Two Women and Some Books
Above,
On wings,
A flight achieved
Beyond
The reach
Of human scope,
Clouded
Skies embrace
The solitary spirit.
Dreams
That lift
The humbled mind
Endure,
And ride
The silent wind
Forever,
Through clouds
Imbued with gentle grey.
From Haruspex: A Walking Shadow part of the Fortune’s Fools series by E.M. Swift-Hook. You can listen to this on YouTube.
The first time he had seen it, from above, Stin thought the far-spreading sprawl of low rise, square, flat-roofed buildings looked like someone upturned a truckload of children’s play blocks. Or not. The shapes were too uneven. Maybe more like a skip full of builders’ rubble, emptied out in the middle of nowhere.
The buildings were all shades of ochre, the newer ones more brown or orange, the older ones yellowed and greying. Some close pressed along narrow streets. Others, more segregated in their own patch of land with courtyards and walls. The double dome of the tiny spaceport bubbled up, incongruous, in the midst of it all and anywhere else in the galaxy there would be ninety million health and safety regulators screaming that the residential buildings were too close. Here, though, there was no one with sufficient authority to object – even if anyone had actually cared. From the domes, a street ran to the main square and then continued pretty much straight on until it came to the only other building of real substance. Dominating the mud-brick built housing and offering a kind of low-tech counterpart to the spaceport domes, the stone-built citadel stood as a testament to local architecture, with its odd half-cylinder tower and its own microcosm of courtyards and housing gathered around the curtain wall.
This was the city of Keran. The planetary capital of Temsevar which was surely the most grimly benighted world in known space. It stood – or more sort of slumped – in a vast plain which stretched, dizzyingly, as far as his eyes could see in every direction, bleak and empty with nothing taller than knee-high bushes and an odd grey-green grass which grew all over.
Someone told Stin that before the spaceport, the settlement had just been a trading post centred on the citadel. Back then, it had only a scant handful of permanent residents and a high turnover of the weird tattoo covered nomads, whose tribes ranged the plains around, moving all the time to avoid their livestock over-grazing the sparse foliage. In some ways, he reflected, nothing much had changed – only the city had grown and now the nomads came from beyond the sky and were much fewer in number.
During the short summer the locals told him Keran was a dust bowl and throughout the long winter, it was a frozen hell. For Stin, it was all alien. A place of exile. First impressions always count and he had been left here in the winter. Adjectives that sprang to mind when he thought how he would describe it to people when – if – he got home again were: bleak, desolate, barren and bitter – like finding himself stranded in a gigantic cold-storage compartment. The memory of standing in the vacant dock looking at the empty space that had been occupied by the ship he arrived in earlier that same day, was still vivid. And that of the voice behind him full of friendly sympathy.
“She left without you? Well, no worries, it happens here. You’re not the first and I’m sure you won’t be the last. You’ll get off in a year or two, just might have to earn yourself a bit to pay the passage.”
He turned to see the speaker, a short man with a round face and a balding fuzz of dark hair.
“I don’t know why she…”
The round face broke up into a gnomish smile.
“You’d not be standing here if you did, would you? Anyway, I’m Agernilio Tavi, but everyone calls me Gernie. I’m the one-man band who keeps the port here running.”
“Stin. Stinian Sabas. I’m the dumb fool who just got dumped by his girlfriend. Now I guess I’m stranded.”
“You and me both, only I’ve stuck it out here the last two and a half decades. Oh man, your face. Don’t look so worried – I chose to stay.”
Gernie, he discovered, was the unofficial deity of the spaceport. He ran the place as his own private business venture and that made him the most important person in the whole of Keran. He was the gatekeeper. The one who controlled access to the rest of the galaxy, the one who could arrange for cargos to be shipped in or out.
Everything offworld was prized here – as long as it wasn’t high-tech dependent. The most highly sought after offworld items were weaponry and medical supplies. These would be purchased or exchanged for whatever local trade could offer – exotic food and drink, art and artefacts, some semi-precious stones and metals. Most of what was traded out didn’t come from Keran or even from the same continent. Most trade came – and went – on the backs of the local beasts of burden. These ponies were ugly beasts, with short, stubby ears, broad backs and thick coats, but had peculiar looking split-hooved feet which could spread and grip on soft ground or ice. They would carry trade goods in pack trains, along the single broad road which stretched to the seaport of Vinbrith, just out of sight over the horizon.
Stin went to Vinbrith the once. It had a pretty sounding name and looked totally picturesque from a distance, the cute cottage-like dwellings clinging to the cliffs above the harbour, the little ships bobbing on the tide and the huge wooden wheels turning slowly. It was perhaps only when you saw the wheels, used to lift the cargos on wooden platforms up the sheer cliff face, were treadmills with three ranks of six men chained in together, that the illusion began to fall away. That and the stench. Pretty as a picture from afar, but close to Vinbrith was worse than Keran – and that was saying something. But from there, wooden-built sailing ships carried goods of all sorts to and from the other continent of the planet, which, Stin had been told, was ruled by someone they called ‘The Overlord’ and held the vast majority of the planet’s population and most all of its resources.
Gernie found him the work. There were a lot of things that needed doing which the locals lacked the technical skill to achieve. It wasn’t good pay, but at least it would earn him passage offworld – eventually. Stin was roped in to help keep the port functional and to spell Gernie manning the archaic transceiver which was set up with the one solitary comms satellite in orbit above the planet.
The system was so primitive that it couldn’t even access regular link-based FTL transmissions. That meant that the only real contact the planet ever got with the rest of the galaxy came via the few ships that visited Temsevar each year. But those incoming ships had to communicate through the satellite as the spaceport couldn’t talk directly to them, it was too far behind modern link technology to do so.
It was when he learned that particular fact that Stin finally realised this place wasn’t just at the back of beyond like most Periphery worlds, it was actually a good few kiloparsecs behind the back of beyond.
Gooseberries, round and pink and hairy
Eaten by queens and constabulary
Cooked in pies and crumble bakes
Made into both jam and cakes
Enjoyed at lunchtime and for tea
By those of high and low degree
Gooseberries, beloved of pilgrims and nomads
And those who like sucking on pink bristly gonads
Welcome to the Hotseat of Truth, a device in which your protagonist is trapped. The only way to escape is to answer five searching questions completely honestly or the Hotseat will consume them to ashes!
Today’s victim is Aaspa the eponymous heroine of Aaspa’s Eyes by Jane Jago
I can’t narrow it down to just one so I will give you a short essay. I believe in the three freedoms. Freedom from want. Freedom of thought. Freedom to love as you will.
In addition, I believe adults to be responsible for the safety and happiness of the young.
And, of course, I believe it is fundamentally wrong to judge people on their appearance.
As you are, presumably, human yourself you may not care for my thoughts about your species. I am sure that the best among you are to be admired and respected, but all the humans I have met have been the dregs of a power and money-hungry society wherein it is each for himself. A human was responsible for my mother’s untimely death, deeming her own arrogant bigheadedness of more value than the life of one she spoke of as a ‘mere animal’, so maybe that has coloured my view of humans unfairly.
Whatever the truth of it, I cordially despise humans and have as little to do with them as possible. I don’t mind killing them though.
*Aaspa grins showing her fearsome fangs.*
I guess I have to make an exception for you.
Of course I believe in second chances. Everyone deserves a chance to learn from their mistakes and to right any wrongs they may have been responsible for.
What I’m not so keen on is third and fourth chances. If someone is given the chance to turn their life around, but they spurn that chance in favour of wrongdoing then they do so at their own peril. I am a big giver of second chances, but less lenient with those who keep on making the same mistakes.
Mercy is a different concept altogether, and my idea of this virtue may differ from yours. But I will explain. To me. Mercy is the giving of friendship and understanding to the friendless and the misunderstood. It is the offering of food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless. Mercy can indeed involve not taking advantage of a vanquished foe, but equally killing a creature that is beyond help can also be mercy in its purest form.
For myself I fear little – except perhaps the moving staircase to the place of the angels (that just about makes me piss myself, even though I know it to be a silly fear).
The real hard fear, however, and the one that wakes me in the night in a cold sweat is that someone might decide to harm my imps.
That’s an easy one Aascko, my mate, my life, the other half of my soul and the air that I breathe.
You can read more about Aaspa in Aaspa’s Eyes by Jane Jago
They came before dawn, silent as wraiths and deadly as rattlesnakes.
By the time the men were aware of danger they were having their throats cut by soundless assassins.
The raiders herded women and children into the grassy bailey, where the systematic butchery began. Old women and male children first. Then young female children and plain women.
In the end there was naught left but prime bloodstock and the leader signed for the slaughter to cease.
“Slaves for sale.” His smile was like the cut of a whip.
Morgana spat in his face.
He had them all killed for that.
A flash fiction by Jane Jago. You can listen to this on YouTube.
In the master bedroom, a woman shut the door between herself and the scores of well-meaning friends and relations who filled the house with their hustle and bustle. She sat down in front of her mirror and began making herself ready to face the hardest day of her life. She worked carefully, taking each step of the ritual slowly, and attempting to brace herself with the simple fact of its familiarity. It was a routine in which each item on her dressing table had its allotted place, and was to be used at its allotted time.
She noticed dispassionately how sorrow and lack of sleep had wreaked havoc with her face, and dabbled random snatches of grey into her cap of mouse-brown hair. Even the softly flattering antique mirror she had inherited from her mother’s grandmother couldn’t make her seem anything but old, and sad, and somehow diminished on this particular morning. ‘You look a proper hag’ she said to her reflection, before gently putting her hairbrush in its accustomed place. She picked up her rings from the little glass bowl beside her, where they always lived when she wasn’t wearing them. After sliding them onto her fingers, she closed her eyes while she threaded gold hoops into the holes in her earlobes.
Feeling the warm weight of two hands on her shoulders, she opened her eyes and managed a half smile for the man who stood behind her.
‘You all right?’
‘No. But I will be.’
‘Good girl.’
She looked down at the rings on her left hand for a moment before saying what was at the very front of her mind.
‘It occurs to me that if I believed in the resurrection and the light, and the possibility of eternal life in the hands of a loving God, today might be a comfort to me…’
‘It might indeed. But as you don’t, not even a little bit, it will be just one more thing to be endured.’
Being so completely understood was like balm to her shredded nerve endings and she put the hand she had been so carefully studying on top of the big square one on her left shoulder.
‘Oh I do love you’ she said with almost childlike simplicity ‘I just don’t tell you enough.’
‘That’s all right’ he replied, in the deep imperturbable voice that had been her lodestone for more than forty years ‘I know. I’ve always known.’
She allowed herself the luxury of leaning back and resting her head against the solid wall of his chest. Closing her eyes she let the tears run unchecked down her cheeks.
‘Don’t cry, love.’
‘Am not. Much.’
Then she felt him bend and rest his cheek against her hair. They stayed like that for a long time, each drawing courage from the other as they had done so many times before. When he finally lifted his head, their eyes met in the silvery depths of the mirror.
‘I just wish…’
But she was never to hear what he wished as there came a tap on the door and her sister’s worried face peeped around the panels.
‘Are you ready? It’s just that the cars are here.’
She stood up and squared her shoulders. ‘Yes. Coming now.’
So she left that place of sanctuary, and went downstairs. Down to where people wore black clothes and sombre faces, and where the hearse bearing her husband’s coffin waited in the street.
The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…
I am old I have noticed this fact
There’s no need to approach it with tact
I don’t bother that you
Will have noticed it too
But stop smirking or you will get smacked
A flash fiction by E.M. Swift-Hook. You can listen to this on YouTube.
There was an endless, hacking, dry cough coming through the paper-thin walls, which combined with the aching squeal of protest in the springs of the bed as I tried to find an almost comfortable position to lie in, made sleep seem a grimly distant prospect. At least, I thought, I would get no unwelcome visitors here. The mildew-scented air, battled with a slightly sour odour of fabric left too long undried that was perfuming my pillowcases. It reminded me of the smell of the dirty-linen basket at home.
Home.
I had no home now, I had forfeited that in exchange for a promise of happiness.
Thoughts and emotions welled up anew, like bubbles rising in a boiling pot, and the more I tried to let them go, the faster they seemed to simmer. So I gave up the battle and opened my eyes, the sickly yellow glow of the flickering, streetlight outside the window revealing where the wallpaper had pinched-up and peeled off, revealing the card with a picture of a single rose. It had been my talisman for weeks and my promised ticket to freedom – five magic words: ‘Trust me, I love you’.
My trust in that love had brought me here – this place that was supposed to have been a sanctuary but offered only cold comfort.
His weight on her was such that she could barely breathe. She moved a little restlessly, feeling wetness spreading across her back. Oh well, she thought, at least he’d had fun then – but she wished he’d shift his backside.
He didn’t, so she made a determined effort to extract herself from the stifling prison of his sheer bulk. Finally free, she scrabbled for the lamp. Turning up the wick she saw a sea of colour. The wetness that soaked the bed was bright scarlet and had seeped from around the axe buried between his shoulder blades.
She started to scream…
From Iconoclast: Mistrust and Treason, a Fortune’s Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook. You can listen to this on YouTube.
He’d never met Avilon Revid in person before, the man who was viewed with awe by most of the youngsters back then and with a wary respect by the High Council. Revid was the man who made miracles. The man who had brought the Coalition to its knees in some parts of the galaxy and had liberated entire planets from corporate domination. Meeting him was the kind of event that stuck in your mind.
Torbalen’s first thought had been how little like a figure of legend he really was in the flesh. There was nothing exceptional in the man’s appearance. His face was familiar to anyone who watched the newscasts. He was something over average height, but not dramatically so, with straight brown hair and unremarkable features. Revid hadn’t been alone, he was speaking with a slightly shorter man, sharp-faced, dark eyed, and dark haired, who was watching Torbalen approach them with suspicion. Then Revid had stopped talking to the man beside him and turned to look directly at Torbalen, revealing the incredible brilliance of his eyes, an almost luminous green.
“It seems I have a lot to thank you for,” Revid said, making a quick gesture to the contents of the warehouse.
Torbalen gave a small nod of acknowledgement.
“Just doing my job — the job I should be doing, not the one where they drown me in administration first.”
The other man had spoken then. He was holding one of the weapons and seemed to be admiring it.
“This,” he said, “is good kit. Quality.”
“And that is high praise, coming from an elite mercenary,” Revid added.
The dark haired man grinned. So he would be the mercenary commander Revid had insisted on taking on for the military side of this strike. There had been disquiet in the High Council around that, with plenty of objections. The concept of including someone who wasn’t personally committed to their ideals had made a number of the Councillors extremely agitated. Revid’s famously pithy reply had been that he considered they were being selfish to allow only members of The Legacy the chance to die for the cause. Torbalen had been one of those supporting Revid, even though he had refused to offer any other details about the mercenary, except when pressed, said he was known as ‘Jaz’.
“It should be quality,” Torbalen told them, unable to resist a small boast. “It came from the military. It was part of a shipment being made to resupply an offensive.”
“You stole from the Marines?” The one called Jaz sounded both impressed and disbelieving.
“You would be amazed how easy it is sometimes. Those who live by bureaucracy find themselves willing to surrender anything if presented with an appropriate looking form.”
That had made the dark haired man laugh.
“You don’t need those, brother,” he said, gesturing to the crates. “You only need a few more men like him.” He had nodded towards Torbalen. “Then the whole fucking Coalition would sign itself over to your Legacy.”
Even Revid had smiled, ironically, at that.
“If only it could be that simple.”
He’d sounded as if he meant it and perhaps he had. Perhaps he hadn’t been one of the typical ‘death or glory’ merchants who formed the majority in the ranks he led. Torbalen had met too many of them, most little more than children, all young people full of hate and hurt and anger, wanting to strike back and not caring if they died in the process. Not surprising when they believed all they had to live for had been crushed out of existence by the blind and remorseless advance of the Coalition. People like his own son.
Maybe something of that showed on Torbalen’s face. Perhaps there wasn’t quite enough of the uncritical adulation Revid was used to, because he frowned slightly when Torbalen didn’t respond. The dark haired man had used the silence, nodding a brief farewell and moving off quickly, to check the various crates and packs, leaving the two of them alone.
“You have my personal thanks, for what that is worth,” Revid told him. “When this is done you’ll have the gratitude of an entire Sector of free people too. I could never have set this up without your being willing to work with me outside the lines. This will be your victory as much as mine.”
Torbalen felt flattered as he assumed was intended. He’d also felt awkward in the moment, not sure what he should say. None of the usual platitudes seemed to fit. It was nothing? That would have been a huge untruth, getting this shipment together had taken him days with no sleep. You’re welcome? That made it sound like a small, formal favour had been delivered and would have diminished both the scale of his own achievement and the praise he was being offered for it. So he said what was on his mind:
“I just hope it’s enough.”
Revid had nodded, there was a shift in the intense green gaze as if he was reassessing something. Then he’d stepped forward and gripped Torbalen’s arm briefly.
“We need to be moving. But when I get back I’d like the chance to talk with you some more, if you are willing?”
For a moment, Torbalen understood the magic hold this man had on others. The sudden rush of tight emotion he experienced almost choked him back from replying and when he did, it was only with the trite, stock phrases of polite convention that came easily to mind.
“I’d be happy to. Let me know when you are back around. Hope to see you soon.”
Afterwards, he felt embarrassed that he’d spoken that way, but in truth, he was glad he’d managed to find any words at all. At least he hadn’t stood there, mouth slack and starry-eyed. He had also been furious with himself. He never thought he might be someone to be affected by celebrity or wowed by charisma. Mercifully, Revid had either not noticed or perhaps was simply so used to such reactions in the people he spoke to, he didn’t consider it worthy of note or response. He’d simply released Torbalen’s arm and stepped away with a brief nod, freeing Car to take his leave and leaving Revid and his people to free the Varn Sector.
Except that was not how it had worked out.
