The green-guards Jak and Kanley lumbered onto the gazebo like a stork and a penguin. The two friends quickly scanned the Midway, but saw neither their young quarry or the danger that lurked between the garish-colored booths of steel and light.
The children regrouped and followed Crim’s lead faster and faster towards the great wheel. The golden sun was beginning to set and it’s fire showed the great bones of the Ferris Wheel stark-skeletal as they approached.
The steel-touched boy lead them to a tall booth right near the base of the Wheel. It was shuttered and dark. His rust-flecked hand sparkled in the late sun as he held it up in caution. The scatter-wag band of children, bandits, dogs, mysteries and wonders as one crouched behind a tall sign advertising the Wheel’s wonders as they watched.
With practised ease, Crim popped a latch with his metal hand, and slithered up inside the booth. A few breaths later and he emerged, triumphant with a battered cardboard box.
Crim came into the circle of the others with his treasure, and proudly displayed it all to see. There were more than a few toy ray guns, but also several action figures of various type painted in eye-scorchingly bright color. A gargoyle, a green knight, a tiny man riding a beetle, one ridiculous figure that carried a sword far too large for the plastic arms to bear the weight.
The steel-touched’s eyes sparkled. “Regular haul, ain’t it? Proper.”
[Just a little snatch from Runeclock that I wrote today and liked. Surprisingly, all this time playing hooky and writing this thing gave me a nice boost on The Riddle Box — I think I’m going to start viewing Runeclock as my ‘writing warm-up sketch’ every day, like I see a lot of illustrators do on the Tumbles. Nice five page burst on RB yesterday, plus incorporating a short story I wrote for something else put me at 82 pages in the draft! I know I have a lot of distractions coming up, but I still want to be at 100 pages by the 10th of August, the International Holiday of Arbitrary Deadlines.]
The odd group of children chattered and gamboled in the gazebo’s shadow. They began to make slow progress towards the Ferris Wheel, but the sugar-arguments made them lag and stall like a herd of dizzy turtles.
Jak and Kanley ran through the Fair, despair and anxiety nipping at their heels. Interestingly, the Sgt’s punishment of choice was to have his pet terriers, Despair and Anxiety, nip at the heels of soldiers that displeased him.
“We’re never going to find them,” the portly guard moaned, nearly caroming off a passing cotton candy stall.
“We will, we will.” Jak insisted. “We just have to figure out where kids would go. Where do kids go?”
The fat guard did not answer, but continued to pant as they ran. After a few moments, he worked up the breath to speak again. “Jak, I know we’re in trouble, but I’m about to split my sides. There’s a gazebo right around the corner. Can we please, please stop for a moment and catch my—-our breath?”
“I don’t know, Kanley.” the tall guard whined.
“It’s tall! It’s tall! We can get a better view of the Midway.” Kanley insisted.
Jak nodded his assent, and the two guards made their way in the direction of the gazebo.
pop
In the middle of the children, a red node appeared. A light on the top of it pulsed a bright sun-flare yellow.
[Hey, remember that book you’re working on — remember that?]
[Yeah.]
[You seem to be spending a fair amount of time on this side project. Shouldn’t you…?]
[SHUT YOUR FACE.]
The Ferris Wheel waits, a grand circle enclosing the horizon.Even the children who have never been to the Fair can recall the grand spectacle when it is operational. A thousand lights and the turn of the wonderful machine.
The Midway leads to the Wheel, a hundred blind alleys and elaborate devices of fun and excitement that could hide a furious overweight green-guard and his allies.
“Of course it still works,” Crim laughed. “It’s robot-steel, nothing can break robot-steel. And we’re going to get a bunch more closer. The toy cart with the unlocked door, where I found all my stuff. It’s right at the base of the Wheel.”
“Must. Get. Toys.” Mark’s hands clutched the air with desire.
The portly guard pounded through the streets of the Fair after the children, but soon lost them. He leaned against the side of a Funnel Cake stand and panted and wiped runnels of sweat off his brow. The silver name tag on his shoulder gleamed, the name “KANLEY” neatly etched.
Two more guards pounded into view. A tall, lanky man who was a friend — and a broad, bearded man who was not.
“Kanley, you alright?” his friend asked with diffident concern, trying to avoid the anger-fueled gaze of the bearded man.
“I’m….fine….Jak.” Kanley panted.
“Fine. I’ll show you fine.” the bearded man, who was his superior officer, slammed a hand into Kanley’s shoulder. “A Rune-discharge? Here?!? At a bunch of ragamuffin children?”
“I’m sorry sir. There was a cat, and the running, and I thought…”the fat guard began.
“You thought nothing. Like you always do. Private Jak. Pull up your fat friend, Private Kanley, by the buttons if you have to, but get moving. Find those children. They have no idea the danger they are in. We must find them, and find them now and remove them from harm’s way. If they encounter the Target…” the bearded man pulled the communicator from his right breast and barked into it. “All units, scramble. 5-8 minors have been spotted in the Fairgrounds, must be detained and removed to safe distance. Priority One. Keep an eye peeled for the Target, and don’t take any risks – but we have to get those damn kids out of here on the double.”
The anger-gaze turned back to Jak and Kanley, the latter weakly tried to snap to attention. “You’ve put those children in danger with your incompetence, Private. We’ll speak more of this at the barracks. But remember, nothing will save you from me if anything happens to those children. Dismissed.”
“Yes, Sgt. Towerlock!” the two guards cried in unison.
The green-guards moved quickly, eyes darting as they searched the Fair. Hands checking their runes at every dark alley, at every can that rattled in the wind. They did their best to cover the vast area of the Fair, but they were stretched too thin.
They feared to find their quarry, and they feared that they would not find the group of children that had wandered into the fair at the most inopportune of times.
“Hey, look!” Nora pointed. “A node!”
A blue Observer Node appeared, a few short steps away from the gazebo.
Today on Runeclock [collaborative writing experiment]:
The children turned to consider the thin girl with the skinned knees. Mark looked skeptical, but was so eager to be off that he made little opposition. Crim shrugged, and the others made warm welcome to their new companion in ‘banditry’.
The steel-touched boy yelled one last time to the moody boy watching from the boardwalk. “So are you coming, Seven? Huh, Seven? SEVEN. Well, we’re going to that place, catch up if you want.”
An apparently older girl that was painting nearby crinkled her nose in …frustration, delight? It was difficult to discern.
The six children and one dubious dog departed en masse, attitudes of vast stealth were adopted and executed. To Hibba’s relief the group made their way under the boardwalk, well out of the gaze of the two guards that still lingered there.
Crim lead them along the shore until they reached the grand wall of tall green planks that surrounded the Fair. He pulled his toy ray gun and held it up in preposterous vigilance, looking north and south, east and west. At last he laid his rusted hand on a plank marred by a single slash of red paint, that appeared to have been dribbled by a careless workman sometime in the past.
The Fair, as it is known, is the realm of lights and machines, the excited whirring of summer and life and memory. The roller coaster jostles, but stays on the track — the smell of popcorn and fried sugar waft.
To the children whose parents could afford the nominal fee, it was a bastion of games and running, of music and tiny teddy bears won by skill and craft. The calliope moan of its vast midway, the shadow-heart of the funhouse, the songs of the travelling bands that did their best to fill the thousand-seat bandshell that even in the height of the busy season only ever saw a few dozen guests.
Above it all presided the Ferris Wheel. A circle of light that spun like the hands of a clock, perfect and real. To ride to the top of its globe was to catch a glimpse of the entire island, to peek beyond the edge of the known world.
The children had no inkling that the Fair was a second-guest, a second layer. During the War, this place had served as the main harbor and command center for the fleet, battleships and rune-lords hurling themselves into the sea and the air. At War’s end, the aching metal had come here to rest, and in a brace of years had been sold to an enterprising soul. The Fair’s master beat the swords into roller-rails and corn-dog stalls, into benches and organs.
The children also had no inkling that at this moment, unexpected men were moving their way through the empty Fair. They wore the green tunics of guards and seemed to be searching for something or someone.
Crim pulled back the board, revealing a gap and a medium-sized pipe that had once served as some sort of drainage.
“Up the chute, geemos. Right into the splash-fountain. Come on then, come on then.”
He rested his silver weapon against his cheek and struck a pirate smile.
It was at that moment that a red Observer Node popped into view directly in front of the pipe.
So, instead of focusing on the rough draft of The Riddle Box this week, or drilling down on the lines I have to memorize for Hamlet, or just conserving my energy for the crazy roadtrip we have this weekend or the move I should be packing and planning for — I decided I needed a further distraction. Like a new collaborative writing project with my friends.
I’m there, I made my goal by Friday, instead of playing catch-up the beginning of each week.
I know this isn’t earth-shattering news, but hey.
Good day today, I may be bleeding off a little tension for my murder mystery with my incessant need to add ridiculous detail and inability to pass by a cheap joke.
“I suspect that via the insidious medium of picture books for children the wizards will continue to practice their high magic and the witches will perform their evil, bad-tempered spells. It’s going to be a long time before there’s room for equal rites.”
Because, here it is. In 1985, Terry Pratchett beat me to the punch. In a speech he gave at a convention he perfectly explained what I’ve been fumbling around for years trying to express. He summed up Swordpunk in an aside:
“But a part of my mind remained plugged into what I might call the consensus fantasy universe. It does exist, and you all know it. It has been formed by folklore and Victorian romantics and Walt Disney, and E R Eddison and Jack Vance and Ursula Le Guin and Fritz Leiber — hasn’t it? In fact those writers and a handful of others have very closely defined it. There are now, to the delight of parasitical writers like me, what I might almost call “public domain” plot items. There are dragons, and magic users, and far horizons, and quests, and items of power, and weird cities. There’s the kind of scenery that we would have had on Earth if only God had had the money.
To see the consensus fantasy universe in detail you need only look at the classical Dungeons and Dragon role-playing games. They are mosaics of every fantasy story you’ve ever read.
Of course, the consensus fantasy universe is full of cliches, almost by definition. Elves are tall and fair and use bows, dwarves are small and dark and vote Labour. And magic works. That’s the difference between magic in the fantasy universe and magic here. In the fantasy universe a wizard points his fingers and all these sort of blue glittery lights come out and there’s a sort of explosion and some poor soul is turned into something horrible.”
The “consensus fantasy universe’. That’s swordpunk. In three goddamn words.
He then proceeds to document the gross dichotomy of gender roles in magic. Wizards are wise, powerful and male — witches are crafty, evil, and female. And that’s troubling and stupid.
It just absolutely flabbergasts me. I’ve been floundering around with these concepts for years, since before I even started work on Spell/Sword, and to find it put so neatly when I was five years old is amazing.
It makes me feel inspired. It makes me feel — I’ll say it — proud. Proud and important, even though it’s completely unwarranted from such a silly book. I want to raise my hand from the back of the speech hall and say “I’m here, Mr. Pratchett! I’m here, and I’m trying. I’m trying to do that thing better! I have three magic users in my book and all of them are female, and through them I’m trying to explore the spectrum. Cotton, wizard of order, seer and battle-mage, the refined and learned wizard of lore and might. Rime, mage of chaos, unfettered and burning Reality like a sun going nova. And The Gray Witch, unknown and unknowable, the magic of forever, of stone and sorrow. I have a witch that is different! SO different!”
Mr. Pratchett peers over his glasses at me, and drums his knuckles on the lectern. An awkward cough fills the sudden silence.
I leap back to the present before some sort of time rift develops or I collapse from Hyper-Anxiety.
Salon Witch, Albert Joseph Penot (1910).
My witch is different, as I hope the few of you that have read the book can attest.
In lore and legend she is the expected crone, laughing and mad and malevolent. But when Jonas stumbles into her yard with Rime in tow, she is not what he expected — or I hope what the reader expected.
She is gray, all gray like the edge of a storm. She is nude and unconcerned, merry and strange, her brown-eyes still human but beyond that completely Other.
And she is sad. And sure. The greatest curse of all is certainty. Necessity.
The character is overtly sexual, but never in a prurient manner. Her nudity is barely described, as component as the red hat she wears in her wide-bucket garden.
I know so little about her! Writers are supposed to be God, but she eludes me. She frightens me more than a little, which is why I skitter into poetry when I describe her.
The fear and loathing that Mr. Pratchett correctly observes in the depiction of the Dark Feminine I do not truly jettison, but wrap it into the character along with all the strange unknowns of her identity. She is not a gibbering octogenarian that can be dismissed, pitied, or relegated to lesser status. She is a character of ill portent, but should never be seen as a minor force – -she is Beyond. Almost beyond gender entirely, but never quite.
I’ll try to put in some dopey male wizards next time around, Mr. Pratchett. To underline. It’ll have to wait for Book Three, the cast of Riddle Box is already set.
“I’m here,” I whisper across the years and the ocean to Mr. Pratchett. “And so is the Gray Witch. Be careful what you wish for?”
With each line, each lyric, each spatter of paint, each glob of clay we cast it. Careful and mad we summon the spirits once again, the true power of our race, that we may act as conduit to the Unknown. Even the dullest brute among us calls out to the demi-god of the television remote, the demon of the freeway, the howling eidolon that lurks in stones and stars and the thousand turns of dumb luck.
But artists are the true shamans.
We need it to mean, we need it to matter. With matter we shape the energy latent, the paths untaken. Some see God in the scratch of the violin, some seek God in the twist of wire and glass. Others just want to show the pain, the rain, the song of the train. All energy, all magic, passing through our hands in an instant then gone.
But if we cast proper, cast careful, cast well…the spell can linger. The shape and form of enchantment can suck in air, and its hands close as if by reflex and it shambles forward into the world to wait for a new victim, a new audience. What we make with true hearts can ward and weave the world, sing it quiet into a better form, shine as a light in the dark, cage the dark beast for a time, hum and giggle like a wine-drunk fairy.
So take it serious, take it real, pound your bones to meal. Stomp and stammer and crash and clamor.
Sing a song, write a tale, draw a thing. Dance or build or break or live.
Make it. Make the thing. Cast your spell and keep your eyes clear. Open the gate in the back of your spine and let the magic work.
I was born in the middle of tomorrow, yesterday’s child.
My parents were Tuesday and waiting for the water to boil. The people of the village are finding me in the hay of the inn’s second stall, the one that the old gray mule calls his own. Or did they already find me?
At some point, there was I in the hay. A child in the hay, pointy ears and bric-a-brac, like Mama Troth says sometimes, or is saying right now as I fold the clothes on the square table in the kitchen, but is also still a stump oozing sap as it’s cut down in the Riddlewood.
I know I’m confusing. People think are thinking that I do it a-purpose, or as some lark. It was hard, sometimes. Wanting to carry on a palaver with all the right tenses, the words that say time like Mama Troth will teach me.
If I’m careful I can tell the pig story right. The straw, the sticks, the bricks — but sometimes I tell the wolf at the beginning,
Wesley Allsbrook
or leave the wolf out all together. Or put in some extra wolves that people never hear of, but that’s mainly a lark.
I used to be funny. Laughing and dancing down the streets of the Kingdom, with my friends and comrades. Before the war? After? I can’t be sure. Enough to say, there was an I and he was funny.
It’s hard to become this, stranger to remember. All at once and never gone. We’re going to a wedding, or have we already been?
Mama Troth told me to go to the baker and pick up some bread, but I could never figure when the place was open. I always came too late or too early, or I saw when the baker was a boy and didn’t have any bread. Or I saw him choking on that apple seed and he didn’t have any bread then either. I tried just keeping my hand on his doorknob until the time was right, but the rain was over and the rain was coming and the rain was always.
I got wet. I’m pretty sure that one already happened.
It’s going to be hard. People move so slow, but I turn and they’re gone. I send my words to where I see them, but they’re already gone, or they aren’t there yet.
Nora Hill held my hand once, but she ran off when her dad yelled. That one is the only one I know for sure is behind me, even though I want it to always be ahead. Nora is dying right now in the war, when the teeth and claws came over the wall. I don’t tell her and squeeze her hand. I should kiss her but I don’t. I see her dying right now, right before they found baby me in the hay, right after we went to the wedding, before the rain, but during the towels I fold all square and neat.
It’s hard to see. I want to shut my eyes sometimes, but Mama Troth is telling me I have to go buy some bread.
Writing continues apace on The Riddle Box. I’ve gotten 50 pages deep into my swordpunk murder mystery without getting all the clues and suspects too tangled — I hope. There’s also been a fair amount of self-high fiving if I’m being honest. It’s rare that I’ll start chortling when I’m writing a scene, but my Pink Panther homage made me quite jolly.
Posting here has been way down, and I’m having trouble feeling bad about it. Work on the novel is going well and I need my spare time to play Animal Crossing. [Kid Cat is my new friend!]
I know! I know! Self-promotion is important. But so is paying off this Tom Nook character.
spell-sword.com 