The Witch's Hour

Here's the thing about the academic year:

It is the worst possible time for me to write anything that involves even a little bit of brain. It's difficult for me not to write anything for long stints of time, but most of what I end up producing during the school year is approximately as clear as the window of a school bus that's been slept on by eight different kids without a washing, and not nearly as interesting to look at. That generally means that books and short stories get poured back into the carafe and set on the burner like that third cup of coffee that you wish you had time for before you leave for work. And I use that analogy purely because the word "carafe" has been recently reintroduced into my vocabulary, and I think it's so much fancier than "coffee pot" so it should be used all the time.

That's not the point though. The point is that I've got about 51k of my new book, which I desperately want to finish, but feel like I can't give proper attention to without ignoring my students, and then on the first day that I might be able to write a bit, I leave my personal laptop and all my files at home, in a place where I can't get to them, because somehow if I had brought them with, it would have broken the magic spell of School Wide Timed Writing, and the whole campus might have been swallowed by the la boca del infierno that I'm pretty sure exists under my home town.

And so a blog post:

I have not made an official announcement as of yet, but as I am sure you have gathered, being a clever reader as you are, that my third (and hopefully final) installment of The Historian's Archives (or at least the arch that deals with Lia's and Sebastian's roles in Sanctuary), is half-way underway in that words have been written, but the second half of the story has been temporarily postponed. In a perfect world, I would promise that it would have a release date of "sometime later this year," but promises to the open air make me uncomfortable, so I will say that Sometime Soon is when I will begin writing again, and Sometime After That I expect to finish the first draft of the book. We are probably looking at Sometime Next Year for a release date, and although I have the cover art done, I don't have a copy of the file on the computer I'm on right now, and so that will have to be another blog post later. The title, however, is The Witch's Hour.

Call me the bug slayer

This morning I woke up at Un-Godly o' Clock with the distinct impression that I was being watched. Having two cats, both of whom possessing the distinct conviction that they know my schedule as well or better than I do, this is not an unusual affair. What was unusual was that, when I opened my eyes, there was no cat in my face.

Now wide awake, even if the sun was not, I took it upon myself to get a head start on my to-do list which, as of that moment, consisted primarily of coffee, yoga, a shower, and then breakfast. Coffee and yoga were successful, but presently the rest has become problematic.

Upon entering my kitchen, I discovered that my cat, Iason, had taken up residence in front of the refrigerator. Iason is a creature of habit, and as a general rule, prefers the coffee table, the corner of the couch, or behind the couch in the wee-small hours of the morning, so I was surprised to see him there, tail thrashing furiously. He was looking intently at the gap between my refrigerator and my cabinets, and I assumed that he had spotted a twist-tie from a bread bag that had fallen off the counter, and was contemplating the best way to attain it.

I was incorrect. It was not a twist-tie. It was a cockroach.

It was the granddaddy of all cockroaches, probably two inches long and half as wide, and it was staring at my cat as intently as my cat was staring at it, its antennae matching the fanatic motions of Iason's tail. I had walked in on the Animal Kingdom's version of an old western stand-off, and there was no predicting the violence that may have unfolded in my kitchen at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

Naturally, being a brave sort, I shrieked. With one hand, I grabbed Iason by the scruff and pulled him away from the maw of the beast's lair, and with the other, I reached for the cabinet under the sink where my ant & roach Raid lives.

My cat, entirely unimpressed and probably a little disgruntled, because he's "over 6 years old, and is really too old to be dragged around like a kitten, mom," wriggled out of my grasp and onto the counter so he could look down on the beast from the top of the gap. I sprayed the crap out of the one strip of kitchen floor that I will probably never be able to reach to clean properly and I felt no regrets.

The beast scuttled behind the refrigerator, leaving me with only the barest hope that it managed to run through the puddle of spray that I'd lined along the back wall before it scurried out of my reach.

Well that's that, I thought. Because as long as I never saw it again, I could assume that it died behind the refrigerator--died a quiet, lonely death where it could reflect on the mistakes that it made in this lifetime, particularly entering my home through whatever means for whatever nefarious purposes.

Determined to make sure that no roach was ever again possessed of the idea that it and I could coexist harmoniously in the same habitat, I pulled everything off of my kitchen counters planned to wipe them down with some sort of Scrubbin' Bubbles/Fantastic/Multi-surface hybrid that I bought because it promised to remove tough grime as well as disinfect.

I returned to the kitchen just in time to realize that I was mistaken: the cockroach had not died a quiet death. The cockroach was very much alive, and it was angry. I realize now that that little bastard hadn't just claimed the gap, it had claimed my entire frickin' kitchen, and it was going to fight me for it.

I pause here to reiterate that this was a BIG cockroach. This was a massive, Florida-sized cockroach. This bastard was so big that I could HEAR the tiny click of its many feet pounding the linoleum of my kitchen floor. It was so big that I could HEAR it hissing at me, waving its antennae menacingly, promising me a painful demise if it got a hold of me. And that bastard ran straight for me.

It was like an old time dragon, defending its territory, risking life and limb to show me that I was not welcome in its domain, never mind that I'm the one that pays rent. (Let me also assure you that this bug knew exactly what it was doing: I dodged to the right, he swung left, I circled around back toward the bug spray, and he cut me off. )

On the other side of the kitchen, Iason was thrilled to notice that his new toy had made a reappearance. So thrilled, in fact, that he stopped bashing my other cat, Macy, on the head (which is his other favourite thing to do on Sunday mornings), and came over to investigate.

So, unfortunately, did Macy.

So now between trying to get to the counter with the bug spray, trying to fend off a cockroach that was out for blood, I was trying to keep two cats from a) fighting over who got to play with the cockroach and b) trying to make sure that neither of them put the cockroach in his mouth, in case it was coated in bug spray from my first and seemingly failed attempt to kill it.

Luckily, the entrance of two cats gave me the opening that I needed. While the cockroach assessed its odds (and judging by the way it tore in the direction of the cats, decided that they were still pretty good), I reached over the impending fray and grabbed the bug spray. Then I swept both cats back with one leg and sprayed at the roach until it retreated into the far corner of the kitchen, just under the dishwasher. I sprayed it several times more, just in case, waiting until the little bastard flipped itself on its back.

I never actually thought about why roaches flip over when they die. Is it because they hope to lull you into a false sense of security and then plan to grab at you when you least expect it? Is it the human equivalent of stop-drop-and-roll? In this case, I like to think that it was a sign of submission: some cockroach body language for "I yield. Your army was too great. You can have your kitchen back."

I cuddled both cats close to me as I watched the beast take its last breaths, watched the frantic waving of its legs slow. I did this not only to make myself feel better about a big roach being in my kitchen, but to keep the cats from trying to eat the now, definitely, toxin saturated bug.

A sense of relief has filled me now, but the bug's journey isn't complete yet. I still have to gather my courage to pick it up off the floor and give it a proper burial.  I'm sitting on my kitchen floor, watching it from the corner of my eye. It hasn't moved in a while, so I think it's safe to call it. Time of Death: 11:17.

The beast is dead, long live the beast.

98. Game

The wolves pondered the big brown lemon that their alpha had presented to them with looks of confusion and apprehension. 

“That’s not edible,” Clara announced solemnly. She had attended this particular pack meeting because she had been promised food, but the small table that sat in front of the couch where she perched was not ladened with the food she’d been promised, nor was the brown lemon something she actually had interest in eating. 

“No,” agreed their alpha, running his hand through his hair short hair and setting the ball down on the table top. “It’s not to be eaten. It’s a football.” 

Clara looked to Brighton. Brighton was looking at his bare foot and back at the football, obviously comparing the two. It didn’t look like he was getting any insight from the comparison, however, so she looked toward Morgan and Conny. Both of them had a very pleased look on their faces, but neither of them looked like they were keen on sharing whatever information they had. 

Having decided that she was the only one willing to participate in the alpha’s game, and in the hopes that she would be rewarded with some type of food for her participation, Clara asked, “And what’s a football supposed to be?” 

Donny looked relieved that at least one of them was going to participate. “It’s a game that humans play,” he explained. “They throw a ball and try to get it to the edge of a field for points and they pounce on each other to stop the other humans from getting points.” 

Clara hadn’t known Donny for a very long time—certainly not as long as some of the other members of their pack—but she was willing to bet that her alpha had no idea what he was talking about. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest and looked from the ball to her alpha. “That sounds very dumb, Donny.” 

“That’s because he isn’t explaining it right,” Topher interjected in an exasperated sort of way. The young alpha was lying across the floor on his stomach, propped up on his elbows while Daniela sat straddled across the boy’s backside. The pair were surrounded by two toddlers, a wolf pup, and two of the three younger boys who generally followed Topher. 

Aspen and Corky were sniggering furtively. 

“Well if you’re so damn clever, why don’t you explain it, small fry?” Donovan gestured good-naturedly toward the younger alpha, but there was a slight bite in his voice. Although he was making the offer in earnest, it was clear that the older, larger wolf, disapproved of being undercut so openly. 

Topher didn’t seem to care about the latter. All he wanted to do was make sure the game was explained properly. Smiling, the boy clambered up to his feet, ignoring the slightly grumpy grunt of the girl who slipped off of his back and onto the floor, and he took the football from the table. “Deacon was telling us about it the other day,” he explained. “Except he didn’t use the right words, so that’s why Donny’s got it jumbled. But I think I figured it out.” His boyish grin was nothing short of prideful. “There are two packs with the same amount of members, and each pack tries to bring the prey—that’s the football—back to its den. But they have to do it without the other pack taking the prey. Each time that a pack brings the prey to its den, it gets points, and the pack with the most points after an hour wins.” 

Clara groaned. “But you cannot eat the football. Why are the packs fighting over it?” Brow furrowed, the fair haired woman flopped back against the couch and looked morose. “It doesn’t make any sense.” 

Topher and Donny looked at each other, clearly unsure of how to answer her question. 

“It’s to do with having fun,” Morgan explained, reaching across the side table from the chair he was sitting on and patting Clara’s shoulder lightly. “Like playing Chase Me Find Me, or Got Your Tail. Humans don’t have to hunt for their food, but they still like to hunt, so they pretend the ball is the prey.” 

It still made no sense to Clara, but she supposed it was just because she hadn’t been human for very long. “It still sounds pretty stupid if you ask me,” Clara grumbled. 

“No one did, of course,” Brighton mumbled. He was reaching across the coffee table for the ball that Topher was still holding. Topher had just handed it over when Clara reached around and smacked the back of Brighton’s head. 

“No one thinks you’re funny, Right,” she snapped. 

Brighton dropped the ball and clasped a hand over the back of his head. “Why would you hit me, Clara? You’re always so mean to me! Donny make her stop being mean to me!” 

“All I want to know,” Clara shouted over her littermate’s keening, “is what the hell the football has to do with me and why did you promise me food when there isn’t any food? I’m not playing that stupid game unless we’re playing with real prey!” 

One of the puppies got a hold of the football from where it had dropped on the floor. The little boy held it above his head with both hands and made a sound between a baby burble and a bark before pegging his burden haphazardly at Clara. “Ga-bah!” 

Clara’s yelp of surprise was lost amongst the giggles of the others in the room. 

“I think it’s safe to say Markie likes it, even if you don’t, Clara,” said Topher, his smile still plastered across his face. 

Clara was not very reassured by the notion that a puppy’s vote outweighed her own, but when she looked to Donovan for some type of support, she found him smiling as well. All that there was left for her to do, then, was to grump on her side of the couch. “Whatever,” she muttered. “I still don’t get it.” 

“That’s because you’re too busy complaining to let us finish,” Donovan said impatiently. “As Topher said, we learned about it from Deacon, and Deacon said that he and his mate spend time together by watching the football on television, and on the days they watch, they order special food and drinks.” He paused and looked pointedly at Clara. “We’re supposed to be learning how to be human so that we can live comfortably even with the wooded areas being made smaller. So since this is something that humans do, I asked Deacon and his mate where they got their food and when the football is on television so we could try to watch it all together while we eat.” 

Clara’s stomach growled. Suddenly the idea didn’t seem so stupid after all. “Well when does it start? I’m hungry now and I don’t want to have to wait to eat!” 

“There’s a game on in a few minutes,” Topher supplied. “And I asked Deacon all about how to work the TV properly so I have it on the right channel and everything. And Felicia and De—“

As though saying their names summoned them, the front door opened and in stumbled the butter-ball of a little boy that was Devon. "You guys," he was carrying two heavy bags in each hand. "I don't know where Felicia just took me, but it was the best place I ever been to in my whole life." He tromped into the living room and plopped the bags down on the table. Each bag held three large black containers, and Clara wouldn't have needed her wolf senses to know that each contained some type of food. 

Felicia came through the door a few moments later, holding two very large tin dishes. The smell of the food got stronger as she entered the living room. “I got everything you said, Don. Except the beer.” She frowned. “They said I need an ID for a beer.”

“Well never mind that, you got the food. I’ll have to ask Deacon about the beer next time I see him. Topher?” Donovan moved to meet her, taking the top dish and setting it on the table next to the bags that Devon had put down, “why don’t you put the television on? It should be near the time.” The second dish followed, and Donovan peeled back the lids to reveal chopped up chicken wings in an orangish kind of sauce.

The smaller containers were each filled with something different. Celery sticks, potato skins, onion rings, Felicia named the content of each container, pointing daintily, and then picking up one of the toddlers. “It should be enough for all of us,” she added thoughtfully. If it isn’t. I can always go back for more.”

Clara slipped off the couch and eyed the food almost lustfully. She felt so happy that she was sure she could have died. “That’s like a whole coup of chickens!” There was a murmured agreement from Brighton and Morgan, and they circled the table too.

Topher, meanwhile, had turned on the TV. “It’s starting now,” he announced, picking up a wriggling grey puppy and moving her out of the way so that he could sit close to the food as possible.

“So all we have to do,” said Clara in the hopes of avoiding any sort of misunderstanding, “is eat the food and watch the television. And that’s football.”

Donovan was helping himself to the first of the wings. “Yes,” he said, “Basically. At least that’s how I understand it.”

Since Donovan had taken a wing, Clara reached out and picked one up for herself. She stuck the fat end of a drumstick in her mouth and pulled the bone through her teeth to tear off as much of the meat as she could. “We’ok,” she wuffled behind her food. “ish not sush a ba’game a’ter all.”

33. Seeing Red

Mother’s Blood

Zos was tired. It was the sort of fatigue that was just as much embedded in the mind as it was settled in the bones, and every step he took up the wagon-worn road hurt. It had been months since he’d bathed properly, and beneath the salt-crusted garments he wore, he could smell his own sweat and stink.

He should have stopped, he realized now; he should have stayed in the city a little longer, used one of the public bath houses, had his clothing washed and the leather of his sandals conditioned to try to salvage the damage that the sea air had done to them. There was no guarantee, after all, that Ilona still lived in her house on the hill. It had been six years since he had spoken to his sister. Six years and it felt like six hundred. Anything could have happened. She could have married. She could have moved. She could have died.

The thought caused the man to falter.

He could handle Ilona having moved away or having married. He could handle the undoubtedly bitter argument that they would have when he showed up on her front door, he thought, but he didn’t think he could handle her being dead. Not now. Not after…

Taking a ragged breath, he pushed his damp hair from his face and forced himself the last few yards up to the top of the hill he’d been ascending. Relief filled him with his next inhale: the house was still standing at least—it was still a good stadion off, still, but even at this distance, he could see it standing at the top of another hill, and the land around it boasted carful guidance of the house’s residents. Leaning heavily on his walking stick, feeling much older than twenty-five, Zos gathered the weathered remains of his strength and continued on what he hoped would be the last leg of his journey home.

A scrawny, half-naked boy with close cropped hair and dirty face met Zos at the edge of the front garden. He stared solemnly up at the adult with large eyes that were too dark to distinguish their proper colour—or else Zos was too tired, or too taken aback by the sight of the boy who stood, bare-chested, on sturdy legs, as though he dared the approaching stranger to challenge him. The child looked no older than six, and still his stance said, “I am the man of this house.”

            Zos exhaled slowly and watched the boy watch him for several long moments before asking, “Is this still the residence of Ilona Theodisiakis?”

            For one dreadful moment, Zos thought that the boy was going to say no. Then, slowly, he nodded. “She does,” possession ran deep in the boy’s tone and he jutted his pointy chin at the older male. “What do you want with my mother?”

            Relief made his knees weak, but pride kept him standing—even if it meant leaning against the stick that held him upright. And another emotion, something a little too mixed up for Zos to identify, settled in the empty place his heart should have been.

“Your mother is my sister,” he told the boy, managing a smile, and very carefully, he knelt, pushing his hair from his eyes. “There, you see? Her eyes are the reverse of mine, but they’re still the same two colours.”

The boy eyed the man warily, shifted his weight, uncertain; Zos was once again aware of the fact that he smelled badly and was underfed. The voyage from Iberia had eaten away at his body as much as it had his soul, and he was certain that he was not making a particularly good impression with the boy.

But the boy’s open skepticism was, as far as Zos could tell, the only feeling that the boy had toward him, and Zos felt a sort of displaced pride in his nephew. In a year or so, when it came time to send the boy off, Ilona would certainly be proud in the knowledge that her son wouldn’t flinch at the challenges he’d face.

“All right,” the boy nodded and took a step backward. “I can take you to her.” He turned on his heels and walked through the sweeping garden to open archways of the house’s front. Zos stood, knees cracking as he straightened his legs, and followed the youth.

“Where is your father, boy?” he asked when he joined the child under the shade cast by the second floor of the villa.

“My father does not live among mortals, mother says,” the boy cast a look over his shoulder, daring Zos to challenge the statement before he turned again and continued in to the building, through the large courtyard and up a set of narrow steps. “I am Alexis, son of Hades.”

How like his sister, he thought, following the child up the steps and into a room at the end of a small hallway, to give a child a legacy that would be all but impossible to uphold.

The room he had been led to was large. Open windows made up more of the walls than stone, and the fresh air carried with it the heady scents of poppy and lavender from the fields beyond the house. And there, at the far corner of the room sat two women at a large loom.

If they had been busy before Zos entered, they were not now. Both women—the first, a soft faced, plump little thing dressed in a pale pink chiton, looked both embarrassed and outraged—and rightly so, Zos reasoned, as men traditionally did not enter a gynaikon,  unless he was familiar with the mistress of the house. She had no way of knowing that he was related to second woman, who was seated on the stool next to her and dressed in a rather plainer chiton. Not until Alexis announced:

“Mother, this man says he’s your brother and wants to speak with you.”

Zos busied himself by studying a tapestry that hung on the opposite wall between two of the larger windows while the woman in pink and the woman in white exchanged hushed, unhappy words that he couldn’t quite hear. The former crossed the room in a huff, still muttering under her breath. She grabbed at the slender arm of the little boy on her way passed, ignoring his indignant squawks, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Zos did not take his eyes off the tapestry. “Had I known you had made this room into the women’s quarters, I would have remained in the hall and spared the boy a beating,” he murmured.

“Alexis is old enough that he should know not to allow unfamiliar men into this side of the house, even if they do claim to be his uncle.”

Ilona’s voice was hard. Zos expected it to be, but it still hurt.

“How old?” He was following a wide blue band in the tapestry and trying to determine which river it represented.

“Five and some months.”  He heard her stand, heard the way she shifted her weight, and felt a strange heaviness in his twin’s steps as she moved across the floor. He pulled his gaze from the tapestry and realized with a slight start that Ilona’s heavy steps were because she was carrying.

He averted his gaze and licked his lips. “And which god fathered this one?”

“You’ve got some nerve asking me that,” Ilona stopped a few feet from him and put her hands on her stomach. “It’s been six years since you’ve shown up here.”

“I wrote.”

“As if I wanted your letters.”

“I could have done with some from you,” he glanced at her, tilting his head so he could see her with his good eye. “You had a child and didn’t tell me.”

“That stopped being your concern when you chose that girl over me.”

The accusation squeezed his heart so tightly that it was hard to breathe, and he clenched his jaw to keep a scathing remark from being voiced. After a short inhale, he said, “I didn’t abandon you, Ilona, I got married.”

“And I suppose I was to live in your house and help that child look after your children?” She scoffed. “Is it any wonder that I came back home?”

“I see that you’re certainly living your life fancy-free with one and a half children and a single servant.”

“I administrate. One of us had to keep up the business when that girl took your manhood.”

Kaia. He wanted to correct Ilona, to command that she call his wife by her name, but he hadn’t said her name himself since…

They’d fought. Loud enough that everyone on the ship had known exactly what they fought about, had known that he was a coward for running away from conflict, family in tow. They fought until Rhea cried and Kaia banished him to the upper deck and told him not to speak to her until she invited him to.

The last time he’d said her name, he’d been angry at her.

“Why are you hear, Zosimus?”

“She’s dead.” His voice was tight. A hundred and one other things could have been said at that moment in response to his sister’s scathing remark, but that’s the one that surfaced, and he could barely breathe for saying it. “She’s dead, Ilona. She and the girl.”

His teeth creaked under the pressure of his jaw, and when he relaxed again, a pain shot into his ear. When he looked at his sister, his twin, the person who he should always be able to count on, he wanted to ask, are you happy now? But he knew if he did, he’d hear the one thing that he absolutely didn’t want to: yes.

He could see it in the hard flash of triumph in his sister’s eyes as she cradled her stomach in her arms, the way she tilted her chin upward. She didn’t smile, but he could see the beginnings of one ghosting at the corners of her lips.

“Dead.” Some tiny part of him withered away at the tone in Ilona’s voice.

And then the expression was gone, her voice softened, and for a moment, Zos hoped that maybe he’d imagined the whole exchange. That Ilona, as much as she had disliked Kaia, hadn’t been satisfied by the news.

“Oh, brother mine,” she crooned, and his hope grew just a little stronger. Ilona took several steps toward him, closing the distance that separated them, and wrapped her arms around one of his. “My brother, my twin…I can’t imagine the pain of your loss.”

A hand reached up to touch his face, and when he looked down at Ilona, Zos felt ashamed that he’d even momentarily convinced himself that his sister would rejoice at the idea of his pain.

She pulled him across the room to a chair and guided him into it with strong hands. “Tell me everything, brother mine.”

With a ragged breath, he did. He told her about how his constant attempts to contact her had begun to form a rift in his relationship with his wife, how they’d tried to mend that relationship with another child and how the pregnancy didn’t take. He told her how they tried twice more before Kaia began to show signs of carrying to term, and about how their joy was diminished when news came that Rome was expanding in their direction. He told her about the arguments they’d had, the debates of whether they should stay in Kaia’s village and accept the invasion, whether the men should fight, how foolish any attempt to resist would be in the long run. He told Ilona how, in the dead of night, he’d bundled up his little girl and his sleeping wife—“I drugged her,” he admitted. “I didn’t want another argument, so I put some herbs in her wine to make her sleep heavier so she wouldn’t wake”—and brought them aboard a ship that was destined for Achaea. The storm, the pirates.  Seven tightly wrapped bodied, one only a third of the size of the others, another wrapped with the body it wasn’t ready to have been separated from, disappearing beneath the black water that surrounded them, and there wasn’t even any wine left to get drunk with.

He purged, possibly in one, long, desperate breath, only vaguely aware that his sister held his face between her hands, occasionally running her fingers through is lanky, dirty hair. When he finally ran out of things to say, he looked up at her beseechingly. “You were right,” he laughed, only a little hysterically, his voice breaking. “You said I’d go to pieces without you and you were right.”

“I’m always right, brother,” Ilona said, one hand leaving his hair to adjust something that sat on a table just behind his shoulder.

“You are,” he agreed hollowly, reaching up to touch her swollen belly. It was too much like Kaia. She would have been about this size, now. And how many times had he sat in front of her as he sat in front of Ilona now, speaking to their daughter. And the first words from his mouth that this unborn child had heard carried nothing but his shame… “I’m so sorry.” He didn’t know whether he was talking to his sister or her child.

Regardless, it was Ilona who answered. “Don’t be. After all, if you didn’t abandon me the way you did, there would probably be eight bodies at the bottom at the bottom of the ocean instead of seven.” She used her knuckles to tilt her brother’s face upward. “You never were very brave, were you, brother mine? I think our father must have been right when he said you were our mother’s only child.”

Her words shocked Zos, broke something in him that he didn’t know was there to break. He opened his mouth to respond, not knowing what exactly he was going to say, when in one deft movement, the woman brought her hand down across the side of his face.

At first, he thought she’d raked her nails across his face, but the pain was too sharp, and it spread from a single fine line from the inside corner of his eyebrow to his jaw. The physical pain cleared his head enough to intercept her hand before it and the small knife it held had a chance to do anymore damage.

His free hand cupped the side of his face and came away bloody. “Ilona—“

“Don’t say my name,” she spat. “Don’t say my name and don’t you dare call me sister in my house. You’re worthless. You’re a coward! My son is a better man than you are!

His hand tightened around her wrist, their arms shaking, but he couldn’t tell if it was because he shook or Ilona. “What was I supposed to do? Fight off Rome singlehandedly?  Fight with nothing but farmers and potters at my side?”

“A lot of good it did you to run,” she hissed. “And you run back to me when you can’t even keep your own wife and children alive, the very people you abandoned me for.” She pulled her hand out of his grasp and threw the knife to the floor. “And you expect me to take you in now.”

With a hand pressed to his still bleeding face, Zos whispered, “I’m sorry. I know, I know, Ilona, I know and I’m sorry.”

“Sorry is weak, just like you’re weak. Your apologies mean less to me than you.”

“What can I do?” he stopped trying to use his free hand to keep the blood from running down his arm. It was a deep cut, he realized, and would bleed until it was sealed.

Ilona laughed, high pitched and hysteric. “What can you do? As if I should know the answer? From where I stand, you can do nothing, brother mine. You can’t take care of me, you let your family down—not just that girl you married, your blood and kin. You destroy everything you touch with your uselessness.”

He hung his head, having no words left, and for what felt to be a very long time, neither of them spoke. Then, finally, a hand touched the top of his head.

“I was your last resort,” Ilona noted, “and I am all you have left in this world.”

He didn’t answer, afraid that if he did, she would use the words against him later.

Her hand slipped to cover his bloodied one, and very carefully so as not to disturb the child she carried, she crouched on the floor in front of him, putting herself in his line of sight. “All we have is each other,” she said a little more firmly. “You understand that, don’t you? It’s the two of us against the whole world.”

Zos nodded. “Yes,” he agreed, not knowing what else to say but understanding exactly what she implied. “Yes, it’s us against the world.”

Ilona smiled and stroked the hand that covered his eye. “You’ll remember that now; and you’ll remember today for the rest of your life,” she said sweetly, her other hand cupping the other side of his face. “And if for some reason you ever forget, again, well,” she pressed her lips to his forehead and carefully heaved herself to her feet, “I just can’t imagine what people would think if they knew Theodisios’s youngest son had so much of his mother’s blood in him.”

 
           

Book Release and Other Shenanigans

There have been lots of interesting happenings as of late, probably the most exciting of which is the release of my second novel, The Dreamwalker's Path, which should be available for purchase through Amazon by the end of the week, if not sooner. A link to the sales page will be supplied when a link manifests itself. :)

I haven't had too much time for writing any short stories, which is a bit sad as I do have a couple which are wriggling around in the back of my brain and waiting for a coffee-derived session of uber-creativity. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm due for one this weekend.

What I HAVE been involved in, since the new year, is a super awesome, brand new play-by-post RP board. This has done wonders in taking up all of the extra creative writing space in my head, which subsequently means that when I do settle down to write some more short stories, or say, begin building the plot for the third book in The Historian's Archives (which as of right now, has absolutely no title), I might actually produce some semi-coherent writing the first time around rather than just letting everything bubble over on the page in a haphazard, pseudo-creative, and slightly spasmodic purging of pent up ideas.

In other news, there isn't much other news. Or rather, there isn't much that feels important at present, although I'm sure later on I'll remember something I should have said or was going to say and forgot. Right now, though, I'm contemplating dinner, which may or may not involve a baked sweet potato and then garrish amounts of hot chocolate.

Not together, of course. That would be gross.

6. Obsession

Knowing You

You don’t know me, but I know you.

I know that you were born far away from where you are now, but that you’re somehow happy in
the ho-dunk town you live in. I know that you like to use your hands to build things, that you like
to read all sorts of manuals—you’ll sit at your window and read from the time you get up to the
moment the sun goes down.

You don’t know me, you don’t even know that I exist, but I know you.

I your favourite food is blueberries, and you like listening to the violin. I know you tried to play
one for a little while, but you didn’t pick it up as quickly as you’d hoped. I know that you like
dogs, and that cats frighten you. Don’t worry, the old myths that they steal souls are just that.

You look right through me every time we meet, but that’s okay because I don’t need you to
I already know everything that I need to know about you.

The average number of times you brush each section of your hair before you go to sleep
(fifteen—you are very meticulous), the fact that you skip the thirteenth stair every time because you think it’s bad luck.

I know that you dye your hair a darker shade of blond because the white-blond of it stands out.

Your favourite colour is blue—the same shade as the tattoo on your arm, the tattoo that don't remember not having, but I remember. I know where it came from.

I know all sort of things about you that you don’t know, things that you used to know, that you’ve
forgotten. I know about the part of you that you’ll never get back.

Because I know you. Your habits. Your desires. Your fears.

One day, you’ll be ready for me, to meet me. One day I’ll tell you everything I know about you.
One day. When you’re ready to listen.

But you’re not ready, are you? I should know. I know you. I’ve been watching you. Waiting for you.

I'll keep waiting.

Catching Up

Just a quick post so that everyone knows that I'm alive. Haven't had much time for writing, unfortunately--which is primarily a result of my being very lazy since I finished the first draft of the manuscript for Dreamwalker's Path as well as settling into a brand new apartment, and a full time job, and helping my family move my grandfather into the house that I just moved out of. Very exciting, all of it, but it doesn't leave much brain-juice or motivation for writing.

Good news is that DP is well into the editing stages. I've managed to read through it twice and edit out some of the blatantly incorrect things, smoothed over some harsh transitions, etc. Still waiting on the opinions of beta readers, though, before I can give it one more good read-through and then send it to printing. Meanwhile the inklings have gotten rowdy again, and demands are being made. I'll have to start outlining the plot of the third Historian's Archives book, which up to this point has no name, but is a bit unavoidable due to the rather inconvenient way that DP ended.

My collection of short stories is hankering to be added to as well. I've got a couple of freestanding stories with the Jaegers that may end up part of book 3, or may just end up in a short little collection of the crazy things that people in that particular universe do.

Hopefully more updates will come--maybe some stories. Maybe just another "This is where I've been the last blah-number-of days." We'll see.

Hasta