The tree bark was warm beneath simba jike’s belly, as she watched the two-legs try to herd water beasts into a flimsy corral. It wasn’t going well. She wondered at them, until it came to her that this was a hunt and the mtu mweupe with the bang stick was waiting for something. 

Even as she thought this, the king of all the mamba exploded from the water in pursuit of a young water beast.

Bang. Bang. The bang stick sounded.

They left him where he fell, and simba jike wondered if there was good eating on a mamba.

©️jj 2019

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. You can listen to this on YouTube. If you missed previous episodes you can start reading from the beginning.

Julia Lucia Maxilla stood up to her full four feet and eleven inches and stared at her co-investigator. She saw a tall, handsome man with black hair, pale skin and a square jawline. He glared down at her, and she was surprised by the blueness of his eyes. Her dogs came to lean against her, and this would have alerted her to the idea the man wasn’t precisely pleased to see her if her own intuition hadn’t already made that clear.
“Llewellyn, is it?” she kept her voice cool.
Behind him she could see another man trying to blend into the wall.
“Yes, domina.”
“If we are going to work together, I think we can dispense with such formality. The name is Julia.”
“Julia,” he hesitated fractionally, “I’m Dai Llewellyn. This is Decanus Bryn Cartivel, and is it permitted to ask what those dogs are?”
Julia decided to let the hesitation pass. She summoned a smile.
“Canis and Lupo are wolfhounds,” she turned and indicated the huge Saxon who stood at her shoulder. “The dogs and Edbert guard me. In case you missed it, I’m not very big so if I need to intimidate somebody they help with that too.”
For a moment the Briton actually grinned, then he must have remembered whatever grievance was wearing at him and he started looking sulky again. Julia sighed inwardly. He was going to be difficult and that was a shame because he was really, really pretty. Before she got chance to snap his handsome nose off for him, he surprised her by holding out a hand to Edbert.
“Greetings.”
Edbert actually grasped his wrist and the two tall men stood eye to eye for a moment.
“You play nicely with my lady. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
Her bodyguard spoke rarely, and when he did his uncomfortably deep voice always reminded Julia of a thunderstorm in some far valley. She winced inwardly, rather wishing he hadn’t chosen to speak now, and was surprised to hear a thread of amusement in the Briton’s response.
“You can be sure I’ll bear that in mind.”
“If you two have finished bonding, I have a visit to make.” Julia turned a carefully blank face to Dai. “You had better come with me. Edbert and your decanus can take a break.”
He frowned.
“Does it pertain to the investigation?”
“No. And yes. It’s a duty visit to the Tribune. The Prefect is just a time server and she’s a complete waste of time as far as I can see. The Tribune is a different matter. Aside from policy, he and I have known each other since we were children.”
“Since you were children?” Llewellyn frowned. “But wasn’t the Tribune born in the Suburra? I heard he was raised in the insulae at the foot of the Capitoline Hills before he was adopted.”
“He was. And so was I. Any questions?”
Dai shut his mouth with a snap. Julia could all but hear him thinking, and took pity on him. It would make little sense to a Briton, who was no doubt raised on TV crime dramas which featured the poverty and criminality of the poorest slum area in Rome, that someone from that place could be in any position of influence or power.
“My father was a soldier, but my mother was a lupa, I think you use the term ‘whore’. My father was killed when he was twenty, in a border skirmish with the Mongol Empire, my mother died soon after of an occupational disease – she succumbed to morbus insu, an STD. I was raised by my father’s family who took me in because I was his only child and I think they wanted something to remember him by.”
“Oh. But how did -?”
“How did I get to be an inquisitor? A long story. And mostly painful, so can we leave it?” She essayed a smile and her new colleague managed a half grin in response. Julia looked at him more closely.
“Your tunic,” she said severely, “is pretty grubby. That fish sauce must be days old. Do you have another?”
He nodded, wearing the expression of a schoolboy caught cheating in a class test.
“Good. Decimus is a fussy blighter. We’ll swing past yours on the way.”

Once Dai was tidied to her satisfaction, Julia led the way to the Tribune’s apartment, which backed onto the barracks housing the cohort of Praetorians that were stationed in Londinium under the Tribune’s command.
“There was a reason I didn’t bring Edbert and the hounds,” Julia admitted.
Dai raised an eyebrow.
“The Lady Lydia don’t like them.”
Dai grinned tautly.
“If rumour is correct, she isn’t seeing people right now.”
Julia treated him to a quick, incurious, glance.
“Oh. Who?”
“One Titillicus. Inquisitor and nasty piece of work. Sent home to his mother in a body bag.”
“Oh. Whoops.” Julia frowned. “Why doesn’t she realise he is never going to divorce her?”

Dai looked down at her, his expression suggesting a genuine curiosity.
“Is she stupid?”
“Probably…”
“I always think bed-hoppers must be the lowest of the low,” Dai told her. “If you can betray your avowed spouse, you are not going to find it too hard to do the dirty in other ways.”
Julia smiled, pleased that they were beginning to find common ground in their values. It eased the conversation as they waited for the Man himself.

Part IV will be here next Sunday. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

It was a trifling thing. A handmade fan. Out of place among the costly claustrophobia of her existence. 

And yet. To carry it would change her life.

If she was brave.

The young scholar who laid his heart at her feet could offer none of the material magnificence she had become accustomed to, though he was handsome enough to dent her heart and clever enough to go far. With the right woman at his side. 

Wei decided that woman would be her and she carried his paper fan with as much pride as if it was the most precious jade.

©️jj 2019

A chicken with an aching bum
Sits on duck eggs to be mum
All her friends think she is mad
Having ducklings with no dad
But she don’t care she isn’t moody
She’s just feeling fat and broody
Poor old girl don’t give a f%$&
If she gets a fluffy duck

©jj

Pulling the Rug IV by Jane Jago is out Monday and includes ‘The Night Librarian’ You can listen to this as recorded by Tall Tales TV on YouTube.

It was very quiet in this area of the stacks, so quiet that if you listened carefully enough you could hear the books breathing. This portentous silence was broken by a rhythmic squeak as a trolley loaded with grimoires and  magical texts was pushed firmly towards the dark corner wherein such resided.
“It’s no good you being like that,” a determined voice said. “It doesn’t hurt being shelved. It’s not as if any of you are chained. Although if some of you keep misbehaving…”
The rhythmic squeal stopped and the trolley rounded a corner, being pushed by a dumpy girl with a determined looking chin. As it neared the  shelves where arcane and magical volumes were shelved the squeal started up again.
“Does somebody want to be shelved on 99b?”
Silence.
The dumpy girl began shelving volumes with practiced efficiency. She handled the books with care and respect, but would brook no resistance nor any other tricks. One of the grimoires snapped its covers at her and she slapped it firmly.
“Start that with me and I’ll chain you.”
If it was possible for a book to look abashed it did so, coming quietly to hand to be slipped into its accustomed place.
Once the grimoires were tidily placed in their proper positions, the Night  Librarian closed the steel doors around their stack and locked them with a hugely ornate key.
On her way back to the centre desk, she paused briefly at travel and pointed an imperious finger. There was a bit of scrabbling as the books reshelved themselves in their proper order, followed by an embarrassed silence.
“Papua New Guinea, since when have you lived between Jersey and Guernsey?”
A dog eared volume leapt from a shelf and scuttled off. The girl regarded the now tidy stack for a moment before permitting herself a small smile.
“Better.”
She turned on her heel pushing the now empty trolley to the store room where it would be filled by the day staff who were far too busy to ever shelve books.
As they saw it, that was her job and the business of shelving had already taken a goodly part of the night, but at least there was just one full trolley left. She looked at it with some disfavour before grasping the handles firmly. Immediately they turned warm, and furry and she could feel tiny tentacles caressing the thin skin inside her wrists.
“Stop that at once,” she frowned awfully and the trolley behaved as she pushed it past Young Adult, Alternative History, and Romance to its designated area: Erotica.
“Here we are,” she said brightly, “your stop”.
These stacks were somehow claustrophobic, and the air was thick and heavy with what could be felt as either threat or promise. The young librarian appeared to feel neither as she simply proceeded with her work.
“Lesbian romance,” she clapped her hands and a half dozen or so volumes jumped from the trolley and shelved themselves neatly among their peers. She carried on, briskly calling out names and categories and the books kept obeying, even if she did feel the occasional groping hand as they passed her by.
Finally there were just two books left glowering at her from the trolley. “Extreme punishment, am I to assume you are unwilling to shelve yourselves like sensible books?”
There was a sudden sullenness in the air and she sighed.
“You lot are more trouble than grimoires.”
Pushing the trolley further into an aisle, where the atmosphere was warm and redolent of body fluids and full of the sounds of moans and curses, she stopped in front of a shelf where her senses were assaulted by cries of pain and the whistle of the whiplash. She picked up the first book and slipped it into its allotted position with very little difficulty. The second snarled at her as she put out her hand. Nothing daunted, she slapped it on its stained cover. It retaliated, and she felt the phantom bite of a whip across her shoulders. She smiled thinly and picked the volume up by its spine.
“Somebody masturbate on you today?”
The book wriggled at the pleasurable memory and she pushed it into its vacant slot before exiting the erotica stack with as much dignity as she could muster.
Back at the central desk, she began the second part of her duties. She worked diligently inputting details of loaned volumes and returns, clicking her tongue at inaccuracies and omissions as she slowly reduced the pile of official dockets, dirty slips of paper, scented notes and IOUs. She had almost finished when she was interrupted by a polite cough.
“Yes,” she said without looking up.
“Please miss, there’s a something roaming the stacks and we is afraid.”
The librarian turned to look at at the speaker. She was surprised to see a whole deputation of small creatures looking at her hopefully. There were brownies, gnomes, elves, rabbits, squirrels, hobbits, borrowers and too many others to mention. Most of these species disliked and distrusted each other, so their banding together portended something of considerable dark power. She shrugged internally and bent her gaze on the spokesperson: a tiggywinkle.
“What sort of a something?”
The hedgehog dropped a nervous curtesy.
“We doesn’t know ma’am. But we hears it and we knows it is hungry.”
“Oh. One of those. You wait here then.”
The Night Librarian took two things out of her capacious handbag, and two more things out of a drawer beside her left foot.
“Okay. You lot stay here. I will deal.”
She strode off along the silent shelves, noticing for the first time how afraid the books were and how they were all trying to make themselves small and insignificant. Reaching the section of the library given over to Dark Magicks, she checked to see that the grimoires were still locked in before taking a very large salt pot out of her pocket. She uncapped it and began to draw a complex pattern on the stained stones of the floor. When she was satisfied she put the salt pot away and brought out a spray bottle of water, which she uncapped before stabbing her thumb with the silver pin of the brooch she wore at the neck of her modest little blouse. She allowed a carefully counted number of drops of blood to mix with the water before briskly recapping the bottle. Walking around the salty pattern, she carefully sprayed a mist of the pink solution around the edges of the pentagram. She smiled thinly and stepped into the centre of the design. Placing the bottle on the floor between her feet she muttered an incantation. And waited.
At first nothing happened, but then a slithering sliding sort of noise, overlain by a toothache-inducing scrape became audible, and the girl in the pentagram felt a sense of resistance. She muttered a few more words and the slithering came closer. A reptilian head with glowing yellow eyes came around the corner, followed by a scaly winged body balanced on short front legs and longer legs at the rear. The creature boasted powerful hindquarters, and massively muscled shoulders decorated with dark leathery wings. As it drew near, the uncomfortable scraping sound could be traced to the creature’s talons fruitlessly digging the ground as it tried to resist the pull of the Librarian’s incantation.
It stopped at the edge of the pentagram, swishing a tail whose spiked end could disembowel a man. Peering shortsightedly into the centre of the salty lines it snarled at the unimpressive figure who had nonetheless managed to drag its unwilling carcass across the floor without breaking a sweat.
“I hunger. I thirst.” It hissed.
“I expect you do, but there is naught here for you.”
“You are here.”
“And I am protected within walls of power.”
The dragon, for dragon it was, sneered and swiped at the salty lines with one clawed forefoot. Nothing moved. It hissed again and tried harder.
“Even if you could disturb the pattern, that which is written on stone and sealed with holy water and blood cannot be removed until I release it.”
The dragon ground it’s teeth and hissed viciously, but the Librarian would not be intimidated. She narrowed her eyes and concentrated briefly.
“Stop that T’Drell. Instead of being stupid tell me how you got here and why you came here.”
The dragon shook its head.
“I do not know. I cannot tell. Asleep I was. Then found myself here. Wandering. Alone. Hungry. Angry.”
“Would you return to Dragonheart?”
“I would.”
“Very well. Be still.”
T’Drell laid his head on the stones and became absolutely motionless as the Librarian began her incantation. As he began to fade he lifted his eyes.
“Thank you,” he whispered.

By Jane Jago - You can read the conclusion of this story in Pulling the Rug IV

“No child of mine could ever be a vegetarian.” Father was in such a rage that he sprayed his morning blood around the dining room.

Mother coughed. “Are you suggesting that Violentis is not your child?”

“No. No of course not. But how can a vampire be a vegetarian?”

“With difficulty. But the decision is her own to make.”

Father retired behind his newspaper harrumphing.

Violentis drunk her tomato juice.

Six months later, Father was the only one in the household still drinking blood. But then he scented a profit. 

Writing ‘Vegetarianism for Vampires’ made him a very wealthy man.

©️jj 2019

I order my drink at the bar
The ice-cubes chiming in the glass
“You want a straw with that?”
Pretty plastic colours
I think what I saw
Last night on TV
An ocean choked
With plastic waste
I say no
The last straw.
Simple.
Really.
Just,
No.

E.M. Swift-Hook

You can listen to this on YouTube if you prefer.

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.

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.

The image that catapulted her to Internet stardom started out as a joke. She needed an avatar for her business – and her husband put her in one of the dresses she was attempting to sell and told her to look mean. He grinned at her from behind the camera.

“The face is brilliant, but it needs something else… I know.”

He disappeared for a moment, returning with an old chair leg adorned with some flex she recognised as coming from a broken electric iron. 

When they stopped laughing sufficiently, she posed again.

And Whiplash Fashions got its public face.

©️jj 2019

From ‘Skin Deep’ a story in Pulling the Rug II by Jane Jago. You can listen to this on YouTube too.

Llys was working in the herb garden when her mother came out of the kitchen and sat herself on a stone bench in the spring sunshine.
“We have a problem, dear heart” she said without preamble.
“Garanwys?”
“Yes. She now says she will not marry Llyd while thou art still living in this house.”
“And shall I stay here forever, then?”
“There is naught that would please me more. But. She has thy brother and thy father pixie-led.”
“I know it. So I am to go.” Llys dusted off her hands and came to sit beside her mother, who looked into her only daughter’s calm features and sighed.
“Why does she hate thee so?”
“Because Owen Smith wanted her not.”
Lyonette regarded her daughter in a puzzled manner.
“Why would he want her when he had thee?”
“All men must want her. Thou knowest that, Mother mine.”
“Aye. I do know. And should one not, it seems her spite follows him even unto death.”
“Him and his widow.”
Lyonette patted the hand that lay on Llys’ lap.
“Sadly. And now I must press thee. Thy father asks what thou wouldst do.”
“I know not, Mother. Do I have choices?”
“Thou dost. There have been two offers for thy hand in marriage. There is one offer of a place as a housekeeper. Or thou mayst have a cottage of thine own in the village.”
“But I must, indeed, leave my childhood home at the behest of a spiteful woman.”
“Thou must.”
“Then tell me of these offers.”
“The priest requires a housekeeper. The fat innkeeper offers for thy hand in matrimony, as does Aled Sheepherder.”
“I would not live alone for the rest of my days, so I must choose one of the other offers.”
“Thou must.”
“I’ll not warm the lustful priest’s bed.”

“Quiet child. He is a celibate” Lyonette spoke sharply, then looked into her daughter’s intelligent eyes and lifted a work-worn hand to her cheek. “Or perchance not…”
“Not,” Llys was scornful. “Remember, I lived beside his house while Owen and I were man and wife. So.” She wrinkled her smooth forehead. “I’ll not take the fat innkeeper neither. He has already worked three wives into their graves. But I like Aled Sheepherder, he was a friend of Owen and he is a kind, good man. Will thou tell my father I will take his offer gladly.”
“Gladly?”
“Aye. I will do it with a glad heart and grudge my husband naught. You might also tell Father that I neither cried nor bemoaned my lot. He could have spoken with me himself.”
Lyonette smiled sadly.
“Not so dear heart. The hurt in thy eyes would have made him uncomfortable.” Then she heaved herself onto her feet and made her way back into the house.
Llys returned to her weeding.

Jane Jago