Allfather decided that criminal proclivities were predetermined and could be discovered in the face, and imperfect babies were to be strangled at birth.

It would have been nice to say that criminality declined in line with the policy, but it wasn’t so. Ugliness, on the other hand, dropped dramatically. But even with this obvious failure of the programme, the process became so ingrained in the psyche of the people that conformity became the only criterion for survival.

It’s a shame then, that those who confirmed came from only one family. Criminality finally declined when the young became too stupid to steal…

©️jj 2020

Leonore went on with her day with a lightness of heart that had been a rare thing of late. Time flew by, and it wasn’t until the sun was setting that she had leisure to think about her draconic visitor. She sat on her bed and considered the events of the last night. They made no sense, and she had just about convinced herself that he was a figment of her imagination created by tiredness and stress, when a familiar chuckle sounded inside her head.
“Where are you?”
He laughed.
“I’m on the roof. Waiting for you to call. And you didn’t imagine me, although it was your sadness that allowed me to find you.”
“How so?”
“Sometimes when a person feels their spirit has been all but overwhelmed, a spark within them calls to their soulmate and, if the portents are correct, that soulmate can come to them.”
“Are you saying that you are my soulmate?”
“I’m saying that I must be. Because you are mine.”
“I am?”
“Yes. Of course you are. I’m a dragon. If I didn’t feel like that I wouldn’t have watched over your rest.”
“You weren’t just being kind?”
“L’e’onore. Dragons are never kind. I came to you because your soul called to mine.”
She sighed.
“Why a dragon?”
“I might as well say why a human?”
Leonore sat down plump on the floor not sure whether to laugh or cry.
“Come down to the garden, let’s talk.”
She didn’t move, and the dragon’s voice grew plaintive.
“Please come down L’e’onore.”
“I don’t understand. Am I going mad?”
“No. You are not. Just come down here. Please.”
She got up and went downstairs to where R’u’uth awaited her with the rays of the setting sun turning his scales blood red.
Leonore caught her breath.
“You are so beautiful,” she breathed and R’u’uth smiled.
“We might want to talk about that later” he said and the warmth in his voice had her feeling a tingle in the pit of her stomach but she pushed it away as perverse. Even so, she couldn’t prevent herself walking to his side and resting the palms of her hands on his sun-warmed flanks.
He turned his head and nipped her wrist with his needle-sharp teeth. She was surprised by how pleasurable the small pain felt and a blush mantled her cheeks.
R’u’uth laughed at her discomfiture but his laughter was kindly.
“Never mind lovely,” his voice was full of affection. “Come for a fly.”
Leonore looked into his eyes and felt her own excitement rise.
“A fly? Can I?”
The dragon bent the knee and she scrambled onto his back where she found a spot between his wings.
He threw her a smile over his shoulder before taking a few running steps and spreading his wings with a snap.
“We are together L’e’onore. Together. And we will fly high.”

©️jane jago

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

Afternoon Tea

I’m ambivalent about the concept, but if we have to do the thing I am very firm in my ideas of what the food should be.

Sandwiches. Tiny. Just acceptable. Cucumber – okay. Cheese – okay. Ham – okay. Not okay: peanut butter, any sort of fish.

Small cakes. Okay.

Scones featherlight. Absolutely essential. Cheese ones with chilli jam. Fruit ones with butter. Sweet ones with jam and clotted cream. In fact, just do the scones. The rest is shite….

Unless. Doughnuts. Never underestimate the joy of a doughnut.

And to drink?

Cappuccino. I fucking hate tea.

Or. Of course champagne. Pink champagne.

It was her ninety-fifth birthday and Cara was up and about at her usual time getting ready to go to work. She shared toast and marmalade and a nice cup of tea with her husband, who treated her to a birthday kiss before they went their separate ways – he to his home office where he was a remote pilot of a drone service and she to her work in a local school.
It was a bracing morning and Cara wondered how it must have been back in the days before they developed the techniques that prevented the decline and muscle-loss of ageing. Of course, it was fifty years ago now, prompted by fears of population collapse and a massive rise in an elderly population unable to care for themselves, governments had finally put the required investment into the research that was even then back in the 2020s, producing remarkable results in mice. Within ten years ‘age-related illness’ had become largely a thing of the past and soon after that, decades were added to human life by the same simple techniques.
As she greeted the handful of children in her class, Cara reflected that she probably had another fifty or even eighty years she could now look forward to and all lived as a productive member of society.
Life was good!

E.M. Swift-Hook

Miranda was delighted that fashion had changed.

Not so long ago she had needed to ask her friends, regarding every new item of clothing she got:

“Does my bum look big in this?”

She knew their polite denials were from kindness and she spent many years wearing nothing but baggy joggers or long tunic tops to cover that unfortunate derriere.

Then things suddenly changed.

Big bottoms had somehow become all the rage. She was not sure how, or why, but she was utterly thrilled.

Miranda put on her shorts and went out in the street, brimming with new found confidence.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Sanity slept in one of the wells below the deepest workings of the abandoned mine.
Yris knew because he dreamed of her often, dressed in pink froth and smiling with glass eyes at the abyssal dark. She had left him so many years ago and she had left the child with him. Perhaps she thought it a fair exchange, but she was wrong. Without her, he found being had long since become more than a burden. But he had continued to be, even so.
One hundred years to the day.
Nothing reached out from the past to offer solace. Only the weary shades of loss and bitter disappointment – of hopes raised only to plummet, like burnt out comets no longer trailing their glory and fire. The uncertain light flickered on the marl-plastered wall which held the record of those years. A private diary of his humiliation. Half his life lived out in these caverns.
Yris ran a hand over the protruding notches of stone he had set in the wall at the end of each year, the last still warm to the touch from the rock-melting heat of the energy weapon he had used to fix it in place. He thought about the final vial of life, cradled in its hiding place and wondered if he was right to wait longer.
“Will you at least eat?”
The voice made him turn, startled, but slower than he should. His ears, even with the deft enhancements he had created, no longer warned him of quiet footsteps on the cavern floor. He felt himself a fool for his moment of panic. The child was now a woman, this woman, who held out a bowl of something edible. He had long since stopped asking what. Her expression held pity. It perturbed him.
He should pity her, one who had lived out her whole life in the dark here with him,one who had no haunting memories of sunlight and open skies. No haunting, taunting, memories, echoing with the long silent voices of a lost time. And the laughter. He did remember the laughter – the taunting laughter – and sanity crying.
“You should eat, Gran’pa.” She put the bowl on his table, the one not covered with broken and disembowelled technology others had scavenged so he might build yet another wingless hope. Now she came over. Close to, he remembered this was not the child grown to a woman, this was the child of that woman’s child, also now grown. He could see nothing of sanity in her. His legs weakened as that realization grew stronger.
One hundred years.

The start of the story Tongueless Caverns by E.M. Swift-Hook, a Fortunes Fools story from the Inklings Press anthology Tales From The Underground: Twelve tales of hidden legends. You can listen to this on YouTube.

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

Sets of Kitchen Knives

Hands up all you daft buggers who own sets of ‘chef’s knives’. In wooden blocks or hanging on magnets. Twenty-three mild steel knives you have to sharpen if you so much as look at them… Twenty-three silent testaments to your gullibility. Twenty-three knives of which you use probably none.

My late unlamented was a chef by profession (his cooking being one of the reasons I put up with his presence for so long). He used three knives – and one of them was solely for threatening people who wandered into the kitchen.

You need a big knife and a little one. That’s it

The Rabid Readers Review Tales from the Pirate’s Cove from Inklings Press

Pirates on many and varied high seas…

Mostly when we think of pirates we think of all the classic tropes, shivering timbers, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, walking the plank, peg legs and hooks. This anthology has some stories that do indeed tip the wink to those tropes, but always in creative and inventive ways – but it also has some truly astounding short stories which take the simple concept of ‘pirate’ and shoot off in intriguing new directions.

All the stories in this anthology are well worth a read but as in any such collection a few stand out to me though other readers will undoubtedly have their own preferences.

‘Iris, like the song‘ had me grabbed from the title. Time pirates who steal precious and meaningful moments to sell, and someone has stolen 1998 – an entire year. The story has romance and a very cool twist.

‘Xibalba’s curse‘ is as creepy as the title suggests. Actually no, it’s creepier. If you can imagine Lovecraft writing a pirate story this is something like that.

‘De leon’s Fountain‘ feels like a classic pirate story, with a quest for the Fountain of Youth thrown in, but it is anything but and the ending is guaranteed to surprise every reader as much as it did me.

‘Lost Treasure‘ somehow reminded me of the Terry Gilliam film, Time Bandits, maybe through the shimmering bedroom or maybe in how a child is profoundly impacted by a time travelling ne’er do well.

‘To the End of the World‘ is a potent mix of piracy with demonic ritual and has powerful themes of love and friendship.

These are the ones that particularly appealed to me, but there is not a dud in the mix. I recommend you grab a copy right away and embark on your own voyage of discovery.

E.M. Swift-Hook

An anthology of pirate tales, what’s not to be excited about?

This book takes the idea of pirate and twists its neck. We certainly hear the ‘yo ho ho’ of piratical derring do and, live in expectation that our feet may be made to walk the plank – however the seven seas may just as easily be in outer space or even in the vaults of the mind. Fascinating…

So. We have twelve assorted tales, and not a dud among them. Certainly there were those I liked more and those I liked less, but there was nothing I hated or felt didn’t merit its place.

My favourites?

Xibalba’s Curse wherein we get frightened spitless. Loved it.

To the End of the World. ‘Traditional’ piracy mixed with dark magic and leavened by friendship. I didn’t see the end coming.

Iris, like the song takes the idea that you can actually steal time and mixes it with a tender love story. Genius.

I recommend the whole collection. Four shiny stars.

Jane Jago

“I’m proud to be British,” he said it like a challenge, as if expecting everyone in the pub to disagree with him.

Instead, in this multi-cultured corner of the capital his words met with nods.

“I’m proud that we take in refugees,” one man said, “or I’d not have met my wife.”

“I’m proud we have benefits. Kept me going when I was made redundant,” one of the bar staff put in.

“I’m proud of our tolerance and compassion as a nation,” a student said, then stifled a giggle.

The man standing at the bar glared, harrumphed and left quickly.

E.M. Swift-Hook

‘Much Dithering in Little Botheringham’ is an everyday tale of village life and vampires, from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

They were rescued from what Em was beginning to feel was a treacly morass of emotion by the insistent burbling of her phone. She dragged it out of her pocket. It was Leodigrace so she answered.
“Em speaking.”
“Your wererabbit is completely insane, Emmeline. He won’t ever be fit to be allowed back into society.”
“Well isn’t that a surprise. And what’s with the my wererabbit crap?”
Leodigrace laughed, a deep sensual sound guaranteed to melt the knickers of any normal female. But Em wasn’t a normal female so she snarled at him.
“Did you have anything useful to say, doggy?”
It was his turn to snarl and Em laughed at his discomfiture. 
“Okay, Emmeline shall we call it an honourable draw? And I do have some information you may find interesting.”
Em put her phone on speaker.
“I’m listening.”
“The batshit crazy bat hater was actually being paid to exterminate the small fliers. He seems to have reported locally to one Sidney Harmsley-Gunn, but the paymaster was an American gentleman called Dominic Schilling.” Leodigrace suddenly sounded serious and profoundly formal. “Be very careful, Emmeline Vanderbilt, your little village has something someone somewhere is prepared to go to almost any lengths to get. And. Queen of Vampires, I am permitted to offer you the aid of weres, should it be that we can help.”
Em felt a prickle over her skin at his formal tone. Leodigrace was someone she respected, which was rare for a were. They were still early on in their own Time of Mitigation, having not read the way things were changing as quickly as the vampire community. So now they had the same kind of problems with rogues that Em had needed to confront a century past. She had some sympathy for that, although tempered by frustration at their folly in failing to see the signs and leaving it so late. 
But Leodigrace had been one of the first to listen and had even swallowed his pride to ask her advice on how it could be done for the were community. If he was now offering his aid then whatever plans Harmsley-Gunn had bought into would be disastrous for the village. So she answered his formality with her own. 
“Thank you, Father of Weres.”
He broke the connection and Em looked at Agnes who was barely keeping her anger in check, but it was Ginny who held her attention. The wispy woman whose surprising bravery had bought her near destruction was gone and in her place sat a proper vampire. She looked as cold as death and as implacable.
“Dominic Schilling,” she hissed, “is a creature without honour or compassion, Demonic Schilling is closer to the mark and he belongs to Ronald Dump.”
Em heard the name, but for a moment she was unable to make any connection to the words. 
Agnes was a different matter. “Ronald Dump? Well we aren’t having that bastard on our patch.” Then she began to swear, comprehensively and with real white-hot anger.
Then Em put the pieces together. “Dump? Fat, bald guy with more money than God? Builds upmarket ‘resorts’, drives out the locals and bankrupts the surrounding economies?”
“Yes,” Ginny snarled. “That awful excuse for a human being. If I am right he will already have bought most of the county council. That’s how he operates – carpeting cash over everything so he can stroll over the crushed bodies to his next photoshoot with the latest bigtime supermodel. And Schilling is his procurer in chief, his right hand flunky.” She almost spat her contempt. “We have to stop him. That werewolf you were talking to is absolutely right. Everything we love about this village would be devoured by his obsessive need to win. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone except himself.”
Ginny broke off and closed her mouth tightly as if afraid what might come out of it if she let it open.
“You have encountered him before?” Em prompted.
 “I lost a battle with him many years ago. He wanted to demolish some listed buildings to expand one of his hotels. We had all the evidence. We had the law on our side. But he corrupted the leadership of the planning department – who I happened to be married to at the time. So he won then. But I’m ready for him now. And this time it’s personal.”
She flexed her fingers and Em almost heard the bugle that was calling her to battle.
Agnes finished swearing under breath and looked at Ginny.
“First stop, Harmsley-Gunn?”
“He invited me onto the parish council, so I really should accept.”
Ginny managed a grin so vicious that it gave Em a good feeling about their new recruit. She had thought her a wet hen, but the youngest vampire in the country seemed to be coming out of her corner, brimming with passion and spoiling for a fight even before her Making was complete.

Part 22 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.