It was colder than a witch’s heart. Owen Smith opened up the forge and kept the fire going day and night, which was probably the reason nobody died.

On the longest night, he was on the edge of exhaustion and his sister dragged a chair over.

“Sit. I can keep the fire going.”

He slept, dreaming of his dead wife and awoke with unashamed tears running down his face.

But he knew what he must do.

Before the thaw arrived, the innkeeper’s daughter had accepted his offer.

They married in the spring, and his baby daughter melted his frozen heart.

©jj 2019

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. If you missed previous episodes you can start reading from the beginning. You can listen to this on YouTube.

They were greeted by a whey-faced curator who seemed to be expecting them.
“That was fast, but I’m glad you are here so quickly – I’ve tried to stop anyone going near the area, of course, but I didn’t want to start a panic by letting people know what had happened.”
Dai opened his mouth but Julia beat him too it.
“Of course. I understand. Perhaps you could take us to see. No need to cause any alarm.”
The curator led the way and Dai shot Julia a puzzled look. She shook her head and winked then took a few quick paces so she was walking beside the curator.
“What can you tell me?”
“Well, the under-keeper found him, said the lions have been very unsettled recently and he had been trying to see what the problem was.”
“The under-keeper was trying to see what the problem was?”
“No. The head keeper. Drust. Ninian Drust. He was a marvel with the lions, he knew them all from cubs. It is terrible, terrible.”
“Terrible,” Julia agreed. “So what happened?”
“He must have been checking the enclosure, looking for anything that might have been upsetting the lions. Would have to have been early morning, before opening. The under-keeper found him when he came on duty just after lunch. Well, found what was left of him.”
They had reached the lions’ enclosure and the curator was wringing his hands over and over.
“Terrible. It’s just terrible.”
Dai caught the slight nod Julia gave him and left her saying soothing words to the curator and hopefully getting more details of events from him. Dai went into the keeper’s room and the stench of exposed entrails hit him full in the face. The keeper’s face was still strangely preserved, eyes wide with a last image of horror, and jaw locked into a teeth-exposing grimace of agony. Most of the damage was to his torso and limbs, the trailing remains of his guts hung down from the table and his body looked oddly deflated with the internal organs and soft flesh mostly gone.
It was obvious he had been attacked and killed by the lions he had loved. Didn’t need a detective to tell that. Dai was anything but a superstitious man and right that moment he was not going to buy into this being any kind of coincidence. His test kit was about as basic as it came but the blood sample told him one important thing: there had been high concentrations of alcohol in Ninian Drust’s bloodstream when he died.
One of the advantages of having a Roman investigator with him was that Dai needed only to ask for his requests to be fulfilled. Instead of being told nothing was going to happen unless and until he provided officially confirmed documentation, a single glimpse of Julia’s ID and the curator was almost offering to shoot the lions himself. The praetorian marksmen who undertook the task after being equipped with appropriated tranquilliser weaponry, were probably more efficient.
The subsequent search of the large enclosure seemed fruitless at first and Dai was on the point of admitting his idea might have been wrong and that Drust had in fact just been drinking and wandered into the lions’ enclosure after all, when he saw it. He had seen it when he first walked into the enclosure, they all had. You couldn’t miss it, but no one had really seen it.
“Hiding in plain sight,” he told Julia, pointing to the decorative carousel-shaped centrepiece in the middle of the enclosure. It’s top, a strange confection of oriental shapes, would just be visible to visitors to the menagerie from the edge of the enclosure. The only people who would ever know it was there would be the lion-keepers themselves – and someone who had access to the complete plans for the entire Augusta Arena complex, of course. It looked for all the world, close to, like some intricate cage-effect sculpture, set around a large rough-hewn rock.
The bars were not even locked and lifted easily when Dai applied his strength to do so. So easily that it was clear they were well maintained despite the appearance of age. Even Julia could have opened them without too much trouble.
“The under-keeper told me that Drust was convinced something was going on with the lions at night,” she told him as the bars slid up, revealing a steep tunnel dropping away into darkness. “Apparently, they would come in the morning sometimes to find the lions all lethargic and grumpy. But the beasts passed every health check he ran them through. It had become a bit of an obsession for the man,; he had put in more security surveillance around the perimeter, but that had shown him nothing. So, according to the under-keeper, he had been camping out in the menagerie for the last two nights, determined to see what was happening.”

Part X will be here next Sunday. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

Mattie cradled her youngest grandchild and looked at his mother over the babe’s downy head.

“Art going to tell me?” she asked gently.

Her daughter pleated the sprigged cotton of her skirt with nervous fingers.

“Thoui’t think me a fool.”

“Try me.”

“Mam. When did anyone last call thee by thy given name?”

“Long before thy birth, my love.”

“Once we married your da called me Wife. Then when Will was born, I became Mother.”

“It ain’t right, Mam.”

Mattie put her hand over Elizabeth’s.

“It’s the price we pay, love, for healthy babies.”

“Aye Mam. I reckon it is.”

©jj 2019

They built him on the hillside, facing out to sea
His eyes glowed red to light the route
To harbour’s calm safety
In his hand he held a blade, upraised to serve and save
A beacon, hero, brought  them home
The honest and the brave
He served the fishers and the folk, who gave him not a name
And ten times ten the winters passed 
Until his sword took flame
Until he walked the naked land, until he took his due
The metal man who lit them home
Sent them to Hades too

©jj 2019

A short fiction by Jane Jago. You can listen in to this on YouTube.

One week…
At the time it hadn’t seemed like too much to barter with the little man with the domed skull who had offered a solution to her predicament. At first he had asked for her virginity as a downpayment, but when she laughed and pointed out that it was a rose that had been plucked a good while since he had pushed out his long upper lip and made an old-maidish tisking noise. But then he had brightened. His master, he said, would be content with a week of her company in recompense for helping her out. At a time convenient to her, of course. 
She had agreed hastily, frankly in so much fear of the consequences of her actions that she would have agreed to anything he suggested. Now, however, with the threat of prison no longer hanging over her head, she would have dearly loved to wriggle out of the deal, but there seemed to be no escape. 
It was, therefore, with a fairly bad grace that she boarded the Eurostar for Brussels on a freezing cold Sunday afternoon in the pouring rain.
“Belgium…” she mused inwardly, “who lives in Belgium?”
That was a question that she was never to have answered. A pressed and barbered chauffeur, carrying a huge umbrella, met her on the station concourse and escorted her to a waiting limousine. He tenderly helped her into the rear of the vehicle.
“Our journey will be of about four hours duration, madam.”
She nodded as regally as she could, whilst mentally trying to pin down his middle European accent. 
He got into the driver’s seat and the vehicle moved away as smoothly as if it ran on ball bearings. The sound of the doors locking was almost shockingly loud. She reminded herself that her own more modest saloon car performed precisely the same function when the speed reached ten miles per hour, but that was of very little comfort as she looked at the chauffeur’s shaven neck and the way his cap was placed precisely centrally on his almost square head. Not normally a woman noted for her imagination, she gave herself a mental shake, but couldn’t rid herself of a small worm of dread lurking deep in the pit of her stomach. 
The journey seemed endless and she was only able to endure it with to
tolerable equanimity by concentrating on her own breathing and looking out of the window at the sheets of rain. As the day grew darker, the rain grew increasingly sleety and by the time they turned off the autobahn onto what was obviously a private drive it was snowing in earnest. The woman examined her own perfectly manicured fingernails and wondered just what she had allowed herself to be manoeuvred into. Pushing half a million dollars worth of assistance out of a sticky situation to the back of her mind, she allowed herself to feel misused.
The big car swished to a halt beside a set of ironwork gates. Her driver rolled down his window and said something she didn’t catch. The gates slid open and the car picked up speed again. Only now they were driving through a rocky tunnel. She shivered involuntarily. The tunnel was dark and it seemed that the headlights barely pierced the gloom. 
“Almost there madam.”
That wasn’t exactly reassuring either.
Not being a fanciful woman, she wasn’t sure why her heart dropped to somewhere in the region of the needle-sharp heels of her boots when the car stopped outside the deeply carved, black walls of an ornate castle. Walls that were being rapidly decorated with white snow frosting. Somewhere in the very back of her mind she heard the words ‘Castle of Otranto’ and some long-forgotten fear grasped her by the throat. At that moment, had there been anywhere to run she would have fled. But there wasn’t. Instead she set her foot on the bottom step and mounted the worn stone steps, bending her mind to grace and suppleness grace in place of gaucherie and fear. 
As she reached the huge doors one leaf was thrown open and a cadaverous figure in the dark suit of a butler stood regarding her. She was a woman well accustomed to servants, so she glided past paying him no more heed than if he had been one of the gargoyles that glowered down on her from the dark stone walls.
Inside the place a huge fire burned in the sort of grate that could have accommodated a whole tree. A servant bustled forward and took her coat. She automatically fluffed her hair and touched fingers to her perfectly painted lips before turning to face the figure that uncurled itself from a huge chair beside that crackling fire. For an instant she saw, or thought she saw, grey scaly skin, yellowish teeth, and long bright claws on strangely articulated fingers. But then the image wavered and all she could really begin to focus on was icy green eyes with vertical slotted pupils. She thought she might have been about to faint, but she was not granted even that small mercy. However, she had never lacked courage and walked to meet her fate with a straight spine and a cool smile. 

One week…

One week can be a lifetime or as fleeting as a passing breath. 
From that day until the end of a pampered and hugely successful life she could never decide which she experienced. All she knew for certain was that whatever happened to her in those seven days she must have pleased Him greatly to be allowed to leave on her own two feet.

Jane Jago

Knut looked at the gesticulating man with some hauteur. He was sitting on his own doorstep, and minding his own business, and, as far as he was concerned, the human needed to mind his business.

Missus came to the door, laughing, she bent to run her fingers through his ruff. 

“D’you think the big man’s afraid of you?”

Knut let his tongue loll and thumped his tail.

In the end the man went away, and when Mister came home he was lavish in his praise.

“You protected well.”

Knut stuck out his chest. He loved Missus, and he was proud.

©jj 2019

Once I stood upon the battlefield,
My sword held high
And in the righteous cause, my blade did wield
And I did die.

Once on horse so fine I rode to war
My king to serve
With pistol and carbine, I slew a score
And fell to earth.

Once in trenches deep I crawled all day
My land to save
With machine-gun fire I cleared the way
And found my grave.

Now I watch a screen and with my hand
It’s drones I fly
Their deadly strikes will kill at my command
But I won’t die.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Picture by from Ian Bristow of Bristow Design

You can listen to this on YouTube.

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.

The Review.

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.

He bought the picture at a house clearance sale. 

Anna obediently cleaned the dim little oil, which turned out to be a charming study of Bacchus and his nymphs.

She loved it. And Him.

The marriage lurched along for another decade, but when it finally broke He was vicious. Within a week Anna was out and he had installed his young mistress.

She was a fey creature who sat in front of the painting devouring it with her eyes.

Then she disappeared.

Did she run away?

Did He kill her?

Or was there an extra figure in the painted bacchanal?

©jj 2019

This is an extract from ‘Dragonheart’ one of the adult fairy tales in The Dragonheart Stories by Jane Jago. You can listen to this on YouTube.

The dragon spiralled down out of the sunset, with the orange light setting his skin aflame so that he looked as if he was made of oil and steel. Tia stood and watched, wryly noting the Diamond Throne banner, whilst being careful not to move or speak until the shining one’s feet touched the ground and he furled his wings.

She bowed her head in a formal gesture of welcome.
“Greetings lady,” the voice inside her head was deeper than she expected. This must be a full male, which meant he would be a shifter as well. He would bear watching. Carefully.
“Greetings, bright one.”
The dragon regarded her out of whirling multi-faceted eyes before bowing his head. The silence lengthened, and seemed to Tia that her uninvited guest was trying to make her nervous with his lack of comment. She broke the silence in a deliberately small voice.
“What does my lady mother want of me?”
“Naught. She would merely ascertain that you are well.”
Tia cast down her eyes so he could not see her contempt.
“Perhaps my lord dragon would care to assume his human form and venture inside, to where we can speak in more comfort.”
If it was possible for a dragon to look puzzled, he did so.
“May one ask what makes you think this dragon has a human form?”
For a moment Tia dropped her shield of humility.
“Who am I?” she raised a narrow dark eyebrow.
He thought about that one for a moment before dipping his head.
“One is ashamed.”
Tia was at great pains not to show her contempt for that remark.
“I apologise. It was not my intention to cause you disquiet.”
She felt the dragonish laughter as a vibration that ran right through her skeleton.
“My name is M’a’tsu, and I would be honoured to visit with you.”
Tia curtseyed.
“I will leave you to make the change in privacy.”
She turned and made her way across the flower strewn meadow to the grey stone buildings that clustered at the base of the cliffs and the stone stairway to the temple.

M’a’tsu watched her go, enjoying her long-legged stride and the way her body moved under the simple linen robe she wore. He found himself fantasising about tying her up with the rope of her own black hair, which hung in a braid almost to her knees. Giving himself a sharp inward reminder that he wasn’t there for pleasure, he took the necessary time to compose his mind before making the change.

Once he was in his human form, he stretched for a moment enjoying the different sensations afforded by thinner skin. He looked down at his muscular perfection and briefly considered remaining unclothed but the pleasure of the rapidly cooling air against his human flesh had to be balanced against the possibility of giving offence. Accordingly he shifted himself leather trews and a waistcoat, electing to remain barefoot for the sheer delight of the feel of grass beneath him.

Jane Jago.