy in that warm, half-melancholy way of his—and because he was happy I was too.

He asked, “What is it that you write?”

“Do you know what I wish?” I replied. I turned my head so that the wind blew my hair out of my eyes instead of into them. “I wish I had a quill that wrote with fire instead of ink.”

“Mm,” he purred understandingly.

There was a stream at the foot of the cemetery, quite a distance off and a thread of pure blue under the pure blue sky. I could see a little blot of darkness on the surface of it and thought how grand it must be for geese to have so many skies to fly in, overhead and on the looking-glass sky of water.

I had the habit of going outside myself, trance-like, whenever I spoke in my own familiar language, because I am shy. I did not need to do it for him, but somehow the scenery and the geese on the water and the autumnal sky pulled me out regardless, and I spoke in my familiar language.

“It is a death-scene of sorts, for it seemed a good time and place to write, here, where it is quiet, where I can think, and Death’s train is raking up the leaves behind him as he keeps vigilance.”

“Of sorts?” he queried, one brow rampant. But he folded his arms around his thin frame and hunched forward, gazing off with a pensive look that, if you did not know him so well as I, you might mistake for darkness. I watched him for some time as his eyes roved over the landscape, waking with light and quenching with shadow, and waking again; I watched him and the thoughts that ran through the light in his eyes.

“There is a deep thing in your face.” I broke the silence at last. “What do you think of?”

He continued to stare, but he was very with me when he said, “This is a good plot of land. I think I will take it.” The corners of his mouth, which always had a touch of unconscious bitterness to them, twisted the bitterness into consciousness once more. “Maybe it is the height and overlook. I’ve always felt that handicap of mine somewhat keenly.”

I frowned, but forced a smile through the frown. “What of that? So do I. But you are tall-seeming, and that is enough. And anyway,” I settled back around, sliding over to press my own tired back against the supporting tree, “I am your Bad Wolf. I give you immortality.”

The bitterness flickered away beneath his steady pulse of warmth. He scooted through the grass to a nearly prostrate position, folding his arms behind his head; I could see the sky reflected so pale in his eyes, his eyes were almost silver but for their single spots of jet. It was like looking in the blue-jay’s eye, and it made me shiver.

“I have been thinking about death,” he admitted.

I looked sidewise at him sharply.

He sniffed and canted his head on his arms, looking up at me. “Truth to tell, it’s a subject that has dogged me for almost all my life.”

I was sitting tailor-fashion, and leaned forward a little awkwardly to steal the handkerchief from his coat-pocket so that my hands might have something to meddle with. “So?” I replied carefully. “Truth to tell, it has dogged me too. I was too young then to remember it now, but my parents tell me I felt the need for God-life after my grandmother’s funeral.” I smiled wryly and gave the handkerchief a mighty tug between my hands. “Funny odd thing, isn’t it? I’ve always felt the need for things to be right. It seems right that death should have prompted my salvation.”

“Mm,” he said, and for a while we were silent.

I unfolded one corner of the handkerchief and rubbed my fingers over the shiny black thread of the monogram. I asked without looking up, “What were you thinking specifically about death?”

“After it.”

“You mean the afterlife?”

“No,” he insisted gently, “I mean the afterdeath.”

I waited patiently for him to go on, but he seemed to be thinking of this as he went, for it was rather a long time before he continued, and a cloud came across the sun meanwhile that chilled me. Thankfully it went away again, and I stretched my arms languidly in the light, like a cat.

“I mean after death,” my companion went on, stretching likewise. “You know me, Half-pint. I hate death. I hate pain. They are so uncomfortable and so wrong and so—ever-present. Death hangs over all of us. Death hangs over everything. That is the curse. Death is the midwife that brings us all into the world, the unknown certainty of death following every child to adulthood, and seen at the end of the road waiting to receive us at the end. We all expect it as we expect some horrible surgery that we cannot avoid.

“You and I can look beyond that. We can expect a life after death—or, rather, a life whose vein runs deeper than the knife of death can plunge. We look beyond death to something better. But I have been thinking, after a lifetime here of living under the looming shadow of death, who could help but look back from the other side of it with relief?”

He was a conjuror. His words, like magic, thrust into my chest and grabbed me, heart and lungs and throat. I could not breathe. I could not see through the sudden spate of tears. I hung suspended in the thinness of my limbo-state in which I lived solely on the throb of his words.

There was a moral somewhere in that, I thought.

“After all that waiting, after all that tension of waiting, what spirit would not look back on the veil, on the darkness, on the surgery, and think, ‘It’s done’? It’s done. The worst is behind. There would be yet the resurrection, and nothing will be right until the resurrection, but death will be done and over with and behind us. The last worst pain. The last worst loss. The last worst severing from all earthly constraints. The last unknown into which we must go. We can look back on it from there and say—”

“It’s done.”

The words out of my mouth seemed to send spider-fine cracks across the surface of my thinness. Any moment now they would break, and I would be bare under that cold November wind.

He sat back up, hunched forward once more with his arms laid across his knees. With the sun and the wind in my eyes everything was like looking through cut glass, sharp, distorted, blinding bright.

“It is still frightening,” I said suddenly.

He thrust both shoulders up in an admitting way. “Of course. Just because you will be on the other side of the surgery does not make the surgery itself any less frightening. But there is an end to the surgery, and there is an end to death, too.” He smiled grimly. “I wonder what death will look back on.”

“The wonders of Ozymandius,” I supplied.

“And despair.”

I nodded.

“No,” he went on rapidly, “we’ll have a new king, and a new minting, and sin’s old coinage will be obsolete.” He turned up one hand and began idly rubbing his right thumb into his left palm, as if he could feel a kind of coin there already. “It is going obsolete already. We will pay the last toll exacted from all mankind. You have never been in debt—you don’t know the relief of having the last cent paid off and your books cleared.”

With characteristic stiffness he got to his feet, groaning a little, and stood against the racing backdrop of light and shadow, his hands in his pockets, the wind in his hair. I sat at his feet still, looking first from his face, which was far from me and almost awful, and then at the landscape, outflung like the wing of a phoenix before us.

His voice was hushed and urgent. “How like Janus we are, Half-pint! How curious it is that the Everlasting Now of God is broken up for us into pasts and presents and futures. I have spent my life thinking of now, and on occasion I have looked back, and I have thought of then—” he withdrew one hand and pointed to the far horizon, west of west “—but not until recently have I thought of looking back from then. It is a curious and strangely relieving thing.”

“I have found,” I remarked, getting up and taking him by the arm, for it was nearly time to go. “I have found that God’s curious things usually are.”

His eyes flashed laughter like a kingfisher's wing. "Come, you!" he said, bending to snatch up my notebook and thrusting it into my free hand. "Finish writing the death-scene of sorts for this story before he finishes writing yours."

"I have broken the thunder of my pen," I said accusingly, "now that we have gone on so long. Besides, I don't believe death writes us out at all. That is the problem with most thought."

My companion reached back and did violence to the collar of his coat, jerking it up around his ears as the wind, now that we were most free of the low turf, blew with an angry sea-fierceness into our faces. "No, no," he said, waving me off with his words. "I have tea and small-talk to conjure. That is a conversation you and I must have another day."

I laughed and went down the hill with him, though which of us supported the other, I could not say.

I Declare After All

2011-12-31T14:42:00.010-05:00

...there is no enjoyment like reading...
Jane Austen

For a while among my blogging circle I seemed unique in that I had no desire or, seemingly, capacity to compose a list of books I would really like to have read by the time A.D. 2012 has lost itself among the backward annals of time. It seems that, unlike most of you, I don't possess the iron will required to really plough through a book I don't particularly like. I just flung down one this afternoon in a height of dudgeon, completely apathetic toward finishing it. Unlike most of you, I don't ever seem to get the chance to say, "I read The Thing of Such-and-Such by Mr. Whatever. I didn't really like it, but I finished it, and that's that." Additionally, I never really plan what I am going to read. When I feel it is 'time,' or when a book catches my fancy, I read it.

So the list I am about to compile is subject to change, and you should probably only call is a 'list' advisedly. "You can carve it in stone," said Barnaby. "I'll still deny it." But here, at least, is what I would like to read this year, not because this year or these books put together make anything particularly special, but because my temporal frame travels through time rather linearly and because this upcoming year seems, therefore, unavoidable, and because (most importantly) I want to read these books.

The Art of Medieval Hunting: the Hound and the Hawk - John Cummins (in progress)
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (in progress)
The Kirkbride Conversations - Harry Blamires
The Everlasting Man - G.K. Chesterton
Beowulf - Mr. Whatever (again!)
The Golden Warrior - Hope Muntz
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
The Discarded Image: an Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature - C.S. Lewis
Moonblood - Anne Elisabeth Stengl (when it comes out in April)
When Christ and His Saints Slept - Sharon Kay Penman
The Four Loves - C.S. Lewis
The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain
The Conquering Family - Thomas B. Costain
The Improvement of the Mind - Isaac Watts
Sword Song - Rosemary Sutcliff

If I put in much more I will be overreaching myself. When Christ and His Saints Slept looks daunting enough; coupled with The Improvement of the Mind (whose font is minuscule) I feel positively drowned in verbiage. If you calculate in a peppering of rereads (some bizarre and irrational part of me wants to reread The Lord of the Rings), it may be a busy year.

Speaking of bizarre, I have not yet got used to seeing my name - my name - turn up in a "my favourite authors" list, sandwiched between C.S. Lewis and Charlotte Bronte. I tell you, it's a mad, mad world.

New Year Writing Contest

2011-12-29T10:17:00.006-05:00

It's a new year (very nearly) and it's time for something new at The Penslayer and Scribbles and Inkstains. In honour of the writers who so faithfully follow these blogs of ours, who have expressed such encouragement and interest in our work, Abigail and I have put together a writing contest for the month of January (2012). Here are the details of the campaign:

wordcount

Each entry must be 200 words or less. This may not seem like much (and it isn't) but don't panic. We don't expect you to condense a full story into so few words.

subject

The theme will be first impressions. This can be a character's first impression of another character, of a thing, of an animal... Think of it as you introducing a new subject, whether animate or inanimate, to the reader. (200 words doesn't seem like much now, does it?)

quality

You are all so vastly different in your styles, so don't try to fit your entry into a specific style or genre. We would like to see prose, but if you are better at poetry, or poetry just "comes," use that instead. Be sure to note your spelling and grammar as we try to be very particular about excellent English. Write your very best, we dare you!

rules and regulations

Entries will be limited to two per person. (Note: two entries is an option, not a requirement.) Obviously, keep it clean; we'll be posting the winning entries (as long as the authors don't object), so they have to be ones that we're comfortable putting up.

prizes!

After the contest closes, Abigail and I will choose first place and second place winners. First place winner will receive one copy of each of our novels, The Shadow Things and The Soldier's Cross, as well as a critique of the first chapter of his or her novel. Second place winner will receive a critique of the first chapter of his or her novel.

Please email your entries to sprigofbroom293@gmail.com and jeanne@squeakycleanreviews.com.

If you have any questions, be sure to ask. And if not - start writing!

To the End of the Way of the Wandering Star

2011-12-27T16:12:00.007-05:00

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
G.K. Chesterton

I was perched in a low-slung camp chair made of wood and cloth, not unlike the sort my ancient friends are accustomed to using, somewhat cold for the basement is chilly (particularly this time of year) content to be quiet and to read. I had finished my scribbles and had moved on to some rather complicated notions by an old author about Kruger beards, and while I was trying to get a handle on this I was deftly ignoring my own notion that I ought to go work on the bike and get some exercise in. There is nothing like reading to displace physical labour. But in the middle of this, quite suddenly and without the least flicker of warning, out of the damp grey woody quiet of the winter's visage through the window came the long, loud, throaty roar of a train's horn. Like a hound which hears the mote I raised my head at once and stared out the window (you could see nothing through it, save bare tree branches and sorry wet sky); on the horn went, thrilling, roaring, blazing like some kind of golden fire through the colourless atmosphere around me. I did not move and I did not speak, but a lot moved in my soul and my soul said a great deal in that long timeless moment that the train went on, calling out its obligatory warning.

I have always considered trains to be a timeless sort of thing. Maybe it is the result of romantic notions passed on subliminally into my mind. Whatever it is, I have always considered them timeless, more than half sentient, running on their iron veins, hidden, through the fabric of society. Society, like tops, whirling in circles and getting nowhere much, goes on, while the trains rush through it all with a kind of terrible, iron purpose, touching nothing, nothing touching them. And as I have been thinking for some months past about the nature of the Kingdom, with that one train that I heard this afternoon (I do not know its name, where it came from or where it is going, I only heard the sound of it), it was a very simple thing for me to see, not the black-sided figure of a Norfolk Southern engine shrilling out through intersections of rail and road, but a blazing, white-hot-iron creature screaming intently through time and space, hurtling toward its goal, itself timeless and its passengers too, hurtling faster and building light as it went - and wherever the slog of time-bound traffic and the cruel blank blackness of asphalt fell across its path it sounded its horn (rally or mort I do not dare to say, perhaps both at once) as a kind of exultant warning to the whirling people around it.

I saw that half-sentient, immortal thing and its comet-streak of light with my mind's eye for a moment (a moment which left, I am sure, a tell-tale burn-mark somewhere on my soul, probably where my spirit and my heart touch) but I got to see that kind of light with my mortal eyes later when I was driving home. The sun had come out and a high, strong wind was up, roaring like the world's last ocean in the world's last autumn leaves. Clouds were tearing at break-neck speed across the sky and I stopped to look up for the note (of rally or mort I do not know) was still in the air, if only the echo of it, and I felt it rather than heard it. So I had to look up. At first I saw that the clouds were across the sun, and then I thought I was wrong and that the sun, become far more huge for closeness, had come down out of its plane and hung in middle earth's atmosphere, enormous, horribly bright, making arms of light for itself out of the racing, shredding clouds so that I could barely look for long. But I did look. I remember that the stars once spoke of high deeds around the years of Jesus's birth and the magi, intent upon such celestial languages, caught the writing in the heavens. Now it seemed, to me, that our own star was saying something about high deeds as well and a high kind of man to do them. Like Simeon I lifted up my eyes and saw the Consolation of Israel and the Light to the Gentiles coming through the clouds, burning like the sun in splendour, and all the windy blue of heaven the high laughter of all the angels.

it's a window in the world, a little glimpse of all the goodness getting through

I have come inside now out of the cold. The late light is lying coppery and gold on the grass and appears quite warm seen from the comfortable environment of my heated room. But I can see by the whirl of the branches that the wind is still roaring strongly, and where it comes from and where it is going I don't know. But somehow I imagine that great, solid, diffusing sun knows, and it knows where that blazing train hails from, too, and where its station lies. I look at the setting sun and I know I am looking west, but from the windows of the train I am not certain what I see, save that I know the light is growing both in the train and from whatever horizon it hurtles toward. What are east and west? what are north and south in a place beyond all compass points, in a place that is the centre of the compass itself? That is where the station is, that is where the light comes from.

I hear the hunting cry of the train again, ethereal, coming from a place where there is no time and space, to me in time and space, and something in me breaks under the realness of its weight.

"A Triumph, My Dear, Another Triumph!"

2011-12-22T13:21:00.004-05:00

Okay, so, I lied. I did manage to finish The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, rather to my surprise, so I have read thirty books this year (2011). That's a rather nice feeling, having read a pretty round number of books. Not a very large round number, but it's respectable. Numbers ought to be respectable, and I think thirty is. None of these errant variables larking about. Good, sound, whole, round numbers like thirty. Good note to end a year on.

I haven't been pushing myself too hard on Plenilune lately, since it is the holidays and my energies are needed elsewhere. It's rather odd: at a time when everyone is getting off something to have their holidays, I feel as if my holidays are being put on the shelf and the busy times are rolling out. I always was a bit backwards... But here are some snippets and cut-outs of what I have been scribbling for Plenilune. Enjoy, and happy plum-pudding! (Feel free to offer thoughts on the snippets, but please just eat the pudding.)

excerpts from Plenilune

Her cheeks cooled, still in her soul, Margaret turned at last from the window and sat on the edge of the bed to undress. She could still see a little of the landscape through the window: a pale, ghostly thumbnail of a picture, a gash of far upland cut level and coloured like the impassive face of a diamond. The wind moaned desolately, and seemed to get in through the chinks in her skin and blow about desolately in her soul as well. Down in the dale an owl hooted which, as her fingers fumbled in the weak light of her lamp with her dress, reminded her of the hunt, of the fox, of the fox in Rupert’s cellar. He would be sitting in a light much like this one, alone much like she was, looking out a dark like herself. Was the little red-coated coward thinking of her as she thought of him?

As Margaret stepped into the courtyard and to one side Skander’s courser, a big-boned blue dun with a mind of its own, was being brought out of its stall and was making a fuss about its handler and the presence of a lean yellow dog that had somehow got in. The dog began to bark, the blue dun went up in a twisting rear on its hindquarters—nearly wrenching free of the stableboy’s hand—and there was an enormous flutter of bodies as people ran to put out the fire that was about to blaze up between the horse, the dog, and the boy.

The singsong dog-snarl of the lord’s red clothing trembled through the garden as he came through the lower gateway and passed at a collected trot up the path. She could not get a clear sight of his face for the tree-branches until he was nearly beneath her—his horse seemed to hang a moment in hesitation at the upper gateway—and then she could see as clearly as if they were on level ground face to face what sort of face he had. It was a fleeting moment, one in which he was not on guard for her since he did not see her, and she saw him very nearly perfectly as he was. His hair was thin and pale grey, cropped close, his brows thick but pale grey too; his features were all heavily hung, and yet strangely empty, as if they had been big and full once, but time had sucked the life from them and left them cobweb-bare. Scarred, grey, wrinkled and haggard, but with a cold and ruthless spark in his eyes that would make Rupert look warm and rustic, Margaret thought that if Julius Caesar had lived a long life, he would have looked like this.

The evening was overcast, a delicate plum-colour, open in the west where the sunset made everything orange. Above the west the clouds were pierced, here and there and raggedly, as with a spear, and the sky in the gaps was, not blue, but a purest, brilliant moony-gold as though the Church had left the door to the Kingdom ajar and Heaven's light was flooding through.

King John's Christmas

2011-12-22T09:19:00.005-05:00

I like poetry in a friendly, indifferent sort of way. It can be very pretty, and very well written, and sometimes approach reality better than prose, but I don't usually go out of my way to find it or use it. If it wants to come to me I'm fine with that. But in my indifference I do have a few favourite poets, like Tolkien and Lewis and Kipling, and one fellow (regretfully) best known for a certain Edward Bear, an A.A. Milne - which sounds as if you are looking for an any-day noun and can't quite remember the name of it, and pausing on the article a moment or two before you recollect it: "A...a...Milne! That's right. One of those." One of my favourite poems is a Christmasy poem of his about a certain King John (he's not easy to miss - there was only one), and the historical accuracy of this poem cannot exactly be vouched for (in fact it would be ill-advised to do so), but how can you not love a poem written by a Milne who can write things like "TIDDLEY-POM" and "BUTTERED TOAST"?

King John was not a good man —
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air —
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon...
But no one came to tea.
And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune in the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.

King John was not a good man,
Yet had his hopes and fears.
They’d given him no present now
For years and years and years.
But every year at Christmas,
While minstrels stood about,
Collecting tribute from the young
For all the songs they might have sung,
He stole away upstairs and hung
A hopeful stocking out.

King John was not a good man,
He lived his life aloof;
Alone he thought a message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it
Against the chimney stack:
“TO ALL AND SUNDRY -
NEAR AND FAR -
F. CHRISTMAS IN PARTICULAR.”
And signed it not “Johannes R.”
But very humbly, “JACK.”

“I want some crackers,
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don’t mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball!”

King John was not a good man —
He wrote this message out,
And gat him to his room again,
Descending by the spout.
And all that night he lay there,
A prey to hopes and fears.
“I think that’s him a-coming now,
(Anxiety bedewed his brow.)
“He’ll bring one present, anyhow —
The first I’ve had for years.

“Forget about the crackers,
And forget about the candy;
I’m sure a box of chocolates
Would never come in handy;
I don’t like oranges,
I don’t want nuts,
And I HAVE got a pocket-knife
That almost cuts.
But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red india-rubber ball!”

King John was not a good man —
Next morning when the sun
Rose up to tell a waiting world
That Christmas had begun,
And people seized their stockings,
And opened them with glee,
And crackers, toys and games appeared,
And lips with sticky sweets were smeared,
King John said grimly: “As I feared,
Nothing again for me!”

“I did want crackers,
And I did want candy;
I know a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I do love oranges,
I did want nuts.
I haven’t got a pocket-knife —
Not one that cuts.
And, oh! if Father Christmas had loved me at all,
He would have brought a big, red india-rubber ball!”

King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all...
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!

AND OH, FATHER CHRISTMAS,
MAY BLESSINGS ON YOU FALL
FOR BRINGING HIM A BIG, RED
INDIA-RUBBER BALL!

Ready To Give A Defence

2011-12-19T08:36:00.007-05:00

In my post Are You A Teacher In Israel, And Do Not Know These Things? I dealt with the lack of religion in stories. As I put myself mildly succinctly in the post and feel as if I said pretty much what I meant I'll refrain from summing it up here, as I doubt I could do the summary justice. In the comments on the post Gwyn lamented the difficulty of portraying our faith in her own literature. Her exact words were, "I desperately want to portray the Faith in my novels, but I struggle to balance that thread with the other story lines {i.e. the actual adventure}. It either takes over the whole novel making it into 'just another Christian fiction' with foreseeable outcomes, or it's just a shallow undercurrent that doesn't feel necessary. There has got to be middle ground... somewhere."

I know Gwyn is not alone in this (I struggle at times with this myself), and since the answer is much too big for a simple reply in a comment box, I am making an answer here. Rest assured that I do not flatter myself into thinking my answer will be by any means exhaustive. It won't be. Dear goodness, no, it won't be. But I do hope it will set any of you with this difficulty on the right track.

I find that difficulties and errors in Christian literature usually reflect a deficiency in the collective Christian mind. I will therefore answer this question, not directly, but firstly by addressing the nature of our Faith. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, whose perfect life was accredited to us at the canceling of our debts by his perfect sacrifice so that now not only are we called to be holy, we might be holy. I think I can be pretty confident that we hold that this holiness applies not merely to Sunday worship, but to every day of the week, to every detail of our lives, that we should "do all to the glory of God." We believe the life and righteousness of Jesus, credited to us, permeates every aspect of our very being - our existence - that when we live and move and have our being in him, he is the medium in which we live, like fish in the water.

If I have not painted a broad enough picture with this then I failed. I think you can see, our Faith covers everything. I think you can see, our Faith sinks deep. It is the air our spirits breathe. It is the light that lights our way. It is our compass, it is our walking-stick, it is our hope of home and belonging. I realize that this seems to play into the (perhaps) extreme of weighing a story down with "too much" religion. So we come to the second point.

There is a notion about these days that says the Church's primary purpose is to evangelize. That's what Jesus said, isn't it? "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you..." What people fail to realize is that their notion is blown to pretty bits by this very passage. Yes, of course, evangelism is a vital aspect of the Church. "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?" But what is woefully missing is the training, the discipleship. The Gospel is hurled broad-cast at any ground that falls under the preacher's eye, regardless of whether it is ready for seed or hard as rock. The important, the vital task of entrenching oneself in the midst of a professing people and helping through long years to cultivate good and sound faith, faith that will withstand temptation, tribulation, hardship, and (most fatal) prosperity is not being done enough.

The Church, therefore, is looked at (if it is looked at at all) upside-down. When you go to put your faith in a novel, or when your faith inevitably bleeds through every pore of that novel, you mustn't think that you are immediately required to deliver the Gospel. Not only are not all of us given to be pastors and teachers, but we should (by virtue of common sense) have a care where we place the precious pearls of our Truth, and how we place them. It is not a necessary reflex action to have a redemption scene in every "Christian" work.

What about the danger of the flip-side, the "shallow undercurrent that doesn't feel necessary"? I know Abigail has complained to me about novels she has read that, though they somehow get themselves under the heading of "Christian," only mention God once or twice, and have otherwise no foundation in Christ's righteousness. This is, of course, a bit far. I would call that shallow without even an undercurrent. I would call that a dry gully. Don't worry, Gwyn - I don't believe this is what you are up against. But having wrestled with this trouble myself, I know what you mean. I think this can best be answered by moving from the negative (an erroneous view of the Church) to the positive, which links us back to some of my first comments.

In Peter's first epistle, from which my post title derives, the reader will be impressed with an overall image of courage, stalwart spirit, confidence, meekness, a constancy that this pale reality seems to break up on and fade away from. "...sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence..." The follower of God, far from holding the name of God at arm's length and never mentioning it, far from flailing about with it, striking everyone in range, stands firmly, confidently, assured of the truth of his soul. From the very passage it is clear that people see this behaviour and seek to understand it: the image itself, unmoved and steadfast, speaks volumes alone. And when they ask, the man is ready to give an account of his Faith.

The extremes are flailing and being shy. The "middle ground" is being certain of our own Faith; our characters, too, being certain of their Faith, and living it as a living man might breathe air. The dead, who do not breathe, take note of a man whose lungs are working. It is quite possible that your plot will dictate how heavily the Gospel is laid on the shoulders of the reader, or how distant it may seem from the foreground. If your story is such that your faith is intertwined with it be sure that there is no doubt left in the reader's mind as to your stand. This is not at all to say that the reader will, by all the words you write, be able to understand you fully, and get a full comprehension of God's redemptive work - but he should at least be left with the unshakable impression that you have hope, that you know there is truth in the world, that God is sovereign. He may not believe you, and you may not save him (can we save any man's soul?), but he will know that you believe, of that he will have no doubt.

They said the king’s particular friends were all a bit strange, standing a bit uneasily on the normal turf of the world
as if they didn’t quite belong there.
The Duke

Are You A Teacher In Israel, and Do Not Know These Things?

2011-12-14T09:08:00.005-05:00

...the greatest part
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of Him that made them to transform
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities.
Paradise Lost, John Milton

This is a subject I have thought about nonchalantly for some time, taking it almost for granted with my own writing, until I was jostled by a little lack of information into considering it more seriously in general. Can I get any more vague than that...? The subject is that of religion in literature. I don't mean strictly fantasy, I mean historical fiction too (I consider science fiction to be a fantasy of a sort). The problem, I realized some time ago, is that you very rarely come across any signs, any gestures, any notion of religion in the pages of a book.

You might argue at first that this is because religion as a whole isn't usually the point of a story, and you don't want to muddy the waters, and you don't want to offend people, etc. I would like to respectfully blow both of those notions back where they came from. If you take a good look at human history in an over-arching sense, the way an eagle might look at a landscape, you will discover a wildly colourful but always persistent drive toward worship. Mankind has an inherent need to worship, an almost frantic need to worship. You will find that in every society you study, in every age you choose. Man will build a pantheon before he builds a code of law. It is so basic to his nature, so deeply woven into his psyche, so human that I find the lack of it in literature to be startlingly unrealistic.

So does every story have to be about gods and men, appeasement and atonement? Not always directly, of course not. But when you have a driving way of life, a paradigm that lies closer about a man than his own clothing, don't you think it a bit odd that it so rarely surfaces in stories about mankind? When I read I find two common default religions in stories: in the fantasy the religion of the character is his quest and his devotion to accomplishing it; in historical fiction (rather more accurately) the religion is that of self. But I have to read that back into the text because I'm looking for it. The author probably doesn't realize it at all. So acknowledge it! In The Eagle of the Ninth, which is one of my favourite novels, there is a scene in which Marcus desperately, ardently beseeches his god Mithras to clear the skies so that the smoke-signal can get through. It is pure paganism, and of course I don't agree a whit with the man, but I agree with the author for putting it in there. It would have been ludicrous for Sutcliff to have portrayed her soldier any differently. He was a centurion of the Roman army, a follower of the Persian god Mithras (who had become a favourite among Roman soldiers). It was not only accurate to history, it was accurate to man.

How do you show religion? There was a time not very long ago when religion was the cadence of life. You could not go a week without the community partaking in the heartbeat of it. Longer ago than that, before truth sorted out the muddle of religion, you had sacrifices and feast-days, a regularity and an importance of regularity that bound not only the people to their gods but the people to each other. That is a hard thing to miss and it is not hard to show. In historical fiction it might be as simple as noting the Sabbath hush that falls over a village, in fantasy it can be as subtle as a charm over a door to ward off evil. It need not be right (though I hope you know what right is) but it ought to be accurate, which is a truth itself; and it ought to be there, if only to add another dimension to the story.

My novel The Shadow Things, rather less than subtle, took this bull by the horns. It takes place in a time when religion oppressed, when gods were to be appeased, not loved, and atonement was a word whose definition was not understood; it's grim, it's dark, but it's true. And in retrospect, looking back from the high vantage point of years in a culture levened by Christianity, I as the author and hopefully you as the reader can appreciate what kind of "religious" world the truth was going out into, and working against, and transforming. I might have made the gates of hell a little less grim, a little less resisting, but that would have been untrue. Yes, they gave way in The Shadow Things, but it was a hard and gruesome fight all the same.

However you do it, whether blatantly or subtly, don't forget this important aspect of humanity: he must worship something, and that need is too obvious to ignore even in literature.

“Oh—something!” he ejaculated, too flustered to know exactly what to swear by.

Vintage of Ink: a Good Year

2011-12-12T14:11:00.004-05:00

"A man of ability, for the chief of his reading, should select such works as he feels beyond his own power to have produced."
William G.T. Shedd

It's December, the last month, the twilight of the year (how does that sound to you, Wagner?) - almost a whole year has gone by! I am convinced that time moves faster the older you get. Years did not seem to whirl by so quickly when I was a child. Not that I mind. That's the beauty of being a time-traveller, I suppose...

I've read a lot of books this year: twenty-nine. I should really like to be able to make that an even thirty, but I'm in the middle of The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, which requires pondering, and David Copperfield, which is enormous, so I don't think I will be able to add another book to my list until January. (Goodreads is well enough, I suppose, but if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, so I keep my own list.) I was introduced to Dorothy Sayers and read three of her works, I read The Scarlet Pimpernel twice (only counted it once), I read three new Rosemary Sutcliff books (new to me, anyway: The Shield Ring, Flame-Coloured Taffeta, Knight's Fee), charming new-comers to the book market Heartless and Veiled Rose by Anne Elisabeth Stengl, I read Emma, my second Jane Austen novel (I'm so behind-hand on these things), and a number of essay collections by C.S. Lewis as well as J.R.R. Tolkien's delightful Roverandom. I read some romanish things like The Lays of Ancient Rome (which post of mine seems to have got an enormous number of page-views from Eastern Europe - I'm not sure what is up with that), Everyday Life in Roman and Anglo-Saxon Times, and The Roman Way - stodgy old stuff like that that I enjoy. I read Howl's Moving Castle, which was a hoot and a half, and Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and Manalive, which boggled me immensely.

Lots of oddments of stories, I dare say. But this year was a good year as far as reading and writing went. Many of the books I read, fiction and non-fiction alike, lifted me and challenged me and taught me something new, or inspired something old, kindled or re-kindled thoughts in me all through the year. One of my biggest writing accomplishments was finishing the second draft of my novel Adamantine; another is the beginning of its companion novel Plenilune - and I could not have started it without many of the books I began and finished this year. I have already said before, the need for Plenilune has long been there, but I didn't reach what I call critical mass until this year in September when I finished the novel The Worm Ouroboros. (That book alone could have a whole post to itself.) Then after that came novels I had finished before it, The Shield Ring and Roverandom, Simon, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Perelandra, flocking around me and chittering excitedly like little Pixar minions with Adamantine looming sceptically in the background and Knight's Fee, one of my more recent conquests, proudly aloft over the others, "fair to see and slender as a racehorse." All of them went into the melting pot of my fevered imagination, heated and smelted and boiled down to the mere soupy brightness of the metal that I wanted and - tally ho! - I began writing Plenilune.

If you can find what in the world (take your pick which one) these novels have in common, you are doing better than I. Funny odd thing, isn't it, what all converges to inspire us? For me it has been a good year for convergence.

* * * * *

The fox seemed to deliberate for a few moments, looking away with the lamplight glassy in his eyes, as if to find the right words. His countenance was unusually doleful. "The Overlord," he began at last, slowly, consideringly, "is more than just a man with a title. He is more than a mere strategist or a high judge presiding over quarrels." He looked round at her, light breaking up against and throwing itself off the quicksilver mirror of his eyes. His voice was low and urgent, with a shiningness about it that made Margaret's heart quicken.

"The Overlord is Plenilune itself. He is its heart, he is its soul; he is the dark lodestone that lies at the core of everything."

"A dark lodestone indeed," said Margaret after a brief, heavy quiet, "would Rupert be."

The fox grinned up at her, all his little white teeth showing. "A dark lodestone indeed, which cannot find true north. It is a good joke," he added, his body jigging a little to the quickness of his foxy breathing, "don't you think?"

Plenilune

Joys That Sting

2011-12-05T20:44:00.008-05:00

"This is a certain maxim, that the more we are governed by wisdom, the less we shall be inflamed by passion."
The Religious Tradesman, Richard Steele

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an emotional person. I am rather thin where my skin touches spirit: as a result I feel things rather keenly, often extremely and violently. And, I suppose, that for a writer this is a good thing. In some cases this is not always a good trait, not always giving me a natural bent toward sensibleness, but as a writer it is a useful thing to be: emotional. It is so human of us to feel, to know that we are feeling, even to differentiate between our feelings. Rachel pointed this out, that as writers we have to be acquainted with an enormous spectrum of emotions, and to be proficient in writing them, or else our stories, our characters, fall flat - there is no life in them. As an owner of two cats, having grown up with cats almost my whole life, I know that even animals have range of emotion, if not the self-awareness to know they emote; if I fail to weave emotion into the heart-strings of my characters, they are even less believable than my kitty.

I like writing emotion, myself. Rachel quoted the line "I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions," and I love that, because that is exactly what I feel. Words: the audible, visible manifestations of the language of our souls. I find it a heady business, writing emotion, and feeling all those emotions themselves as I filter my characters out of my finger-tips. And Rachel in her post (do read it!) challenged her readers to write emotion, to not forget that, like any other person, characters exhibit emotion and that a reader will expect to find it. My current novel Plenilune is very emotional, but I thought that, given her challenge, I might pick out emotions and show you what I have done in various and sundry stories to display those feelings. I hope you are much amused, greatly diverted, possibly enlightened, maybe even inspired.

sullen

They did not mean to forget her, she told herself with a tell-tale viciousness. She pulled her knees up and gripped the hard thing that hung at her chest, hoping to find comfort in the good horse-magic. But there was a wind blowing wolf-wise, howling-wise, through the open doorway beyond which all was shifting darkness, and there was no warmth to be had even in the good horse-magic.
The Guttersnipe

anger

“Oh!” cried Margaret, bursting into heedless, furious tears. “Oh, you worthless, p-pitiless, filthy creature! I despise you! I d-d-despise you! I despise you!” Her raging words fell out into sobbing—furious, terrified sobbing. She crumpled into the bed-sheets and sobbed mingled tears and blood; with every hysterical gasp she smelled her own blood, tasted it, felt the cut agony of her own broken lip.
Plenilune

happiness

For a moment purely childish expressions ran across Miss Morgan’s face as she stared at him and his hand, taking in his meaning. He hoped that James was not wrong, and that she did know how to dance after all. But then she seemed to compose herself and, with the perfect demure nod, she placed her hand in his. “I can think of nothing I would enjoy more, Mr. Godshall,” she murmured.
Not Raymond

terror

Like a child in a nightmare, wanting someone to wake him. Paralyzed with fear and pain, Tamsin lay in his bed, covered in sweat, dragging in breath after ragged breath. He still hurt. His limbs were locked, his body did not answer him... Slowly, agonizingly, inch by inch the flesh responded to the will, tingling as if the valves were reopened and he were flushing blood back into the dead extremities. He clawed upward, dragging himself out of the horror of sleep. He sat upright, holding the moonlight in a pool in his lap. He stared at it, trying to sort reality from nightmare; and then an unreasoning fury rose up in him, against the house, against the painted barbarian, against the book and the captain and everything that was not Nim.
my 'Boxen'

sorrow

But she knew, as one might know a thing in a dream, that there would be no going home to his hall now. The grey, heavy face darkened with smoke and blood seemed to draw away from her; a whole world seemed to come between them, as though already he was in the halls of his fathers, sleeping, sleeping until the angels sounded the trumpets from the blue ramparts of heaven. She clenched her eyes shut and let the tears roll down her face onto his, streaking in the grime.
Adamantine

morose

That was the most difficult part. By nature he was of a quiet disposition, but he could not allow the captain to have the floor for long or else the man would have no time to drink. Entering the room, he glanced from the man’s bulk to his sideboard, and winced. That was good brandy: he hated to waste it.
my 'Boxen' again

discomfort

Aidan checked, turning his hawk-nosed face over his shoulder, full in the firelight with a little sharing smile on his face, as if he thought the jest were funny too. But Tate was sure everyone in the hall knew that the jest was not funny to Aidan, and she felt the soft ripple of awkwardness run among them, as a little wind will run among the grasses of the downs.
I'm not sure what this story's name is.

mockery

But as he passed me, he stopped, and I knew then that he had never forgot I was standing there. His gaze met mine, lifted a little for I’m a big fairy, narrowed against the blowing rain. There was that laughter, flaming white, laughing at me out of his eyes.
The Duke

contentment

The fire was going down into a fitful heart of reddish gold, like a ruby caught in a candle. They all took the night in very deeply on their uninhabited rock on the edge of the empire; to Adamant, if felt as though she were lingering in that nowhere-place, that between-time: that place that was like the marshland, like the horizon where earth and sky touched, like the twilights of a day. She was cupped—they were all cupped—in a place that was on the brink of all places, in a time which was no time at all and was the central point upon the face of a clock itself.
Adamantine

fury

Master Lucius' pen stilled a moment. The moment lingered, hanging in the balance, the looks between the Lords of Eryri and Arfon and the young man tangible as the heat of the fire beside him. The hate was throat-catching. Young Epona's nostrils flared and the shadows flickered across her brow as her eyes widened a fraction. The hand on the sword-pommel slowly curled in on itself. Only Ambrosius did not change in his appearance. Master Lucius thought perhaps the stormy grey of his eyes grew faintly white, like the sea, but he could not be sure.
The Guttersnipe

annoyance

“I swear,” he said to anyone who would listen, “that man cannot be got drunk. He’s off already."
more of my 'Boxen'

joy

There is nothing, I thought to myself, so glorious as a high vision of the ocean as the world is descending into twilight. The many facets of amethyst colours, the sound of the wind, the silver, the singing, and the gold all burst upon us as a war-horse going into its last battle, trumpeting scarlet, furious and exultant. I drew in a breath to burst my lungs.
Blue Martlet

I seem proficient in sad or sad-seeming emotions. I'm friendly and bright by nature when you converse with me, but rather the opposite in writing - the emotions in writing can go so deep that, down there (or up there), joys really do sting.

"I love old things. They make me feel sad."
"What's good about sad?"
"It's happy for deep people."

"How Poorly You Have Sketched My Nature!"

2011-12-01T16:16:00.008-05:00

I've been tagged! I didn't realize it at the time. I had to be told. I didn't feel anything. But apparently I have been really, truly tagged, and I'm really, truly flattered. Rachel, from The Inkpen Authoress, realizing the difficulty of engaging lookers-on when writing a story, got it into her head to put together a list of questions for any current works in progress that will help both lookers-on and writers to better be acquainted with their novels. She tagged me, and if I could just warm my fingers enough so I don't fear snapping them off while I type, I'll try to answer these questions. In case there was any confusion, I am doing

Plenilune

“You might call it that,” Rupert said.

1. Who are the main characters?

Main characters, ah, gee… Of course you will have met Margaret Coventry. You haven’t? She’s my main character, a stiff, proper, if feisty young English lady of 1844. Other main characters include Rupert de la Mare, the suitor she does not want and cannot escape; Dammerung, a legendary war-lord who seems to have gone and got himself killed; Skander Rime, a cousin and neighbour; and a cheeky fox. I might add in old Hobden, but he wavers between the lines of first and secondary characters.

2. How did you get the idea for this story?

Get. Get? This one forced its existence upon me and then left me to yank some kind of shape for it out of my mind. As I finished up Adamantine I realized Adamant Firethorne’s cousin needed a story too. I had practically wedged myself into a corner with the need to write the story, only I didn’t have one. I had to make it. As my stories usually come to me in their own spates of inspiration, I’m rather proud at what my genius managed to create on the spur of an hour-long moment. And, too, I had always wanted to write this kind of story but up until that moment I had not found the proper plot in which to put my place. Now I have.

3. What genre is this story?

This is most definitely fantasy. It would be nothing short of fantastic, quite literally, if such events could occur. Alas, these spirits live only in cloven pines—er, books.

4. Describe your book in three thoughts:

Margaret trying to get home and realizing she does not know what or where home is anymore. A duel between two men that becomes a chess game on a living scale. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

5. The bit that describes an obscure piece of real life best:

Everything seemed impossibly long and far away, as though the House, like a dog in its sleep, stretched out in the night and was twice as big again as it ought to be.

6. The funniest line said by a side-character thus far:

“I am heartily sorry to meet you, Miss Coventry.” The fox gave a little sniff and held out a paw, which Margaret came forward and took, feeling very surreal as she did so.

7. Your favourite piece of description:

Overhead was the bulk of earth, dark in its massiveness, the crest of it ablaze with blue light like some enormous frightened cat on All Hallows’ Eve stiffened and hackled in the heavens. And beyond earth’s arched figure, beyond the long rays of light that broke off its back, stair-stepped the stars of heaven: upward and deeper, so that to Margaret, who had not bothered before to look beyond the inner ring of earth, it was like looking into a pool, a deep pool, a high pool, that went on infinitely until the end of time where eternity hung its veil so that little people like herself might not look in and die.

8. Your biggest fear in the writing of this story:

My biggest fear is probably that I won’t be able to capture my main characters to my satisfaction. They are so big and so bold and so important that I feel rather small in their shadows.

9. Last full sentence you wrote:

“In spring, when the Murklestrath is in full spate and the nomadic blood of the Carmarthen is too, then perhaps I go with my lord when my lord goes out to defend our borders.”

10. Favourite character thus far:

Thus far. I like that caveat. Thus far. My favourite character thus far… No, I don’t like this caveat any more. It’s a jostle between the fox, Skander Rime, and—of all people—the secondary figure of Skander’s manservant.

11. What books have been written or have you read that are similar in style and flavour to your novel?

I would like to meet someone who has read a book that hasn’t been written… I don’t read a lot of fantasy, and consequently my fantasies are rather straight-forward save that points here and there and usually their basic premises are impossible. The only books I can think of which I have read that bear similarities in any way to Plenilune are Rosemary Sutcliff’s Knight’s Fee and E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros; but even those don’t help much, as they were only the critical mass which helped me launch into writing Plenilune. Hmph. Inspiration. What a tricky business.

12. If it was destined to become a book on tape, who would you wish to read it?

Oh, boy, this question has never occurred to me before. Possibly Elisabeth Sladen, but since she is dead now I may have to leave this question blank.

It is my understanding that one, once tagged, must tag others. So I had better do that, hadn't I?

Anna from Insanity Comes Naturally
Megan from Poetry of Lost Things
Mirriam from Thoughts of a Shieldmaiden

Skander pulled on the front of his tunic. “A pretty trick,” he sniffed wryly.

Lies of Poets, Child, Lies of Poets

2011-11-28T20:33:00.007-05:00

I like fairy tales. I like hero stories. I like them because, as G.K. Chesterton points out, they teach us something about reality. It teaches us that good and evil exist, really and truly, and that good can conquer evil, really and truly. Fairy tales are a tell-tale hymn of hope back of all our imaginations. We believe in the hero at high noon, we believe in the champion standing in the gap. We believe in dark nights giving way to bright dawns because everywhere we look the blueprint of such a story is staring us in the face.

I like fairy tales and hero stories, but when I write them I learn something. It's hard to write the hero. It's hard to write the fairy. I know. My hero, my fairy, they have to be looked at from the outside because what goes on inside them is so inscrutable. But is it? Is it really impossible for us to look inside?

I hear boys talk of the army and war like it's a grand thing. I hear people talk of police work like it's glory. And something inside of me aches when I hear their words because I know the hero, I know the fairy. I've written them. I've walked with them. I've stared in their eyes and seen the haunted looks, the half-conscious bitterness about their smiles. It isn't glory. It isn't grand. It's hard. Everything depends on the hero, the fate of the day hangs in the hands of the fairy, and that weighs. It isn't all backlight and modeling snapshots. It's hard. It's real.

From a distance we see them uplifted like some kind of pantheon, perfect, capable of taking anything on and winning the day. They always look strong. They never cry. We're not even sure if they can bleed. They seem to pass through the midst of this world without anything seeming to brush them. But if you get close, if you look into their eyes, you realize that isn't true. We write about the glory of a hero's victory and the courage of the fairy, but do we ever write about the pain? Do we ever write about the weight of responsibility, of the fear, of the heartache? Do we write those moments when despair gets its claws into the hero's heart and presses on his lungs like Apollyon's knee? Do we ever write about those moments when it is almost all the hero can do not to run and hide and cry like a child because everything depends on him, and because everything seems so impossible?

It's hard to write that kind of thing. It's almost indecent to bare someone's heart like that, even though it is just a character. But sometimes we need to know. Sometimes we need to hear that a hero believes, only he needs help in his unbelief. Sometimes we need to know that Jesus wept. Sometimes we need to know that life hurts the heroes too. We need to know that victory comes at a cost, and that cost leaves scars. Sometimes the struggle isn't for a world, or a people; sometimes it is for a family, for a single day, for the day after that, and the day after that. I know heroes, heroes that aren't made of ink but of flesh and blood, and they do bleed, and they do cry, and they hide it all away behind their faces that seem to be untouched by the winds of this world. But I know. I know they have heartache. I know they break and tear and unravel in their insides while they try to hold their world together around them. I know my heroes hurt, and somehow...somehow that makes them better heroes than before.

Do we know that? Being a hero isn't glory, it's guts. Being a hero isn't triumph, it's toil. Being a hero is hurting, being a hero is dying. It's written in the blueprint of the fairy tale, of the hero story, if only we look deep enough to see it. And after that we can remember that it is glory and triumph and healing and living, because that is written in the blueprint too.

truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone
but if it dies, it bears much fruit

Salt and Pepper Words: Scribble Samples

2011-11-21T15:12:00.004-05:00

I'm a little dazed. We had our annual Thanksgiving dinner with the church family yesterday, and my husband and I signed up to tackle a turkey. Which means we didn't get any rest on Sunday. So I'm a little dazed. Today is technically laundry day, which means doing laundry, but so far I have managed only to wrap some Christmas presents and read in The Reformers and Their Stepchildren. Add a nap to that, and I have not had a very productive Monday, but since I missed Sunday's rest and I have elbow-room to take Monday off(ish), I'm going to think nothing of it.

So I'm going to take this opportunity to give you a peppering dosage of what I have been up to and what I have been writing, and what I have written. As Katie said about her own dosage (and she my inspiration), "they're Something, at least - and that is a good sight better than nothing."

scribbles at a glance

The second in command stiffened by his commanding officer. The wind kicked the commander's plume to one side, streaming it out like the tail of a horse in full gallop. Rhodri was silent. A sound, an irregular clink and rattle, drew Adamant's gaze upward. Over the central building flew the flag of Faerie: a great red banner, tattered at the edges, but still blood-red, with a black, hollow-eyed raven rampant on the crimson. The metal weight of its sheet was swaying in the wind and banging an uneven tattoo against its pole. They must listen, she thought. Then, I am so hungry.
Adamantine

He shook his head, and her words seemed to have only driven him farther away than ever. "It is uncommon grace that Eikin needs, and God has not given me any sort."
Adamantine

Rupert’s image was all sleepy power and there was a light laugh in his voice when he replied. “I know full well where I stand in your heart, Skander. Did you not throw down this obstacle of a wife in front of me because of it? But though you may dislike me, take me not for a blackguard.”

“I’ll take you as you are,” said Skander coldly.
Plenilune

Behind them on the sidewise-blowing wind came the sound of Skander’s hunter and the two dogs coming back to them; with them on the wind came the thin, high scent of late-blooming heather. Down there in that garth that two years ago and for three years had been Rupert de la Mare’s Manor, thought Margaret with a sudden and inexplicable touch of sadness, they would be making perry out of the little brown half-rotten pears of the little brown half-wild pear trees.
Plenilune

“How poorly you have sketched my nature!” she said with a flippant and caustic tone. “I have no objection to balls and parties. What is the point of shining if there is no sky to shine in?”
Plenilune

He appeared that morning, not in grim costume to reflect the fate of Plenilune laid out on the blade of a sword, but in a jacket of sparkling white, pristine, supple, comfortable, and stitched with bravado.
Plenilune

and lastly, a quote which is not mine

Christians are not distinct from the rest of men in country or language or customs. For neither do they dwell anywhere in special cities of their own nor do they use a different language, nor practice a conspicuous manner of life. . . But dwelling as they do in Hellenic and in barbaric cities, as each man's lot is, and following the customs of the country in dress and food and the rest of life, the manner of conduct which they display is wonderful and confessedly beyond belief. They inhabit their own fatherland, but as sojourners; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is to them a fatherland and every fatherland is foreign.
The Epistle to Diognetus

Like a Merchant Seeking Pearls

2011-11-14T08:42:00.004-05:00

Noble and well-educated souls have no such high opinion of riches, beauty, strength, and other such like advantages, as to value themselves for them, or despise those that want them: and as for inward worth and real goodness, the sense they have of the divine perfections makes them think very meanly of any thing they have hitherto attained, and be still endeavouring to surmount themselves, and make nearer approaches to those infinite excellencies which they admire.

The Life of God in the Soul of Man,
Henry Scougal

I came to this particular passage rather providentially in my reading of The Life of God in the Soul of Man. Henry Scougal puts it as eloquently as Paul puts it bluntly: that all our temporal achievements, whether physical or intellectual, are passing, shallow, thin, and unworthy of praise when compared to the solid perfection of God. I think any one of us would readily, and heartily, admit to that, and I think any one of us would also admit to the infrequency with which we acknowledge the inferiority of our conquests.

Because I am published, and plan to be published again, I will occasionally look around publishing house websites to get an idea of who the authors are out there, what is going in the market, etc. Not that I have been much in the habit of catering to crowds, but I like to know, you know. But as I was perusing a site the other day, a site geared exclusively to publishing works under the heading of "Christian," I discovered something rather appalling and sadly common. As I read the author biography blurbs, who they are, where they came from, what they do, I realized that only one mentioned God. Only one mentioned God in a capacity of singular devotion. Only one author's blurb addressed his purpose as unveiling the Word of God. All the others were full of credentials (he studied here, he has preached to so many people, she runs this organization, she is a founder of this group). Each one so full of man-oriented, inferior conquests.

I could understand, and I would readily forgive, this if it were found on a secular website, or a publishing house that went both ways, "secular" as well as "Christian." But for a site that so ardently sketches itself out as catering to the Christian public, my poor little gullible mind could scarcely believe it. The characters on the screen spelled out the marketing mantras of this world. The credentials of these authors were all about their worldly aspirations and achievements.

Let's not down-play the good of some of these achievements. It's a good thing to have gone through the structure of seminary training, or to have the rigors of fostering a congregation under one's belt. But when it comes to speaking and writing the truth (which is, I assume, what writers who adhere to Christ mean to do) do these credentials hold a candle to a knowledge of the inward worth and real goodness of the divine perfections? Tell me, what really matters in the Kingdom of Heaven? Wealth? Eloquence? The best training seminaries have to offer? When you are called to give an account for the deeds done in the flesh, will you find that you hung out your shingle on the basis of your worldly triumphs ("Lord! Lord! we did all these things in your name!"), or will you find that your credentials were in accordance with the pursuit of holiness?

My father tells the story of his sojourn, like Dante in The Inferno, into a Christian bookstore. In his perusal of the shelves he heard two gentlemen speaking behind him. The first asked how he would know a good book, and the second replied, "Look for this symbol." As my father tells the story he says, "Of course at that point I had to turn around." It was the colophon of the publishing house Banner of Truth, an image of the preacher George Whitfield. In such a simple image, stalwart and be-robed, the publishing house conveys a grim, joyful adherence not to large congregations or stellar education, but to men through the ages who have clung to the truth of God's word above all else. Those are their credentials. That is their eloquence. That is their wealth. Not any station this world has to offer, but the lasting knowledge and growth in knowledge of a truth which outlasts all.

When I am asked "What makes you think that you can write?" I hope my credentials are simply that:

"I know what is valuable in the Kingdom of Heaven."

Completely Mental

2011-11-07T16:43:00.012-05:00

For Anna - because, well, she can dance.

The music was Mozart and, though instrumental, was far too fast. I resisted the urge to get up and pace, an urge I have found to plague me strongly in the past few hours. It was really pathetic, I told myself, how worked up I was getting about something so simple. It wasn't as if there was anyone about to laugh at me. The things one does, I told myself, for research!

"Ahem."

My heart froze in my chest. Irreproachably dressed, as if this were serious, he stood in the doorway, leaning a little on the frame to get the most of his weight off his legs. Good-naturedly he had protested the endeavour at first - the advancing cold made him ache - but I had been stupidly persistent and in the end he had given in. I wished now I had not been so forward.

I frowned. "You didn't tell me you were getting all dressed up for this," I said with a touch of irritation in my tone. "I can't possibly stand up in my jeans with you."

"I reserve my views on jeans," he said ominously. Then, with a little sideways twist of the shoulders, he added, "Your hair went up so nicely this morning, I thought it a shame to have you wrestle into your gown. I know you get so very mithered about that. Now, are you serious or aren't you?"

"I - hmm," I said intelligently, and kept my seat.

He held out his left hand imperiously. "Come along, Half-pint."

He had the way about him. I found it impossible to refuse. With a prodigious sigh I rose, my heart still uncomfortably where my throat should be; in three steps I was across the room. A moment later, with my eyes shut as though I were expecting it to sting a little - maybe I did - I put my hand in his. When he made no move, I cracked one eye open. That light, mocking smile of his that had more to do with his eyes than his mouth was flashing at me. "Honestly."

I pulled myself together. "Should I put on shoes for this?"

"I will try not to step on your toes."

Hand in hand, he led me into the next room where there was more area to move about. Pathetically I was shaking a little, from embarrassment and excitement. In reflection, I thought it perfect. She would be feeling much the same feelings herself, under her own circumstances. Thus far, research was going well.

If only I had thought to put on a gown.

My companion took his position and wrestled me gently into my own. The music from the other room was faint now; I only heard little snatches of it. For a moment the sheer, stark reality of the room jostled with my imagination: sofas refused to give way to polished mahogany tables and a piano; the carpet refused to give way to a polished ballroom floor. With grim determination I took a heavy intake of breath and conjured them up for all I was worth, afraid all the while that even the slightest movement of mine would shatter them.

My companion maneuvered my hand onto his arm and took a firm but gentle hold of me. We were ready. I felt him pause, as if listening to the beat in his own head. I kept my eyes fixed on his as if I were grasping a life-line. He counted silently, then suddenly broke off with a splutter, which was very unlike him.

"You look like a cornered rabbit. Relax. I can't dance across from a face like that. Just relax. Think of your feet making patterns in ink, the way your fingers do. With me, now."

And suddenly we were moving. I was half a heartbeat behind him, which made for an awkward beginning. He stepped forward - which foot was mine? - and I stepped backward just as he was gliding to the side. Hurriedly I caught up with him, still as stiff as a poker, my eyes instantly glued on our feet. I began to worry now that he would step on my feet. Unexpectedly he pulled me forward, to the side again, and even turned about in step. I always seemed that half-heartbeat behind; my stomach was beginning to knot.

"Look at me," he said. With a painful hesitation I tore my eyes from our feet. My gaze trembled on his own. "Look at me. Dancing to ink, Half-pint. This is what you do every day. It's just like that. Look at me. Let me guide you."

He was wearing his gloves, his black doeskin gloves, and for that I was thankful; my hands were growing rather sweaty with all this strain. But I cared. Hadn't I told Uncle Raymond that once? If I cared, I stuck to it. For all I felt like an idiot, I was going to stick to it. Obediently I kept my eyes on his, moved when he moved, stiffly, stupidly, my heart in my throat...and then I felt it. It was beginning to flow. Over and over, backward and forward, gliding and turning, backward and forward, gliding and turning. Like Ben-Hur and his horses, altogether one with the lives of themselves flowing in the reins, he and I somehow managed to grasp the genius of the dance. A smile cracked my pensive lips. Dancing to ink, he had said: patterns of ink. Oh, the sofas were gone. The carpet vanished. I was in a Lookinglass ballroom, in a gorgeous red gown, and everywhere there were lights and laughter and the clinking of glass on glass - and perhaps even, if I listened hard (though I did not have much leisure to), the accompaniment of music. I knew, in that annoying back part of my mind which had a way of hem-hemming reality at my elbow, that I was dancing truly horribly in a rather small enclosure, but somehow that did not matter at all. I had ink in my veins. I could feel it rushing through with the beat of my heart.

Dancing to ink. Patterns in ink.

Just at the right moment he stopped, giving me one last turn while the realness of the carpet flashed hot-red into my bare feet, and we stood apart, panting a little. The tables and glass and music were gone. It was just the living room now, oddly bleak after the colour of my imagination. But even now that did not matter either.

My companion gave a little philosophical sniff and pulled at the hem of his coat, adjusting it back into position. "Well, amphibious girl," he asked, "was the research satisfactory?"

"Yes," I gasped, hands on knees. "I think I have the pattern for the scene now. What I do for my stories! I'm completely mental."

"Don't flatter yourself." He wilted gracefully into a chair and leaned his head back against the wall. "We knew that already."

"Ppthbt," I said childishly.

Spacers Between Kingdom Tiles

2011-11-01T21:42:00.006-04:00

A little over a week ago Megan, on a Sunday's whim, scribbled down a few of the small, fleeting things that are the delicate pattern of beauty in her life. Little things: little things that somehow matter. Indi, the main character of my published work The Shadow Things, reflects on the problem of the little things:

"Surely there is something that brings the rain and the dry," he said to a little ant toiling by his foot. "Look, even you find food to eat. Who watches over you? Surely not the gods. They are almost too busy and unfeeling to care for us, and when they touch us, it is to kill us."

Who cares about the little things? Who makes the little things that are the exquisite backdrop of our lives? God does, whose power keeps the paradox of the atom from flying all to pieces, whose finger inscribes the invisible lines between the stars. God does, and Megan took the time on a Sunday's whim to chart out some of the little things in her life. It was a treat to read, as I am sure it was a treat to write; she invited others to scribble down a list of their own little things as well. I thought...well, perhaps I might.

Perhaps I might. I felt uneasy, as though I were borrowing her thunder. But I kept thinking about it, dutiful, ever anxious to enjoy myself since I thought this would be an enjoyable exercise of the mind. And then a strange revelation broke slowly over me. Do you remember, as a child, how large everything seemed to you? A single turkey seemed to me a positive ostrich, towering and grotesque, intent on running me off the dirty tract of farm and pecking my hair out. Dogs were like ponies. Ponies were like elephants (I remember the horrified twist in my gut when I was made to trot in my first horse-back riding lesson). When you are a child, everything breaks on your vision as enormous.

And it still does that to me.

I almost hate to do this exercise because it will peel back all my cool, demure layers (which really are a part of me) and get down to that inner core where, let's face it, I'm still just a child. Andrew Peterson sings about the window in the world: have you ever wondered what the window itself feels? Maybe like being run through, run through and broken up on and rattled and overwhelmed and at the same time trying to channel all that goodness... I look at autumn like a man newly stepped onto an undiscovered planet. Every autumn. Every autumn a new planet. Nothing is little. Every cup of tea is a fresh cup of amber. Everything is like living stained glass through which the genius of Christ's light is shining around me. Nothing is little. So how do I remember the little things? Every sharp detail, every piece of mosaic, every thread I can pinch between my fingers that is woven into my life, is enormous. I'm such a child. Here are some of my enormous little things.

catching a fresh breeze in my face
the Kingdom
seeing the sunset rays streaming over the clouds
my sister telling me "I love you" when I am upset
the hello-goodbye kisses from my mother and father
my husband kissing my hand, or ruffling my hair
writing a passage so that it rings true
discovering the narratives of the Scriptures coming to life before my mind's eye
my father's teaching
holding a conversation in quotes from books and movies with my family
my mother's cooking
my sister-in-law's desserts
wearing my husband's sweaters
finding letters in the mailbox from my friends
Uncle Raymond laughing at me
the worlds inside my head - fells and dales, downs, river valleys, seashores, farms and quiet streets...
Rhodri
candle-flame
the colour of a blue jay's coat
the autumn cry of Canadian geese
the little red light that lives far down in a glass of wine
the surf-sound of the wind in the trees
the giddiness and sudden seriousness of the Tenth Doctor
the sound of waves falling, lulling me to sleep
Sunday
going to cut down and put up my parents' Christmas tree
apple-picking
when only my husband 'gets' what I mean (fiery horses)
the pile of coats on my parent's coat-rack Saturday evenings when we all visit
feeling the living throb of my church through my spirit
opening Christmas presents with my throwing-knife
lying awake Christmas morning, as much a child as ever with excitement
seeing a constellation I know
smelling woodsmoke
Wednesday afternoon walks
my morning cup of tea

These are the colours and brush-strokes that make up my world.

Dramatis Personae - Plenilune

2011-10-31T15:45:00.021-04:00

Dear jolly goodness, it's been awhile since I've done anything like this. I'm not sure what prompted me to resurrect this little exercise of madness, save that I have been having trouble "seeing" one of my characters. The wretched bloke is positively slippery - like a fish. I say I only want to dissect his character and get a better look at him, but he remains unconvinced, and squirts out of my grasp almost before I have closed it on him. Honestly. It's as bad as Peter Pan and his shadow.

All right, all right. I don't own any of these pictures except - nope, I don't own any of these pictures, but I do own the characters. Very wibbly wobbly. Anyway, enjoy the creative endeavours of a girl overdosed on sea-salt and cracked-pepper chips. Cheers!

Avaunt, sire, avaunt!

Margaret Coventry

The main character of Plenilune. English, twenty, too reserved to be pretty and too pretty to be left alone, Margaret steps onto the scene as the dutiful if unwilling victim of her mother's insistent attempts to make her marry and marry well. She has very little faith in her skills at procuring a husband, she has every intention, all the same, of doing so - partly to spite her own mother. What she had not expected was that a suitor has already had his eye on her for some time and, under the very nose of a rainstorm, without family or friends ever knowing, whisks Margaret clean away to woo her with an iron hand occasionally hid inside a velvet glove. Stubborn, English, proud to her core, Margaret resists with all the will she has and seeks to return home. Even less expectant is the discovery that she has no real home at all.

Rupert de la Mare

Every inch and more a match for Margaret's demure stubbornness, Rupert meets her with chilly gallantry, chipping away at her defenses by the sheer impact of his presence, sudden kindness, and equally as sudden ferocity. He has no little plans for the future of his Honor; his temperament and station allow him ample ambition. Unfortunately his temperament is one that rubs people's fur all wrong, and his cousin, in a desperate bid to stop his head-long career for power, lays him a wager which, if he cannot win, he cannot hold power. Smarting from the insolence, and remembering with a grudge his cousin's move, Rupert nevertheless undertakes to win the wager.

Skander Rime

Skander is a sharp if rather young lord, holding the Honour of Capys from his seat in Lookinglass. His ready wit and gentle, amiable demeanour belie a taste for hunting and war. Though friendly he is not particularly sociable, and after his first distrustful encounter with Margaret he finds a kindred sort of spirit in her coy but stalwart personality. Though he is not sure she feels any sort of friendship in return, he feels sorry for her and sticks his neck out for her, trying to dissuade Rupert from his course - earning him only a deeper enmity with the young lord of Marenové. With the future of Plenilune appearing more and more uncertain on the horizon, Skander feels caught in the middle, concerned for Margaret's welfare and at the same time loathe to spark strife with so powerful an Honour as Marenové.

Dammerung

He was nicknamed War-wolf at a young age for his natural skill in war, his flippant, almost thoughtless ability to see and deliver a crushing martial blow, and his propensity for stalking, with a mirthless sort of cheer, through the ranks of everyone and everything as if only he were material, and everything else but mist. Though counted by age among the young bucks of Plenilune he stands by his own consent and the common consent of the other lords at the head of them all, a living sort of legend-figure with the shadow of death following after him.

The Fox

The fox is a diminutive character, but armed with immense cheek and irreverence. He styles himself as Rupert's ex-jester, though, contrarily, he makes more fun of himself than of his grim master. Being a creature as much chained as she, among all Margaret's acquaintances the fox understands her best and makes himself her closest friend. He is twice as protective of Margaret as Skander Rime, but significantly less capable of doing anything about it, which irritates him extremely. Cheeky, irreverent, dashing (and knowing that he is dashing) he does his best to keep up Margaret's spirits until such time as they can find a way to save her.

* * * * *

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list, but here are the pivotal characters, at the very least, with all their thinly-sketched portraits of personality and two-dimensional analysis covered in little crumbs of chips and tasting unusually strongly of salt. I am proud to say I did not waste time at this exercise, as my novel boasts of an additional near-two-thousand words, which is all I meant to write today. I even got a nap in. Not bad.

Le douce, mon amy, le douce.

The Regime

2011-10-28T08:34:00.005-04:00

"Furthermore, I think that Carthage must be destroyed."
Cato the Elder

I have a horrible memory. Everything blurs together after awhile when your mind is travelling at breakneck speed through half a dozen time periods and as many stories at once... I'm sure you know the feeling. It must have been somewhere between watching the Harry Potter films and some of the recent Marvel productions (real high-brow entertainment, I know, I know) when it dawned on me the wastefulness of these villains. If you insist on barking "Avada Kedavra" left and right, or smashing up whole sections of a town (and the people in the town), when the day is over...who will be left for you to rule over? It suddenly seemed stupid. If you kill a whole people you won't have a people to rule over - and isn't that what you want? Power, recognition, control, fame, the heights of worldly aspirations? But when chanticleer has killed all the other roosters with his spurs, there is no one to applaud him when he stands on the top of the dung-heap. There seemed to be no good point in killing so many people. Even such magnificent works as The Lord of the Rings bothered me with this apparent lack of purpose.

Puzzled, bewildered, I put the question to my husband. Now, my husband can bluff like the devil and I can be as gullible as a child who was born yesterday. I complained that it made sense to decimate a conquered people to teach them who was boss, but you didn't just wholesale slaughter them unless they had proven really stiff-necked (see Cato). He told me this was because these recent stories are built off the Nazi regime and the fixation, not just on world domination (that's an old one) but on the wholesale slaughter of otherwise innocent people groups.

Let's not kid ourselves. Politics until a fairly recent era has always been full of back-stabbing, double-crossing, cloaks and daggers, smoke and mirrors. Politics still has all that, but in our country, at the very least, you are unlikely to find an appointed member of government communally stabbed to death beneath a statue of one of our founding patrons. But what about politics on an economic and inter-provincial scale? We are going to assume that the reason for invasion of a people is for conquest, not for an escape from a depleted farmland or displacement by other moving peoples. We are going to assume that the sword is being used to gain greater power for the hand that wields it.

In general, if I were to invade a people in a large, lush river valley, do you think it would be expedient for me to slaughter them all because, well, they aren't of my people and I want the land for myself? It might be. I might wipe them out and plant my own soldiers there. But I need my soldiers and they aren't time-expired from the army yet, so what do I do? Leave a contingent to hold the peace and let the natives continue farming, harvesting, breeding and slaughtering, and make them pay with the fruit of their land (my land) as tribute. Ta da! National income.

I'm addressing this to fantasy writers because historical fiction often has a lot of parameters laid out already. When you make a villain, and you want to go on the war-path, you have to ask yourself: "Why? And how?" Is this for world domination and rule, or a psychopath's need to kill everything that doesn't say "Yes, sir"? (These are not always mutually exclusive.) Does your villain have a god-complex, or an ego the size of Anatolia, which makes him think that he is the best thing that has ever happened to his country and that he, and he alone, will bring it ultimate glory? Remember, it is unlikely that anyone will act passionately thinking that what he is doing is wrong. I am not going to kill Caesar thinking that killing Caesar will damage the Republic. I am going to kill Caesar because I believe in my heart of hearts that Caesar is a menace to the Republic and that he must be put away. (I might do it for money, though.) I'm not going to secede because I want to break up the Union, I'm going to secede because I think the Union is unfair and oppressive. I'm not going to hunt down and kill the Scarlet Pimpernel because I hate Englishmen, I'm going to hunt down and kill the Scarlet Pimpernel because I believe the aristocracy is a plague upon France (and because I'm French and I've always hated the English). I may be dead wrong, but by golly I'm going to think I'm right. So half the trouble is making your villain reasonable, making him more than a mere power-hungry killing machine, making him more than the poster-child of the Regime. Villains are more than people out to kill everyone else.

Rationality, purpose, a political and economic arena. The regime that stories like The Lord of the Rings were inspired by wielded the sword with purpose too, and it had a reason for what it was doing, a reason it thought was right. But we have to go back and make our reasons in our stories; we can't just hang our stories upon the horror of a massive steam-rolling villain trundling across the landscape, leaving needless and brainless desolation in its wake. And the stronger the validity of the villain's reason, the stronger the villain himself. He may be wrong, he may be unjust, he may be completely blinded by his false ideals, but at least he is more than a marching killing machine. If he wants to be king, he needs people to rule; if he wants his way, he must fight with ideas. He can be a complete devil, but even the devil knows how to be cunning.

" 'Bout fifty percent of the human race is middle man, and they don't take kindly to being eliminated."

I Would Sooner Summons Pan

2011-10-25T16:40:00.004-04:00

as I walked out one evening
to breathe the air and soothe my mind
I thought of friends and the home I had
and all those things I left behind
a silent star shone on me
my eyes saw a far horizon
as if to pierce this veil of time
and escape this earthly prison
fernando ortega

Never fear! I haven't forgot Ask Jeeves. You all just have a devil of a knack for asking questions that take some conniving to answer. For a while I wasn't sure I was going to be able to answer this particular question adequately without giving too much away, or boring you to tears, or confusing you so that you rip out your hair. I like to think I hold that kind of power over people, but I wouldn't want you to be bald.

Gwyn: are you planning on posting any excerpts in the near-ish future?

"Near-ish" is open to interpretation. I would say "I call all times soon," but I am perhaps the most impatient person of my acquaintance with the exception of my two-year-old nephew, and even then I think I give him a run for his money sometimes. But near-ish or far-away, the day has come at last, the opportunity has come at last, for me to present the house with an excerpt from my novel Plenilune. By all means (legal), do enjoy!

* * * * *

It was her first clear day in almost a week. There was no time to dawdle. She put on a frock of fawn-coloured corduroy and stepped out of doors, following the sound of the slow, incessant chopping.

It surprised her how very much old Hobden looked just as she had left him. His bent, wrinkled, nut-brown body was encased in the same cotton shirt, the same tattered leather vest, the same corduroy trousers and boots. He made the same soft, irritated grumbles as he always did. For no reason she could explain, she thought he ought to have changed; for no reason she could explain, she was glad he had not.

“Good morning,” she said graciously, finding a seat on a giant block of wood. Her fingers dug into the hard, sun-warmed bark and she felt the rough rings of the tree’s heart under her palms. In this little southern corner of the House the sun of late autumn, the sun of early morning, dreamed of being warm.

With a slow, circular, ambling movement Hobden swung the axe down and away and gave a little salute, tugging with thumb and forefinger on his forward tuft of hair. “G’moornin’,” he rejoined in that rich, raspy, walnut tone of his. He squinted northward and added, “Mus Rupert’s gone away for the day, hmm?”

Margaret nodded.

Hobden turned away and fumbled with his handle on the axe-haft, grumbling under his breath like a badger all the while. “ ‘Tain’t for me to say, but I knowed Marenové took a breath of relief when ‘e passed beyond t’intake.”

“Marenové and I both,” murmured Margaret, with her head turned away so that Hobden would not hear.

Old walnut Hobden went back to his work, swinging slowly away at the wood while the wood fell away beneath his blows, sheering off in even twos so that he was presently surrounded by so many large split almond-looking pieces of wood. He did not seem to tire, but went on with all the steadiness of an engine. Margaret watched him absentmindedly for some time, wrapped up in her tartan against the November chill; but presently, as he showed no signs of stopping, she began to grow tired of the monotony and she got up, skirting him carefully, and began to wander along the southward arm of the home-meads which were less cultivated and bore the stamp of the wild encroaching fells more clearly than the other gardens did.

Broom and furze, whose flowers had long since fallen, and bramble, whose berries had long since been picked, made a kind of wild hedge at the end of the low slope that took and channelled the little stream. It seemed to be the very oldest piece of garden of all; there was no foot-bridge over the stream, which Margaret would have expected to find elsewhere on the grounds, but a mere loose collection of flat stones rising out of the stream-bed. She took the stones without another thought, crossed a bit of grassy, unkempt soft turf that might have been a flower-plot once, and squeezed gingerly through the thorny gap in the intake hedge.

After that there was a thin, short wood of alder that did its best to sink its roots into the stream. She climbed through it and out, with the suddenness of stepping from one world into another, upon the tawny shoulder of the fell. The wind was all around her as it had not been in the low hollow of the House grounds; it boomed and galloped, thundering, brushing, lunging and kicking like a stampede of horses round her shoulders. It was a golden wind, golden and bronze like the wings of an eagle and the bright colour of it swelled around her with a potency like water. She moved through it, borne and buffeted by it, with the House falling away behind her like a bad dream.

A narrow goat-path, a mere thrush-coloured thread in the tawny turf, stretched upward before her, skirting the steep side of the fell, but always stretching upward, upward and around and out of sight behind the distant shoulder of the fell. There was no question of following it. Without a thought she struck out on it, climbing upward with the swell of the air all around her. It became a bother to wrestle her wrap around her shoulders and she let it go, holding onto it with only one hand, so that it flew out before her like a multicoloured banner of primitive war, fierce, free, its snapping and billowing the very laughter of its genius. She felt it stirring something in her blood.

After a quarter-hour of walking the wind had slackened into a soft constant rush and she paused on the goat-path to look back. She had come far and high; Marenové House lay below her, the view of it unobstructed by trees—if she strained she could just make out the tiny toy-figure of Hobden still at work. If she was very careful, if she stood perfectly still, with one hand up to shove her wayward hair out of her eyes, she could almost imagine she was not wearing Rupert’s collar and leash.

It was a cruel trick, she thought, to be trapped in a land that seemed so high and wild and free.

With prim deliberation she gathered up her wrap and skirts and continued on. She rounded the swell of the hillside and found herself above a flock of sheep, quite a large flock, overseen by two squat calico dogs. They ranged all down the slope and into the finger of a green stream valley. To Margaret, walking along to the tune of their thin bell-notes, they looked like a spray of blackthorn blossom flung across the fell’s slope. Quaint and picturesque, pastoral, uninhibited by the torments and cares of the young woman poised above them, they went on grazing—and would go on grazing, she thought with a pang of strange longing, time out of mind, as they had always done, no matter who sat at Marenové House.

And suddenly from somewhere high in the folds of the fell’s flank, high up above the flock of sheep that was like the blowy white blossom-fleece of a blackthorn, high and clear there came to Margaret at that moment of consideration the sound of a panpipe playing. The sound stopped her in her tracks, frozen like a bird, and she listened to that sound as she had never listened to a sound before; and it seemed to her, as she listened, to be the very calling of a soul. It spoke across the dale, silver and thin, but full-bodied like wine; a pianoforte and its notes, a harp and its notes, were all separate things, but to Margaret the panpipe and its song were a living and eerie one.

Just as quickly as the song had come to her she ached as she had not let herself ache in weeks. It was not for home, it was not for her family. She did not know what it was for. She only knew that she had to turn and get away from that free, melancholy voice among the fells—which was the very voice of the fells themselves—before it crushed her.

plenilune, jennifer freitag

I'm running out of questions. Some of them are still in the queue, and I'm not ignoring them, but I'm still thinking about them. I would love to continue answering questions so if you have anymore, don't hesitate to post them! Otherwise I'll just keep trucking. Thank you for the fun!

Behynd the Name

2011-10-24T09:14:00.004-04:00

My neck is thinnish. Not Audrey Hepburn thin, thank goodness, but a bit on the delicate, feminine side. Yes, it wouldn't take anything to chop my head off, I dare say. And I'm sticking it out there alongside Katie's in the matter of fantasy. She had a real bang-up post on the topic the other day that I couldn't help agreeing with, amending (or clarifying) her statement of "I don't really like fantasy" by saying "I don't like fantasy that is cliche, overdone, overbaked, overwrought, unimaginative..." It was a good post; you should read it. And I heartily agree with her, though I'm sure one could make the same assessment of just about any genre out there. There is the mighty mass of bad, and there are the good few.

But we know this sort of thing! We're good, educated, literatured citizens, some of us positive bibliophibians. We're trained to sniff out the good from the bad. I was happy to leave Katie's post and trundle on, whistling a happy tune, content that a fellow writer had struck a blow in favour of decent reading and writing.

And then I tripped on it. Walking across the blogosphere, I went and put my foot in it, and nearly my face, and after a brief and horrified stare at what I saw I felt the resolve harden in me. Something had to be done. No one had said anything yet. Something had to be done. I sailed into the living room, yardstick in hand doubling as a walking-stick that was very elegant in my own mind, arrested my poor unsuspecting husband, and told him in no uncertain terms (save that the fury in my head was tangling my tongue up) that some thing had to be done! My poor husband, taking me in stride as always, absolutely the best ever, laughed at me in a way that I took to be encouraging and my mind was made up. For better or for worse, for axe and for block, for liberty and the right to name characters, I was going to speak up.

It's the Y.

Have you noticed? Have you seen it? It's a cad, it really is, sneaking into one's fantasy, worming its way into the names of your characters, displacing otherwise law-abiding i's, all the while assuring you that it is making your character's name look "foreign" and "elegant" and "fantastic." That Y could sell washing machines to the devil. In the blink of an eye it becomes the defining, the tell-tale, the betraying mark of amateur fantasy. Oh, don't think I'm exempt. I keep a list of names I have invented over the years, most of them from my very early years. I don't use the list anymore because the names are so outlandish and painful, but it's a good example of what I am talking about. Take a look.

Ranviyer
Erynion
Elyason
Vanayel
Ithylen
Althya
Kyrry
Ryne
Jyny
Tym

I'll cease abusing your eyes. As you can see, these names are ridiculous, some of them positively unpronounceable, but all of them somehow distinctly belonging to a fantasy story. The fantastic, the otherworldly, hangs, not upon the character's personality or upbringing or nationality or customs, but upon the weirdness of his name. That's a slender and amateur thread on which to hang the fantasy of your story.

In favour of the Y I will say that its use is not a universal cop-out. Koby and Brandewyn, which are also in my list, manage to get away with it because Koby is a name you might find anywhere and Brandewyn is that sort of pretty faux-princess name a couple might give a daughter even now. And the Welsh are completely exempt from this principle because long ago they decided the alphabet didn't have enough vowels and they needed to make more. However, if you are not careful you are liable to have your story pegged as a fantasy (even if it is a fantasy) merely on your use of the Y. I find it to be either Welsh or amateur, and while I don't mind the one I'm not hankering to be pigeon-holed into the other, how about you?

My neck may or may not still be intact at this juncture. Like Katie, I like a good, solid fantasy and I don't like to waste my time on anything less than that. I don't think I read as much as she does, my natural taste tends more toward historical fiction, but I do have an array of fantasy in my library. So what about them? What are the names of their characters? What are the names used by authors who have "made it"?

Eltrap Meridon
Brandoch Daha
Roverandom
Puddleglum
Caspian
Curdie
Gorice
Tirian
Puck
Juss
Una

None of these make use of the over-fantasized Y, but all of them belong to fantasies. They all manage to be in their own way unique, decent, even strong. It is absolutely possible, and recommended, to find names for your characters that don't make use of the Y. Fight! Win! There are excellent names out there just waiting to be used. There is a wealth of imagination in your own brain just waiting to be tapped. Don't settle for the mediocre Y.

Beautiful People - A Compendium

2011-10-21T12:56:00.005-04:00

Sky and Georgianna Penn's Beautiful People challenge this month happens to coincide with one of my Ask Jeeves questions - which makes a pretty little loop-hole for me to dive through and a nice structured set of questions with which to answer the one I have been given.

If you don't know what "Beautiful People" is, it's a month-by-month series of questions posted by Georgie and Sky (ten each month) for writers to answer about their characters. A full list of the questions can be found on Sky's blog in the archives here. For those of you who don't know what Ask Jeeves is, it's an opportunity to throw questions at me and learn more about my current work in progress Plenilune. Don't be shy! I like answering your questions, so if you think of any more, please feel free to post them!

Morgan J: what is the main character [of Plenilune] like?

Once again I have the pleasure of introducing via Beautiful People the main character of my novel-in-the-making -

Margaret Coventry

1. What is her full name?

Margaret Elaine Coventry

2. Does her name have a special meaning?

Not at all.

3. Does your character have a methodical or disorganized personality?

Margaret is very methodical, but not habitual; she can be impulsive, but she is rarely illogical.

4. Does she think inside herself more than she talks out loud to her friends? (more importantly, does she actually have friends?)

Margaret has many acquaintances, Margaret allows herself to have few friends. She never talks out loud to herself but she is equal to conversation with others.

5. Is there something she is afraid of?

No; she might hate and she might loathe, but there is little that Margaret truly fears.

6. Does she write, dream, dance, sing, or photograph?

Margaret has been taught to sing and dance. She does well at these diversions and enjoys them.

7. What is her favourite book (or genre of books)?

Margaret is not an avid reader and perhaps the biggest and most famous work she can boast of having read is The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. In general she is either too busy to read or the reading puts her to sleep.

8. Who is her favourite author and/or someone that inspires her?

This is an oddly-phrased question. Or perhaps it is just me. She does not have any favourite authors, though it is quite possible that the sentiments of the philosopher-emperor have made the stoical cast her face can take.

9. Favourite flavour of ice cream?

Margaret has never had ice cream and I could not tell you for certain whether she would like it or not if she did.

10. Favourite season of the year?

Margaret dislikes winter, but she has no objection to any of the other three seasons; she does not give them a great deal of thought.

11. How old is she?

At the time of writing, Margaret has lived just over twenty and a half years, but her height and natural grim temperance of nature might impress a stranger with an older age.

12. What does she do with her spare time?

Margaret hates having spare time; she feels like a marble kicking around a kettle. If there is nothing else to put her hand to she will go for a stroll and reflect, or, in very dire cases, she might read a book.

13. Does she see the big picture or live in the moment?

Margaret is used to looking at the big picture, but for the most part that picture is relatively small. At the moment she does not know what she sees or what to do about it.

14. Is she a perfectionist?

Margaret is not a perfectionist, Margaret is defiant. What she puts her hand to she must yank bodily into tidiness and goodness, so help her!

15. What does her handwriting look like? (round, slanted, curly, skinny, sloppy, neat, decorative, etc.).

Margaret’s handwriting is fast and illegible.

16. Favourite animal?

Margaret has a weakness for owls, though she has only seen them in picturebooks and has only heard them at night from a distance.

17. Does she have any pets?

She has no pets, nor does she have a real use for them as they are hairy, smelly, and lap-dogs (which are acceptable animal companions for young ladies) are rather pathetic, useless creatures.

18. Does she have any siblings? How many? Where does she fit in?

Margaret has two sisters and a cousin whom life has forced to be close to her family, but she gets along with none of them. She makes an effort to be friendly to her cousin, whose temper is not as cutting her sisters’, but in general she keeps herself to herself and the four of them are happy to leave it that way.

19. Does she have a 'life verse' and, if so, what is it?

Margaret does not have a ‘life verse,’ or a ‘verse for life,’ but if she did it could very well be “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”

20. Favourite writing utensil?

A charcoal pencil.

21. What type of laugh does she have?

Margaret’s laugh can be very cutting and quite sarcastic, if she chooses. When she is genuinely and pleasantly diverted, her laugh is very sweet and quite becoming.

22. Who is her best friend?

As I said before, Margaret has few friends, and even fewer people she considers her equal. She is on companionable terms with a labourer, but he is no match for her in wit, education, and station; her closest friend could very well be a half-tame fox.

23. What is her family like?

Well-to-do, leisurely, respectable, a touch educated with a gloss of old aristocratic pride, very much into “society,” if not a major player there; in short, one of those unbearably dull, wealthy, landed families which has as much bad blood and sentiment in it as it does coinage.

24. Is she a Christian, or will she eventually find Jesus?

I think the best answer to this question is yes.

25. Does she believe in fairies?

Not in the least, but she does believe in the supernatural.

26. Does she like hedgehogs?

Margaret has never seen or heard of this “hedgehog” thing.

27. Favourite kind of weather?

Margaret is fond of clear, dry, sunny weather. Alas, she is English.

28. Does she have a good sense of humour? If so what kind? (Slapstick, wit, sarcasm, etc.?)

Being very frequently the wallflower and outside observer of gatherings, she is a student of irony and sarcasm.

29. How did she do in school, or any kind of education she might have had.

Margaret, like most ladies, had a governess—with whom she did not wholly connect and whose passing she did not regret, but from her she learned her French and German, her piano and harp, her needlepoint and script, and the basics of geography, mathematics, government and natural science.

30. Any strange hobbies?

Strange hobbies are discouraged. Margaret does not indulge in them.

31. What kind of music does she like?

Margaret is quite a hand at the piano and harp; she enjoys folk songs and ecclesiastical music and even plays an eastern piece that a relative brought her from Anatolia.

32. Does she like to go outside?

Whenever the weather is clear Margaret will go for a stroll. She is not much of a naturalist by bent, but her walks are a means of useful solitude and reflection.

33. Is she naturally curious?

Margaret is really only curious in that which piques her interest. She is not curious universally and she is not even curious energetically.

34. Right, or left handed?

Margaret is right-handed.

35. Favourite colour?

Burgundy.

36. Where is she from?

Margaret is from the northwest of England.

37. Any enemies?

Margaret’s temper, inadvertently abrasive, has a way of making enemies.

38. What are her quirks?

Margaret makes a point of not having quirks. The worst that she could be charged with is mixing a sense of chivalry with a cool reserved nature.

39. What kinds of things get on her nerves?

Her suitor’s presence, conversation, existence…

40. Is she independent, or does she need others to help out?

Not able to find anyone she considers her equal among her family or her family’s acquaintances, Margaret has long since become an independent individual.

41. What is her biggest secret?

It’s about the size of a large domestic cat.

42. Has she ever been in love?

Before Plenilune, no, Margaret has not.

43. What is her comfort food?

Margaret does not have a comfort food, but a glass of wine before bed she finds generally soothing.

44. Does she play a musical instrument? If so, what?

Margaret was taught to play the piano and the harp; she does well with both and does not consider either more of a favourite than the other.

45. What colour are her eyes? Hair?

Both Margaret’s hair and eyes are of the brown, nutmeg-coloured persuasion.

46. What is her favourite place to be?

She has several places that she enjoys being: alone, with old Hobden, or with the half-tame fox. She does not think of them as “favourite” places—in a way, they are sanctuaries.

47. What are some of her dreams or goals?

Margaret is not much of a dreamer, nor does she tend to set goals for herself. Her challenges consist of accomplishing the next task. The soothing English temper got lost in her when the old strains of Norman conquest and Saxon fury decided to reawaken.

48. Does she enjoy sports?

Margaret is a good rider and she is game enough to enjoy a hunt.

49. What is her favourite flower or plant?

She likes the English oak, whose strength, durability, grace and grim demeanour she identifies with.

50. What is her biggest accomplishment?

It’s the size of a wine-bottle.

51. What is one of her strongest childhood memories?

Getting hit in the face with her sister’s doll. And hitting her sister in the face after that. She was six years old.

52. What is her favourite food?

Margaret likes the traditionalism as well as the taste of Christmas plum pudding.

53. Does she believe in love at first sight?

Margaret has never given thought to the prospect.

54. What kind of home does she live in?

Margaret lives in a large, old, rambling Norman-style manor house which has been built on to by successive generations, its parts and portions attempting, but not quite managing, to all appear as if they were meant to go together.

55. What does she like to wear?

She likes to wear black, just to spite her suitor.

56. What would she do if she discovered she was dying?

If she had time, she would continue her routine; if she had little time, she would sit quietly, and perhaps broodingly.

57. What kind of holidays, or traditions does she celebrate?

Margaret’s family is a member of the Anglican Church; they observe all of the major ecclesiastical days; Christmas, though not often very jolly, is at least one that Margaret looks forward to.

58. What do your other characters have to say about her?

Her mother considers her a headstrong nuisance; Hobden calls her “like sum queen of old” and says she “might do rightly;” her suitor calls her “a precocious little chit” and considers her fit to be a queen; her suitor’s cousin calls her a force to be reckoned with; the half-tame fox, perhaps alone of her acquaintances, can smell and appreciate Margaret’s desolation.

59. If she could change one thing in her world, what would it be?

She can change one thing, and she does.

60. Does she have any habits, annoying or otherwise?

Margaret is a paragon of good behaviour. She has worked hard to become a model young woman, though on occasion her behaviour seems forced, which can grate against the nerves, and her personality is often cold and reserved, which is not a wholly commendable trait in a young woman.

61. What is her backstory and how does it affect her now?

Margaret is the eldest daughter of a sonless family and a great deal depends on her marrying well. Having watched the behaviour of her two sisters and cousin nearly ruin those chances completely, Margaret feels the weight of her responsibilities very keenly, the keenness helped in no small part by the constant reminders of her mother. As a child she was always quiet, reserved, and introspective, to which she added a touch of resentment and, incongruously, a rough kind of justice and mercy as she came into her adolescent years.

62. How does she show love?

A cold and constant sort of hate is an emotion Margaret is more accustomed to showing. She is not one to lose her temper easily in any direction so that it takes a great deal to draw out passionate love or hate from her. What she hates she is liable to hate until she dies, what she loves she is liable to die for without stopping to count the cost.

63. How competitive is she?

Margaret is extremely competitive, but she doesn’t choose her battles without being sure of some hope of victory. When she is faced with a challenge (i.e. marrying well) she rises to it with grit and poise.

64. What does she think about when nothing else is going on?

At home she keeps her mind busy with needlework and reading, and in particularly good weather she will go out for a ride on horseback. Abroad, Margaret spends her time taking walks in solitude and waging her own private war with the torn soldiers of her emotions and convictions.

65. Does she have an accent?

As a girl Margaret had a local Lancashire accent, but she has struggled hard to replace it with the southern and more refined accent of the Home Counties. As a result, her voice nestles comfortably and a touch alluringly between the two.

66. What is her station in life?

Margaret Coventry comes from an old Saxon family which originally settled in the Midlands; around the reign of James I a branch of the family moved to Northern England and settled down comfortably, which branch Margaret is from. Her family has contained anything from petty earls to landed farmers; her father receives income from her grandfather’s mill investments and they enjoy a well-to-do middle class estate.

67. What do others expect from her?

Margaret’s family, and Margaret herself, expect her to marry well and continue to support the social and financial dignity of the family. For this Margaret has no complaint, if only she were not pushed so, and she resents the difficulty the very personalities of her family members present her as they push her to make a good match.

68. Where was she born, and when?

Margaret was born in the northern English town of Aylesward in the Year of Our Lord 1822.

69. How does she feel about people in general?

In general, Margaret does not usually expend any emotion on people. On an individual level, she thinks of people in extremes, though she may not show it. This cool, subconscious façade is taxed rather sorely in her travels abroad and her temper is worn thin both for and against people, but her basic opinions, once founded, rarely change.

* * * * *

She brought her eyes down from the squat, stupendous bulk of the tower and followed the line of his waved gesture. The roses, rather splendid, thick, full roses whose age she did not dare to guess had flung themselves over the stable yard wall and clung to it in a thick mass, dark reddish-green in the gloom, fish-scale shining in the rain—but bud-less and barren. What colour would they be, she wondered, if they were to bloom again? A dormant spark of imagination thought their last bloom ought to have been crimson, and any resurrecting bloom ought to be white as York.

Plenilune, Jennifer Freitag

There is Margaret Coventry, in a very odd, small, and fractalled image. Cheerio!

Horn-Song

2011-10-19T08:16:00.002-04:00

'It is good to hear the trumpets sounding again, Cottia.'
The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff

Side by side, in fawn-brown and peat-coloured corduroy, we sat on the bare hill slope, watching as from a god’s vantage—and with a god’s detachment—the movements down below us. The tawny flanks of the hills were covered in long mottling patterns by the creeping scarlet pimpernel, which gave the hills a grotesque bloody cast; I sat with a shock of the humble wayside flower in my hand, twisting it absentmindedly around my fingers while the little spark of russet bloom faded in and out of my far-seeing vision. We had been speaking a moment before, my companion and I—about what, I don’t remember—and we had fallen silent again. The big upland emptiness around us discouraged conversation. So we sat in the windy quiet, I tailor-fashion, he with his knees up-drawn to his chest and his arms draped over them.

From far below, thin and angry and defiant, came up the sound of a war-horn baying, breaking up the quiet.

My companion did not move, but I saw his eyes flicker sidewise, southward, as if he could follow the sound of the horn’s song. I watched him carefully, but no other betraying shadow chanced across his features.

“Does it do anything to you?” I asked of a sudden, rather surprising myself with my own question.

He, too, looked faintly surprised; I could see the odd-shaped dove-coloured reflection of my image in his quizzical eyes.

“The horn-song.”

“Ah.” He turned back to the far-down chess-board view below us, but the dark thought had come into his face and I knew he was not seeing what was before him anymore than I was seeing the red jig of my scarlet bloom. Funny odd thing that, now that I thought of it: the horn-song was much the same colour as my bloom.

“Do you mean past-ward or forward?”

His question, in turn, surprised me and I said, “Well, both, I suppose!” with an awkward laugh that I did not mean and regretted the moment I made it.

My companion unlinked his arms from around his knees and ran his fingers soothingly through his hair, which the wind had taken and ruffled, which the wind took and ruffled again as soon as he put his arms back down. “I always thought them mocking, especially the brass-throated horns—these are bull-toned beasts that they have here. When they are the church-bells of your people, a people of a religion of annihilation, they sound fair mocking to the discerning ear. I had a strange and loathing love for them, for long and long.”

He reached over and took from me my shock of scarlet pimpernel, as if there were not enough around us for him to pick his own, and began twisting it as I had been twisting it, idly, staring at it without really seeing it, his brows drawn close to darkness over his eyes.

“For long and long,” I prompted, “but not forever long?”

He flashed a smile at me which did not turn up the corners of his mouth. “For long and long, but not forever long. But they conjure an altogether different feeling in me now, when I hear them.”

From a thick stand of beech below us came the yelp of another horn just then, silvery and collared in scarlet, as it seemed all horns had a veining of scarlet in their voices, and it sent a strange longing shiver down my spine.

“It calls up something in the blood, doesn’t it?” asked my companion, as if I had said something by my shiver. “Sometimes I think it is a sunset—the last sunset—calling out to me…” His voice had grown soft and far-off, then with a sudden intake of breath and hardness to his tone he said to me, “Do you remember that book of yours of when hell was at large in middle earth?”

“Yes.” I took back my flower. “I remember.”

“And do you remember that scene in which the champion of hell broke through the citadel gates, and he and the hero stood at odds with one another, waiting to see who would move first, and you did not know who would win or if the dice were loaded—”

“And then a cock crowed,” I said, and said it through a sudden tightness in my throat.

“And then a cock crowed.” He smiled mirthlessly.

I said, “Funny odd thing, isn’t it, that it is always a cock-crow?”

He nodded, and for a moment we were both thoughtful-silent, waiting for him to find his thoughts enough to go on. Presently he did so, arms across his knees once more, staring down unseeing and unblinking into the land below us, eyes a little wide as if in a kind of fixed horror at what he did see. “And then a cock crowed, as it seems it is their lot to crow at such a moment, mockingly—did I not say they had a mocking sound?—mockingly for hell does not know, as a simple dung-hill rooster knows, that dawn is breaking.”

“I am thinking it is not the colour of a sunset after all,” I said in a kind of rush, staring at him as he stared out at the valley, “but of sunrise.”

A madman’s light flashed upward into his eyes. “A dung-hill rooster crowing, crowing up the dawn, and then the horns!—horns! horns! horns! The vanguard of the ally come to turn the tide. That is what horns do to me—church-bells do it to you: they catch me looking for heaven’s vanguard to come through the mountains of the clouds and aid us—and outstrip us—in turning back the enemy tide. It grows weary fighting here, and long times between hearing our own rallying call, long times hearing the mockery of hell-horns; but the funny odd thing is that our mortal horns break through that, though far less powerful than the trumpets of either heaven or hell…”

His voice drifted away, broken off by a sudden confusion as if he had got lost in his own spate of words. I was looking now at my poor crumpled flower: crumpled, and yet the scarlet of it still burned against my palm.

“It is as though heaven calls out through our mortal horns, saying to hold fast, not long now…”

“Yes,” he said. “It is like that.”

And we were silent for some minutes after that, sitting in the tawny and scarlet of the hill’s slope, looking down at the movements below, hearing from time to time the bark and scream of the smaller horns calling out the movements. It was a funny odd thing… I caught it, too, the half-checked straining to hear if one of those horns had a voice you have never heard before, but have always known. I had always thought the horn would call us home, and maybe that is the part of it, but only the part of it. I thought now, seated by my companion in the blowing emptiness of the uplands, that perhaps it would be a horn calling us to the last charge; the Battle of Death, I thought I would call it—or the Battle of Life, I was not sure. Either way, something in me ached with a raw and uncovered aching to hear that horn.

With a heavy sigh my companion unfolded, climbing to his feet and holding out his hand to me. “There’s a moral somewhere in that,” he sniffed, “if you like morals.”

I let him pull me to my feet, and in the standing open the wind hit us full, feeling as if it would pull us clear away, blowing us into fawn-brown and peat-colour on the high blue of the moorland skyline.

“And I think he knew so,” I called down the wind: “the man who wrote that book of mine.”

The smothered thunder of a headlong fight boomed up to us on the wind. We began walking away, but the horns kept calling after us—scarlet, tell-tale, faintly mocking.

Like Love and Thunder

2011-10-17T09:32:00.010-04:00

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig a grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And lay me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
"Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
Requiem, R.L. Stevenson

Sparrow: what are the general plot-shaping elements of Plenilune?

This is one of the more serious, and possibly more betraying, questions in this oddment-of-questions that I have got from Ask Jeeves. Whether or not Jeeves can answer you, Sparrow, remains to be seen.

There is hope (and I think I have grounds to hope) for a layered plot with multiple influential elements running through it. But I think the strand that I had best pick up is a strand that will not only open a door into Plenilune, but perhaps others of my works as well, a strand which perhaps shows through most strongly in Plenilune. That strand is keeping faith. I am prone to misjudging how well people will understand me from the outset, so I will explain and say right off that what you understand when you read "keeping faith" may not be what I mean by it. I do not mean, necessarily, faith in God, though that is most certainly the pinnacle of it.

This is an idea, really a way of life, that I had to learn from people long since dead. It is not something you will stumble over often today, I think, this idea of keeping faith. Ours is a disposable age - we make things, we make everything, even our ideas, our loves, our lives, to be disposed of and replaced with something new. We do not have three-hundred-year-old yew-hedges rooted deep inside our souls. Everything is transient. Everything. And when everything is transient, nothing has value. We no longer hold anything dear - nothing trusts us to remain true.

By "faith" I mean allegiance, by "keeping" I mean the endurance in it even to the point of shedding blood. And by all this I mean something deeper than mere spoken oath, something that is woven into the very fabric of a person's being, something that, if broken, would kill them. This is the honour of the servitude of love. It is usually unspoken, and there are often no words to explain it, though perhaps Peter said it rather well when he said,

"To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

In the object there is a frank and unspoken value, in the person a frank and unspoken faith. This is something I hold with a fierceness, and it comes out in my stories - in Plenilune, perhaps, most of all so far. It looks like white-bronze harp-strings. It looks like a holocaust cloak. It looks like love and thunder.

Keeping faith. It is something so deeply ingrained in the characters, so deeply ingrained that it moves the plot, that they would die if they broke it, and they would die to keep it. It is sometimes called patriotism, or heroism, but it is far more primeval than that: it is love-serving that holds fast, love-serving that does not dream of ceasing - it is itself: it is keeping faith. And this, with all that it entails and all that it circumscribes, is what drives Plenilune and the people within it.

* * * * *

‘If they want this Eagle back; if they fear that it may harm them, where it is, let them send someone else for it! Why need you go?’

‘It was my father’s Eagle,’ Marcus told her, feeling instinctively that that would make sense to her as the other reasons behind his going would never do. A personal loyalty needed no explaining, but he knew that it was quite beyond him to make Cottia understand the queer, complicated, wider loyalties of a soldier, which were as different from those of the warrior as the wave-break curve of the shield-boss was from the ordered pattern of his dagger-sheath. ‘You see, with us, the Eagle is the very life of a Legion; while it is in Roman hands, even if not six men of the Legion are left alive, the Legion itself is still in being. Only if the Eagle is lost, the Legion dies. That is why the Ninth has never been re-formed. And yet there must be more than a quarter of the Ninth who never marched north that last time at all, men who were serving on other frontiers, or sick, or left on garrison duty. They will have been drafted into other Legions, but they could be brought together again to make the core of a new Ninth. The Hispana was my father’s first Legion, and his last, and the one he cared for most of all the Legions he served in. So you see…’

‘It is to keep faith with your father, then?’

‘Yes,’ said Marcus.

Time Is of the Essence

2011-10-14T08:40:00.004-04:00

The Saxon is not like us Normans.
His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious
Till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow
With his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, "This isn't fair dealing,"
My son, leave the Saxon alone.
Norman and Saxon, Rudyard Kipling

Gwyn: what is the time period [of the novel]? Even if it is fantasy, what era is it most like?

I wonder sometimes (though I don't envy the position) what it must be like for an individual, a single person, to be so influential, so important, so looked-up-to and regarded, for better or for worse, by so many that the individual's name becomes identified with an entire block of time in history. So many of us, some of us important, some of us influential, blink through this tiny span of time God has given us, many of us leaving behind only the mark of a gravestone - and even nature works to scrub away the writing on our stones. The weight of carrying so many years seems crushing to me. Times and epochs are frequently carried on the shoulders of states and nations: how many single persons had to carry all that weight themselves?

Plenilune begins in the Year of Our Lord (he carries all time, and what a weight that must be!) 1844, on an October afternoon. Despite the specificity of the date, the decision to write during the Victorian era was rather arbitrary. It was decided while I was writing Adamantine, and I chose it only because of a reference to a literary work that was published the year before. You might say I chose the Victorian era because the Georgian one (Regency) seems so very belaboured among the scribbling womanish class these days, but I'm afraid that did not cross my mind until much later. While it has little to no influence on either work, I can at least admit to a partiality to Victorian dress which (when not ridiculously posh) can be quite beautiful and rather dashing. Pardon the idle whims of an author.

Gwyn, rather astutely (or by pure accident, I don't know) added the possibility of fantasy in her question. Both Adamantine and Plenilune are fantasy, but so widely divergent in their fantastical nature that don't suppose the exposition of one will suffice to explain the other.

The territories, or Honours, of Plenilune which Margaret has occasion to come into contact with are overseen by family houses. The Honours are generally divided into manors or villa estates which sons of the family or close friends of the family hold and oversee for the head of the Honour, who was generally the patriarch or, in some rare cases, a particularly strong widow. All Honours are held under a single Overlord (to be seen more like the ancient British king than the Latin rex) who is elected by the vote of the Lords of the Honours - his position was maintained for life. This position has been held by the men of Marenové for so long that it has become effectively hereditary in the minds of all.

The Honours and even individual manors are largely self-sufficient, agricultural-based, and have a high level of autonomy. They look to the Overlord for judgment and leadership in war, and while the Overlord is more than just first among equals and while he does technically hold absolute power over the Honours, the temperament of the people of Plenilune, including the temperament of the Overlords, does not tend toward this extreme.

So much for the political face! I dislike going into long monologues on clothing, but as I typically segment eras by what clothing was worn I suppose I shouldn't avoid mentioning it altogether. Broadcloth and linen are the staple fabrics used; nobility enjoy velvet; corduroy and cambric are enjoyed by all. Men wear trousers, and may wear either tunics or shirts and jackets as they please; women's wear tend to be layered single-piece dresses or frocks depending on the use. Outerwear can be either full-length coats or cloaks. Swords tend to be cruciform in shape and pattern welding is used almost universally.

the fork is used with relish

Thank you for this question, Gwyn. It helped me shake out a lot that was heretofore nebulous in my own mind.

You Will Hear the Beat of a Horse's Feet

2011-10-13T08:45:00.004-04:00

"...seeing as you are forced to meddle with horses, don't you think that common sense requires you to see that you are not ignorant of the business...?"

Oikonomikos, Xenophon

Here's the answer to another question posted on Ask Jeeves for my new novel Plenilune! Again, if you think up a question that hasn't been asked yet, just go post it in a comment on Ask Jeeves.

Gwyn: does [the novel] have any prominent horses or specific breeds?

This is a particularly fun question, especially for me, and I wish I had the opportunity to do it justice. Unfortunately, due to a rather important detail that I feel disinclined to give away, I am not able to go into any kind of detail about breeds in the story. Adamantine, too, is like this. And, in a way, this is a good thing, because otherwise I might be far too tempted to go into ridiculous detail about horses and give them overly elaborate names and purposes in the plot.

The difference, perhaps, between the two novels is that in the former horses are, in a sense, a mere means of transportation - not a means taken for granted, but still not lavished with a great deal of affection either. In my current novel, which takes place among nobles and lords, horses are a stamp of prowess and extremely important for war and sporting.

The detail regarding breeds I go into is minimal. At present I have only four types: destrier, courser, hunter, and palfrey. The last three, because of the terrain in which the story takes place, often have mingled hill-pony blood in them to give them sureness on the slopes, but you are equally likely to find a horse without the stockier blood in it, it all depends on what the owner wants.

Destrier: This is your "Great Horse," the kind that looks like any number of draught breeds you will see today: your freckle-tending Ardennais, grey Percherons, blond Schleswigs, Shires, russet Suffolk beasts. Generally docile, termed "gentle giants," destriers are moving battering rams. Though common enough for knights of the history we are familiar with, they are somewhat rare in Plenilune's universe as heavy armour was neither developed nor wanted.

Courser: This is your more typical gentleman-warrior's horse. They are bred muscular and strong, usually with stock that is naturally obedient and good-natured with a propensity to learn quickly. Some are kept almost like dogs, fondled and made much of by their masters, which creates an invaluable bond between master and horse that can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Light-boned horses are not typically used. The category depends largely on admirable personality and dexterity mingled with presence of body. Coursers are not always distinguishable from the hunter class.

Hunter: Hunters differ from coursers really only in training, and then it is usually most economical to train your "light" mount to jump both fallen tree trunks and fallen human bodies. Hunters are firmly built but fluid in movement, unafraid, and tend of all the Plenilune breeds to have the most amount of hill-pony in their blood. Hunters must have a comfortable ride as well as stamina and quickness - unusual comfort is not always looked for in the courser, but if you manage to get a good hunter you are likely to have a good courser in him as well.

Palfrey: I discovered that this horse-type's name, coming out of the German, means "ambler." This type has a gait like a winged trot, frequently very smooth, and can cover a lot of ground by its fluidness and persistence. The lateral gait, not unlike that employed by the camel, is left hind-left front-right hind-right front; less camel-like, and the one I enjoyed more when I tested it on my protesting hands and knees, is the left hind-right front-right hind-left front; the point is that there is at least one hoof on the ground at all times, making for a liquid forward movement that can be startlingly quick and is sometimes called "the flying pace." Because of this unusually comfortable gait they are frequently used for travelling and for ladies. A famous modern breed that exhibits this is the Tennessee Walking Horse.

Cows and not horses are used among farms for ploughing. Hill-bred ponies, which are often half-wild, are used for carting, carrying, and droving. These will look most like the modern reconstructions of the Tarpan breed, but can be as large and even elegant as any one of the stocky old breeds that can be found in the corners of Britain. They are often unlovely, tough, temperamental, and among the most doggish of the Plenilune breeds.

Through the stable doors stepped the first of the horses. It was the Master of Marenové’s, as was fitting: a beautiful amber champagne creature with loose white feathering about the fetlocks and the soft mizzle striking white sparks off the copperiness of its hair... Next out came Margaret’s own horse, a darcy-coloured grey palfrey that seemed, emerging from the dark interior of the long low building, to emerge from the otherworld itself.

Plenilune, Jennifer Freitag

I Have Reached These Lands But Newly

2011-10-11T21:43:00.003-04:00

Hurrah and huzzah with brightly polished brass knobs on. I asked in my post Ask Jeeves for people to level questions at me concerning my new novel Plenilune. Bethany got her question in first, and thankfully her question is the sort I can start off with without too much confusion.

If you have any questions you would like me to answer (or to try to answer - again, I can refuse if I think it would give too much away) just post it in a comment on Ask Jeeves. Your questions can be thought-provoking - for myself as well as for other blog-readers. Fresh blood (or new eyeballs, if that is a little less grotesque) is always welcome when addressing a novel.

Bethany: where is [the novel] set?

Plenilune is set in dale country. If you have read or seen any of the James Herriot stories, you will know how lofty, mysterious, and splendid this kind of countryside can be. Wide pasture country, looped through with rivers, furred with woods, broken up into farm garths and ploughlands and sudden runs up hidden arms of land in which nothing moves but the fox and red deer is the sort of country in which Plenilune takes place. But with the dales comes another piece of land, just as important: the fells. Everything in the dales goes on under the tawny shadows of the big barring fells, and everything on the fells goes on under the enormous colourless sky. Everything is up.

Unfortunately, everything is also in mid-October at the moment, and the year is drawing to a chilly close. The finches are in the wild blackberry bushes, pretending there are still more berries, and whole clouds of swallows are on the move, making a racket under the stable-eaves as they roost for the night before continuing their southward migration in the morning. Pretty soon these beautiful dales will be smothered in snow and the fells, ever ominous, uplifted against leaden grey skies. At about that point the story will be set in front of the fireplace, with perhaps a pan of hot chestnuts to boot. But at the moment it's still fine enough to ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross (only, there is no Banbury Cross) to see a fine lady upon a white horse (which horse is dark grey, in reality).

Be sure to bring your wellies.

Ask Jeeves

2011-10-10T21:57:00.010-04:00

"You really are quite mad, you know that."
"I have said as much."
The Phoenix Requiem

Poor Penslayer, all abashed, is very much disliking this new novel of mine. I started this blog as The Shadow Things was trundling out upon the book market, and as Adamantine was grinding slowly toward the finish. All in all, they were both very "done" things. I could talk about them a little more freely (though perhaps Adamantine not so very much, because I should hate to give spoilers). With my new novel Plenilune that is not the case. She (she? he? it?) is a mere 20,000 words at present, and yet the deathly hallow of its shadow lies long and big behind it. Plot is fairly jostling in my head. Characters, all of them a little frightening and sharp at the edges, and dark in their own way when you look them in the eye, are all gathered at the round table of Lookinglass House staring at me, waiting for me to keep writing - and to hurry up about it. They are most of them warriors, too, and you have no idea how unnerving that is.

Well, maybe you do.

I am like a child in a candy store, willing to run about wildly and give far more spoilers than is good for me (and you) because of the sheer raptures I can get into while in the throes of a story. And Penslayer, like the arch-typical butler, keeps "hem-hemming" at my elbow, reminding me not to give too much away while at the same time keeping up a writing blog. It's all very difficult, when at this stage everything is all very hush-hush. But I want to hear from you, because what you think at this stage is very helpful. It helps keep my brain churning, it helps me look into things that I otherwise wouldn't have thought to look into. So ask questions! Ask me about, oh, I don't know - the dress of men and women, do horses wear shoes, what about architecture, plants, how many characters do I have so far, what in the world is the plot? I want to know what you want to know! Though I do retain the right to refuse to answer if I think it would give too much away. (Gee, Jenny, what a stick-in-the-mud.) I'll answer them to the best of my ability with as much humour, dodging, hem-hawing, vagueness, and interest as I can possibly muster.

"People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis."
David McCullough

On second thought, let's not go to The Penslayer.
It is a silly place.

Breathing Ink and Ilex

2011-10-03T10:03:00.004-04:00

I see all these bloggers posting about how it is autumn in their part of the world. A lot of us live in the States, so I've been wondering anxiously, "When will it get to be our turn for autumn here?" Well, I think our time has finally come. Our weather between seasons is fickle and unstable, and changes as I might try to change gears on a stick-shift. But I think, as October rolls in (where did the year go!) it is finally autumn. I lay awake the other night thinking about the upcoming months: apple-picking, birthdays (so many birthdays) involving food and cake and presents and people getting together and laughing, Thanksgiving dinner, the onset of really cold weather and Christmas... (Most of my family's celebrations centre around eating food. It's the Sicilian in us, I suppose.) Nearly twenty-one autumns, each one like amber and held up to the light, lie in my memory, and I took them out as I lay awake the other night to look at them, and they are so very beautiful. They are full of romping in the short crisp grass, playing in the leaves, taking walks down windy roads, eating and talking and laughing with my family, arriving at the church Thanksgiving dinner in the suit of Roman armour my husband made for me... It's a crazy, blowy, amber-coloured time. And here I am at last, standing on the brink of one more autumn.

I sat the other day on my parents' patio, soaking in the late sunlight and autumn wind, reading Knight's Fee, and I could sympathize with Randal's feelings of strange homecoming as he arrived for the first time at Dean. Autumn always feels a little like homecoming to me, and at the same time as though home is a long way off. Maybe it is the Sabbath-feeling, that the whole part of my world has come to the twilight of the year to rest, and that's what makes me think of home. The dogwoods are changing into their best garnet colours; the hollies are putting out their little scarlet berries and the crows are screaming over them. Everything is so beautiful, so varied, so jewel-like. The leaves are all dying on the trees; it's strange that death can look so lovely as that, blood-coloured and fierce. I wonder if there is a moral somewhere in that.

"Pray that thy last days, and last works, may be the best; and that when thou comest to die, thou mayest have nothing else to do but die."
Vavasor Powell

Flowers are pretty in spring, and green is a fine colour, but nothing compares to the last burst of show the trees put on in autumn. They quite outdo themselves. Soon the maples will be turning, and the gumball tree, and the pecans will be littering the driveway with little banana-peel leaves, and I'll be able to sit in the heart of all that colour, reading and writing (because these things are done best in autumn) underneath all that surf-sound of wind in the trees, cleaning out my veins with the cleanness of autumn.

A Laughter Dark and White

2011-09-29T16:11:00.010-04:00

This little piece, belonging to nothing in particular, spun itself out of my mind yesterday. I want to dedicate it specifically to Katie, because Katie has been sick as a dog for such a long time. I don't know if she is cognizant enough to even read it right now, but I mean it for her all the same.

* * * * * *

Martlet’s sleepy daze was disturbed sometime near of witching hour by the ringing tramp of mailed boots at the end of the corridor. Houndwise she opened one bleary eye, careful to keep perfect stillness, as out of the far dark loomed two figures. They had entered the hall and were coming wearily toward her. The taller of the two was speaking, and she recognized the voice as that of Phillip Cheval himself.

“The land is nothing to me fallow,” he was saying. “It has lain fallow long enough. Let him tend it. It will do the land good, and do him passing good as well. I am needing a tenant there, anyhow.”

By now they were nearly over her, pausing in the stairwell doorway. Martlet dared not breathe, dared not move, but lay bug-flat on the rushes in the corner of the corridor’s end.

It was Guy Rollo who replied. Martlet recognized his voice, rather too small for his brown-bull frame. “I know the land needs ploughing, Phillip—was I born yesterday? But is your choice of tenant wise?”

Phillip Cheval’s voice was laughing and strangely iron firm at once. “What slander! No, no, coz; for all his faults, the man can thrust a plough into the earth’s life-blood. Let him tend the land. In a hand-span’s time we will see that I am right.”

Guy Rollo spread his hands and rumbled back like a war-horse grumbling over his evening grain. The noise sparked Phillip Cheval’s laughter—dark lightning laughter, thought Martlet—and the two stepped together up the stairs. But as they did so something small and round fell from Phillip Cheval into the rushes. It fell without a sound, and only Martlet, her heart quickened to a pounding in her empty belly, saw it fall and where it fell. She lay in the tense stillness of death until the smothered ring of boots finally drifted up into quiet…then with a heron-dart her arm flashed out, her hand closed over the tiny object, and faster than thought she had rolled back into the shadows with the thing cupped close to her chest. In the little panting quiet she lay and looked at it.

It was round and made of metal, and in the darkness nearly coal-black. But in what dim light there was Martlet saw a kind of slumbering colour within, far down in and rich, which made her flesh tingle, though she could not say why. The thing was skin-warm on one side and had a great smooth hole in it through which she could put a finger.

Why, she thought, it is a ring!

The ring was battered, smooth with wear, and roughly made, but to Martlet, snuffing it houndwise, it was a thing of beauty. Never in her life had she touched such a jewel; never in her life had she been as close to such a jewel as she had been close to the high and lofty Phillip Cheval. Her head spun with it and with the hunger in her belly.

For a long while she lay with the ring clutched in both hands, her heart alternately quieting and quickening and quieting again. But after a time she gathered herself up laboriously, rolling over and getting to her wobbly knees, reaching as she did so with one hand for her crutches. In her other hand she clutched the ring as though her life depended on it. She got herself up on her wooden legs and like a lamed bird got herself into the stairwell. The stairs were agony; she crawled up many of them, desperate to be quiet, and fought every inch against the vertigo of height and hunger. Round and round, upward and upward she climbed, crawling against the downward flow of the dark around her as a fish might fight a current. She was breathless and shaking visibly by the time she reached the top. There was a blur of golden light before her but for a while it shifted on her vision like light on water and she had to lie still on the cold stone top of the step before it steadied. It was a torch, a single torch set in its ring high up above a door, and the knife-shaped flame of it was casting wild tiger-light all around the doorway and the guard who sat at attention there. With a little mewing whimper Martlet got herself up and stumbled forward.

The guard saw her coming long before she reached the pool of light. He watched her quizzically, fingers tapping from boredom. Her struggle against hunger and her crutches seemed to interest him until he realized that she was not going past his pool of light, and he pushed off from the chair, thunder clouding his brow.

“I don’t have any scraps, waif,” he said gruffly. He waved a hand. “Keep going. Don’t loiter.”

The effort to speak brushed a wave of nausea over Martlet’s vision. She fought it off, took a firm hold on her crutches, and drew herself upright. “Is this Phillip Cheval’s room?” she asked in a thin voice.

“No, this is Heaven, and I am Saint Peter. Go away!” He moved forward to urge her on.

Martlet gave a single piercing, warning shriek, like a cat which has been stepped on, and stopped the man in his tracks. She swallowed, shuffled forward, and began again. “I have a thing for Phillip Cheval. It is very important. He will want it back.”

The man regarded her for a while in silence, his lips pressed into a thin, uncompromising line so that the scruff of his ruddy brown beard stuck out menacingly like so many flame-tipped spears at the end of his chin. He had put his hands into his belt, and his two first fingers were playing idly with the cruciform buckle of his belt.

“Eh!” he said at last. “You don’t look like a murderer… If you have something for my Lord, hand it over and I will give it to him.”

But Martlet shook her head. “N-no, I must give it to him. It is too—too important.” Her right hand gripped the ring until she could feel the metal cutting into her skin.

“Splendour of God,” the man swore softly, and jerked his hands out of his belt. “Very well, I will ask him. Do you stand here and don’t fiddle—” he caught up his pouch which had been hanging on the back of his chair “—with anything.”

She could hear him muttering soft and fantastically under his breath as he turned around and raised a fist to the door. The sound of his knocking banged off the walls all the way down the corridor. There was a pause, then a voice called from within and the guard opened the door, sending dagger-points of yellow light into Martlet’s unprotected eyes. She squinted and grimaced, and by the time she could open her eyes again the guard had gone in and the door was shut again.

Like a lamed bird she moved closer and propped herself against the door, ear pressed to the wood. The guard must have been standing only just inside, for she could hear his words clearly.

“There is a girl outside, sir. She says she has something for you.”

The other’s voice came from a distance, and was a little sharp with bewilderment. “A girl?”

“A little waif.”

“Is that what the caterwaul was?”

The guard gave an admitting laugh. “Yes, sir. The little cat was most adamant about giving something to you. She said it was important and that you would want it.”

There was a long considering silence, which Martlet found agonizing. In the flickering light of the torch she looked down at the object in her hands. It was still drenched in the shadow, but she could just see the round form of it. It was still skin-warm to her touch.

“I wouldn’t have bothered, only she seemed insistent—” the guard began again.

But Phillip Cheval cut him off. “No, no, never mind, Chancy. Show her in.”

Martlet reeled back from the door just as the guard rattled it open again. She peered blinkingly up into his shadowed face. “Phillip Cheval will see you,” he said a trifle grudgingly. “Come on in.” And he added, as she shuffled past him, “And be respectful!”

She got herself into the room beyond and heard the guard Chancy shut the door. Somehow that was the worst sound of all, that door shutting on her, cutting her off from the long familiar tunnel of empty darkness, shutting her in on this firelit, crowded, rich world. Her eyes were wide in her head as she stared about her. Rugs of bearskin covered the floor and there was not a rotten straw in sight. The fireplace, which was lighting up most of the room, was faced in a cold white stone that had little blue veins in it, like a lady’s hand. Tapestries hung on the walls, sporting scenes of the hunt and the battle, with men and hounds and horses and falcons, limbs all flailing wildly after whatever sport they were about. The colours dazzled her. There was an enormous bed, a real bed, with rich red hangings and a mane of gold stuff dangling from its four posts. There were tables and couches, and off of everything, it seemed, the light was jinking and catching and lashing itself back. She was drowning. She was drowning under all that horrible bright splendour. She could not breathe. She could not move. She stood like a struck bird in the middle of the floor, surrounded by it, feeling her face blanching.

A smooth, dark voice called to her, breaking through the suffocation. “Come here, child.”

She turned her gaze slowly from a rack of swords to see Phillip Cheval seated in a low-slung camp chair, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, his arms draped idly over the arms of the chair. It was a picture of languid poise, but Martlet was not fooled. She heard the iron-dark edge beneath the voice and knew that this man, this long, dark man surrounded by all this richness and splendour, was a very terrible man.

It was with a kind of blind effort that she answered those summons. The low, smouldering, hawk-eye stare that was in the great one’s eyes did not waver from her, and somehow hers did not waver from it though she felt as though it peeled her very skin back so that she was all the soft redness and bone that was inside. It was a horrible feeling.

She stopped at the end of his feet and for a moment the silence and firelight and gloom was between them. The world to Martlet was that pale blue stare and the crush of metal against her palm.

At last Phillip Cheval spoke, and his speaking was as the release from an enchantment. “You don’t have the look of a murderer… What is it that you have for me?”

Balancing herself on her crutch, she stretched out her hand and peeled back her stiff fingers. “It is this,” she said. Then, feeling as though she ought to give proper account, “It fell from you when you were passing up the stairs, and I found it for you.”

Phillip Cheval folded himself back up into his chair, leaning forward to see the thing in her hand. His lips parted in surprise when he saw it. He took it from her and held it in his own hand—hers dropped once more to her side—and the terribleness that had been in his face was suddenly replaced by something tender. Martlet looked from his face to the ring-thing that he turned and turned in his fingers. In her hands it had been coal-black, but in Phillip Cheval’s it was of mottled gold and the slumbering colour that had been in the gem had woken now to a red and wicked light, winking in the depths, flashing off its faces like the red lightning of a dun-coloured autumn evening. She shuddered cold. Was that where he kept his terribleness, she wondered, and when he did not have his ring about him he wore the terribleness in his face?

Phillip Cheval laughed soft to himself through his nose and snatched up a glance at her. “So…! It is my ring.” Then his gaze became searching, and he asked, “Why did you bring it back to me?”

The ache in her belly, which had whimpered low until now, flared out again with a crippling power. She fought against the dryness in her throat and took the time to find the words for a thing for which there were no words at all. “The light was in it when I found it,” she said. “But it had gone down, and it said it wouldn’t wake until you had it again. It told me it wanted you.”

The eyes, which had turned terrible again, held her as though he had gripped her shoulder. The dark laughter which she had heard from him was in them, flickering back and forth, back and forth. She felt horribly small under that gaze.

“So…” he said, and he leaned back once more. “It is my ring, and it may be that you and I alone understand why such an old and battered thing is of worth to me.” He held it between thumb and forefinger and rolled it back and forth, letting the light play in the red gem and run widdershins around the bezel. “It is too small a thing for me,” he mused. “I was young when my father passed it on to me, and even then my hands were too large for it. It must be that my people were smaller once and finer-built.” He looked intently and tenderly into it, and Martlet could see the red reflection of it in his pale blue eyes. “They say it comes down from the Welsh war-lords, and maybe even from the kings of Rome. But that is a truth found on the other side of the Dark, and no one can find the truth there anymore. Still,” his eyes jumped to hers and he folded his fingers back on the ring so that it vanished from sight, “it is mine to me. I wear it ever on a chain because my fingers are too large for it. It must be that the chain-latch broke.”

He dug into the front of his leather jerkin, which even at this hour he had not put off, and fetched out from there a long fine chain of silver colour. Sure as he had said, as he held it up to the light, Martlet saw that the latch had snapped. “Hmm,” he said thoughtfully.

“I’ve seen the blacksmith,” Martlet prompted respectfully, “make chains with their links closed on each other. Mayhap Brix can make a chain like that for you, so that there is no latch to break.”

“Mayhap he?” mused Phillip Cheval. “Mayhap he will. Meanwhile a boot lace will do passing well for the task as any other thing.”

Martlet stood rooted to the spot—for if she moved, she feared she might fall—while the great man rose and crossed the room and began rummaging among his chests for the boot lace that he sought. Presently he found it, and she watched him thread the scarlet-speaking ring-thing on it, and lift it over his head. He seemed taller than ever as he did it, tapered as he was to the waist and broadened at the shoulders, like the post-man’s horse, which ran like the wind and cut the wind up as with knives around it. And he shook himself, horse-like, when he had put away the ring and swung back round on Martlet.

“Well, little waifling,” he said, resuming his seat. “What can I give to you for this?”

She stared back at him, her brain alternately hot and cold, groggy and clear. She felt the cat-shriek rising in her throat and, beyond it, with the clearness of a young thing which has not many years to its name, she remembered her father recalling the words of a poor monk. “A man mayn’t have much, but by God he’s got his dignity.” Her hungry frame felt like an autumn leaf, dried out, empty, lifeless, and the tempest of her rage shook her like an autumn leaf in a gale.

“I didn’t come in here for anything,” she blurted out, her thin voice cracking. “I come because I minded you would want the ring. Sir,” she added, remembering some semblance of manners at the last moment.

The great man held her gaze, the wayward forelock of his hair hanging between his eyes. But she did not feel the terribleness that was in those eyes because of the muffling anger in her brain. She held the gaze and shook, and shook and held the gaze, and the silence between them was a long silence. Then suddenly Phillip Cheval’s lips cracked into a smile, and the laughter that was in those eyes, Martlet realized, was a white laughter.

“Your pardon, little cat,” he said smoothly. “I did not mean to rub your fur awrong.”

Once more he rose, lunging upward in an oddly graceful way, and he swung over to the table which stood before the fire with the sea-rolling gait of a man who is blind-weary. With his words the fight had gone back out of Martlet and she stood draped on her own crutches, hoping that they would not lose their grip on the floor, and she watched the man rustle among the things on the tabletop without really seeing what he did. The anger had left her emptier than before, and now all she wanted was to get out before she fainted, because she could not have borne that. But she saw with clarity, out of the other things he moved, the hunk of peat-dark hard bread that he picked up, and the wedge of cheese. He took a leather sack off the back of a chair, a sack embroidered all over with lily patterns of scarlet and silver, and he dropped the bread and cheese inside. Leaning far over the table, he drew close a skin of wine and this, too, he put in the bag.

Martlet watched all this with her breathe bated. She did not dare to breathe, lest everything blow away and howl off down the narrow tunnel of light that her vision was becoming. Phillip Cheval returned and held out the bag idle-wise, as if it were nothing at all. “Marian is ill with the fever and can’t clear up tonight. It is a shame for this to go to waste.”

The roughness of the strap slid against Martlet’s palm, the one that the ring had bitten.

“I know it is late—it is beyond late—but I need you to find the time to take care of this for me.”

“Anything,” Martlet heard her own thin voice saying, though she stared and could not lift her eyes from the lily-pattern of the threads. “I would do anything, sir.”

“Yes,” said Phillip Cheval softly. Then, lifting his voice, “Chancy!”

The door cracked open with such speed that Martlet guessed the guard Chancy had been listening the whole while. And perhaps Phillip Cheval guessed it too, for the dark laughter was in his voice as he said, “Here is the little cat, Chancy. Mind her fur and take her off.”

“Yes, sir.” Chancy stood aside to leave the doorway empty for her, but Martlet, momentarily immobilized, stood staring at the leather bag that dragged so heavily against her arm. Chancy was waiting, Phillip Cheval was waiting. She felt her face going warm, but she could not quite move.

Phillip Cheval’s voice broke gently through to her. “I forgot to ask, little cat. Have you a name?”

She pulled her eyes from the bag. Had she a name? For a moment she felt rabbit-hunted, and her name a warren down which she wanted to scurry but she had lost the way to it. But then there it was, in the biting pressure of the crutches under her arms. “They call me Martlet.”

Phillip Cheval’s teeth flashed, white, with his laughter. “So they do? So they do… God be with you, little Martlet.”

She could go then, as though he had broken some enchantment over her. The clack-clack of her crutches were the only sound in the stillness as she shuffled along the floor and passed Chancy in the doorway. The guard rumbled a good-night to his lord, and the lord gave one back, and then the door swung shut and the two of them were standing in the corridor where the torch fought the shadows for dominance.

“You’re a rum one,” said Chancy roundly.

Wave after wave of dizziness washed over Martlet’s brain. “Mm, coo,” she said sleepily. Then, rousing herself with an effort, for she had still to make her way back down to her pile of rushes in the corner at the base of the stairs, she said, “He—he is very terrible, you know.”

Chancy’s lips pressed again into a thin line, plunging his bristled chin into shadow. He stood with his hands in his belt, fingers playing with the buckle. “He is terrible, I know, but such a one as men are wont to follow… Na,” he shook himself and broke off, waving a hand dismissively at her. “What would a girl know of that kind of thing? Get on, cat. I’ve got hours of boring guarding to do, and I want to do it undisturbed.”

Martlet shuffled off without another word, feeling the circle of torchlight drop away from her shoulders as it were some saffron fairy-cloak. She went, her body like a husk, her spirit too full for it. The only thing that seemed to keep her anchored was the weight of the bag in her hand. But at the head of the stairs she stopped and looked back. Chancy had resumed his position in his chair, elbows on his knees, leaning forward to peer into the dark. She pressed her lip forward, poutingly, thoughtfully, and murmured,

“No, but I do know of that kind of thing. The ring told it to me.”

Then, owl-like, she shook herself free and melted away into the dark of the stairs.

Out of This Far Country

2011-09-27T11:44:00.008-04:00

The Dragon's tail twitched at the end. "Do I know you?" he asked, turning his great head to peer at the man more clearly with one eye. "You seem familiar."

"We have met," Prince Aethelbald said.

Heartless, Anne Elisabeth Stengl

It grabbed me by the throat today. It's funny, how you can be trucking along with life, doing passably, minding your own business, and it comes around the corner on you, grabbing you by the throat. It did that to me. I clicked an idle link on an idle blog, idly interested in following it because it said it would lead to a song by Andrew Peterson. And it did. But it led to more than that.

It doesn't just grab you by the throat, you know. It has horrible eagle-claws that dig into your chest and rout out your heart, too, if you have a heart to be routed out. Not everyone does. But somehow, I think I would rather suffer that sudden agony point by point, more and more, as the day draws near rather than be steeled against it. I would rather stare back at Deep Heaven and feel my smallness under it than go crazy and deny it. I would rather live and hurt than be dead and feel nothing. It's a strangely horrible, beautiful pain.

And it caught me by the throat today.

It was the song that gave it critical mass. I had been reading studiously earlier, finishing up a rather lovely fantasy novel that, with each word as I neared the ending, chipped away at my sleepless dullness. A little at a loss, for I am always a little at a loss when I finish a book, I wandered after the idle link and clicked on the song. It began to play: The Far Country. I felt the words reaching out to strangle me, because you can only reach it by dying. Images, memories of beautiful places real and conjured, the sound of waves falling, the sound of the wind in autumn leaves, the warm feeling of life in the earth under my feet, people's words - Christ's, Lewis', MacDonald's, Stengl's, even Sutcliff's - gnarled and knotted in my veins. The Far Country - the Far Country!

this is a far country, a far country
not my home

We walk in Abraham's footsteps through a strange land, and he walked in Christ's, and in every footstep that we leave there is a drop of grace. I hadn't forgot, but I wasn't remembering, and it sprang out at me like a panther. Maybe you have felt its claws too, and the way it leaves you disembodied like a leaf borne on a wind, a wind which no one knows where it came from, no one knows where it is going. Even the leaf doesn't know, just that where it is going is home.

and I long to find it
can you feel it, too?
that the sun that's shining
is a shadow of the truth

I'm reading Hebrews. It's funny, isn't it, how imperturbable God's conspiracy of sanctification is? I finished a book about a dragon-slayer who drank up death and lived to tell about it. I'm reading Hebrews, a book about the endurance of the saints through the shadow things of this world and the hope of those real things to come. I clicked on a song by Andrew Peterson, and a shining spear took me through the hollow of my throat. I remembered: I'm a stranger in a strange land. The books and the song made a part in the hedgerow, they were that mountain on which Christian stood, from which he gazed by spyglass far off and upward, catching a glimpse of the Celestial City. And it hurts, because there is so far to go, so many things to endure, so much loneliness and death-dark vales to go through. The Far Country is so far away. But with the wandering of Abraham is mingled the hopeful faith of the book of Hebrews. It doesn't lessen the pain - I don't know if I want it to. I know some people say faith is superstition, that this pain is neurological nostalgia, that the Far Country doesn't exist. I know why they say that: it takes eyes that see to see it and a heart that beats to love it, and only the Prince of That Country gives those things out. They don't grow in This World. In this dispirited, materialistic time I know that some of the things I know best are things I have never seen. They are the things that shod men's feet with iron, that set their faces like flint. They strengthen the cords of their hearts and strike fire inside them. They make us run the race with endurance. They carry us through the fight to the death - and beyond.

I was made to go there
out of this far country
to my home, to my home

I saw a glimpse of the Far Country today. I couldn't tell you what it looks like, save that righteousness dwells there; I couldn't tell you where it is, save beyond a death by burning. But I smelled it, and I heard it, and I swear I caught a glimpse of it, and I know it is there. We know it is there. We call it by many names, fantastical and otherwise: Elvenhome, the Far Country, Farthestshore, a New Heaven and a New Earth, the Sabbath... But whatever other names we use to describe it, we all use one together.

Home.

The Very Witching Time of Night

2011-09-26T11:47:00.006-04:00

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule -
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space - out of Time.
Dreamland, E.A. Poe

I used to wonder what it was about the great artists that drove them so batty. Every single one of them, it seems, was either disturbed or depressed or insane. It makes people leery about being "artistic." Who would want to be pigeon-holed with that crowd?

I still don't know what it was about those men (mostly men, but some women too) that drove them so crazed. Was it, as the Green Lady of Perelandra said, that living under the naked spread of Deep Heaven drives man's mind to madness? Is it his pursuit of the Muses, his unrequited love for beauty, that makes him so unnatural? Is it his very Godlessness, his lack of any moral foundation as he pokes among spirits of a different sort? Is it his looking for that which he does not know that makes him mad? I still don't know. And quite possibly I don't want to know. But I do know that the passion that can take an artist of any medium can be almost too much to bear. I am thankful to have that firm foundation, to be able to look at Deep Heaven and not fear it, to know what lies back of all the beauty in the world. I have the rudimentary beginnings of a sound mind. But I am an artist - I'm a time-traveller, a conjurer, an instrument that I am trying to tune and play at the same time. Like Scrooge I feel immaterial and silent as the grave passing through histories and images, scraps of song, lines of poetry and prose, anxious above all else to take them in and share them with others but feeling so helpless to do so. I am an artist and it's tiring.

I've begun a new novel, as you know: Plenilune. It came on me with an unsporting but necessary suddenness and I have been thinking about it almost constantly, running with it for all I am worth, afraid that if I slow down I will lose momentum and drive. I'm prone to laziness, a trait that a writer cannot afford. I haven't always been writing, but I have been thinking and thinking and thinking. I feel like my poor centurion Amadeus.

"My Lord Count, this past year and over a year I have thought for Britain and I have fought for Britain. Now let you see to affairs of state, and let me bury my British dead."

I am not a good sleeper. I am by nature very high-strung and tense - I associate myself rather closely with Ginger of Black Beauty fame. Most nights I am combating the aching tension in my neck and shoulders that my personality inflicts, which doesn't bode well for a good night of sleep. Plenilune has thrown into that mix a mind moving so quickly that I swear you can hear it hum. I can usually find a calming image, such as a cat curled up asleep (is there anything more comfortable than a cat curled up asleep?) and, focusing on that, I can wander off hand in hand with Morpheus until about three in the morning. Not so the past several nights. My mind has been given an involuntary flogging and has been running flat out through the long dark hours of night wherein there is nothing else to do but lie away and stare at the ceiling, thinking and thinking and thinking until I feel close to going mad. At the time I write this my cup of tea stands empty, having barely nicked the groggy muddle in my head; my plate of breakfast-lunch stands almost eaten; the mellow glow of my lamp mingles with the rainy atmosphere outside my window. I am tired, overrun by my own story, and I am barely out of the starting gate with it. This is what it is like, being an artist, I suppose.

I hope there is some method in this madness. I have said before, it is not all tiresome. I am a cross gingersnap when I don't have a quarry to chase. I am glad for Plenilune; heck, I'm of proud of Plenilune! Maybe it is not method, maybe it is more madness, but as a "creative person" I am not happy without this grueling work. For whatever reason the "great" artists went mad, I imagine "thinking God's thoughts after Him" is apt to drive a man rather mad too.

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's holy wisdom is foolish to man
He must have seemed out of His mind
God's Own Fool, Michael Card

And, in my small way, that is what I am doing. So here I am, tired, crazed, full of my plots and characters and countrysides and wanting badly either a nap or a hot bath. Welcome to my life.