Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Jane Jago

A darkling drabble offers a shiver of horror in a hundred words…

“A hundred lashes”, the old man with the dead eyes intoned. The accused woman swayed in the dock. 

Her court-appointed lawyer studied his knotted hands in silence. He had just heard an effective death sentence, but he accounted his skin of more worth than hers.

Shocked silence hung like a shredded sail, broken only by the sound of the heavy footfalls of the execution squad. 

Ten masked men, armed to the teeth, into whose care her captors gave her.

Their leader looked down into her eyes.

“You are with child?”

She nodded. 

He shot the judge between his eyes.

©jj 2022

The tale of a bold knight, a valiant steed, an innocent maiden and a cunning dragon…

His name was Barney and he kept body and soul together, barely, as chucker-outer and general dogsbody at the ‘Ferret and Flagon’ down a malodorous back alley in the city. His father and grandfather had been master smiths and he had expected to follow in their footsteps, but the plague had killed his family before he finished his apprenticeship, leaving him destitute and meaning that he was grateful to work for his bed and board – neither of which amounted to much.
His fortunes changed again on a filthy afternoon when he was mucking out the stable, while trying to avoid the huge iron-banded feet of Salazar, the bad tempered stallion the innkeeper had taken in payment for a bad debt. As he worked the ground beneath his feet shuddered and the world seemed to take a lurching tilt. A feeling of vertigo almost brought him to his knees. ‘Oops’ he thought, ‘earthquake.’ He didn’t have leisure to think much more as all his attention was taken up by calming a freaked-out stallion – and keeping his own stomach where it belonged.
When the earth stopped moving he led Salazar out of the wreckage of the stable…
Into bright sunlight, brightly-coloured flags waving in the breeze, and silken pavilions where lords and ladies toyed with marchpane and sweet wine.
A cadaverous character, in a costume he somehow knew indicated a steward from a high-status household, hurried towards him. He awaited the storm of abuse with which upper servants always greeted the likes of him. But it never came. Instead the steward bowed so low his nose all but touched his skinny knees.
“Sir Barnabas. Be welcome. Are we to expect the pleasure of watching you in the tourney?”
Before he could open his mouth and mess things up properly, Salazar stepped firmly on his toe. Barney clamped his lips shut and inclined his head. This seemed a satisfactory response and the steward bowed some more.
“Would you do me the honour of following me?”
Barney inclined his head again. The sardonic laughter in his head somehow lightened the load. Salazar, for it was he who was so amused by this turn of events, spoke slowly and clearly in Barney’s head.
“Right, stable boy. Seems as if you’ve gone up in the world and brought me with you. Know anything about the tourney?”
Barney shook his head.
“I thought not. Can you just sit still and let me do the work I’m trained for?”
Barney nodded.
“Let’s give it a shot then shall we? It’s not me risking broken limbs.”
This time it was Barney who laughed.
By this time they had reached an ornate pavilion flying a positive forest of exceedingly ugly pennons. The Steward opened the door flap and bowed once more.
“Your servants await within.”
Barney smiled his thanks. before leading Salazar into the pavilion. Inside, it was excessively noisy and totally disorganised. This annoyed Barney.
“Quiet,” he bellowed in an awful voice.
The silence that followed was quite pleasing. Barney studied the assembled company from beneath his sandy brows.
“Better,” he said. “Now. Will somebody please fetch my armour. It appears I have a tourney to attend.”
And that was all the direction his minions needed. They separated into two groups. One crew began stripping and re-dressing Barney as though he was a two-metre tall doll. The other set approached Salazar – with rather more respect and a great deal of care for the whereabouts of his long yellow teeth and his huge iron-shod feet.
In the end, though, the horse was gaudily caparisoned, saddled and bridled before the knight dressing crew was through. Once encased from toes to neck in steel Barney was draped in a blindingly white surcoat emblazoned with the same gaudy and crudely drawn motif as adorned the pennons snapping in the wind above the pavilion. Barney stared down at his chest in some disbelief.
“The Queen’s Royal Majesty designed your coat of arms with her very own hand.” The servant who spoke appeared to be having trouble keeping his face straight.
“Using her very own wax crayon, by the looks of it,” Salazar’s voice in Barney’s head sounded about as disgusted as Barney felt.
Barney himself thought discretion a good idea and kept his counsel.

This adventure of Barney and Salazar will continue next week…

May Day and the maypole is erected on the green
And all the local school kids will dance and eat ice-cream
They wind the ribbons clockwise, then dance them widdershins
Plaiting and unplaiting as the dancers skip and spin

The grownups take their pictures or maybe video
And drink warm ale outside the pub until its time to go
And maybe there’s an ‘obby ‘oss or maybe a green man
Or maybe morris dancers shake for pennies in their can

But no one goes a-Maying in the wild woods anymore
And no one brings home white-thorn to hang above the door
And girls no longer go by night yearning to be misled
To find a man to marry them, to try before they wed

“Here we come gathering nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May.
Here we come gathering nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning…”

E.M. Swift-Hook

It had got dark and by the time Brandon pulled the car up at the side of the road he had chosen to park up a short walk from his intended destination and in the residential road, his smart car would draw little attention. Moving quickly he followed the road round to where the entrance of the overgrown path waited, univiting. He carried no light and once away from the road it was hard to see. A slight breeze brought a drizzle of rain and beneath his feet the path was muddy. But Brandon was no longer focused on the physical. He was shifting his energy carefully, drawing the shadows around him, aware that the atmosphere of this place had altered since he had last been here.
Tasting the energies, Brandon paused and for a moment the memory of the thing he had seen on the beach brought a chill that owed nothing to the weather. The sensation was stronger the further he went along the path and as he passed the fallen tree the first image he had of the ruined church tower was of an ethereal glow playing around it like green flame. The scent redolent of the same energy he had fought on the beach was almost physical to his nostrils and he was unable to suppress a shudder of revulsion. Proceeding with extreme caution, Brandon realised that the source was not sentient, but the whole area seemed imbued with the eldritch power. Like a pollutant contaminating the very ground and stones.
Something moved in the graveyard.
Brandon simply stopped moving, allowing his form and force to blend with what was there. On a physical level he would have seemed less than a shadow amongst shadows, astrally his energies faded like a camouflaged moth on its branch. Stillness his shield.
It took a few moments before he was certain that the figure moving was indeed physical. There were other eyes watching, but none of a kind to trouble Brandon even in his less than powerful state – vermin drawn to the thrum of energy like the thirsty to a fountain or jackals to a corpse. They would not move to interfere in a wizard’s affairs.
The being was human and psychic and in extreme emotional distress. Brandon watched with fascination at the churning of the energy around it – reminding him of oil and water being stirred in together. He wondered how long before one of the vultures decided this human was weak enough to latch onto and made its move.
He watched as the figure grew more desperate – searching for something and not finding it. A feral shadow pounced from the night and bit deep on the unsuspecting human who seemed too distracted even to notice as it latched onto his energy. Another followed and a stirring around the area told Brandon that the rest would follow in a moment.
He stepped forward and sent a shiver of his energy against the natural shields of the human, satisfied to see the parasites lift and scatter and the human freeze and then look round sharply. Another pace and Brandon consciously released the shadows allowing his outline to be visible to the other.
“Who’s there?”
The voice was male and uncertain. Brandon saw the slight shimmer of dull metal as the man pulled something out of his pocket. He quickly positioned his energy for points of control and was puzzled to find the shielding. It would be a fight to break in this one’s psyche and with a gun involved that would not be an option Brandon wanted to try. There were times the simple human methods were better. He stepped forward to take advantage of a thin sliver of moonlight so the man could see him more clearly and feel less vulnerable.
“A friend.”
There was no reply for a long moment and Brandon felt the brush of a questing probe and deflected it gently.
“A friend?” There was a disbelieving snort and the gun moved to glint in the moonlight. “If you want to kill me you’ll have to get your hands dirty wizard. Not like you lot did with my sister. She couldn’t fight you but I can.” He moved the gun slightly. “This says you are dead here no matter what may happen to you off this planet.”
Brandon stood very still and allowed the new information to settle. The headline from the local paper was stuck in his mind: Girl Victim of Ritual Killing.
“I’m guessing Olivia Brown was your sister?”
That made him draw a sharp breath.
“So you don’t deny it?”
“I have done nothing. I just read the news.”
For a moment the man seemed to falter, uncertain. Brandon took a slow step forward into the hesitation, and then another, closing the distance between them, enough to make a difference.
“Keep away!”
Brandon stopped dead and allowed the narrow moon to show his empty hands.
“You are the one holding the gun here.” He pointed out. “I don’t want you to feel you need to use it, I just want to talk.”
“Yes, I’m the one calling the shots – makes a change doesn’t it? How does that make you feel wizard? After all, I am a mere human.”
“Some of my best friends are humans,” Brandon responded mildly, “and I can’t think of many who are wizard race.”
“Who the hell are you? I never met a yank wizard.”
“It happens in the best families, even the best American families. My name is Brandon, what’s yours?”
“Like you don’t know!”
“Matter of fact I don’t. You seem to think I know what you are about but truth is I just walked in on this and have no idea.”
This was met by forced derisive laughter.
“Ha ha ha! That would be funny if it were true.”
Brandon said nothing and let the initiative fall open.

E.M. Swift-Hook

It’s not as if I cared she said
It’s not as if I cried
It’s not as if I banged my head
And wished that I had died
It’s not as if I missed his voice
It’s not that I was sad
I knew that leaving was his choice
It wasn’t all that bad
It’s not as if the bed’s too big
Or if I feel alone
It’s not as if I missed the pig
But I wish he would come home

©️jj

This is a book one read under protest. One morning at breakfast one was attempting to explain to the mater that literary affection must be pure and unsullied, it must not mirror life. If it did, it would be unpleasantly sweaty and redolent of bodily fluids.

Around halfway through one’s peroration, she got up from the table, temporarily abandoning a plate of greasy egg and sausage to scrabble around in the escritoire that leans drunkenly in one corner of the breakfast room. She returned to the table bringing with her a torn and dogeared paperback with which she proceeded to beat one about the head.

“This is a proper exploration of human emotion. Read it and for f***’s sake learn something. There will be questions later.”

Adjudging discretion the better part of valour. One read it.

My Review

A plain female child grows into a plain woman. Somehow she catches the eye of a man. Who turns out to be married. Then she runs away. Then she goes back

End of story.

Honestly, gentle reader, it does nothing for one. The heroine lacks romance, beauty, allure, etcetera. Although the hero is quite exciting, I suppose. But if one’s distaff parent hadn’t insisted….

Star rating. One out of five. Plus a half for a slightly sexy hero.

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.

Big bigger got someone to come and make a mess of the orchard. There was sandpits and holes with plastic cups inside.
He spent hours there hitting a ball with a stick.
The gnomes were fascinated, but the moles were incensed. It seems them cups echoed something rotten and woke up baby mole.
They stood it for a week.
Early one morning Big stuck his hand into a cup to get the ball he had just knocked in there.
His screamed and ran with blood pouring from his hand.
Mole looked out of the cup and showed his sharp teeth…

Jane Jago

…for a moment the silence was blissful. Then the screaming started…
Writing team Leo and Mike Johnson have their day disturbed when a body turns up near their house.

Leo grinned.
‘I have plenty of ideas. To start with, we are comfortably off and slightly famous. Plus, Riverview is the nicest house in the village and Mike owns it outright; inherited from her mum. She was born in this house, so she’s the local girl made good. The incomers have all tried to inveigle her into their cliques, but she has no interest in their vapid pseudo-middle-class ploys. She trims the ends of her hair herself, and I’ve been with her for better than twenty years, during which time she has never entered a nail bar, used a personal shopper, or given a shit what any of that lot think. Her friends are those she had from childhood, not boring incomers. Then there’s me: I’m American, not entirely Caucasian, and not interested in their gym bunny bodies, or in playing golf with their soft, white husbands. And to round it off there’s my wife’s delightful cousin, Lila, a scrawny bitch who has a holiday home at the other end of the village. She has spent her life alternately envying Mike and taking advantage of her sweet nature, and likes nothing more than stirring up the neighbours with the odd fairy tale or two. So.’
By the end of this masterly dissertation all the coppers were hiding their amusement with difficulty. The WPC got herself together first.
‘Would you mind looking at some pictures?’ Mike shrugged and Leo went to sit beside her. The policewoman passed them a sheaf of pictures. Nobody said anything for quite some moments as the pictures occupied all their attention. Mike looked at one for a very long time then whispered something to Leo, who got up and loped off.
‘He won’t be a minute.’
Leo came back into the room with a large leather-bound photograph album, which he set on the coffee table in front of Mike. She opened it with some distaste and, finding whatever it was she sought, left it open and walked into the garden. Leo spread his hands.
‘We sort of recognise the face in the reconstruction. It looks very much like one of the nurses at the care home where Mike’s dad lives. He has dementia. Anyway. The nurse is much older than your estimates for the floater. But the face is remarkably similar. Mike would prefer not to look if you don’t mind. This was about the last time her dad actually provably recognised her.’
The young policeman swallowed audibly, and all three nodded before looking at the photograph. It showed an elderly gentleman, with a clever, ugly face, sitting in an armchair. Mike sat on one arm grinning, and a stocky woman in a nurse’s uniform sat on the other. The woman’s round, smiling face was remarkably similar to the artist’s impression of the body found in the swimming hole.
‘The nurse is called Sylwia. She’s Polish.’ Mike had returned on soft feet. ‘She’s still working at the care home. I saw her Thursday.’
‘What care home is it?’
‘It’s called Holly Lodge and it’s in Exeter.’
Leo wrapped his arms around Mike and hugged hard. She reciprocated. Then he turned his face to the coppers. ‘Would you like a couple of copies of this picture? I could put a jpg on a disk as well.’
The oldest policeman cleared his throat. ‘That would be most helpful. But there’s something else. We are asking for DNA samples.’
Leo smiled a bit twistedly. ‘You can have blood, or hair, or a mouth swab with pleasure.’
‘A mouth swab will be perfectly acceptable.’
Leo nodded and the WPC got out a sealed swab and a plastic pot. She efficiently swabbed his mouth, then sealed the swab in its pot and labelled it neatly.

From Shall we gather at the river? a hard hitting murder mystery thriller by Jane Jago which is available for 0.99.

President Milwood had been thrilled to be the one invited to meet the aliens until they actually arrived.
“So you see,” they explained, “that all this time you humans have believed you were a naturally evolved species you were mistaken.”
Face pale with shock, the President made excuses to the alien delegation and withdrew from the meeting room.
How was she going to tell the population of Earth that humanity was an experimental genetic hybrid testing some obscure hypothesis and the research was now concluded, the funding cancelled and the planet to be cleaned up ready for the next experiment?

E.M. Swift-Hook