Yule love this!

It is the festive season,
The time December sees in
And that’s our very reason,
To grant each day for you
Something that’s old or new
Perhaps a gift or two!

TODAY’S DELIGHT – A Classic song for the festive season, cheerfully and irreverently reimagined for you by the Working Title Blog!

(To be sung cheerily and heartily to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells‘)

Dashing through the snow
In a very dangerous way
Oe’r the road I go, sliding all the way
Horns in cars all sound
Give me such a fright
Oh why did I come out to do
My Christmas shop tonight?

Oh bloody hell, shopping smells
And the town’s gone mad
It’s no fun to try and run
When there’s no gifts to be had.
(Repeat)

First I tried for toys,
Gifts for girls and boys,
All were too expensive
And made a lot of noise
So I thought of treats
Stuff them up with sweets
But then I past the dentists
And thought about their teeth.

Oh bloody hell, shopping smells
And the town’s gone mad
It’s no fun to try and run
When there’s no gifts to be had.
(Repeat)

So what can I get
In the slush and wet?
Tonight is my last try
To find some gifts to buy
Oh, I’m giving up
This is just too hard
They can all have gift tokens
Shoved in a stoopid card!

Oh bloody hell, shopping smells
And the town’s gone mad
It’s no fun to try and run
When there’s no gifts to be had.
(Repeat)

Yule love this!

It is the festive season,
The time December sees in
And that’s our very reason,
To grant each day for you
Something that’s old or new
Perhaps a gift or two!

TODAY’S DELIGHT – A lucky Limmerick!

As I polished a genie appeared
With three wishes to shine up your year
May you journey in style
Avoid crocodiles
And never run out of cold beer!

Jane Jago

Yule love this!

It is the festive season,
The time December sees in
And that’s our very reason,
To grant each day for you
Something that’s old or new
Perhaps a gift or two!

TODAY’S DELIGHT – A Giveaway!

Winter was the bejewelling of Temsevar, its crystalline magnificence turning even the most sordid and mean peasant’s wooden hovel into a glittering palace of diamond. The snows softened the harshness, smoothing all into a glorious billowed largesse of white. From every branch and twig, every roof and casement, every eave and doorway, came the glitter of silver icicles, their growth arrested every night and scarcely allowed under the scant warmth of the red sun each narrow day.
Every ugliness was made mild by the glory of a shimmering white crown, every roughness made smooth and the uneven made plain. The winter was levelling, but it levelled in a way that paid vast tribute to the might of the elements. Rich and poor alike were equal before the onslaught, for both could share in the splendour which outshone the most regal opulence of the greatest noble. To watch the sunrise, blood red over the virgin white and silver landscape, washing it with a mystical ruby glow, was to be awed and left with wonder. To trace the pearlescent shimmer of the twin moons over the snow, where the whiteness caught and reflected back to the darkened sky the moist brilliance, until even the night might seem to dazzle, was to feel one had walked, waking, in a dreamscape or broken through to some celestial realm of deity.
But the beauty, if free, was also lethal. The cold wore down the resistance of the weak and made them prey to illness or starvation and the frozen ground would not open to bury the dead, who were burned in high pyres on the ice, in batches like cakes.
Here the rich and the poor parted company, for the wealthy had portals against death in the cold. They had piles of wood to burn, stores of bottled, dried and salted food, they had flour to bake with and flesh to cook. Not for them the privations of starvation in the snow-stricken land. A house could be counted wealthy by the fire that burned in its hearth, driving back the demons of cold and darkness. Even the meanest hovel that could light a fire all day was accounted rich when the chilling shroud of snow and ice descended.
It was in the winter that those who were free-born and poverty-stricken would envy the enslaved. For, worth money and offering labour, even the most meanly treated slave could expect to be kept warm and fed through the White Moons, where their free-born cousins could hope no more than that this winter might be light and their meagre stores of food and fuel might not be gone before the thaw. What value was freedom when the cost was one’s life or the lives of one’s children?
So winter was the glory of Temsevar and its greatest influence. Without it, perhaps the slave economy might have evolved and changed, but with it – and the utter dependence it brought of the weak upon the strong – the frozen arms of ice which embraced Temsevar for two-thirds of the year, also embraced the culture and values of its people, freezing them into patterns as cold and merciless as the brutal winter itself.
The ice cracked the marrow from the bone of the planet, riving rock and stripping life from the land, animal and vegetable. The rivers froze solid and the seas slowed as if sleeping and then surrendered to the embrace of ice. Only the hardiest in nature could survive and most of the larger animals only lived by entering the deep sleep of hibernation through the worst of the cold moons. You would not see tizarts playing in the snow or find therloons leaving ice-tracks under the twin moons.
Most people dreaded the onset of winter as much as they dreaded the onset of old age. For the annual revisiting of the Great White was a similar experience – the pace of life became slow and painful, cold and bleak. In the great Halls, poets would pass the wine, mulled with the herbs and berries of the autumn and sing with lysigal of the great deeds that had been done that summer and would be contemplated the next. But elsewhere, it was as though the planet slept and its people dreamed beneath the alluring counterpane of snow, fringed with its tassels of ice and embroidered with frost.

From Dues of Blood, Book Three of the Transgressor Trilogy by  E.M. Swift-Hook, and is free for you download today and tomorrow.

The first white frost awoke 
To beauty, flowers dead and iced with lace 
As overnight the days of autumn 
Died. And winter took their place

The first white frost bedaubed
The trees with silver shining bright
And round our feet the sucking mud 
Grew crisp, and turned from dark to light

The first white frost awoke
To beauty, nature as we walked
And all about our heads our voices
Misted as we talked

The first white frost, a harbinger
Of winter’s freezing bite
Made us lift our heads to to glory
And our hearts to feel delight

©jane jago 

A tale of angels, demons and dragons…

Aeva allowed herself to be herded, giving ground steadily and carefully until her opponent thought her defeated. Then, as a cruel grin stretched the draca’s lipless mouth, she dropped her pose of helplessness and moved towards her tormentor. Before the draca could compute what was happening, Aeva was behind her again and had taken a leap onto her shoulders.
With a wordless cry of rage, the draca began to stab and slash at the creature who stood on her shoulders, but it is extremely difficult to stab somebody who is all but on your head without also stabbing yourself. Draca had succeeded only in cutting her own shoulder when Aeva’s obsidian dagger sliced across her throat.
Aeva jumped to the ground and danced back out of reach as the draca dropped her weapons and her hands went unbidden to the pumping gash that was spraying her lifeblood onto the sand. She sank to her knees and then onto her side.
As the last light of life was fading from her eyes, Aeva saluted with her sword blade across her face.
“Rest peacefully. It wasn’t a bad fight.”
Something like a smile slipped over the draca’s face as she died.
Athena lifted her hands and was about to dismiss the magical barriers around the fight when there was the sound of an unmusical fanfare and a cloaked and hooded figure appeared beside the dead half-dragon. Unfortunately for the new arrival, magic knows no social status and it was immediately outlined in blue crackling light and the smell of charred wool filled the air.
Athena was quick enough to stop the person being wholly consumed by fire, but the cloak and boots were still smouldering when the visitor threw back her hood. The face beneath the wool was as white as bleached bone, with the only colour coming from a pair of lightless black eyes and a mouth like a slash of scarlet.
“Morgana,” Lucifer breathed and the pale beauty laughed.
She looked at Aeva with the kind of loathing that is as corrosive as acid. “We meet at last, abomination. I knew you would make a mistake one day,” she jeered. “And so you have.” She flexed her fingers admiring the pointed talons that decorated each digit. “Now it will be my pleasure to imprison you and kill your lover very slowly while you watch.”
Aeva stared at her from a face grown as white as that of the creature who faced her. “Who are you?”
Morgana laughed. “I am your worst nightmare demon spawn. Come with the weight of the law on my side.”
“How can this be?”
“You are an Invigilator, are you not?”
Aeva nodded.
“Then you are sworn to celibacy. A blood oath.” She hooked a finger as if expecting Aeva to come to her, but the small figure didn’t move. “Come and meet your fate, demon bastard. You may not defy me.”
Tears rolled down Aeva’s face but still she didn’t move.
Adamo spoke from the station he had taken up against Aeva’s back. “It would appear that you have miscalculated somewhat,” he said mildly enough, but his voice had quite the martial note of a hunting horn. “Can you think how that might be?”
Morgana sneered and hooked her finger again. This time at Adamo who remained as still as Aeva.
Before the situation had chance to get any uglier, there was the sound of another musical note but this was as if the harps of a thousand angels filled the sky. This time the figure that appeared was robed in cloudy grey. When she put back her hood the face that was revealed was as ordinary and as old as the dirt on which Aeva stood. She held up a wrinkled old hand and Morgana seemed to shrink into the folds of her black cloak.
“My daughter,” she said gently, “it behoves even the agent of Hades to check her facts before seeking to use the law to bludgeon the innocent.”
Morgana drew herself up to her full height. “What facts would those be?” she managed half a sneer. “The female is sworn to celibacy. Therefore she is my lawful prey.”
“Was Aeva Darkstar an oath breaker then she would, indeed, be yours to torment as your diseased soul sees fit. But she is not. She has sworn no oath. Her blood does not stain the stones of the High Altar. Now. Begone lest I lose patience with you.”
Morgana spat on the ground and the spittle boiled and foamed but did no more than that. “It seems that you speak truth, old mother. But my day will come. I will have the demon’s bastard in my dungeon yet.” And she disappeared.
The old one sighed. “She does love a bit of drama does that one.” She turned her seamed old face to Aeva and Adamo. “Be blessed children.” And she faded too.
Aeva felt herself sag and had seldom been as glad of anything as she was of Adamo’s strength.
Around them there was much to-ing and fro-ing as Lord Draco dealt with his children and the berserkers got back their errant prince. But to Aeva nothing had any substance except Adamo’s arms and she could do nothing except look into his face and wonder at the miracle of his love.
When she came back to herself the desert was all but empty, only the Guardians, Adamo’s Fighters, and two berserkers remained.
The older of the two was speaking. “You lot have to do something for Aeva Darkstar. Didn’t she just stop a mortals versus monsters war that would have felled your children like wheat?”
The second berserker, who Aeva realised was Gudrun, broke in urgently. “It isn’t right. It’s not enough that the draca and that nasty bastard Loki will be after her blood, now we know Morgana wants her too. You have to stop looking at your hands and do something.”
Thor groaned. “But what? Even if I took her to Valhalla…”
“She wouldn’t leave her lover.” Athena spoke flatly. “And that means we have nowhere.”
Unusually Gabriel and Lucifer had their heads together and it was Gabriel who spoke out.
“Come forward Adamo and Aeva.”
They walked forwards hand in hand and both looked up into the matchless purity of his features. Lucifer moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother and it came to Aeva that she was looking at two sides of the same coin.
Lucifer offered her a twisted smile. “Precisely. But now I have a question for you. Would you be satisfied to spend your eternity with this male?”
Aeva couldn’t speak round the lump of hope in her throat so she nodded.
Lucifer looked into Adamo’s dark face. “And you. Would you leave your fighters and live only with Aeva Darkstar.”
“I would, dread lord, with all of my being.”
Gabriel took up the theme. “There is,” he said, “a garden. It is a place outside of time and subject only to the law of The Creator. It can be your home if you so will.”
“We do so will.” Aeva and Adamo spoke as one.
As the words left their lips a portal opened and the smell of greenness filled the air.
Adamo and Aeva joined hands, and, naked as babies, walked into the Garden.

Jane Jago

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Somewhere in the deep and distant past (during the time I was too busy raising a hopeful brood of contumacious little buggers to take notice of fashion) somebody sneaked something eggy onto the shelf behind the bar. Having made this dreadful mistake they looked at it for a decade before deciding that mixing it with lemonade and shoving a cocktail cherry in it made it a palatable drink. They then persuaded a whole generation of non-drinking aunties and cousins it was both ladylike and delicious.

It’s not. It has the texture of snot and the smell of egg.

Don’t …

I don’t feel myself qualified to comment on Thanksgiving. It’s a noble sentiment – eat until you almost explode to give thanks for staying alive for another year – and one I applaud.

Is it like British Bank Holidays? Slightly outmoded by the number of days people get off work now? Or does it retain real meaning?

I don’t pretend to know. And neither can I pretend to like pumpkin pie.

In the spirit of friendship I’ll see your Thanksgiving and  raise you British Boxing Day, wherein one lays about groaning and recovering from the Xmas excess.

Happy Thanksgiving and may your turkey be succulent….

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

The squire’s daughter had few friends, and many enemies. But, friend or foe, they were appalled when her father gave her in marriage to the bony octogenarian who was the king’s tax collector.

Next year, a much younger man came to collect the taxes. When asked where his predecessor was he laughed a cold sort of a laugh.

“My father is no longer with us. It is often thus when a foolish old man takes a bride young enough to be his daughter. The woman? She lies at his side as a good wife should. I cut her throat myself.”

Jane Jago

Poems of puppy Fozzie Jago as he is exploring and experiencing the world!

There is a something a horrid surprise
It’s behind me wherever I goes
And I cannot outrun it however I tries
And it sticks very close to my toes
It’s long and it’s creepy and scares me a bit
As I watches it out of of mine eye
And if I could catch I’d be biting of it
To make the bad follower cry
I will be creeping though long that will take
To catch and to punish the thing
I catches and bites but I thinks it’s as snake
Coz I bit it and it did me sting
There is a something it’s black and it’s thin
And the look of it makes me feel pale
Hoodad he laughs all over his chin
And says Fozzie that snake is your tail!

Jane Jago

In a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire never left, Dai and Julia solve murder mysteries, whilst still having to manage family, friendship and domestic crises…

They left the house as one party – with the addition of Cariad’s two children, who Julia was pleased to find were both quite delightful, taking after their mother in looks, but seeming to have their father’s easy-going disposition. They had an escort: servants carefully sanding the paving in front of them and a ceremonial guard clearing a path through the seething crowd. Julia craned her neck to look at the three Llewellyn boys, who walked hand in hand with Baer behind them like an anxious mother hen. She smiled at the girl and gave her a thumbs up. Then they were in the great open atrium of the temple of the Divine Diocletian where the brazen gongs were just sounding. Caudinus excused himself to join the group of officials at the steps of the sanctuary.
The service droned on and on. Julia was very glad of woollen stockings and fleece-lined boots as the marble floor struck like ice underfoot. As the priests reached the loudest part of the invocation, she slipped one hand into the pocket of her cloak and came out with chewy caramel sweets, which she passed quietly to the children. Enya looked a question.
“About now,” Julia whispered, “my grandmother always gave me a sweetie, otherwise I started to flag and fidget. So I thought…”
Enya smiled radiantly. “Genius.”
Eventually, the long religious ritual was over, punctuated by chants and hymns everyone knew. Traditional shouts of ‘Salve Diocletian!’ and ‘Diocletian Invictus!’ and from the less religious: ‘Saturnalia Optima!’ rang around the crowd.
Julia was relieved when Caudinus’ soldiers escorted them to a reserved table at the edge of the atrium, where they could sit and sip mulled wine sheltered by a colonnade and wait for the Magistratus to join them once the final formalities were completed. An outside heater warmed the air enough to take the chill, but not enough to actually warm anyone. Julia thought the children looked cold and tired, even Baer.
“We may have to stay,” she said decisively, “but the children should be indoors.” She deputised a group of soldiers to take the little ones back to the Magistratus house, where the family was due to dine, asking that they be given a hot drink when they got there. The children left under escort, Baer gripping the hands of the youngest Llewellyn boys. Julia wished she could go with them. She cupped her hands around her mug of mulled wine and sighed.
“Domina?” Julia looked up to see one of Caudinus’ guard of honour standing with a respectful expression on his face. “Domina, the Magistratus asks if you would be willing to deputise for your husband in the gift-giving ceremony.”
So it was that Julia found herself a reluctant participant in the ceremonial at the temple, joining the select group of Romans who were presenting the official gifts from the City of Viriconium to the Divine Diocletian on his dies natalis to show their love and appreciation for his beneficence and to bribe him into keeping it going for another year. She tried to suppress such impious thoughts as she stood in line, breath frosting the air in front of her. She had been asked to present a small silver boar, symbolic of a prophecy made to Diocletian by a druidess about how he would come to power. Julia wondered if that was why the Druids were largely left alone by the Roman authorities even today. Not acknowledged, but not actively persecuted unless they openly declaimed anti-Roman theology. It was the only religion she knew of in all the Empire that did not bend knee to the divinity of Diocletian and yet it was permitted to practice its rites unhindered. Then it was her turn to step up and place the statuette on the table of offerings, bow her head in respect and walk carefully backwards to her place as the rest of the gifts were given and long speeches of thanks were made by lesser city luminaries.
Even Caudinus had to put a hand up to his mouth to smother a yawn. But then Julia knew he had been attending endless civic functions, ceremonies and receptions over the last four days of Saturnalia. Far from being a holiday in the sense people usually thought of one, like most other feriae stativae, Saturnalia was a five-day round of official appearances for the Magistratus. Dai had deputised at two such, uncomfortably toga clad with Julia in jewels and stola. After a final blessing, the doors of the sanctuary were closed behind the shivering priests, who scuttled inside bearing with them the expensive offerings of a grateful city.
“Thank you so much for doing that, Julia, especially with it being so cold. I do have to think the Divine Diocletian didn’t have in mind that we should stand freezing in his honour when these festivities were first added to Saturnalia,” Caudinus observed as they made their way back across the atrium. “But then I don’t suppose it gets quite so cold in Spalatum in December as it does here in Cornovii so it was prob-”
“Magistratus!”
Their escort had move smartly to come between Caudinus and the two men who suddenly appeared from the dispersing crowd, shepherding a smaller cloak-wrapped figure between them.
Caudinus frowned and made a frustrated tutting sound as they came to a halt in the middle of the atrium.
“I am Mot Fionn, dominus. This is my father Kalgo and my only child Megan.”
Julia realised with a slight shock of surprise that she recognised the name. Dai had told her how this time last year, well before he had even met Julia, Hywel had tried to match-make Megan and Dai on a blind date. The Fionns were neighbours to the Llewellyn lands, such close neighbours that their land wrapped around a strip of Hywel’s. Megan was the heiress to the Fionn lands and it had seemed a good idea to both families if an alliance could be arranged. But, it had not gone well, by Dai’s account and had finished with him returning an unhappy and rather drunk Megan home whilst not being exactly sober himself. Dai had told her Megan was a young woman but had not said how young. Julia could see she was still really a child, maybe seventeen and beneath the hood of her cloak her face looked pinched and miserable.
“Please, Magistratus, I demand justice for my child,” Mot called out. “She has been treated badly and left in a sorry state.”
Caudinus gestured to his guards to let the trio approach.
“This is not the time or place, Fionn, but tell me the thrust of it quickly and then put the details in an email. When we get back to business after the festival I will see you have your justice.”
The two men were glaring at him with cold antipathy. Julia glanced at Megan, but she had her head lowered as if protecting something she was holding under the cloak.
“So? What is this? Speak up. I am willing to hear you, but not to freeze whilst you take your time thinking of what to say.”
“My apologies, dominus,” Kalgo said, bobbing his head respectfully. “It is just – I – well, we – are afraid to speak.”
Caudinus was frowning now.
“Unless you need to admit to some crime, you have no need to be afraid to speak. Just tell me what this is about.”
“With the greatest respect, dominus,” Mot said, his tone obsequious, “there is always peril is speaking truth to power. You are known to be a just and fair man, but when matters touch one’s own family – justice can be lost.”
“Oh for -” Caudinus snapped his mouth shut and drew a breath. “Part of being ‘just and fair’ is not favouring any. Now, please state your problem so we can all get into the warm.”
“Then I state here before witnesses that Dai Llewellyn fathered a child on my daughter and abandoned them both to marry another.” As he spoke he pulled open Megan’s cloak to show the dark-haired infant she held. Julia found the air she was breathing had no oxygen. An odd, detached and lightheaded sensation pulsed behind her eyes. For a moment she even thought she might faint.
Caudinus raised a hand to silence the sudden low buzz of speculation.
“You can’t just walk up to someone and make accusations like that, Fionn. This is not the time or the place – this is a temple on a sacred holiday, not a family court session.”
But Mot was pushing Megan forward, so much that she staggered a couple of paces, clutching the infant to her. Julia put out an instinctive hand to stop the girl stumbling and her face looked up in abject misery.
“Tell them, girl,” Mot demanded, “tell them who is the father of your child. Swear it before the gods and the people.”
“Dai Llewellyn is the father of my child,” she said the words in little more than a whisper.
“And?” Kalgo growled as if prompting her in a lesson.
“And I do swear it before the gods and the people.”
That was enough, more than enough, to set flame to the tinder of crowd gossip and Caudinus had to shout this time to get attention. Julia fought down the impulse to scream and run. With her head pounding and her heart lead in her breast, she drew on her years of military training to stand erect and proud.
“That is enough, Fionn!” Caudinus was saying. “Get your daughter and her baby into the warm and make a proper presentation of your claim in due legal manner. And if I find this is an accusation without proof -”
“We have proof, dominus,” Kalgo told him, face twisting in a grimace. “We have DNA test results. And don’t worry we’ll put it all in legal writing and send it to you like you ask.” He jerked his head and Mot almost pulled Megan over, as he seized her arm and strode off. In Megan’s arms, the baby started crying and the wails seemed to transfix the people in the temple precincts until the Fionn family had walked back out through the gate.

From Dying as a Druid by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.