Ned Hayes's Blog, page 135

“I look down at the paper to see a fragment of cosmology:...

“I look down at the paper to see a fragment of cosmology: now I read it hungrily, my ability to read undimmed behind a wall of mute, mad years. 

Nine spheres there are that rotate across the great firmament of the heavens. As Pythagoras wrote, each sphere holds the stars like glowing jewels on their surface, whirling ever in their orbits. At the center of those vast moving orbs of quintessence rests the unmoved rock of this earth, our Eden and sometime Hell …

The ancients understood all things, from the mysteries of our frail flesh to the languages spoken by animals and by angels. Here are all the remnants of their knowledge we hold. The voices of the past echoing into our diminished age.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk

SOURCE:  Astronomical Clock, Munster Cathedral

"I still hold that manuscript from the Scriptorium clenched...

"I still hold that manuscript from the Scriptorium clenched tight in my hand. I look down at it. A prayer book. When I crack it open, my hand lands on a page with The Burial of the Dead."
— from the novel Sinful Folk

PHOTO from: Eberbach Abbey, where the “Name of the Rose” was filmed…Side aisle by Matus Kalisky on Flickr

"Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as...

"Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven’s gate."
— from the novel Sinful Folk

"The road is covered by jagged serrations of ice hard as iron. I...

"The road is covered by jagged serrations of ice hard as iron. I pull aside the boot soles that are strapped to my feet. Underneath, my feet are streaked with cuts and dark abrasions. Thorns, branches and sharp ice graved their signs on me unknown, leaving behind a medley of runes written in some strange tongue."
— from the novel Sinful Folk

"I ran. A path seemed to open before me into the woods, some...

"I ran. A path seemed to open before me into the woods, some small track to a little town, a forgotten village.

I sensed the watcher—keeping pace with me in the thickening forest, maneuvering silently through the clasping vines, the slapping branches and heavy windfall logs—close to me at times.

Then my poor left foot betrayed me, catching on an errant vine and sliding helplessly on slick rock. I tumbled into a bramblebush, pushing Christian out of harm’s way before I plunged headfirst into the misbegotten backwater of a summer-shrunk creek.

I pulled myself out of the deep and stinking sludge, clawed my way up the granite, and reached for my crying son, his blanket caught precariously in brambles. But my foot lodged in a fold of robe, and then I fell without stopping, slamming backward against the great unforgiving rock.

The distant thrumming of the hooves still shuddered through me as the stone caught my head on the way down.”

— from the novel SINFUL FOLK

SOURCE: lori-rocks

"I am holding now in my hand Moten’s oldest manuscript, the...

"I am holding now in my hand Moten’s oldest manuscript, the History he scribed throughout his life. The edges of the bits of vellum and parchment that he sewed together into this makeshift book are ragged and irregular. He made this thing of his own labor, out of what was left behind when the true manuscripts were made. Remnants and rags made up his book."
— from the novel Sinful Folk

Reading the ARC of SINFUL FOLK, being released in January...

Reading the ARC of SINFUL FOLK, being released in January 2014 !

"I sleep as a lost child dead to the world, cuddled with the...

"I sleep as a lost child dead to the world, cuddled with the rest of the orphans into that great nest of straw in the open hall of Canterbury Abbey. The warmth of sleeping bodies drew me in. On that first night in Canterbury, my belly full of warm gruel, embraced by other sleeping children, hearing their breathing light and sweet in the night, I felt myself in heaven."
— from the novel Sinful Folk
Picture: Andrea Mantegna. Madonna with Sleeping Child. c. 1465-70.

"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh...

"The road is a river of ice, slick and unforgiving. A harsh sweep of white iron, smooth as glass and cold enough to freeze any uncovered inch of flesh to the surface. Hillocks and haystacks rise up, isles in a smoking brume. Here and there snow has blown aside, revealing the line of the great white stone road that slices through the hills."

— from the novel Sinful Folk

"Now I can hear other sounds. We are surrounded by whistles,...

"Now I can hear other sounds. We are surrounded by whistles, calls, and woodland rustling. Birds. My ears are full of the faint rhythm of wood fowl settling down for the night.

I can see larks, swallows and waxwings. Bullfinches too, flashing their black and red plumage and white rumps as they fly away, chasing seeds that remain here, in these unburned woods.

Close-at-hand, a robin twitters on a low branch, and listens for another that answers from beyond the farmhouse.”

— from the novel Sinful Folk 

PHOTO: scienceinprogress:untitled by rustleofleaves- on Flickr.