I could see the sky, but for the trees.

Damn time goes by quickly when you're busy (busy mostly equalling: study, assignments and/or being sick - not necessarily in that order).

Still I feel bad for neglecting the blog, especially after my last spiel (I have been writing, I just like to get stories to a partially rounded off state before uploading - so that I don't cut them off right in the middle of a particular segment of plot) so I thought that I would give you something new (and comparatively longer than my last few updates) to chew over.

Just a few things before I get to it though:

- No it's not a continuation of the pirate story or an attempt at a play/play like dialogue - both those are coming along, but I started this up on a whim the other day and sort of got stuck in it.

- Yes it is fantasy - though is hopefully not terribly cliché (though undoubtedly I will have the clichés pointed to me).

- yes it is in a way part of the series that I have been working on/talking about for forever and ever - though it is not a main part, but is instead me playing with a new character (who may or may not be important) and their role (or lack there-of) in major events within the world/universe.

(As I think I have mentioned to people in the past - If I do at some point write this series I don't really want it to be a big unwieldy series, ala The Wheel of Time, but would instead be aiming for maybe a few smaller series of stories and stand alone novels set within the same universe (think Larry Niven's 'Known Space' series or Iain M. Banks 'Culture' novels if you are in anyway familiar with them - which is a probably not given my current readership/me not really knowing anyone else who has read them).

Anyway without further nonsense, here is a story which I would like you to read, rip apart and generally criticise in a (possibly/hopefully) helpful way (also comments on last post would be cool too).


Wildwood

“Rowe!”

The boy froze, halfway over the fence.
“Where do you think you’re going!?”
Under his breath he cursed his bad luck. He was so close; he could almost touch the trees. He’d been so sure that he would be able to get away this time. So sure that she was too busy to pay attention to what he was doing, but now somehow he knew that she had been watching the whole time. She was always watching. He thought of the punishment to come and a hot and prickly sensation trickled down the back of his neck. There was no way that he was going to avoid the switch this time, not after being caught for the third time in almost as many weeks. He could hear her moving closer.
“What have a told you about going in there!” She was genuinely angry now. He swallowed, and then sighed under his breath. So it was going to be the usual lecture. He had heard it so many times now that he could almost quote her word for word: She would go on about how that now he was older he had to take on some responsibility. She would mention how sick his mother was. How he was causing her to worry. How that worry only made her condition worse. He hated her for saying that, knowing full well that he was not allowed to visit her had no way of knowing if it was true.
Normally he tried his best to ignore her, only coming back to attention when she came to mention his father and ‘what he would think’ or ‘what would he say’. It always came down to that and normally enough to drag him back in to line, normally. His father always knew when he was paying attention or not and a look of disapproval from him was always a hundred times worse than the switch his aunt seemed to prefer. He kept his back to her, hiding a grin.

His aunt had a fearsome temper when angered, which seemed to be most of the time as of late, but she had never been known for her originality. Always it was the same routine. He would have listened if the threat had any weight, if his father was here. But he wasn’t, he had left weeks earlier on business and would be away for weeks more; the fear of angering him was a distant one.
So, he thought, he may as well have some fun now, while he could get away with it. The old wood flexed as he completed his vault over the fence and then in an instant he was in amongst the trees. He could hear his aunt shrieking profanities; rushing towards the fence. She must be really angry now. Even more reason to disappear. He was running as soon as his feet hit the ground.

It didn’t take long for her voice to fade off into the distance; although this close to the village the trees were still relatively thin they had a way of muffling voices and making it sound as if people were in places that they were not. It was supposed to be like that all through-out the Wildwood, though the trees only began to thicken if you made it over the Northern Hedge and into the forest proper, something he had only done once before. In the outlying forest the distance between the trees meant that even from far away it was still easy to find the fingers of chimney smoke from the village drifting up lazily to clutch at the sky overhead; In the Wildwood proper you were lucky if you could see anything overhead besides the drapery of branch and leaf.

He knew no one would bother him for the rest of the afternoon. For reasons he had never understood the people from the village always avoided the Wildwood. The other children tried to explain it away with the usual ghost stories: sometimes the wood was a hiding place for murderers or madmen; sometimes it was home some sort of monster, or if they were feeling particularly imaginative, it was the forest itself that was out to get you, because it was haunted or old magicked or ensorcelled or whatever. The only thing the stories ever agreed on was that if you went too far in, it wasn’t too likely that you would ever be coming. For the most part Rowe ignored these stories. It doesn’t take much to scare children. What interested him more was the way the adults behaved: They simply ignored it. Never went in, never talked about it (unless they were telling their children to keep away from it). They even avoided looking at it; instead they seem to look through it or just at the fence that marked the border between forest and village. They went to a lot of effort to try and hide it, but Rowe knew that they too were afraid of the forest and that they had been afraid of it for so long that it had become habit forming. Firewood and lumber were brought all the way from the part of the wood that curled around the eastern side of the village, never from the Wildwood itself, even though it was right there in front of them. As far as Rowe knew, the only time an axe had ever touched Wildwood trees was when the fence had been built and that had been before his father had been born, when the trees near the village had been as thick as those further in. Before the villagers had cut and burnt the forest back. Making his way down one of the innumerable animal trails that wended their way through the young growth he could still see some of the left over traces of the fires; black scars on the trees which had by chance survived, and the desiccated remains of those that had not. Many of the more brittle ones had since collapsed into little more than piles of ash, either under their own weight and the simple passage of time or because they had been taken to with stone or branch and a youthful desire to break things when angry. But today was not one of those days. Instead he had just wanted to get away, away from the crowding and the heat of home and out the open, where the crisp air carried the hint of coming of cold and winter.

Eventually he came to his favourite place in the forest, a copse of elder trees which, huddled together, had somehow managed to make it through fires largely unscathed. With a sigh of relief he pushed his way through the thick knotting of branches and into the small glade hidden within. In a way it was like coming home, he had been coming here for years and the clearing was littered with things that he had found, made, or had simply wanted to keep hidden. Various attempted fishing poles were sat haphazardly by the small pond that bubbled up from somewhere underground - a few discarded fish bones lying in a rough fire-pit suggesting that at least one had at some point been successful. Out of habit more than hope he went down on hands and knees by the water’s edge, trying to see below the surface; it had been several weeks since he had seen, let alone caught, a fish. The water was cold and clear, but as usual it was empty. He wondered what had happened to them and hoped that he had not scared them all away. Though he had been much more likely bring them food than to catch one of them to feed himself, having only done so if he stayed the night and so missed dinner, something that had become increasingly common over the last few weeks. More often than not he would simply gather up some leaves and a cloak and sleep out in the open, but as it had grown colder that was becoming less and less comfortable and so instead he had put together a slightly more permanent area to bed down below the overhang of a large boulder that sat on the edge of the clearing. It was dry place to sleep but was not very comfortable, so he had ‘borrowed’ a sheepskin blanket from an old chest he had found in the attic. He sat down on the blanket and closed his eyes, wondering if it would be a good idea to stay the night again and wait until tempers had cooled off. Out of habit his hand moved to a small hollow in the rock face where he kept his more prized possessions. There were a few stones and odds and ends, pebbles with odd patterns and hard chucks of what looked like stone but let the light through when held up to the sun. The silver coin he had found one day when his father took him into town. Some feathers and some scavenged fish-hooks. Instinctively he grasped the handle of the heaviest weight he could find, bringing out the dagger that had been a gift from his Uncle he last time he had come down from one of the great cities in the North. Taking it from its sheath he tested the blade against his thumb, though not with enough force as to cut the skin (he had learnt that lesson within the first hour of owning the knife and it was for that reason that his aunt had decided that it was best that he not keep it – which was exactly why he had hidden it).
He slashed the short blade through the air experimentally, before sheathing it and tying it to his belt. The day was still young and he was starting to feel adventurous.
From the glade it was only a small trip to the Northern Hedge and he found himself wandering toward it before he knew where he was going. He found himself tingling with apprehension - If he was going to face another switching for going into the Wildwood he may as well actually go into the REAL Wildwood. Through the trees he could just make out The Midmost Mountains. He wondered if Wildwood stretched up all the way to meet them and, if they did, how long it would take him to walk there. Not for the first time he thought of running away. Maybe he could climb the mountain, or at least go and see if anyone lived there. His Uncle had told him of people in the far north, beyond the great inland sea, who lived in mountains. Though now, looking up at the snow-capped peaks, he was sure that it must be too cold to stay there for more than just a little while.

Slowly the trees began to thicken and grow taller. Gone entirely were the young saplings that made up the forest close to the village, here almost everything was old growth with no sign that the fires had ever touched them. Rowe found himself on edge, scared and excited at the same time. It was said that the animals grew strangely vicious this close in to the Wildwood proper and unlike all the other stories this was something he was inclined to believe. The last time he had crossed over The Hedge he was sure that he had seen a wolf, though he had been too taken by panic to really be sure. But, he told himself, he had been younger then and smaller and he had not had the dagger.

Then, all of a sudden the trees gave way and the Northern Hedge lay before him. If the other trees had been old, then these were truly ancient, but where their younger siblings had had room to spread out and grow in all directions the trees of the hedge instead sat shoulder to shoulder, with limbs that so closely intertwined that it was impossible to see what lay on the other side. He took a deep breath and pushed his way through.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust; everything was darker, with only brief slivers shining through the cracks in the leafy ceiling. The air was still, almost heavy, but still the trees seemed to sway to some unfelt breeze. Almost imitating them he began to shiver, though he was not sure whether he did so out of coldness or exhilaration.
He tried to move in a straight line, knowing that if he lost his sense of direction that he would most likely end up getting lost entirely, but that was easier said than done. Like the outer woods there were trails left by animals, but here they seemed much more chaotic and indecisive, crisscrossing over each other and often looping back upon themselves. The birds too acted oddly, as he heard no calls or cries of warning as approached, only the soft fluttering of wings and the moving of shadows.
Very slowly he got the impression that something was watching him. It started as a tingle on the back of his knew, a vague concern about what could be behind him and then gradually began to develop into something more. He had stopped to investigate a small stream that slipped almost silently between the trees when the feeling surged so strongly that he went into an instant panic; turning this way and that, clutching the knife and trying to see everywhere and everything at once.
He felt hot and clumsy and sick all at the same time. His eyes flickered from tree to tree and he began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. Something moved behind him; brushed against his shoulder. He bolted.
He ran and ran and ran. Absolute terror ripping each breath from his lungs. Branches whipped at his arms, at his face, he felt one or two cut the skin but was too pre-occupied to care. Not once did it occur to him that he was running in the wrong direction. He stumbled up and over a hill and into light and open air. He fell.
Something poked at him, rolling him the right way up. People were talking. He groaned, trying to push the needles of light back from his eyes. He blinked. He was on a road and there were people everywhere. A voice in the back of his head began to laugh. There are no roads in the Wildwood. It’s supposed to be secret. Full of dark things. Not full of people.

One of the men, and he realised that most of them were men, jabbed at him with his boot and said something. He looked up at him, at his dark green livery and the plate of burnished steel that was wrapped around his chest. Soldiers. Soldiers on a road in the Wildwood.
“Hey kid! I said ‘where the hell did you come from?’”

Rowe began to mumble dumbly in response when the soldier looked away and snapped rigidly to attention as a man in a dark blue tunic moved through the other men, likewise at attention, to come and see what was going on. He looked from the soldier to Rowe, crossed his arms and made a surprised but yet unworried exclamation.

“Huh.”
He turned back to the soldier and asked, “Where did he come from?” The soldier seemed to somehow go more rigid. The man in blue had bolts of lightning stitched into his sleeves.

“I was just asking him sir. Doesn’t seem to talk.”
The man looked back at him.

“From one of the nearby villages by the looks of it, though I thought they were all supposed to be terrified of coming in here.”

Rowe tried to say something, but the patted him oddly on the head and then turned to move away.

“Not that it really matters though. Seeing as what we’re doing here isn’t exactly on the books and we’re running short of time, we can’t really have him running back to whatever hovel he crawled out of and telling everyone he can that he saw a Magister and some of the imperial watch traipsing around deep in the Wildwood.”
The man’s voice seemed to echo and repeat itself. Rowe, found himself yawning deeply and then in an instant his eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp from head to toe.
“Just tie him up or something so that he doesn’t try and run when he wakes up.”
One of the soldiers nodded and the Magister smiled sadly.

“Looks like we’ve got another volunteer for our little trip. Poor kid.”



TBC

Next post should be up sometime next week - either pirate or play, I promise - though I do have a weekend away and essay proposals and a presentation to get through first so we'll see how we go...

The Folly of Youth

I'm at uni at the moment on a break between lectures and tutes so I'll have to make the intro to this one short and sweet. (I am also very hungry, so rather keen to get some of what passes for food here as soon as possible).

For your perusal today I have the second part of 'The Sudden Shore', which is the first half of an attempt to give Geoffrey some background, and to explain why it was that he was aboard the harlequin (not entirely happy with the second half yet, but will have that up soonish/once I am and then will get onto how the ship sunk and what happens from there, etc. etc. etc.)

Dialogue/play attempt will be the next thing up (basic idea is cemented, still working on the actual writing/fleshing it out).

Also, I have made an attempt to deviate with style a little with this one - feels sort of similar to 'The Bookshop' (except moving slightly quicker with a little less detail - might want to change that) which is good in a way, as I was rather happy with that story, but also makes me want to do something rather whacky just for fun in one of my next posts (The poetry unit I'm doing at the moment is throwing up a few ideas when it comes to thinking outside the box and it's only second week).

Anyway thoughts/advice and comments are as usual welcome - read, enjoy and no there are no pirates yet - but they will show themselves at some point and hopefully you'll be glad you waited.

Story:

The Sudden Shore (II)

He had first set eyes on the Harlequin several weeks, when the little ship had pulled into the port city which had until then been his home. His father had gone aboard before him and had bought and paid for Geoffrey’s passage. “I want you to see the world” he had said, before leaving for home, Geoffrey had instead heard “I don’t want you here anymore.”

To Geoffrey this had come as a sort of relief. For a long time life on his father’s estate had seemed like a prison, and there was nothing left that particularly interested him when he managed to pull off an escape. He wanted something new.

As the only son of a mother who had died in childbirth and a father who had shut himself away from the world not much long after he had come to crave adventure from an early age simply so that he could escape the sombre halls of the family estate. As soon as he was able he took to slipping away from his father’s world of rules and formality to wander the world outside the manor gates. He explored nearby forests, where his young mind populated the populated the leafy green hollows and gullies with both imaginary friends and dreamt up monsters in equal measure. He came to crave his time there more than anything else; in his mind he made a home amongst the trees and he was content.

Eventually however his father emerged from his self imposed exile and took on the opinion that it was ‘high time that the boy grow out of his childish games’ and so the outside world was promptly barred from him as scores of stuffy old men descended upon the estate with the apparent purpose of, as his father barked ‘giving the boy a decent education’.
Not long after that woodcutters were said to be seen amongst his favoured hideaways, the land of which his father had appropriated to support his new hobby: winemaking. Although Geoffrey never did see his father doing much of the ‘making’, he did seem to become rather keen on the ‘tasting’ and as such invited many guests around, as often as was possible, so that they too could share in his new discovery.
As his father’s parties slowly grew louder and more rapacious Geoffrey swore to himself that no matter what happened he would never end up like his father. Would never dwell. Would never drink.

He managed to keep the promise up until the very threshold of adulthood.

By the that time he had lost most of the fear he had once held for his father’s authority, and in turn his father had lost most of his ability to do much more than stumble between the many rooms of the house and roar groggily at the few remaining servants. So Geoffrey set out to explore the new freedoms of adulthood.
He came to frequent the all the taverns and inns in the nearby village. Taking to cards and women and drink with the most reckless abandon. Very quickly he came to be known less for his family’s wealth, but the way in which he insisted on squandering it. He gambled, he binged. He fought and whored. To the very exhaustion of what the monthly stipend that he had convinced his father to grant him when he was in one of his more infrequent ‘jolly’ episodes of intoxication.

It was about the same time that he started to borrow that his father made an attempt on his own life. Although unsuccessful it had the unfortunate consequence (as far Geoffrey was concerned) of still bringing his father to god, albeit in a spiritual sense rather than a physical one. This in turn led to a slow slog back into sobriety and the real world that he had been so keen to avoid for so many years.

Very quickly the relationship between father and son returned to how it had been before. His father, became convinced that it was his duty to save his son, just as he too had been saved. This was something that Geoffrey did not take to with much enthusiasm as his father’s view of one ‘being saved’ required attending the local church as often and seemingly as early as was humanly possible. To Geoffrey this was generally a far from enjoyable experience, as he had made it a point over the last few years to spend the majority of each morning sleeping of the effects of the night before. Yet seeing it as the route of least resistance (with his father’s hands being once again securely on his purse strings, and the dispensation of its contents relying so much on his father’s approval) he made the effort to attend, feigning as much interest as he thought was required and offering as little lip service as he thought that he could get away with.

Seemingly this was enough to fool his father, who, it appeared, had never been happier and announced, for the first time that Geoffrey could remember, that he was actually proud of his previously wayward son.
For sometime things remained as such. In the mornings Geoffrey would accompany his father to morning mass and nod and smile and tell anyone who asked how he had managed to dispense of his wicked ways through a life of quite prayer and contemplation, then in the evenings, once his father had retired for the evening to do just that, Geoffrey would slip away to the nearest tavern so that he could rediscover his ‘wicked ways’ anew.

Sometime later, on a particularly crisp morning where Geoffrey was nursing (and attempting to hide) a particularly bad hangover, a rumour began to circle amongst the local congregation that a newly made Earl had just this morning purchased a large parcel of land just on the other side of the village to his Father’s own and would be beginning the construction of a grand manor house as soon as he was able. He was said to be extremely wealthy and highly favoured in court, his family well know and well bred, and of more interest to Geoffrey he was supposed to have a daughter, who as chance had it was just shy of his own age and, if rumours were to be believed, was stunningly beautiful and just a little bit rebellious.

The Sudden Shore

As I said the other day, I am now taking requests from my somewhat limited readership - semi-regardless of what they might be or how ridiculous they may be (i.e In the past I've been asked several times to write a story about ducks and although I have yet to write anything doesn't mean that I never will).

The Sudden Shore is a response to my first request - for pirates and swashbuckling - although as you read it you will quickly notice that, so far, it involves neither.

Unfortunately/Fortunately for what was probably not an entirely serious request I seem to have managed to get myself rather involved in writing this story and it has ended up being far longer than I had originally planned (hence the current lack of pirates/ending and the time taken between updates).

Still I figured that I should at least put something up, just to show that I am actually working on something and so I can get some feedback on the basic idea.

So here it is: the beginning of

The Sudden Shore

The body floated face down in the water, slowly drifting between the various pieces debris and detritus that littered the surrounding ocean. Every so often it would disappear beneath the surface as it was swallowed by a particularly strong swell, only for it to be spat out somewhere distant many minutes later, with only a slowly fading ribbon of red marking where it had been. As the hours passed the stain it left in the water grew steadily smaller and smaller. The body cooled and grew stiff as rigor inexorably began to set in. Birds started to circle overhead, their cries loudly announcing their find to their fellows.
By the time the body was found there was very little left to point to who the owner had been, but to the man who found him this didn’t matter. He knew who it was, had seen them only a few days before: when the body walked and talked and still went by a name.

Geoffrey Andale, poked gingerly at the body of Arthur Roe with the end of an oar, held tightly in one hand as the held a salt stained handkerchief up to his nose with the other. The body bobbed and for a moment he almost expected it to roll over and wake up. Instead it just was just pushed away for a brief moment before the current caught it again and it began to bump up against the side of his small row-boat, skin wrinkled and made pale by the sun and sea.

Geoffrey wanted to retch, but there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up, so instead he licked cracked lips and lay down, trying his best to ignore the noise the body made each time it came into contact with the boat. Tried to ignore how thirsty he was.
Up until an hour ago, when he had first seen the body, he had been seriously considering drinking some of the water that surrounded him. It had been a stupid idea, a suicidal idea, he knew that, but it had been so long since he had had a drink that he had begun to slowly convince himself that, surely, only a little bit wouldn’t hurt any more than drinking nothing. Surely just enough to wet his lips wouldn’t do any harm.
Now, however, the very idea made his stomach churn. As far as he was concerned it was as if the body had now polluted the entire ocean, to the point where he flinched back every time the spray flicked across his face. Drinking sea water was now the last thing on his mind.
Time was slow to trickle by. Lying in the bottom of the boat meant that the sun became the only constant in the sky and it seemed to have climbed to its zenith and then to have stopped, where it now beat down upon his brow like some molten hammer. He draped the handkerchief across his eyes and tried to rest, tried to ignore the hollow 'thunk' that Roe’s body made each time it brushed up against the boat. Sleep or unconsciousness (he had started to lose all distinction between the two) was slow to come and when it he was plagued by dreams and disjointed memories.
Roe’s face was the first to come to him this time and then the man was in the boat with him, whole and grinning, as if he had somehow forgotten that he was supposed to be dead. He began to talk but it all passed by Geoffrey without leaving any meaning behind, who instead sat there transfixed by the deep cut that lay just beneath the other man’s ribs and the seeping redness that had begun to colour what was left of Roe’s shirt.

Roe followed his gaze and the grin slipped from his face. “You did this Geoffrey” he said with an accusing hiss, his voice suddenly clear. “You did this! Left us all to die. Left us to rot... You coward.” He tried to pull away but Roe reached out with pale hands to grab the front of his shirt.
He tried to scream, tried wriggle from the dead man’s cold grip but instead he was pulled down. Down past the boat and into the inky black of the water. Quickly it filled his mouth, filled his lungs. He screamed a silent scream as Roe pulled him away from safety of the row boat – back in the direction he had come, back to the broken wreck that, only days before, had been The Harlequin...


Alright, so that's it for the moment - this is only a fraction of what I've done so far, so it's a little short, but it seemed to be the most natural place to cut it off as the next bit of the story deals with Geoffrey’s past - from childhood - to how he ended up on the Harlequin and then in the boat (I'm not finished with that thread yet so seemed silly to put it up as well).

Anyway - there will be more up in the next few days - seeing as I'm writing it right now.

Starting to feel good about this.

Comments appreciated.