Bolded Hearts is a love story from Jane Jago free until 16 February

The fog came down suddenly: sleek and white and thick and cold. It felt like being draped in a clammy cobweb, and it became impossible to hear one’s own footsteps on the grassy pathway. If it wasn’t for the feel of the warm fur of the great dog who paced majestically at her side Amal would perhaps have been afraid. But she had walked worse than this with Chin-Cha as companion and protector. She wove her fingers into his great ruff of grey and silver hair, leaning on his strong presence as she had been able to do for so many years. Chin-Cha, she thought, the love of my life and my biggest single regret. She knew that the great dog now pacing at her side was a shape changer trapped in his present form by a powerful bear witch, who had then ensorcelled him to the service of a six-year-old girl. That child had grown up to be Amal the healer and witch-woman. A woman who loved her protector with every fibre of her being but would rather die than burden him with the knowledge of that love.
As the fog grew even denser, a voice spoke in her ear, it was woody and breathy, and sounded like a poorly tuned wind instrument.
“People ahead. Hiding. Ill intentioned. Those who have been hunting you since harvest moon Yuri thinks.”
Yuri was a frost imp and trusted friend. Amal put up a hand as if to touch him, and he blew on her fingers. Surprising warmth.
“How many?”
“I will see” and the sense of his presence was gone.

Chin-Cha pressed himself against her leg, silently urging her off the path. She allowed herself to be guided to the rough trunk of a big tree. He pushed her thigh with his nose, indicating that she should climb. Doing as she was bid Amal soon found herself on a wide branch beside a sheltering hole in the trunk. Wrapping herself in the blanket from her pack she crept into the very heart of the tree. She could no longer see her companion, but had the reassurance of his spirit as he hunkered down in the brownish bracken. Then he was coming towards her. Fast. She felt him bunch his muscles and erupted out onto her branch. He made a prodigious leap and she grasped his harness to steady him. They both crawled into the tree cave and huddled together for warmth and comfort.

It was not long before Amal got the sense of Yuri’s presence. She was about to speak when a small icy hand was placed on her lips.
“They are here” the woody windy little voice whispered, seeming to come from right inside her head. “Be still and silent and listen.”

At first Amal heard nothing, then she made out the sound of laboured breathing. There was a noise as if a heavy boot hit flesh.
“Where is the woman, tracker?” a harsh voice demanded.
“She came this way. She can’t be far. But I can no longer feel her presence. It must be the fog.”
“You had better not be lying to me. Gopal get the hounds. They will track her dog, and the old woman said that once we kill it the witch woman will lose her magic.”

You can keep reading here for free until 16 February…

Cheezer parked his wheelbarrow and lifted out its precious cargo. He was all but extinguished beneath pink rosebuds and baby’s breath. His brother Chigger snorted derisively.

“Stealing flowers from the cemetery ain’t gonna make her want an ugly nome like you.”

Brenda clipped him across the head and he subsided.

Cheezer bore the bouquet to where Primrose sat, sadly regarding her faded reflection.

He put the flowers down beside her and essayed a smile.

“Primrose. Would you consider being my Valentine?”

She jumped back startled, but then she smiled and touched the flowers with one chubby finger.

“Yes, please, Cheezer.”

©jj 2022

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

She was heading home.
Pan stood in the spaceport only half-believing it.
Five years was a long time to be away.
The certificate awarding her qualification in astrotransport design and engineering, sat on her profile so she could see it every time she checked her link. She needed it there as it was still something of a struggle to accept she’d not only completed the course successfully but aced the grades to get a top tier ranking.
An arm sneaked around her waist and squeezed.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked up to see Tolin, his gaze drawing her in as it always did. She had never seen anyone’s eyes actually sparkle before she met him. Turning into the embrace, she slipped her arms around his neck so she could pull his head down for a long kiss.
“I’m missing you already,” she said when their lips finally broke free.
He smiled, making her think of every romantic hero of her teenage years. He had the body of an athlete and the chiselled good looks of a male model. Each time she saw him she felt a weird disconnect deep in her solar plexus. They had been together for the last five cycles, nearly half a year, but she still couldn’t quite believe it.
Tolin had walked into her life quite literally. She had been heading out of the simulator suite after one of her sessions testing a design theory she was working on, and he had walked in through the door, so lost in his augmented links that he nearly barrelled into her. At the time she had been completely caught up in the work she still had to do, so she hadn’t paid him much attention. But he had insisted on a fulsome apology and keen to escape so she could write up the results, she had agreed to meet him for a meal in the student cafeteria.
That was when, somewhere between the soup of the day and the fruit salad, they had fallen in love.
Tolin was there to upgrade his pilot’s licence. He was a freetrader and had just made enough credits to be able to up his licence from Class D – restricted cargo and no passengers – to the Class C which allowed freetraders to carry most regular cargos and occasional passengers. It was the baseline for making any kind of decent living.
They moved in together a few days later and shared bills and a bed for the rest of the semester which was Pan’s final session and Tolin’s only one.
But all good things come to an end and here they were. Pan wondered where this left them now. She had a whole stack of job offers to consider, one or two even in Central. Those were the ones she was most excited about. A job in Central meant she would have the right to live there, the right to bring her family with her. It was something she was going to have to work on and she wasn’t sure where Tolin fitted into things. He seemed to sense her mood and pulled her close again.
“I already told you not to worry about me, Pan. I’ve got a business to build and you’ve got a career to start. Let’s see where we are this time next year.”
A whole year.
She opened her mouth to protest and he covered it with a kiss.
“Or maybe less. Tell you what, soon as you have your first vacation time, we’ll take off somewhere. Wherever you want.”
His eyes sparkled and her heart was lost.
“Promise?”
He laughed.
“If you do.”
“I love you Tolin Dreen.”
“And I love you Panvia Dugsdall.”

Mulligan’s Reach was a planet in the Periphery of the Coalition that had very little of its own resources to attract the rest of the galaxy but was perfectly placed to be a trade hub for the further hinterlands of the Sector. As such it had a reasonable tech level, lots of space, but not much by way of wealth trickled down to the locals.
Home was a small house on the outskirts of the one major city. The land here was dry, as rain seldom fell. It needed constant irrigation from the well-maintained network of waterways. The best land on the banks and floodplain of the wide Reach River, had been bought up for intensive farming by one of the corporations long ago. But a few small farms struggled on the marginal land between that and the city, then beyond them some even smaller holdings which allowed their owners a chance to supplement whatever income they might make by other means.
It was to one of these that the groundcab took Pan. In a row of identical buildings, all of an age to need ongoing repairs to stay sound, it stood out as the one with the most foodstuffs growing around it and the least well-maintained facade.

There will be more Roguing Thieves next Sunday…

Though my eyes may grow dim
Yet still I see him
And all of his colours glow bright
I am still as beguiled
By the breadth of his smile
As I was on that long ago night
Though I may have grown old
I am wrapped from the cold
By love, and by laughter and grace
Though winter is near
I can’t understand fear
As his arms are my special safe place
I may not be the girl
In a hot-blooded whirl
Who said yes without even a thought
But the life we have shared
With its joys and its cares
Can never be bartered or bought

©jj 2022

Carnival, the night when the unrestrained appetites of the barrios would come leaping and prancing up the cobbled alleys into the very heart of to the city. The night when the fountains in even the meanest streets would run blood-red with wine, and masked women in diaphanous dominos would flirt with danger under sulphurous lanterns.
Papa Ouedo always leads the dance, with his huge bare feet slapping out a staccato rhythm on the hot stones and his face painted as white as chalk. Behind him, the boys and girls of the samba schools strut and posture – their semi-naked bodies slick with sweat and other effluvia.
On this one night of the year, when the sky is lit by a million shooting stars, and the city by a thousand hissing gas lamps, the dancers will come right into the Piazza del Innocenti, polluting the atmosphere with their raucous music and the acrid aromas of sweat and sex. Like every year since time immemorial, the balconies around the great square are set to be packed with the wealthy and aristocratic citizenry, who have their own traditions of lechery and gluttony to uphold as they celebrate Carnival in the safety of their marble-walled palaces.
When the music was at its hottest and most demanding, a small figure slipped unnoticed through the servants’ door of the noblest of all the noble houses. She was dressed as Columbine, in clinging cloud-grey draperies of the finest silk, and masked in exquisite feathers of black and white through which her eyes shone like blue diamonds. All she knew was that He would be dressed as Harlequin, and He would know her as she knew Him. Her heart pounded with some little fear, as it was dangerous to be out alone on any night, even here in the pampered streets of the uber-wealthy, but tonight it was pure insanity for a gently-bred virgin to be under the faraway sky. She knew this just as surely as she knew her own name, but it very quickly came not to matter. The music and the danger, and the sounds and scents of Carnival filled her blood like the bubbles in her father’s oldest champagne – and she felt alive.
She accepted the loan of a cup to scoop rough red wine from the nearest fountain and felt its thickness caress her throat. She tossed the cup back to a satyr with very prominent male parts and ran off laughing. For the most part, she ignored the plucking hands and caressing fingers, although it did amuse her to permit a kiss here and there – mostly, it must be said, from the blood-red lips of other Columbines.
If there were a hundred more Columbines out there in the streets, there must have been a thousand Harlequins, many of whom called her and stretched out their hands towards her slender form. But she evaded them easily, slipping in and out of the dancers like a monochrome ghost. There were so many that her head spun. So many multicoloured costumes, so many black masks, so many who would have gladly borne her company, but none called to her soul. For a moment her shoulders drooped, but she was of high courage and she plunged into the narrow twisting alleys that led ever downwards to the darkness and danger of the slums that fringed the city like grubby skirts.
As it grew darker she became aware of a subliminal pull that was leading her eastwards towards one of the towered gates in the city wall. When she got there, the gate stood open and the only guard to be seen was leaning on his pike and peering owlishly at the flood of humanity that ebbed and flowed through the portal. She had never ventured beyond the gates of the city but now she knew her way led over the narrow stone bridge that spanned a mile-deep gorge. Out she went, keeping to the centre of the causeway away from the beckoning edge. She felt more than a little envy for those who pranced along the stone parapet but feared that her own vertigo would cause her to cast herself into the abyss should she venture too close to that tempting drop.
Once back on firm ground, her feet took her, unresisting, in the direction of a huge bonfire on which some sort of an animal seemed to be roasting, sending oily smoke up into the blackness overhead. For a moment she felt completely disoriented and her fear seemed to communicate itself to the crowd around the fire, as they turned their smoke-blackened faces towards her and she could hear the sound of their teeth snapping together. A woman swore harshly at the interloper, but Columbine could hear nothing, all she understood was that the speaker’s mouth moved and a gobbet of greenish phlegm landed on the hem of her cobwebby gown.
The very air around her thickened with danger and she knew not whether to run or stay. A group of young women began to move towards her, with malice brightening their faces, and outstretched grasping fingers, and eyes full of contempt for her white softness. At that, even Columbine’s bright courage failed her, and she felt her heart leap to her throat. She was about to pick up her skirts and run for her life when she saw Him. He was wading through the crowd towards her like a fisherman wades the shallows of the river. He was a huge tatterdemalion figure, whose bright silks barely covered a body muscled as an ox and tattooed with strange symbols. She looked into the black lightlessness of his eyes and thought he would not be gentle with her, although she made no resistance when he bent and lifted her high against his chest.
As it turned out, she maligned him. His treatment of her was almost tender and although there was pain it was no more than that which was inevitable. He returned her to her father’s house just as dawn was lending a sickly yellow light to the eastern sky. As she put her hand on the latch He opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped Him with her small fingers against his lips and went inside.
In the fullness of time, an heir to the great banking house of Grimalka was born and there was rejoicing in the city.
On the night of Carnival, Serena Grimalka sat in a brightly lit window with her son in her arms. There was one more duty for Columbine to accomplish. She scanned the crowd, wondering if he would even come. When the proceedings in the square were at their loudest and most debauched, she saw Him. It was as if the crowds parted and made way for the bulky figure to come and stand by the window. Impelled by who knew what impulse, Serena curtseyed very low before turning the child to face the glass. The baby opened his black eyes and for a long moment he and his father looked at each other. Then the tattered Harlequin turned away. Serena did not ever see Him again, and she settled into a quietly happy marriage with the gentle scholarly cousin her father chose for her.
She never sought to venture out on Carnival night, even though the rhythm of the drums was like a drug in her blood and she knew that half her soul belonged to a tatterdemalion Harlequin with huge dirty hands…

‘Columbine’ from Pulling the Rug iii, a collection of short stories and poems by Jane Jago.

When life is all shouty you should shelter take
It batters the hatches you battened
It whips like the wind ‘tween the folds of your coat
And makes you know something has happened

It rises on hind legs and gets in your face
Its breath stinking bad like a sewer
It trips up your feet like a broken shoelace
And all you can do is endure

Life chooses the moments you least do expect
And pounces just when you are down
It likes to happen the very worst times
When it knows you have no help around

It happens by threes, it happens by fours
It happens in streaks and bad patches
And all you can do when it happens to you
Is take cover and batten those hatches.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

You know there is something seriously wrong when the Hon Rodney comes home with the following: flowers, champers, chocs, and a guilty grin. If it isn’t April he probably doesn’t want you to do your wifely duty in the bedchamber, so you should be prepared for the worst. 

The silly ass will have volunteered for something that he knows you are not going to like. It could be any one of many things, but my particular bête noir is the fundraiser in the garden.

My garden is my pride and joy, and it is famous across three counties for the wonderful collection of camellias, and, later in the year, my cherished roses. And then himself comes home, all pink jowls and pinky ring and only bloody well wants to host a garden party in June. Not unnaturally, one’s first reaction is profane in the extreme. However when one digs beneath the belly fat and the little vanities, the Hon. Rodney isn’t such a bad spouse so one is obliged to make the best of a bad job. As our daughter, Caroline, once said: ‘Taken by and large men are at best unsatisfactory and at worst complete wastes of oxygen. On that scale the Pater wasn’t such a bad bargain.’ But I digress. The garden party.

Having firmly established that there is zero chance of anyone setting foot in the rose garden, one needs to make a plan. Not anywhere near as simple as it sounds. I have known women whose gardens have been so far decimated as to be unrecognisable. 

I have been through so many incarnations of this horrible possibility that I feel qualified to offer the following advice. If you have a room that opens out onto the lawns, so much the better (if not a marquee on the tennis court is your only viable option). Fortunately for me, the Hon. Rodney’s billiards room has a wall of roll-back glass doors (erected in the roaring twenties for his sun-mad grandmother – who ended her days looking like a walnut with dyspepsia and was living proof that you can be too rich and too thin). Be that as it may the room is ideal, and it has a wide terrace which commands views of my precious roses. Note: do not provide chairs otherwise the assembled company is likely to remain until the sun goes down. Indoors, the billiards tables can be moved to the sides of the room and covered with plywood and large cloths to serve as buffet tables. He doesn’t like it a bit, but a certain sense of justice makes him admit the fault lies with himself and the hypnotic appeal of the bosom of the yummy mummy whose fundraiser we are suddenly supporting.

So far so good. Now to the food and the drink.

Food.

You could spend three weeks concocting pretty finger food. Or. Go to your nearest supermarket and grab a very large trolley full of ‘Party Food’ plus olives, cheese, and an assortment of potato-based snacks – I will leave it to you to decide what my plan of action might be. While you are shopping don’t forget paper plates, disposable serving dishes, and paper napkins. Never mind the environmental objections to disposables. Look at it this way. The amount of power and water the dishwasher would use to clear up after a hundred middle-class oiks will more than offset the throwaways.

Drink.

This is not the occasion for cocktails or punch. Send the Hon Rodney to Oddbins (other purveyors of wine and beer can be found dotted across our fair country) with a shopping list and instructions to hand same to the employee who offers to help him.  If left to his own resources the booze would cost thousands of pounds. While he is there he gets to hire wine glasses by the box. Do not risk the Waterford crystal on fundraisers; some will get broken and it’s all but irreplaceable. When the HR arrives home, a little worried that ‘nothing over a tenner a bottle’ may mean undrinkable, open a random bottle and drink it between you. He has no palate, and as far as most women are concerned, a glass of wine is a glass of wine.

And that is how it’s done.

Important notes: One – this is a very good time to obtain a nice new diamond, or that good looking hunter you’ve been pining for. Two – do not forget to place Mellors in the entrance to the rose garden with a shotgun and instructions to repel boarders (there is no need to insist that he puts in his false teeth).

Look out for more tips on how to cook like a toff!

It was a sad fact that being called Graham didn’t go with being a nome. And neither did a penchant for long words, a leaning towards political leftism, and a plant based diet.

All of which meant Graham took an awful lot of bullying, thinly disguised as ‘banter’ from a section of the garden community. Until one night, under a gibbous moon, his patience snapped.

Next morning, the croquet lawn resembled a war zone, with disembodied bits of nome broadcast like discarded toys.

Bertha smiled grimly. “If they gets reassembled, maybe them buggers’ll learn when a joke stops being funny.”

©jj 2022

Somewhere in a Wild West that never was…

As darkness fell, the air chilled abruptly, reminding anyone with the brain to think that winter wasn’t far away. The woman slowly uncurled herself from her crouch. She moved soundlessly away from her place of concealment and walked to where a blighted tree dominated the skyline like a rotten tooth. When she was within twenty paces of the tree a tall figure moved out of the deep blue shadow. He pushed the black Stetson back from his forehead and scratched his head.
“Miriam,” he said, “they never told me it would be you.”
“Ditto, Cuchilo. Somebody has a strange sense of humour.”
When he smiled his teeth showed very white in the moonlight.
“Somebody does indeed, although that’s for later.”
“Aye. Now we need to move.”
They jogged away, quietly and in perfect step. Cuchilo took the lead, and Mir kept station two feet back and on his right. The sky clouded over above them, and the moonlight became fitful, but Cuchilo didn’t allow a little thing like a dark sky to slow him down. After about thirty minutes of steady jogging he gestured for a stop and whistled briefly on two notes. A figure detached itself from the shadow of a clump of mesquite and came forward leading two horses. One was Cuchilo’s cream-coloured stallion, Hombre, and the other a bay gelding of unremarkable appearance. Both horses whickered a soft welcome and the boy leading them looked surprised.
Cuchilo grinned. “Hush boys.”
The horses quieted but the human boy still showed the whites of his eyes.
“It’s okay amigo. The horses know my companion quite well. This is my wife.”
The boy ducked his head respectfully and Cuchilo said something to him in that musical language nobody not born to his people could ever grasp. Grinning, the kid kissed his fingertips, before fading into the undergrowth.
Deciding there was nothing she could profitably add to the conversation Mir climbed into the saddle. Cuchilo leapt onto his own horse, before offering his most businesslike look.
“Where to?”
“I want to be at the dry riverbed where last of the old railway line disappears into the desert before dawn.”
“That should be doable, the horses are fresh.”
He turned Hombre and headed off in what Mir knew would be the right direction – even though she herself would have had to wait for the cloud cover to disperse before she had any idea of which way to go. She clicked her tongue at the gelding and they followed where Cuchilo led.
Now she had leisure to think about it, Mir saw an irony in blindly following a man she had once loved so dearly – and who still held her soul in his hands, even if he had broken her heart when he left her. However, right now there was no help for it, and in some ways it was comfortable. Cuchilo may have decided a woman of his own people would suit him better as a wife, but that didn’t mean Mir couldn’t trust her life in his hands. She could. Okay, she was. He must have been in tune with her thoughts, because he motioned her forward so they rode knee to knee.
His voice was a bit grim when he spoke to her and if she hadn’t known better she might have imagined she saw pain in the way the muscle moved along the hard line of his jaw.
“There are things we need to speak of, but now is neither the time nor the place.” He reached over and touched the back of her hand. “Can we be partners again? At least until this job is complete.”
It almost sounded as if he regretted their parting, but that couldn’t be the truth. It had been him who ended their marriage so abruptly. She tried to file those kind of thoughts to a quiet place in her mind and turned to look at him.
“Partners it is.”
He smiled and she felt a traitorous warmth in her chest.

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 like a sweet-smelling rose,
The pollen gets right up your nose!
But the petals unfold
And the heart is of gold
And the ending…? Well nobody knows.

E.M. Swift-Hook