Somewhere in a Wild West that never was…

It was still full dark when Cuchilo reined Hombre in. “We’re right about there, but I’m thinking we need to pull back a ways so we can see without being seen. And we need to cover our tracks.”
“We do. I hadn’t thought it through, but we surely do.”
Cuchilo threw back his head and howled. He was answered almost immediately and he threw Hombre’s reins to Mir before slipping to the ground. In the fitful moonlight she saw him crouch down just as the wolf sprung. They wrestled and played for a moment before Cuchilo bent to the wolf’s ear. Whatever passed between them, the rest of the pack emerged from wherever they were hiding and rubbed around Cuchilo as if they were tame dogs. When he had communicated with each one he got back into the saddle and kneed Hombre forward.
“There’s a cave. It’s dry and overlooks the draw. We will be able to stable the horses and watch without being seen.”
Mir spotted the deer before anyone else, she touched Cuchilo on the thigh and he followed her eyes. In a second he had an arrow nocked. The buck had just lifted his head when an arrow ended life. Cuchilo roped the carcass and dragged it behind his horse.
“Well spotted.”
Mir managed a smile, although being with Cuchilo after nearly four years alone was coming close to killing her. “I remember how much this lot like deer meat.”
The cave was exactly what they needed. Even so, by the time everyone was fed and sorted dawn was just pinking the sky. Mir yawned and Cuchilo motioned to the pile of branches and horse blankets.
“Sleep. I’ll watch.”
She needed no second telling and with wolves huddled around her for warmth drifted into a refreshing sleep. Waking who knew how much later, the warmth of the wolves’ bodies had been replaced by the feeling of hard muscle at her back and a long arm draped over her waist. She knew the feel of him as intimately as she knew her own hands and the craving that had never subsided lifted its head. Without conscious thought she turned into his embrace, rubbing her face against the soft flannel of his shirt. His response was as swift as it was flattering and the seduction of his hands and mouth were as potent as ever.
When it was over and she lay in his arms, Mir made no attempt to hide the tears that ran almost unheeded from her eyes. He was instantly contrite.
“Miri. What is it? Did I hurt you?”
“No. But you will. When you discard me again.”
He pinned her to the makeshift bed and stared into her eyes.
“What do you mean, discard you?”
Anger was Mir’s only defence, and she wriggled and fought in his hands. “You know what I mean. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
“Miri. No. It wasn’t me…”
There was a second of fraught silence, before they spoke in unison – both having the same thought and both finding the same difficult words.
“Why didn’t you at least tell me yourself?”
Cuchilo stared down into her face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I guess I am. But who?”
“Your sister.” Mir felt that like a slap. She had always known that Yael didn’t love her, but to actively try and ruin her life… She looked into Cuchilo’s eyes and saw the truth in him. He cupped her cheek in one hand. “Who came to you?”
“A shaman called White Eagle. I didn’t want to believe him, but he had your wedding ring.”
“Yael had yours too.”
“Only she didn’t.” Mir put her hand to the neck of the undershirt that was all she currently wore and drew out a chain on which there hung two rings.
“White Eagle neither.” The rings around Cuchilo’s neck were on a leather thong.
Mir buried her face in the strong brown column of his throat. “Oh, love,” she murmured. “Oh my love.” And then she really started to cry. He was wise enough, and tender enough, to let her cry it out before drying her cheeks with his shirt sleeve and offering her a rag on which to blow her nose. She complied and leaned into his warmth. He wrapped her in a hug.
“Better now?” he asked.
“Better than I’ve been for a goodish while.”

From The Redhead, the Rogue and the Railroad by Jane Jago which is available all through February for 0.99.

Because life happens…

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!

E.M. Swift-Hook

… or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

a slong (noun) – Gaelic drinking song with obscene gestures

Anywa (proper noun) – less known sister of Pocahontas who kicked a certain young British officer in the balls when he tried it on with her

beeter (noun) – person who hits vegetables

blof (noun) – pre blog status when trying to construct witticisms

chater (noun) – to converse about one’s unfaithful spouse

earleir (noun) – aristocratic listening device

inc ase (noun) – tattoo on butt cheek

nagel (noun) – celestial being much given to homilies and finger wagging

naybe (noun) – the act of not being

poliete (noun) – parrot food

questoon (noun) odd-shaped vegetable of dubious origin

scharacteromeone (noun) – garden gnome with attitude (bad)

shhabby (adjective) – of cats having slightly moth-eaten looking fur

teh – (noun) strange brown beverage made with ground leaves and hot water

thnakees (noun) – very low slung scrotum

udnerstand (noun) – wobbly milking stool

winteractith – (noun) pagan festival including naked snow fights and much raucous singing

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Big Bigger was up to something. He was digging a hole in the veggible patch and singing. The nomes were suspicious of cheerfulness in one so normally morose.

“Wossee up to?”

A whisper ran around the garden, and Chigger crept closer for a look.

“He’s planting a tree.”

“A tree?”

“There?”

Brenda went to look for herself. “That ain’t no tree you higgerant nome. It’s. It’s… summat else.”

Big finished his hole and unwrapped the thing. It was wide and hollow and he firmed it in carefully.

The empty box read. ‘Acme rocket launcher – for fireworks.’

The nomes all flinched….

©jj 2022

Imagine waking up one day unable to recall who you are or where you came from – only to find you are serving a sentence as a convict conscript for crimes you have no memory of ever committing…

The rotation of Thuringen meant the local daylight and dark cycle matched one and a half Coalition standard days, which meant every third day the ‘City spent in total darkness or total light with a crossover day that saw a noon sunset. In any standard cycle it gave ten days of full darkness. Today happened to be a dark day and when Avilon left his low-grade accommodation, he walked through a drizzle of rain and streets sheened with silver as the wet surface reflected the lighting.
The block, where he had been allocated a one roomed unit, crouched beside one of the main thoroughfares which ran into the suburb. Private transport vehicles – he’d heard called PTVs – were exclusive to the wealthy. For the majority, there were the large public groundcars and those with funds to spare could make use of the fast-to-summon airborne auto-cabs. These, mostly dual-seater vehicles, skimmed past at high speed guided by their AI, leaving any pedestrian glad of the enclosing safety bars which spanned over the walkway, protecting from above and from the street.
Every day so far, since his arrival on Thuringen, unable to afford to hire an auto-cab, Avilon had needed to walk a short distance to the nearest public transport point where he could pick up a ride to his place of work on the far edge of the industrial area in the next sector of the city.That journey to and from work and a single brief foray to the local retail mall to purchase basic essentials, as his block was designated a delivery no-go zone, had so far been the extent of his explorations. He had spent any free time available to him, the time between returning from the plant and sleep, running through the Legion’s restricted-space fitness program. On occasion he had paid the link charge for accessing vidcast channels, or surfing social media and public infolinks, trying to make sense of the strange environment he had been propelled into.
He had also been looking for any trace of Jaz.
He did not have a lot to work with. Jaz had never had much to say about his life before the Specials. Not that it meant he wanted to keep anything about it private from Avilon, more because in the Specials anything anyone ever said was public to the Lattice. It meant you always thought about what you said and had to consider the consequences of whatever you might share. So the few scraps of information Jaz had given him had been precious gifts.
He knew Jaz had a family of his own, a woman and two children – boys – and they lived in Starcity. Jaz once earned his living as a mercenary – a good living, he said. His woman owned and ran a food outlet and Jaz always seemed proud because she served proper cooked food and not cheap, vat-prepared stuff such as they got fed in the Specials, or the more varying qualities of meal-synth productions he understood most people lived on. Whenever they were faced with another tray of something bland and indescribable made from rehydrated nutrient gel, Jaz would always go on about the good food she served there.
Avilon even knew the name of the woman – or part of her name -Tillsa. But no more than that. And in the ‘City, with an estimated total population of somewhere over forty-five million people, trying to find one food outlet with so little to go on, was never going to be easy.
He had made a start a few days before, looking on the local public links. There were around eighteen hundred food outlets listed advertising themselves as serving real food. Most were in large and popular retail zones or entertainment sectors. If he needed to check them all out, one after another, by his own estimation it could take over a year to do so. It occurred to him, the proprietor would probably be either Jaz or his woman. The first assumption led to no possible results – but a search on the name ‘Tillsa’ came up with just two options: a ‘Tillsa’s Place’, listed as being in one of the suburbs and the other with no name, just its address in the spaceport. The one in the port stood nearer his accommodation, but from the way Jaz spoke of it, Avilon had the impression of something more upmarket. So he decided to head to the one further out.

From Trust A Few – book one in Haruspex, the second Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Because life happens…

The secret of living not glum
Is to live by this one rule of thumb:
If you can’t eat it or fuck it
Then pass by that bucket
And go find a bottle of rum!

E.M. Swift-Hook

Times of Change is free to download until 23 February.

Jaelya Roussal, Regent of Harkera, woke up to almost total blackness and silence, her heart hammering hard and a shimmer of perspiration coating her body beneath the light coverlet. She woke as one awakes from a bad dream, with the vague and yet urgent sense of danger that the rational mind, still blurred from sleep, takes time to dispel. There was no possible danger, she told herself, two men stood guard outside her door and the grounds of the Summer Palace were well patrolled by night and day. No one would harm her in her own bed-chamber.
During the civil war she had woken like this many times and occasionally with good cause, when there were sounds of fighting brought to her on the night air. But the fighting was over, Mandervik himself was dead and the war, which had only finished in the spring, seemed now to belong to another lifetime and a different Jaelya.
Waking to the dark left her with a feeling of unreality – as if the universe itself had disappeared and she was all that existed, alone, floating on an island suspended in a void. Then beyond the invisible door to the solar, she heard the sound of booted feet and a muted exchange of words as the guard was challenged formally. The footsteps receded, leaving the stillness of the night to descend again like an unbroken veil.
She was fully awake now and she cast her mind back, wondering what had disturbed her sleep. It had not been a dream – more a jolt of surprise, of the kind that set the pulse racing.
Then she knew.
Alize had been there. She did not question how,with the door bolted and guarded and the windows shuttered against the night air. She just knew that Alize had been in the room and touched her as she slept and had spoken the words which had woken her:
“My poor child – you thought the war was over, but it has only just now begun.”
“Alize?” she spoke the name hesitantly and in little more than a whisper. But there was no reply and the room was empty. Alize had somehow come and was now gone, leaving no trace of her presence.
Sighing, Jaelya turned on to her side and drew her knees up close to her body, hugging the coverlet around her as she had done when a child. She refused to dwell on the words or their meaning or even why tonight, of all possible times, Alize should come to her after so many years of silence. Such thoughts were best left for the clear light of day when the ghosts of the past walked more warily and her mind could be better focused on the demands of the present.
But, like a shy creature of the wild, sleep eluded her. Her thoughts drifted, against her will, until those time worn ghosts that hovered about her, led her gently along the paths of unwilling memory to the beginning of everything.
It was, of course, Alize who had been there then.
Her first awareness of life had been of holding Alize’s hand on that day – as if she had been flung into the world fully-formed at the age of three. Even now she could still see clearly the high beamed roof, with its painted and vaulted ceiling, arching over the huge black and white slabs of stone which paved the floor. She had stood in the doorway, as if looking into the universe from outside, one hand holding onto a small bundle of clothes and the other gripping Alize’s hand tightly – as if her life depended upon it.
She conjured the scene easily, untarnished by the passage of years. The long table, taller than herself then, the chairs which had seemed made for giants, the fireplace which looked large enough to roast a good-sized ox and the faint, musty, smell of cold ashes and old books. Seated at the table, a heavy bound book open before him and a remote screen set up to one side, sat a boy with a mop of curly hair who had looked up as they entered. To the Jaelya in the memory, he had seemed so grown up himself – but he cannot have been much more than five summers her senior.
Feeling confused, she had looked up at the figure of Alize towering beside her and the face that had looked down at her contained blue eyes that seemed to embrace the world and all the stars beyond. Jaelya had felt as though she might be swallowed up in their depths, but somehow the thought made her feel safe rather than frightened. Then Alize’s gaze had moved from herself to the boy, who had got to his feet and was standing quietly behind the table, his square face framed by unruly golden curls.
“Child, this is your sister. Her name is Jaelya and I want you to take care of her.”
The boy had been staring at her with open curiosity as if wondering what manner of creature she might be, but at Alize’s words a miracle happened and his face broke into the most gentle and wonderful smile.
“My sister,” he had breathed the words as a triumphal declaration rather than as any kind of question and then the boy had come across to her, his hands held out in welcome, his honey-coloured eyes lit up by the brilliant smile that was for her alone. “Hello Jae. I am your brother and I’m always going to keep you safe.”
And in that moment Jaelya had loved him with a fierce devotion, a devotion which all the years between and all the tests and burdens of those years had done nothing to diminish. So why was it, as she lay now in the dreamless darkness, that the thought of his returning to Harkera filled her heart with nothing but apprehension?

From Transgressor Trilogy: Times of Change by E.M. Swift-Hook, a Fortune’s Fools book which is free to download until 23 February.

The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find his work at Bristow Design.

Strictly speaking Thimbletoes wasn’t a nome, she was a fairy whose glass wings refracted the sunlight into a million rainbows. But she was a sort of honorary nome, whose most particular friend was a shy girl nome with a garland of primroses around her broad forehead. Poor Primrose had the misfortune to attract the notice of Ferdy Fishernome. When she refused his attentions, he beat her with his knobby fists. Thimbletoes was enraged, and when Big Brenda arrived Ferdy was engaged in beating his own self with many cries of pain.

Brenda walked away. “I ain’t interfering with fairy justice.”

©jj 2022

Roguing Thieves is a previously unpublished Fortune’s Fools story by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Home hadn’t changed even after five years away.
The twins were so much taller than she expected, for all they had kept in touch through links. They had been eight when she left, real children, and now they were teens. Back then it had sometimes been hard to spot the difference, despite their being different genders. But now they looked nothing like each other. Halkoms’s voice had broken and he had shot skywards in height whereas Magenta was beginning to get a very feminine shape. Pan’s other sister, Kiona, two years older than the twins, was having mid-teen angst and mood-swings. It was like coming home to well-loved strangers who she would have to get to know all over again.
Of course, Jennay was still the same. A strong, capable, woman, only a few years older than Pan herself, who had taken in and adopted her stepsister’s orphans without a word of protest, setting her own life on hold to make theirs flourish. Although Jennay was a fully trained paramedic, it was not the sort of work that easily fitted in around childcare, so money had always been tight.
“I told you that you would fly if you took up that scholarship,” she said, hugging Pan once the first rush of excited greetings from all three siblings had been navigated. She picked up one of Pan’s travel bags. “Come on, let’s get you settled in. I’m afraid you’ll have to share a room with me. Mabs moved in with Ki and Grim is in the cabin room the twins used to share. We left the top bunk and built a desk under it for him.”
“Grim?”
Jennay laughed. “I know, right? Everyone calls Halkom that nowadays, it’s that stonefaced look of his. Now, here we are. You can have the bed by the window. There’s storage under it as well.” Then she was left alone to unpack and settle.
It was good to be home.
Sitting on the bed and looking out of the window, Pan wondered if she should uproot them all. Trade this house with a garden where they could grow fresh food, clean air and the views of the magnificent countryside, for an apartment in a city, thirty floors up with synth-meals and virtual scenery through ambianced windows.
She didn’t have to.
She could settle here on Mulligan’s Reach, get a job in the spaceport doing whatever they would pay her for. She wouldn’t have to uproot the family and the best bit was that there were a fair few freetraders based here. She was sure Tolin could find a bay in the spaceport. She wanted to ask him, but he wasn’t available on link. Not surprising as he would be spending a lot of time in FTL space, planet and systems hopping, where link technology had yet to find a way to connect.
The decision was taken from her the next day anyway.
She was up early to help hustle the others out to school and was just finishing up clearing away from breakfast when Jennay made her sit down at the old kitchen table. Her face looked as stony as Grim’s.
“Look, I didn’t want to spoil your homecoming yesterday, and I’ve been keeping it from the kids, but you need to see this.”
‘This’ was a mail from the landholding wing of the city administration. Their landlord. It gave them notice that the land was being sold for redevelopment and they would need to move out within the next three cycles.
Pan met Jennay’s troubled gaze, saw the haunting fear and felt the weight of responsibility settle more heavily on her own shoulders. It struck her that Jennay must have been about her own age when taking on four children. Well, now it was her turn to step up and put family ahead of her personal life. Pushing away her dreams of setting up home with Tolin, she mustered a smile and reached over the table to squeeze Jennay’s hand.
“Well, the good news is it doesn’t matter. I’ve got a position with Rota doing mech tech repair and upgrading work on their merchant fleet. We’re moving to Central.”

So with a brave smile held in place on her face like a mask and a heavy heart, Pan signed over her life to Rota for the foreseeable future. She didn’t even have the compensation of an interesting job. The work she was being paid at Central rates to do was well below her level of qualification. It was also made clear to her that the chances of progression were limited. Rota just liked to have an overqualified staff to impress their clients. With so many people such as herself, desperate to gain access to Central, they could pick and choose from the brightest and best in the rest of the Coalition. Worse still, as a new citizen of Central, she was expected to work through her first year without taking any vacation unless on compassionate grounds. Unfortunately, that didn’t include maintaining a long-distance romance.
The link chats with Tolin trailed off as the year went on. He kept saying he’d try to come and visit, but they both knew that was never going to happen. Getting a visa for Central was beyond the means of a struggling freetrader just starting up. Then one day he just didn’t reply to her link and that was that.
If her own happiness had been stymied by the move, at least she had the compensation of seeing the others bloom. Kiona and the twins took to life in Central as if born to it and were thriving. They were storming their grades in education and making new friends. Even Jennay was blossoming after her time-out raising them all. She had gone back to work as a paramedic and begun dating a colleague. There was even serious talk of marriage.
It made it hard for Pan to share her own unhappiness with anyone. She lost her brave smile somewhere along the way and began to settle into the idea of life as it was. After all, she could hardly complain. She had a well-paid job and a home in Central. Most of the galaxy would look at her with unadulterated envy.

There will be more Roguing Thieves next Sunday…

She’d take it back if she could
The words were out
Then she saw his face.
The cut so deep that blood shed.
But it was done.
Spoken.
Said.

Nothing could be changed
The words were out
Their wounding complete.
No tears can wash out that pain
The hurt ricochets
Inflicting
Silence.

The one most on her side
Then words come out
Tearing them apart
The one she trusts, knows her best
Knows just where to strike
To hurt.
Snarls.

Now, as intimate strangers
The words come out
Weaponised by choice
Lovers become enemies
Each no longer hears
Pain filled
Cries.

E.M. Swift-Hook