Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

When old Agnes died, the rest of her seven did what was necessary. They buried Agnes, gathered together her books, and burned her vardo. Young Mary was surprised when Agnes’ cat heaved his impressive ginger bulk onto the oldest wicca’s cart.

“He will stay with us until we find a human seventh. Without seven the magic would be weak.”

It was almost a year later when the seven found a young whore working in a backstreet stew. 

She was thin and fearful, but the magic filled her.

The ginger cat slowly faded until all that was left was his grin…

Jane Jago

Ginny decided she had come out much too early to see the bats, either that or she had mistimed exactly when ‘sunset’ really was. From her ‘bat hide’ behind some bushes, but with a clear view of both the church and the belfry – at least she assumed it was a belfry – she saw the vicar. He was making his way through the churchyard and looked rather odd wearing a long duster-style coat as if he had stepped out of a spaghetti western or a Fields of the Nephilim video. He had a tank of something on his back with a spray gun in a holster. He also carried what looked like some sort of a gun. 
Ginny was no expert but it looked like the kind of gun her cousin Bradley had posed around with shooting tin cans from the garden wall one summer holiday in her early teens. Bradley had used it to shoot at pigeons too. That had been the summer she’d become vegetarian. So she was pretty sure the gun was nothing very dangerous unless it caught you in the eye.
Or unless you were a bat. 
But, surely not? This was a vicar not some crazy teenage cousin like Bradley. And Bradly was a semi-retired investment banker now. But the tank of chemicals on the vicar’s back spoke otherwise. 
Frozen to the spot by indecision, Ginny realised that even if she called the police the vicar could kill all the bats before help arrived. 
She wasn’t even aware she was up and running until she heard some mad-woman shouting abuse and realised it was herself and that she was running into the church behind the bat-hating vicar.
By the time she was inside he was unlocking the door to the belfry and he spun round. The lighting in the church must have been a bit odd because he looked as if his front teeth were too big to fit in his mouth properly and the whole of his face seemed to project towards her and she could have sworn his nose was twitching in anger. Then he stepped towards her and the strange effect was gone. His long coast swung back as he moved and she saw a wicked-looking hunting knife in a sheath on his belt.
“Ah, Virginia, so sorry but it’s a bit of a bad time. If you would like to join the flower arranging rota you’ll need to speak to Dolores St.John. She’s always keen for new recruits.”
As he spoke Ginny realised the gun – whatever sort it was – was pointing towards her.
“Uh. No. I wasn’t planning on–”
The vicar smiled, but instead of his usual rugged good looks, his mouth seemed rather narrow and in the subdued light, Ginny got the strangest impression of – fur.
“If it’s about writing a piece for the parish magazine, that would be wonderful. Thank you.” He took a step towards her which felt decidedly menacing. “You really should go now, Virginia, I have something important I need to do.”
“You’re not going to kill the bats.” Ginny had intended it to come out as a firm denunciation, but instead, it emerged from her mouth as more of a strangled squeak.
The vicar giggled.
“You’re not going to kill the bats,” he echoed mockingly. “Well that’s where you’re wrong Virginia Creeper. That is exactly what I am going to do. I’m going to eradicate every last flying rat from this belfry and you should leave right now.”
“But they’re protected!”
The vicar looked around theatrically.
“Doesn’t look like it to me. Not at the moment anyway.”
Common sense was sternly lecturing Ginny that this man was clearly deranged and that her best course would be to run from the church and call for help. But she knew if she did that the bats would indeed be unprotected. Instead, she took out her phone and started filming.
“If you do anything to the bats, I’ll show the world what kind of monster you are.”
Which was perhaps the worst – as well as the last – mistake of her life.
“Why did you say that, you stupid woman?”
The vicar seemed to bound across the distance between them in a single jump, knocking the phone from her hand. His face, thrust right into hers, was no longer human, but covered in soft brown and black fur, with round doe-like eyes. What had been his hair was now long ears.
The vicar was a giant rabbit.
The impossibility of that stunned her as the force of his bound hit her in the chest and Ginny was thrown backwards. She just had time to see the long yellow front teeth and the barrel of his gun caught the last rays of the setting sun through the narthex window as she fell, then her head hit the stone flags stones of the church floor and there was nothing.

Part 14 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.

Dinner

The secret of living is this:
You don’t need ecstasy and bliss,
You just need a good man
Who knows how to – and can
Do the dinner when you are half-pissed

Eleanor Swift-Hook

There are some books one remembers distinctly from childhood because of the immense impact they had at the time on the developing individual. I have memories of A Wizard of Earthsea bound up in blood and trauma.

I was gifted the tome by some long forgotten maiden aunt of my pater’s who had included a hand scripted note saying how she thought the cover looked like it was ‘a good book for a little boy’. I should probably add that said maiden great-aunt was profoundly immersed in art deco, dadaism and surrealism. Left to myself I would not have opened the thing and would have slipped it into the bag of items Mumsie always kept for The Less Fortunate and shipped out to a charity shop once full.

But Pater had other plans. It seemed I was required not only to write a loquacious and sycophantic thank you letter to said maiden great-aunt, it was also required that I first read the wretched thing and pass comment upon how profoundly it had moved my innocent young soul. In other words, a review.

From the wisdom and experience of adulthood, I can look back fondly on my child-self and laugh at my puerile folly in thinking this was some show of esteem and affection for his aunt from my father. As I recall the inheritance netted him enough to double his investments overnight.

I still have the review, which I wrote with a cartridge pen on the back page of the book and in the process inflicted a paper-cut on my innocent childish fingers. My first ever.

My review of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin.

A boy called Dunny, or Sparrowhawk or Ged is good at magic and goes to a kind of Hogwarts on an island. There he learns magic and gets in a fight with the school bully. He loses his shadow and he and his best friend have to find it again. 

It was a very annoying book because the boy could have won by using the magic stone but for some reason decided not to.

Stars: One and a half. 

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.

In Devon, the railway runs right by the beaches
Past small sandy inlets and bright golden reaches
Then follows the river whose tides are so steep
Over salt-smelling marshes and waters so deep
In summer the sea is as blue as the sky
And reflects the white seagulls as they hover by
But in winter the waves crashing over the line
Carry the feeling of wildwind and brine
And over the railway the white salty spume
Collects in a way that defies any broom
In Devon the railway runs right by the sea
Which is almost as nice as you think it might be

Jane Jago

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