Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…

The emotion was getting a bit much for me when a sharp whistle announced it was time to put our plan into action. Somebody passed me an intricately embroidered fur parka to go over my cold weather suit and Moth smoothed my hair around me. Thistle proffered a pair of snow goggles and kissed his fingers.
“My brother is a lucky dragon.”
I grinned and Moth touched my cheek. “You do look beautiful, dear one.”
“Stay in the warm, beloved,” I said to her.
I stepped out of the van into about six inches of snow. It was going to be a bitch of a day for travel, but for now the snow clouds had blown over and the sun on the whiteness made me very glad of the smoked glasses.
The first sign of my erstwhile captors was the sound of booted feet crunching in the snow.
“I’m glad we don’t have far to go. This stuff is a bitch to drive on.”
I recognised the driver’s voice.
“If you’re such a wuss let me take the controls.”
That was the one who had been sitting in the back seat next to me.
The one I had thought of as the boss, with whom I now had an even more personal score to settle, spoke in his cold, pitiless baritone.
“As I have no wish to end up in a ditch, you will be in the back with the consignment.”
“You’re in charge.”
“I’m so glad you remembered that.”
They passed us, barely looking our way, and I saw three bulky killers. There was something not human about the way two of them walked and I understood them to be weres who rarely used human form. Bears if I wasn’t mistaken. The third was much more used to his human body. I pegged him as the driver and a were rodent of some sort. They were all hard, tough-looking specimens, and there might even be a fight here. I felt the call to arms singing in my blood and ruthlessly pushed it down.
Backseat thug was first to their vehicle. He pulled open the door and stuck his head in.
“Boss. She’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone? She’s just slid onto the floor.”
“No. She ain’t here.”
Cold voice wrenched open the door beside where I had been sitting. He stared into the empty vehicle.
“She didn’t get out on her own. Who has dared interfere with the business of the bear?”
This seemed as good a cue as any and I spoke into the cold air.
“I’m here. Come and get me if you are man enough to face a woman not drugged and manacled.”
The three spun around as if I pulled them on wires.
“Who helped you?” Cold voice was angry in a dangerously cool-headed way, and I needed to push him over the edge to a place where he had less control of his beast if we were not to have to kill him where he stood.
“What’s the matter, teddy bear? Can you only cope with women if they are tied so you can smack them around to your heart’s content?”
“You gonna let her talk to you like that boss?”
“Talk is cheap.”
But I could see him clenching and unclenching his big hands as the bear claws slipped in and out of the ends of his fingers.
“Talk may be cheap. But it’s less cowardly than stealing women and keeping them drugged and barely alive.”
He took a step forward and immediately there were a half a dozen dragons at my shoulder.
Mandrake spoke in a voice laden with contempt. “Was there something, bear?”
A cruel smile twisted cold voice’s face. “Thank you for holding my prisoner for me. We’ll be on our way now.”
“What makes you think that is going to happen?” Purslane made her voice light and mocking.
“The word of your Queen.”
“Saying what?”
“Saying that no dragon shall intervene in the dispute between house Lyon and house FitzRoy.”
Purslane laughed. “What does that have to do with anything here and now?”
“Don’t act any stupider than you are, female. That’s FitzRoy’s daughter being delivered to Lion for his justice.”
“Well. One of us is stupid,” Purslane placed her words as carefully as arrows, “but I don’t think it’s me. This lady is most certainly not the Lady FitzRoy. She is the mate of the battle dragon who stands at her shoulder. I’m sure you know how the whole of Dragonheart feels about anyone laying hands on it’s own.”
The bear was brave, but he was also outnumbered. He took a step back.
“We’ll say no more about it then.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Do you really think it will be that easy? You owe me a blood debt at the very least.”
“I owe you nothing. What business of a bear lord is a whore who spreads for a dragon?”
He had probably spent all his life thinking himself quick, but compared to an enraged shifter he was as slow as a running tortoise. No sooner had the word whore left his lips than I leapt on him, extruding four tiger claws on my left hand as I did so. He was uncomfortable enough in his human form to allow me to bear him to the ground in my initial rush. I slashed his perfect face once with my clawed hand, then retreated so fast that neither he nor his cohorts had any chance to lay hand on me.
I wasn’t even breathing heavily, but he was as he dragged himself to his feet. He touched the bleeding cuts that decorated his cheek with a shaking hand.
“I will kill you.”
“I doubt it, teddy bear.”
And that settled his hash for him. He lost it and his beast demanded to be set free. When he gave in and began the change his cohorts joined him.
Fools!
Every lycanthrope ever born knows it is folly to make the change when surrounded by enemies. But sometimes anger overrules common sense.
As they reached the vulnerable state between human and beast, two dragons grabbed each and bore them to the ground, pulling their arms behind their backs and affixing silver manacles to their wrists.
And there they were, trapped halfway between forms and powerless to do anything except what they were told. I turned my back and walked away.
Moth awaited me with a grim smile. “Bear will carry your mark for his life.”
“However long that may be.”
A rumbling roar announced the arrival of three hugely muscular tracked vehicles and the rest of the wing. All of whom looked to be spoiling for a fight.
Mandrake inflated his chest and blew out a column of violet-coloured flame. The dragons settled down.
Moth spoke urgently in my mind. ‘How do he? Why he does? I never sees dragon flame in human form before.’
I hastened to reassure her. ‘It’s because he’s a true fire lizard. He flamed then to remind the other dragons who is boss.’
‘Is good then.’

Jane Jago

Writing inspired by the art of Ian Bristow

The Pain,
Lightless, black as night
It Burns,
Salt water scores your skin
Red Eyes,
Have pity not, nor sight
They Stare,
Yet understand your sin
Your Prayer,
For sight of that far home
Too Far,
Too lost beneath the deep 
Your Wish,
To be no more alone
His Answer,
The last and final sleep

Jane Jago

Ian is an awesome artist and cover designer, you can find his work at Bristow Design.

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

You need some new glasses they said
Choose frames that look nice on your head
But I can’t see my face
Without glasses in place
So I’ll just keep the old ones instead 

Jane Jago

An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

“We may have a problem or do have one?” Em asked, knowing Agnes was seldom that precise in her use of words.
“Okay. Do have. The vicar has a visitor.”
“Who?”
“A rat catcher. Didn’t stay long, but he took in a box of stuff and he came out without it.”
“Oh bother the man. I’d better keep an eye on the church hadn’t I? “Hadn’t we. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“I’d be glad of the company. I just wish we could watch both sides of the church. I can only see the back door from here.”
“Can’t you get that pesky bloody bat of yours to go and keep an eye from the lych gate?”
“Yes. Of course I can. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“It’s being close to the church does it. I find I’m thinking a lot clearer over this side of the village. But right now I’m on my way.”
Em felt comforted by the thought that Agnes would be with her, and she rather despised herself for those feelings. In an effort to reassert her normal control, she brushed herself down briskly and went to collect certain things from a large tin trunk in the attic. Once she had assembled what she thought she might need, she dressed in camouflage trousers and a neat khaki vest. Carrying her booty downstairs she loaded the pockets of the ancient poachers gilet that hung behind the back door before lacing her feet into the Doc Martens that Agnes had persuaded her into last winter. As by now the sun was turning the evening sky a lurid orange picked out with purplish storm clouds it was time to persuade Erasmus to cooperate. 
“Are you awake my friend?”
To her surprise he answered immediately. “I am. What do you require of me?”
“Agnes and I can watch the back of the church from here, but we can’t see the front.”
He was ahead of her. “I will hang in the lych gate. It’s high enough so I won’t be seen.”
Em felt him leave, just as Agnes slipped in via the back door. “I left the car in the pub car park.”
There not being too much else to say, they took themselves upstairs to where a window seat on the half-landing offered a perfect view of the back of the church. They sat down, comfortable in their silence, and Em looked at Agnes with an inward grin. She also wore camo, although hers was less tailored than Em’s and her pockets bulged with various things as Agnes was always one to be prepared for any eventuality. 
It occurred to Em that there was one vital piece of information she hadn’t passed on to her friend. “I just remembered what I haven’t told you. Erasmus says the vicar is a were.”
“Wolf?”
“No. And we don’t know what. Erasmus tells me the bats say he’s rodent.”
Agnes gave a humourless chuckle.
“A rodent? Then my money’s on him being a wererat. I can just see him fitting in well with those cunning, sneaky supes.”
“But a wererat becoming a vicar?”
Agnes shrugged. “They have their exiles, rogues and outcasts same as the rest of us, but the traits always run true.”
Em wasn’t convinced, there was something distinctly un-ratty about the man that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “I suspect we’ll find out soon enough.”
“You got the silver bullets?”
“I have. If necessary.”
Agnes’ phone bleeped. She listened for a moment.
“Thanks. Can you follow him?”
She listened some more. “Right. See you.” Agnes put the phone carefully back in her pocket. “The vicar is on the move. Dressed like he thinks he’s Clint Eastwood I’m told. Arnold is following on his motorbike, but he has to keep well back. Oh, and Arnold has Petunia riding pillion.”
Em sighed. “But you never know, she might even be useful for the first time in her life.”
They resumed their study of the churchyard in the lurid light of a Disneyesque sunset. A movement at the edge of the little coppice that backed onto the churchyard caught Em’s eye. She stared and then as her eyes became accustomed to the half light under the trees she realised who it was.
“Agnes. Why do you suppose the Cropper woman is sitting in Dead Man’s Wood watching the church?”
“Azriel knows. But she is just about bound to get in the bloody way. I’ll go send her home.”
But before she had even got up from her seat, a strange looking figure slipped into the churchyard by the back gate. It was the vicar, loaded for bear and heading towards the church.
The two women ran down the stairs and down the garden path to where a low wall separated Em’s garden from the churchyard. Em was thinner and fitter than Agnes but even she wasn’t fast enough to stop Ms Cropper who ran into the church shouting incomprehensibly…

Part 13 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and Eleanor Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Because life happens…

Exploring the mysteries of life through the versatile medium of limerick poetry.

Unexpected

Life is unexpected at times
When nothing you do seems to fit.
You try hard as you can
But it simply won’t work
And in the end, you just give up and go and do something else completely different instead!

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Starship Troopers was not a book that one had any intention to read.

Ever.

The blurb made it abundantly clear it was about boot camp and killing insectoid aliens in great quantities and the antithesis of everything that represents fine literature. To one, such as oneself, raised upon more the most sophisticated themes and rarified tomes by She Whose Name One Is Unfit To Mention, it seemed like being asked to enter into a rugby scrum only after ensuring two weeks of torrential rain have softened the pitch.

So why would I do such a thing? One hears the single nonplused warble resonating from my myriad readers. You can be sure, gentle people, it was through no choice of oneself.

This is a cautionary tale that tells how karma always finds a way.

Last month I was prevailed upon to join the local literati gathering – or ‘Ben’s Book Club’ as it is is listed on the Community Centre noticeboard. Mumsie had declared that it would be of great value to my own written words were I to take more time to peruse those of others. She also threatened to evict me from my writing sanctuary and turn it into a hell-hole brewery for her own vile alcoholic distillations if I refused.

So, perforce, enforced by force majeur, I went. The torrid event occupies an entire afternoon each week, filled with in-depth and avid discussion and dissection. Then, once the local gossip is dealt with, the group spends a few minutes at the end considering whatever book Ben has chosen for the week and being assigned one to read for the next.  The first week I went it was Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.

My review of Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

A young man goes to boot camp and learns how to fight insectoid aliens so he can vote. The rest of the book describes the fighting. Spoiler: he doesn’t vote at the end of the book.

Stars: Four – for allowing me to learn sufficient juicy gossip from Ben’s Book Club members to blackmail Mumsie into letting me keep my writing sanctuary.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

jenny dunn lived in a pretty smart town
with an up so market prices go down
all year round in her little room
she used her smartphone to control

Friends on facebook (both far and wide)
cared for jenny dunn not at all
they liked her posts she played their games
time now to login again

children grew up with screens a few
and down went their health as up they grew
winters stopped more summers came
then the sun dried up the rain

one day jenny dunn died I guess
hard to know as her profile’s there
busy folk living their virtual life
don’t miss the woman who was ne’er a wife

Friends on facebook (both false and fake)
reaped their harvest ate their cake
came their going and died their death
earth gone nowt left…

eleanor swift-hook

Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…

It seemed to me to be no more than the truth and I leaned into Mandrake’s formidable strength secure in the knowledge he would never use that physicality in any way that would ever cause hurt to me. He must have caught the edges of my thought because he rested his face against my hair. For a second his naked love warmed my soul even as his physical heat warmed my body.
Purslane became very brisk and practical, in an effort, I thought, to conceal her emotion.
“Your face will heal cleanly I think. There should be no scar. Dragon venom is a great healer. Your wrists and ankles are bruised and abraded, and your ankles were filthy, but I have dressed them with antiseptic ointment.”
I leaned forward and offered her my hand in thanks. She took it and for a second I touched her mind. She was a fine proud female and I would never tell Mandrake of her unrequited love for him.
I had been through quite a lot in the last few days and I found myself wholly unequal to planning and plotting. I left it to Mandrake and his dragon chums, opting instead to doze and try to husband my energies. While all the shouting and arguments went on around us, Purslane put a big mug in my hand.
“Soup,” she whispered, “made only with pot leeks and potatoes.”
“Thank you my friend.”
She blushed that I would call her friend, but it was a blush of happiness not anger. I smiled at her and essayed the soup. It was excellent. I found myself hugely hungry and when Purslane put a slice of buttered bread in my hand I bit in with relish, meal finished I felt greatly improved.
“I must have been unusually hungry.”
“That isn’t entirely a surprise. Your kidnappers had you for better than two days, and I’m sure they never fed you.”
“Two days?”
“Yes. Your fae kept tabs on your whereabouts while Mandrake gathered a rescue force.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you for coming to my aid.”
She blushed again and I grinned.
“It’s okay. I know you did it for Mandrake. But the end result was me getting saved.”
Moth came to my shoulder. “You needs to get dressed if you wants to be in on surprise for bad men.”
I very much did, and Purslane held up a blanket screen while I climbed into a cold-weather suit and a pair of fur boots. Moth combed my hair until it crackled and moved like living silk. While she combed she planted the plan in my head. It seemed good to me and I gave Mandrake an upraised thumb.
His answering grin was dangerous. Our vehicles moved across the car park and I watched as the blowing snow covered every trace that we had been near the kidnappers’ car. As the snow piled up on the roof of that vehicle I shivered at the thought of how cold I would have been trussed up and with only a ratty old sleeping bag to keep me from freezing to death.
“How stupid are they?” I asked out loud.
“Fairly. But a female of the FitzRoy clan would be much less affected by cold than most. That family is part seal and they carry a layer of insulating blubber under their skin.”
“So they just left me to suffer.”
“That’s about the size of it.” A burly male with whorling inked scrolls on his torso showed his fangs before diving headfirst into a fur-lined parka. When his head emerged he grinned more normally. “They say you are tattooed too.”
“I’m inked, certainly. But it is about an inch deep into my flesh.”
He bowed his head. “I had heard of this thing. My respect knows no bounds.”
I had experience of draconic trials of bravery and I wasn’t up for any of that crap today. So I snarled at him.
“Even if they had to tie me down?”
“Even then.”
I felt his puzzlement at my vague aggression, and I pulled myself back. I was being stupid. This friendly dragon wasn’t testing me. He was just trying to find some commonality. l felt a little ashamed of myself, but covered it with my friendliest grin.
“They didn’t tie me. But I screamed.”
“Everyone screams and that’s just skin-deep ink.” Then he must have cottoned on to my train of thought because he turned a kindly smile my way. “I did not seek to put you to the test, madonna. It was but conversation.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I think I’m a bit on edge.”
He bowed his head again. “To admit when one has been misguided in a thought is true wisdom and the brightest of bravery.”
I held out my hand and he took it in his huge palm. I felt the need to make reparation and there was only one way I could do that.
“My name is Perdita,” I said.
“I am Thistle, egg brother to Mandrake. I will hold your name in my soul.”
“And I will hold your name as dearly as that of your egg brother.”
We clasped fingers for a moment and I felt his true nobility. Mandrake smiled from his position of command, but the surprise was Moth. She hovered in the air in front of Thistle’s face.
“I am Mothwing, daughter of Harebell, and I greet the friend of my bonded sister.”
Thistle bent the knee in a truly courtly gesture.
“I am proud to know you.”
Moth smiled at him before taking up her favourite perch on my shoulder.
‘We trust these dragons much,’ she whispered in my head.
‘I find them worthy of trust.”
‘Moth do too.’

Jane Jago

Writing inspired by the art of Ian Bristow

Reynard sat in the sun. It lit his fur and warmed him to his bones. He had almost everything a fox could need. Except a mate. He half closed his eyes and saw her against his eyelids as svelte, and smooth, and subtle as a snake.
When he heard the voice, he thought himself dreaming at first, but the  he realised it was a real happening and he looked to where the sound came from.
She sat about two feet from him basking in the same sunbeam that warmed him.
When the sun went in they walked the night together.

 Jane Jago

Ian is an awesome artist and cover designer, you can find his work at Bristow Design.

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

I am old, and I worship the sun
A snooze in the heat is such fun
I lay like a lizard
With a sign on my gizzard 
‘Turn me over when you think I’m done’

Jane Jago