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…

Mandrake took back the microphone. “This was not. But the taking of my mate falls just as heavily on you as it does on the traitorous cat. We require reparation.”
“What do you require, sir dragon?”
“Less, perhaps, than we might. You and your confederates are to desist from an abominable scheme that would punish a child for its father’s fault. We will hold you personally responsible for the cessation of such plans. You will also, in addition to your normal responsibility for the conduct of your own weres, stand as surety for the behaviour of House Lyon.”
Mandrake stopped speaking and we waited in silence.
The bear I marked with my claws was first to find his voice. “I claim vendetta against the creature which marked my skin, and against its lizard.”
Wulfric looked at him with obvious loathing. “I forbid.”
“Then I am no longer your bear.”
“You would seriously defy me?” Wulfric was obviously astonished.
“I would.” And once again the marked bear reiterated his defiance. “I am no longer your bear.”
Wulfric showed his teeth. “You are not indeed.”
The blow that caved in the now clan-less were-bear’s skull had nothing about it of science and everything of impotent rage. The second bear tried to run, but suffered the same fate as his friend. Wulfric turned a fulminating eye on Lord Lyon.
“You heard the dragon’s terms. Are you prepared to abide by them.”
“Yes,” sulkily.
“I beg your pardon.”
“I said yes didn’t I?”
“So you did. But I think I will have a blood oath of you.”
“I will not give it.”
“Very well, then.”
Wulfric dropped his human form and stood over Leonard in his full glory as a coal black bear.
“What are you doing?”
“If you won’t swear you’ll have to fight me.”
I prodded Mandrake. “We should maybe make sure it’s a fair fight.”
“Good point.”
He whistled into his comms device and armed dragons appeared on the roofs of our vehicles.
“Who are those men?” Leonard called out.
“Let’s just call them insurance, shall we?”
A woman stepped out of the shadows. She wasn’t young, but she was of surpassing beauty and grace.
“Leonard’s ‘mate’,” Purslane spoke with extreme distaste.
“Ah yes. I’ve heard of the lady. Do please keep an eye on her.”
“I shall be delighted.”
The woman crossed to Wulfric and placed one red-nailed hand on his thick fur.
“Surely this is unnecessary,” she purred.
The bear looked at her with something I struggled to understand on his ursine features. “Step back,” he growled.
She smiled up at him, wholly confident in the power of her beauty, and slipped her free hand into the pocket of her richly furred robe. I didn’t trust her a bit, and neither, it seemed, did Purslane. Beauty clapped a hand to her neck before crumpling into a heap on the floor.
“Tranq dart.”
“Good shooting.”
Lord Lion picked up his woman and carefully disposed her unconscious body under the portico out of the snow. As he tidied her robe about her, we all saw him sneak a hand into the pocket she had been going for. Unfortunately for his plan, the Bear Lord saw it too. The sound of bones being crushed was loud and sickening and Leonard screamed a scream of pain and terror and rage. He went for his own pocket and if Wulfric hadn’t crushed the wrist of his dominant hand he might even have made it. But he fumbled the gun he was grabbing for and it dropped to the ground with a metallic clatter.
The bear stood back and showed his long yellow teeth in a contemptuous snarl.
“Make the change, pussycat, or I will kill you where you stand.”
Leonard threw back his head and roared, but he didn’t take his lion form.
“What’s he playing at?” Purslane wondered.
“I don’t know.” Mandrake sounded just as puzzled.
I stared at the writhing figure of the Lion Lord. There was something badly wrong with him, evidenced by his body squirming almost as ineffectually as the weres we bound with silver.
“Oh my goodness,” I said softly. “He isn’t making the change because he can’t. Look at him. It’s like he’s a half-were.”
“A half-were?”
“Someone who can’t fully make the change to his or her beast. But that’s ridiculous because I’ve seen him Change.”
Wulfric Bear glared at us before shifting his human face onto his bear body. “What have you done to the Lion?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of course I’m sure.”
“Well. That only leaves one option doesn’t it.”
He walked over to the unconscious female and dropped back into human form. One large hand curled around her throat, and, even though she was unconscious, she struggled against the sudden constriction. I knew what he was doing and it made me feel sick, but I could also see why he thought it necessary.
“What does bear do?” Moth asked.
“He’s closing her airway so she can’t breathe,” I felt a constriction in my own throat and for a second I too laboured to draw breath.
“It’s cruel pretty fae. But look at the Lion.” It was Purslane who spoke, and her voice pulled me back into the here and now. I was grateful.
Leonard Lyon stopped fighting in his own body and pulled his beast about him. He shook his orange mane and roared. For a second or two his right front paw hung lifeless, but the superior healing powers of his best took over and he soon stood four square.

Jane Jago

Writing inspired by the art of Ian Bristow

Here I set my heart within your hands
Here I swore my soul unto your lands
Here I took my first breath as a fae
Here I lived until your dying day
Here I bore the child you’ll never see
Here I lit the flame to set you free
Here I kneel and weep my final tear
Here I lay a rose for you…
Here…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Ian is an awesome artist and cover designer, you can find his work at Bristow Design or watch him in action creating this piece on ART with IAN

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

If he lived to be six months old, Gizmo thought he would never understand humans. When he made noise they shushed him, and if he got wet they wiped him before he went indoors. So what was happening here?

The big human made farting noises while something big and red grew tall on the grass. Then Gizmo watched tame water come into the red thing through a worm. It was odd. But now…

Now the small humans were in the tame water screaming like fighting cats.

Gizmo found a patch of sunlight away from the wet screaming and fell asleep.

Jane Jago

Agnes and Petunia looked Ginny over carefully as she slept. Finally, Agnes grinned.
“Looks as if we got away with that one. Aside from the fact the hair on her head seems a bit less wispy and her front teeth are a bit prominent, she’s just the way she was.”
Em was bitterly tired but she managed a smile, and when Arnold offered her a cup of something steaming she took it gratefully. It was soup, and it helped. However, what she really needed was blood tea, and a lot of sleep. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when a puffed-out Agnes handed her a tall mug from her own kitchen. She drank deeply and felt a measure of strength seeping back through her bones.
“Now what?” 
Agnes indicated the trussed-up were with a lift of one of her chins.
“Good question.”
The voice was unfeasibly deep and came from the doorway. Em smiled a weary smile.
“Come in Leodigrace. Come and tell us how the heck that one got away from you.”
The shadows readjusted and a tall man came quietly into the church.
“He didn’t get away, Emmeline. He slipped under the radar. I can find no trace of anybody knowing anything about him. Although someone did. And we will find out who.”
Agnes gave the big lycanthrope a dirty look. “Not wishing to be thought unwelcoming, or anything like that, just how did you happen to be in the area?”
“I didn’t happen to be here. I was having a meeting with the bishop – about yon bunny rabbit – when I suddenly knew something was happening here. I hurried…”
“Now you are here,” Em managed to sound severe even in the face of gnawing fatigue, “can we leave the disposal of that poor mad creature to you?”
“You can.”
Leodigrace bent over and lifted Doug Turner as easily as if he was a tiny child. Then he was gone.
Arnold looked at the three women. “I don’t suppose anybody is going to tell me who or what.”
Em shrugged. “You’ve seen too much already, so why not. Leodigrace is the big cheese when it comes to weres. And he’s the biggest effing wolf you have never seen in your life. He might eat bunnies for all I know. And now I have had about enough. Will you carry Mzzz Cropper over to my house please?”
Arnold swallowed, then pulled himself together. “I will. Then I will come back and scrub the floor.”

By the time her unwanted guest had been installed in the guest bedroom, Em was feeling the full effects of a very trying day. For once the age she felt reflected the age she looked and it was not entirely down to the drain of creating a new Sister. Agnes had sensed it, of course, and insisted on organising everything, making Em sit in the lounge with her feet up whilst she sorted the settling in of the Cropper woman.
“Do you think I’ve made a mistake?” Em asked when Agnes placed a brandy in her hand and sat down with one herself.
“Not like you to second-guess yourself, Em.”
The brandy helped. It tasted of fire and nostalgia.
“No. It isn’t. I think I am still trying to work out how I missed all the signs about Doug Turner. How could there be a were – or any kind of supe – wandering around the village and I just didn’t notice?”
“None of us noticed, not just you. So stop blaming yourself. You’re tired and a good rest will see you right as rain.” She finished her brandy and stood up. “Now I’ll leave you to it. Do you want me round tomorrow to help out with explaining things to our new Sister? It’ll be a bit of a shock for her as we didn’t have a chance to do the pre-chat and all that.”
Em groaned.
“And I can just imagine how she’ll take it. This is one I’m really not looking forward to.”
“She can’t be worse than Petunia was can she?”
“Maybe. After all, according to Angela Pendle-Burton she’s a committed vegetarian.”
Agnes’ mouth formed an exaggerated O shape. Then she laughed.
“Well that will be one for the books.”
“Exactly,” Em said. “What the hell do we do with a vegan vampire?”

Part 16 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.

Curse

Growing older is not such a curse
The alternative’s certainly worse
So do all you might
To take some delight
Afore you get to ride in a hearse

Eleanor Swift-Hook

It is August, the month when the true cognoscenti abandon home to imbibe sun, culture and romance. My maternal parent has boarded a flight to Goa and I am lifted on finer wings to explore Greece. I leave you who are chained to your domestic soil with some whimsy from my poetic genius. À bientôt!

The Seagull

Once upon a picnic beery, whilst I guzzled, drunk and cheery,
Over the tartan blanket spurious, spoke words which could only bore –
While I waffled, sometimes rapping, suddenly there came a flapping
As of some bird quickly crapping, crapping on my fresh coleslaw.
“Tis a bloody gull!” I shouted. “Crapping in my fresh coleslaw.
“Shoot the bugger!” I did roar.

And the seagull, never flitting, still is shitting, STILL IS SHITTING!
All across the tartan blanket and the bowl of my coleslaw!
Soon his evil squawk brings streaming every seagull near, it’s seeming
And the flock of flockers teeming do devour my picnic more,
Thus, my cup of fine Prosecco now is spilt upon the floor.
I shall picnic – nevermore!

Sonnet IV

Within the inglenook of creeping night
I steal Calliope’s wings steeped with flame
And an homunculus enters my sight
Bearing aloft a banner with my name.
I stalk to rocky kloofs of distant height
To claim the fabled phoenix for my own
And by the wounding pens terrible might
I slay the fierce chimera all alone.
Those Labyrinthine paths conquered by right
So now upon my head Theseus crown
Marks my soliloquy of posey bright
As in Morpheus arms I softly drown.
From forth my dreams thus comes triumphs of rhyme
For of the Muses choice, I am the prime.

Hibiscus

Hibiscus bloom of palest pink
I have not words, I have not ink
To speak of love’s bepetalled face
Watch from afar who walks in grace
Who walks in beauty as the dawn
Who in my breast true love doth spawn
Who shines like effervescent gold
Who shall not wither, nor grow old
Hibiscus bloom thy petals ope
And face the sun and dash my hopes
Hibiscus bloom of palest hue
Who murders hope with lies untrue
Hibiscus bloom of stainless steel
Who stamps my love beneath her heel

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

There’s poems writ and paeans praising
A lover’s eyes or deeds amazing
Songs have been sung or chants recited
For landscapes that have souls delighted
And here and there a verse may tell
Of a flower that is blooming well
But no extolling words before
Addressed a slug on a kitchen floor.
No hymns do clamour to acclaim
This refugee from the garden’s domain
The dappled flanks and saddled back,
That somehow slip through any crack
The gentle way it tastes the air
Stalks aloft, and not eliding 
The silence of its graceful gliding
And silver path it trails behind
That glitters in the morn’s sunshine
Revealing where the night before
A slug did grace my kitchen floor.

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…

Mandrake grunted and gave our driver a signal. The vehicle started up and began moving slowly and inexorably towards the building. The other two fell in behind us. At first, there was no reaction, but as the first all-terrain began to ascend the steps the sound of cracking marble must have been as loud as gunfire because a massive were-lion in a red velvet robe ran towards us waving his arms. It was the Lion Lord his own self and he seemed seriously disturbed.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
We drew quietly to a halt and Mandrake passed me a microphone.
“We are here because I’m displeased with you Leonard Lyon.”
He drew himself up to his full height. “Who dares to chide the Lion in his own place?”
I laughed. “The person who is about to order her vehicles to drive right through your pretty house if you can’t find your manners.”
He stomped about a bit but he really had no room for manoeuvre.
“Very well. What do you want?”
“A few moments of your time. And some amelioration of your behaviour.”
He didn’t like that one little bit and I was beginning to think of suggesting the vehicles inched forward a little further, when a hulking brute dressed in black leather ambled quietly out of the house.
“Give it up, Leonard. Whoever this is has you by the balls.”
I started to laugh.
“What?” Mandrake was right on the verge of being cross.
“Sorry love. That’s Wulfric. He’s the big bear.”
“Oh. I see. Should we give him back his children?”
“Yes. In a minute. I’ll speak to him first though.” I toggled the microphone switch. “I don’t know what you are laughing at Poppa Bear. I’m no more pleased with you.”
“And why would that be? I have no truck with females.”
I switched off the microphone.
“Mandrake, can you have his creatures evicted from the all-terrain, please?”
Mandrake whistled into his radio. A few seconds later a door opened in the belly of one vehicle and three figures stumbled out. They were no longer bound in silver, but they had spent so long halfway between forms that their bodies didn’t know whether to be human or animal. The resulting mess of heaving lumps and bumps, and odd clumps of hair, and unsuitable fangs and claws, might have been pitiable had I not personally suffered at the hands of the grim trio.
Wulfric laid hands on the two bears, which enabled them to solidify in more or less human forms. The rodent was less fortunate as, after watching his struggle for a moment or two, the big bear broke his neck and dropped his corpse in the snow.
The two were-bears stood silent under the regard of their master. He didn’t look too pleased to me.
His first words were accusatory. “Who dared mark the face of a bear?”
“One whose face he marked. In partial reparation for unnecessary cruelty to one who was bound and helpless.”
This wasn’t at all what he expected and he growled angrily before taking another verbal slash at us.
“I see your vehicles carry the mark of the Dragon Queen. How comes it that you are here in direct defiance of her orders?”
Mandrake took the microphone from my hand.
“Which orders might that be Bear Lord?”
It was Leonard Lyon who answered in a voice filled with glee and bloodlust. “The order not to interfere between houses Lyon and FitzRoy. An edict I received direct from the queen’s own lips.”
Mandrake allowed himself a chuckle. “We are not in defiance of such an edict.”
Wulfric, being a little more intelligent than Leonard, began to smell a rat. He turned to his frightened weres and placed a hand on each head. When he had listened to their thoughts he bowed his own head.
“Mea culpa,” he said, and I could hear the words burning in his throat like acid.
Leonard turned on him. “What is the matter with you? Why are you apologising to renegade dragons? I see what it is now. They have the girl. And now they have to hand her over or risk being declared wolfshead by their own queen. All that their intervention has done is make it worse for Demoiselle FitzRoy when I have her in my claws.”
“They don’t have the girl. They have the woman your agent kidnapped from the college. But. It. Is. Not. FitzRoy’s daughter.”
Leonard stared at him. “Don’t talk rubbish, man. The college principal assured me that the girl was in the hands of The Collector.”
“Well she lied to you.” He cracked his knuckles and the noise was very loud in the snowy air. “It’s a pity you had her killed, or we could have asked her what she was playing at.”
“You are seriously suggesting we had the wrong female.”
“I am. And we are in so much trouble.”
Leonard scoffed. “If the female lives, we must hand her back to her father with no harm done. And we go and get the FitzRoy girl ourselves.”
Wulfric grabbed him by the collar and shook him until his teeth rattled. “She’s a dragon mate, you stupid fragging pussycat. We are within inches of being declared prey.”
“Prey?” At last Leonard seemed to be grasping the edges of just exactly how deeply he was sunk in his own ordure. “Surely they can’t do that.”
“Can and are very likely to. Between us we are responsible for the abduction and ill-treatment of the mate of a battle dragon who would also seem to be a wing leader.”
“Battle dragon? Wing leader?”
Wulfric was relentless. “Yes. All that and, from what those two have in their brains, pissed off in the extreme.”
“But who is the female to dare to mark one of your enforcers.”
While he was talking, Leonard was moving towards the fallen fighter with the light weapon. Mandrake handed me the microphone and slid a small window open. As the Lion Lord made to grab the fallen weapon, Mandrake flamed briefly.
Leonard screamed and Wulfric spared him a glance. “Shut up pussycat, you aren’t hurt. Although whatever it was you were after has been melted into a puddle.”
The Bear Lord bowed towards our vehicle. “My apologies. This treachery was not of my making.”

Jane Jago

Writing inspired by the art of Ian Bristow

George was a gentle creature, slow moving even for one of his kind and deliberate of thought and speech.
When Mabel was introduced to the group, all the males hustled around her puffing out their cheeks and making their most macho grunting noises.
She ignored them, choosing instead to come and munch some fresh greens at George’s side.
When Alfred attempted to mount her she flipped him over onto his back and continued munching.
“A girl likes to be asked,” she said quietly.
It was many days before George did ask, shyly.
Mabel nodded, and they tended the eggs 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…

When a gal from the WI
Was asked why the glint in her eye
She replied with a grin
That it isn’t a sin
To put plenty of gin in your pies

Jane Jago