Miss Mawdsleigh taught art. At an all-girls school. And if that wasn’t soul-destroying enough, she lived at ‘home’ with her overbearingly genteel mother and a white Pekingese dog.

Every Saturday morning she took Pekoe to the dog parlour for his shampoo and grooming. 

If the weather was inclement she waited, otherwise she took a brisk walk in the park.

On this particular Saturday she left Pekoe as usual. But she never came back for him

By the time anybody noticed she was missing it was too late.

It isn’t only teenage boys who run away with the circus…

©jj 2019

Idria, the Dragon Slayer was sitting in a comfortable tavern with her booted feet on the bench opposite, enjoying the most excellent malted ale which the landlord assured her was his own brew.
The sun was shining and through the window, she could see a family of ducks trailing over the millpond.
Life was good and she had not been summoned to slay a dragon for almost a decade now. Which was just as well as she was not sure she could fit in that armour anymore.
It was a hard decision to make. Idria frowned in concentration.
Did she had another ale or maybe ask for another portion of the landlord’s excellent apple pie? The landlord waited, a little impatiently, for her reply. It would be on the house, of course, after all she was The Dragon Slayer.
“Ah tefts! Why not both?”
Decision made Idria relaxed back in her chair and looked out at the peaceful scene beyond the window. Such a perfect day, nothing could spoil it.
Nothing except that small black dot in the sky which she could see getting closer and closer.
Tefts no! Surely not? Not today when she had just ordered –
The magical sound filled her head even before the bird was in clear sight. Around her, the chimes rang out, akin to that of someone dropping a series of metal plates of different sizes onto a bell. A moment later the chiming stopped and Idria was clad in her Dragon Slayer armour.
The good news was that the magic armour fitted. The bad news was – it fitted.
“Tefts! Does my bum look big in this?”
The landlord had just returned with her ale and nearly dropped it in surprise.
“Um – no,” he said colouring. He was not to know the armour gave her the ability to hear his thoughts: No bigger than the rest of you anyway.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The room was full of people, and the noise was such that the woman’s head hurt. She closed her eyes for a second, but that didn’t help so she looked for something to concentrate on. But what. All was noise and chaos.

The bench next to her creaked as a man in saffron robes sat down. She gave him a smile, to which he responded.

Dropping her eyes she was surprised to find comfort in studying the hands that lay quietly on his knees.

He must have seen the direction of her glance, because he smiled.

“Bless you,” he said.

©jj 2019

The Gates to Faerie is a new urban fantasy out now from Dan Melson

Mark Jackson’s problems begin when he wakes up with his ex-wife’s mummified corpse.
Seven years ago, she walked out on him and vanished. Now she’s back desperate for help. She claims a cult cured her cancer. Now they want to kill her.  Sceptical, Mark agrees to help. But when she knocks on his door, she looks like a teenager. They patch things up and one thing leads to another…
In the morning, she’s a mummified corpse and LAPD thinks Mark did it. The solution to his problems can only be found in The Gates to Faerie

I was fourteen the first time I saw someone vanish.
It was a girl, of course.  I remember her as being tall and thin, her skin the rich dark brown of fertile soil, with tightly curled black hair, falling in clumps to her shoulders.  Her bathing suit was lighter brown, and looked as if it were completely dry.  In fact, I don’t remember water dripping off her at all as she exited the lake.
Looking back now, I’d thought I was being cool and low key about scoping her out as she left the lake, which means I was staring and probably drooling.  I knew she was way beyond me, or anyone else in the troop.  We were all watching.
I saw from the way she moved that she wasn’t really a girl at all.  She moved lightly, not disturbing the leaves or dirt under her bare feet.  Young as I was, I knew she had to be older.  Nobody that age masters that kind of grace and effortless self-control.  Not the dancers who practiced in the loft above the gym and took private lessons, not the martial arts devotees who spent every possible moment at the dojo and might already be fourth or fifth dan or the equivalent, and definitely not boy scout nerds like me, no matter how much time we spent outdoors learning how to move quietly and not disturb the animals.  She made the best of us look like clumsy blind bumblers, and she did it effortlessly.  She looked maybe sixteen or eighteen, but she had to be older.
You could tell there was something special about her just looking at the way she moved, like the sunlight that hit her was somehow made special by her presence.  Yet she had an air of complete nonchalance.  She knew she was beautiful and desirable, but to her it was nothing special, it was just the way she was.  She knew we were watching her, enjoying watching her, but it didn’t harm her and so she enjoyed our enjoyment.
As she approached a large stand of manzanita, she turned and I caught a glimpse of her ear as her already dry hair moved, trailing her head through the turn. The ear I saw was small, and pointed, like some of the aliens on Star Trek.  Our collective jaws dropped.  She looked right at me, and laughed.  Canines more pointed than anything I’d seen on a human flashed momentarily.
Then she turned back to the manzanita.  Suddenly, her clothing shifted, no longer a two-piece thong, becoming instead a gown in rich earth colors, somehow all the more alluring.  She turned again, walked under an arch of overhanging red branches, and was gone.
Not “out of sight” gone, “vanished” gone.
Being fourteen and both disturbed and intrigued by what I’d seen, I remember picking myself up off my towel on the lakeshore to check.  Several other members of the troop followed.  We could barely make out that she had left a trail, light footprints with long toes in a couple of places where she had crossed bare dirt.  But it stopped dead under the manzanita arch.  Nor was there a path to continue.  Beyond a small space under the arch, the bushes closed in and became impassable to anything bigger than maybe a cat.  There wasn’t anywhere further to go.
We talked it over for half an hour, and intermittently the rest of the weekend and occasionally after, among those who had been there.  We all agreed that we’d seen a young woman leave the lake.  But beautiful young supermodels do not vanish without further trace in a manzanita thicket.  Eventually, we agreed she’d somehow managed to go around rather than through.  Agreeing that it had to be true didn’t make it so, however, and I remembered what I had seen in the back of my head.  I think we all knew that something unusual had happened, but didn’t want to admit it for fear of appearing naïve.
What a group of children we were.

The Gates to Faerie is out now!

A Bite of... Dan Melson

Q1: Would you rather live in this world or the one you create in your books?

The World of Gates to Faerie (from this book) is our world with an interesting addition.  Since I’d rather have the addition than not, I’d have to choose there.  
The Empire of Humanity from my science fiction side is specifically designed to be a place where the average person can make themselves a pretty good life.  The rulers are constrained by enlightened self-interest.  Unless something goes drastically wrong, action and major risk are things the citizens must specifically seek out if they desire them.  Choosing to live there would entail starting over, but the society is such that the effort will be more than repaid.

Q2: Chocolate cake or coffee cake?

There is no cake but chocolate cake, and I am its prophet.

Q3: Have you ever invented a language?

Not entire languages, like Tolkien, but my Empire of Humanity has four overarching languages which it uses for differing purposes, as well as a large number of local 
Traditional is an agglomerative language much in the mold of English.  It follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over the head, and goes through their pockets for loose vocabulary.  It is a language for everyday conversation, as well as for poets and writers.
Technical is a designed language used to eliminate ambiguity in a take no prisoners manner.  It is the language of legal contracts, of military and government orders, and technical manuals.
Mindlord is another designed language, designed to be information dense and often, to convey multiple meanings with one set of words.  Its drawbacks are that it is context sensitive as well as vulnerable to minor errors in transmission or reception.  It is rarely used by anyone other than operants, and usually only in the form of telepathy.
Concept is perhaps the only truly natural language, a non-verbal language of pure thought.  It can only be used telepathically.

Dan is a real estate agent, loan officer, and eclectic collector of skills and knowledge.  He has written eight science fiction novels, two fantasy, and two consumer guides, and has more story ideas than he will ever have time to finish.  He lives in Southern California with The World’s Only Perfect Woman, two daughters he is preparing for world domination, and a variable number of dachshunds.

You can find him on his blog and Facebook or  follow him on Twitter.

If she closed her eyes she could shut out the noise and argumentation all around her and pretend she was anywhere but in a noisy office among the sort of people she wouldn’t bother to talk to if she had a choice

But there’s a saying about beggars and choosers, so she just closed her eyes and waited.

Eventually, her name was called.

She stood up and walked into her husband’s office. He looked at her with tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Sorry love. But it’s good news. The adoption went through without a hitch.”

“Christopher is our son now.”

©jj 2019

He was the handsomest man of his generation and he had every intention of staying that way. He watched his diet, exercised wisely, and eschewed alcohol and tobacco. It paid off as his face adorned a thousand thousand billboards, and his six pack was familiar to every female everywhere.

Even with fame and fortune, he remained modest and endearingly polite.

Try as they might, the gossip columnists and muckraking bloggers could find nothing to his detriment.

One blogger cornered him.

“Why are you so fucking nice?” she snarled.

He bent to her ear.

“Because I have a very small dick.”

©jj 2019

Tweedleeast and Tweedlewest
resolved to go to war
For Tweedlewest said Tweedleeast
had really gone too far
And as they spoke, the silverbacks
hid ‘neath the bed and shook
For Tweedleast said Tweedlewest
would soon be brought to book
Tweedlewest and Tweedleeast
did huff and puff and shout
And women in suburbia
cried who will help us out
The Slavic eagle heard their cries
his wingspan blocked the light
Which frightened both our heroes so
they clean forgot to fight

© jane jago

The old woman had always been protective of her deck of tarot cards. “Don’t you be touching they. They’m no good to the likes of you.”
Later, as the growth in her belly began to claim her life, she came to rely on Ruth, and they became more than teacher and pupil. Even so, it was a surprise when the old one pressed a cloth wrapped package into her hands one day.
“Don’t open they until I’m gone. They only knows one master. But you should be able to get one use out on them before they dies with me.”
Ruth put the cards in her pocket and got on with life. She was busy enough with caring for the dying wise woman and dealing with the calls on her skills as a herbalist not to think about the future at all, leave alone a one-use deck of tarot cards.
When she closed her mentor’s eyes for the last time and placed a kiss on each wrinkled eyelid, Ruth sat back on her heels and rubbed a weary forearm over her brow. Things, she thought, were about to get difficult.
She wasn’t wrong. Her troubles started almost immediately with the arrival of the young man who now owned the cottage in which she lived. He was one Donal Thatcher, nephew to the woman whose corpse was barely cold. At first Ruth thought he wanted her out, but he was lazier and cleverer than that. He would, he said, allow her to stay in her home if she became his second wife. It was not precisely an appealing prospect, but she knew the village looked to her to accept his offer and remain as their healer and herbalist. If she was to be burnt at both ends by a lazy demanding family and a hard physical job, why nobody cared about that. It was her place to be useful. Even her own father made it clear there was no place for her in the family home.
“You chose to be ‘prenticed to a witch now you be payin’ the price,” he said before shutting the door in her face.
It was hard not to feel vengeful as she retraced her steps towards the now overcrowded cottage. Her father might say that it was her own choice, but it was he who had made it impossible to live as his daughter. He who had made her life miserable and had crowned his petty cruelties by refusing to consent to her marrying the boy her heart hankered for. She sighed and mentally shouldered her burdens. What to do?
There was, on the edge of the forest, an old oak tree where she had held hands with her love in the carefree spring of her life. As if knowing her need for a connection with past happiness, her feet took her to that very tree, while her mind grappled with the problems of here and now. Impelled by who knew what impulse Ruth put her hands against the rough trunk and rested her cheek on the sun-warmed bark.
“Where are you, my love?” She expected no answer, but it comforted her just to think of his strong, brown face.
“I’m coming, Ruth. I’m coming.”
She turned in half a panic, not daring to believe her ears.
“Where. Where are you?”
“Meet me at midnight.” Then she heard the joyful note of his laughter before he was gone from her mind.
Was that real? she wondered. But no. It couldn’t be. It was just her heart playing tricks with her.  Then again, what if it was a real sending? She walked into the cottage still lost in thought to be greeted by the shrill scolding of Donal’s fat wife. 
“Where have you been, you lazy slut.”
Ruth didn’t trouble herself to answer, and a bout of slapping and hair-pulling might have ensued had not a long, angular shadow fallen over the chaos of what had once been a serenely pretty sitting room. Donal’s wife took one look at who stood in the doorway and dropped to the floor in a deep curtsy. It was the moneylender, the only man of any wealth within half a day’s ride, and a man who even her mentor had feared for his affinity with the dark. Ruth looked into the narrow, whiteness of his face and knew what he had come for.
“Mistress Ruth,” the voice was deep and smoothly cold, and it jangled against her nerve endings. “Mistress Ruth. I come to offer you the protection of my name and my hearth.”
“Oh no, sir. She cannot do that sir,” Mistress Donal babbled. “Her is already promised to us.”
“Is that the truth?”
“No. I am promised to nobody.”
The bony man looked severely at both women.
“My offer is on the table. I shall call at noon tomorrow for Mistress Ruth’s answer.”
He turned on his heel and all but collided with Donal, who had been hovering behind him. The three cottagers watched as the moneylender mounted his tall horse and rode away without a backward glance. Donal grabbed his wife by the wrist.
“You don’t lie to that one, stupid slut.” Then he turned a fulminating eye on Ruth. “And you. You now have until noon tomorrow to make up your mind. It’s him or us. And he’s killed three wives already.”
Ruth nodded. “Aye, I know. It looks as if you win. But for now can I have some peace and quiet please.” She was about at the end of her tether and surely even Donal could see she should be pushed no further lest she break altogether. 
He looked at her for a moment then laughed a harsh laugh. “I suppose we can give you that much. One last night alone before you come to our bed.”
His wife licked her lips and it was all Ruth could do not to allow her revulsion to show in her face. She managed to keep a calm exterior, though, and went quietly into the room that served her both as bedroom and the workshop where she prepared her potions and simples. Shutting the door quietly behind her, she sat down on the narrow whiteness of the bed and shuddered.
Where had her options gone? The same place as her carefree youth she thought. For a moment she felt the claws of despair, but she straightened her spine. It was no good repining, a decision must be made. She could become Dermot’s second wife, or she could accept the offer of the moneylender, a man who she believed to be deeply involved in the darker arts.  Neither choice promised much of a chance at happiness. Once she admitted  that it strengthened her resolve. She would take neither, instead, the minute it grew full dark she would leave. Of course Dermot wouldn’t let go of her that easily and neither would the moneylender. Somehow none of that seemed to matter, she would just go.
The window was big enough to climb out of if she took only a small bundle of things, and the world away from what she knew could hardly be less friendly than what she was facing in the familiarity of the place where she was born. Maybe, she thought with a warming of the area around her heart, she would even go back to the oak tree and wait there until midnight. 
She carefully gathered together a small pile of things, not too much because she would need to carry everything she took. She was hunting for her warm cloak when her hand fell on a small cloth-wrapped bundle. The tarot deck. 
Even through the cotton wrapping Ruth could feel the cards growing warm in her hand as if they would speak to her. She bowed her head in respect before opening the pack and allowing the tarot to tell her what it would.
Whilst she laid the cards out her conscious mind registered that the pattern on the table was unfamiliar, but her hands and the cards seemed to know what they were doing. As she finished, her right hand went to a card and a voice in her head said ‘moneylender’. She was unsurprised to see the hanged man, symbolic of death and disgrace. ‘Donal’ showed the Devil’s leering face. ‘Remain’ her hand turned over the symbol of chaos and misery that was the tower. ‘Leave now’ she felt the warmth of hope even as she turned over that very card. 
“And lastly, Ruth,” this time she whispered aloud, her voice a thread of sound in the orange light of sunset. Without hesitation she turned the card. It was the queen of swords. The last piece in the puzzle adjuring her to have courage and purpose. 
Ruth bowed her head in acknowledgment and a single tear ran down her cheek, but it was cathartic rather than sad. 
I will rest a while, she thought. Then I make my own life away from this place. She rested, quiet in her mind for the first time since the old witch fell ill. 
When the moon rose she was ready, slipping away like a wraith in the night.
Whether it was her new found courage, or whether the spirits of the tarot were watching over her she knew not, but for whatever reason her escape ran flawlessly and she soon found herself in the woodland being drawn ever westward as though by an invisible string from her heart. Around her the sounds of the nighttime wood were somehow comforting and she trod bravely with her feet making little noise on the thick loam beneath the trees. Once in the fitful moonlight she saw a badger snuffling about his business, and once a stag raised his horned head to gaze limpidly at her passing.
She supposed it must be midnight when she reached the mighty oak. Reaching out her hand she smoothed his bark and felt the ageless incurious spirit that inhabited the heart of the tree. As she communed with the forest giant her ears caught a breath of sound, and her heart leapt into a blaze of joy. By the time the sound resolved itself into the wheels of a wagon and the hooves of a horse she was standing at the side of the track with her bundle on her shoulder. He didn’t even need to stop the wagon, merely reaching down a strong arm and lifting her onto the seat at his side. They kissed briefly then both set their faces to the east and the miles that must be covered before sunrise. 

The moneylender was at the cottage early next morning, banging on the door and waking the inhabitants with cold curses.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
Donal didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “In her room. She begged the favour of one night alone. She hasn’t come out.”
“Fool.” The dark wizard felled the lazy thatcher with a blow of his staff. “Fool. She has flown. I awoke this morning to the sure knowledge she was gone.”
“She has nowhere to go.”
“It seems as if nowhere is preferable to either of us.”
Without awaiting invitation he shouldered his way into the cottage and up the narrow staircase. He kicked wide the door of the stillroom to see an open casement and an empty room. Cursing under his breath he was at the table where the tarot deck still lay in two strides. As he reached out his hand to dash the cards to the floor they seemed to crumple before him like leaves in the autumn wind. Only the card at the centre of the unfamiliar pattern remained intact.
The Queen of Swords stared at the dark wizard from a pair of calm green eyes…

©️Jane Jago 2019

Philomena was finding it hard to understand the series of events that had changed her life altogether, and brought her to a place where she was attempting to write a letter to a virtual stranger. 

Put bluntly, her father had capped a life of indiscretions by shooting himself. Which left Philomena homeless and penniless. 

With an effort she schooled her mind, telling herself that salvation had arrived in the nick of time, and that her saviour was even now in London seeing what else he could salvage for her.

She bent her head and began to write.

‘My dearest husband…’

©jj 2019

They landed on the phone wire
Perched, like feathered fruit
On the slender branch
Of a man-made tree.

A hundred tiny voices
Calling to the sky
A raucous caucus
Vibrating the air.

Sudden silence, like nightfall.
Stillness on the wire
Waiting for a sign
Hushed breath in each breast.

Abrupt – the flutter, fluster,
Flap and fly up high
Shape the swoop above
Vanish over the horizon of rooftops.

E.M. Swift-Hook