Jennifer Freitag's Blog, page 33

Kick Up the Leaves and the Magic is Lost

'cause you had a bad dayyou're takin' one downsing a sad song just to turn it aroundyou say you don't knowtell me, don't lieyou work at a smile and you go for a rideyou had a bad day
I sat down to work on an informative post about "verbal sparring" in writing for an upcoming blog convention.  I got two paragraphs in and found myself opening a new document and writing the following one-shot.  This is largely for Mirriam, but I hope everyone enjoys it.  Additionally, I would love to hear people's thoughts on "verbal sparring" as I go about writing my post.  Read and think about it!
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“How could you be such a jerk!” I shouted.  “What is wrong with you!”Vince was agitated, not, I quickly saw, because he was remorseful, but because I had hounded him down since I had passed Li in the hallway, routed him out with the ruthlessness that would have impressed our Roundhead ancestor, and pressed him for an answer.  He wanted to squirt away and I would not let him; he was growing hot under the collar when he turned on me and shouted back,“I just got tired, all right?  Honestly, does anyone take this seriously?  I’m on the brink of my career.  I have other things to think about.  I can’t have perfume and nail polish and hair styles and magazines gumming up my brain.  You said yourself I needed to focus on my work.  Get off my case!”For a moment I stood in the little grass quad, staring at him, choking on disbelief.  I knew my brother was stupid.  I even knew, though I did not want to admit it, that he had all the ramshackle making of a no-good.  I never really thought he would hear me when I kicked him at his studies and told him to take them seriously.  I never realized he would be so stupid as to chuck the most important relationship for a career.But then I have always been the quixotic one.“Don’t you leave,” I snapped as he was turning away.  “I am not done.”“Well, hurry up,” he snapped back.  “I have a class in—”“An hour!  I think I can get everything out in that time.”He pushed back his jacket and shoved his hands into his pockets, slouching in that most irritating, arrogant way.  He sniffed, too, distain wrinkling his little button nose.  How I wanted to punch it!  It would have been easier that way.“You still don’t get it,” I started out, knowing even as the words came out of my mouth that they would only drive him farther away.  “I told you to buckle down to your studies and take life seriously because people are depending on you to do it.  That isn’t your money you are wasting by blowing off classes.  Grandfather is depending on us to do well and make that money count for something.  You need to take your work seriously because your employers will be depending on you.  This culture is so totally lacking in dependable, honest workers—we might at least try to be two.  You have no idea how valuable a dependable worker is.  The same goes for Li.  She was dependingon you.  She had plans—and they included you.  She was depending on your steadiness, your sensibility, your seriousness in your relationship.  You don’t chuck it all in the river just like that! just because you got tired!”I listened to my last words.  Vince knew I had not finished because I had made a long habit of pausing for breath before barrelling on, and as I listened to my words I realized the problem was much more serious than I had imagined.  “You do you mean,” I levelled at him, “you got tired?”He shrugged.  “I just got tired of her being everywhere all the time, always demanding my attention.  Honestly, it was like having a puppy.  I would want to go out with my mates and she would get cross because I would go without her!”“Well, small wonder you wouldn’t take her, with the mates you have,” I snorted.“Always!”  He began pacing.  “I would always have to pick her up, take her here, there, to class, to the store, out to lunch.  I know she hasn’t got a car but I never had a moment to myself!”“You idiot.  You never get a moment to yourself when you are in a relationship.  You don’t generally want one.”“Well, I did!”“Well, you’re going to get a long one!  Look ahead to a long, lonely, cold life, completely devoid of any sensible woman because you are a jerk!”He flung out a hand at me, accusingly, militaristically.  “Why are you taking herside?  What does she have to do with any of this now?”I sat down heavily on the stone bench, feeling the damp seep into my trousers, and not caring.  I put my head in my hand.  Clearly against the black of my eyelids I could see Li pushing her way through the little press of girls, displacing an Egyptian exchange student with a bump and a little cry; she had rushed on, her face turned from them, but I had seen.  I must have looked like an idiot myself, poised on the edge of the scene, caught in surprise when I saw that her almond-round, Asian face was crushed in pain, a pain barely suppressed.  She had run on as if late for a class, but I could not help noticing that she was headed toward the girls’ room.“You made her cry,” I said through my hand.“Girls cry.”I exploded off the bench.  “You made her cry!  You made a girl cry!  That doesn’t make you feel like a monster?  You can just stand there and tell me ‘girls cry’?  What do you think girls are?  Are you so totally medieval?”He looked at me quizzically.  “What are you talking about?”It was useless.  In a minute I would be strangling him and be charged with first degree murder, and even then he would not understand.  I had tried and suddenly I realized that I did not want to mend the breach between them.  I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed, sending him staggering backward.“Hey!”“Shut up,” I snapped.  “And God help,” I added, doubling back a moment as I was about to leave, “God help whatever woman you do marry.”He took a step after me.  “Where are you going?  Trent!”“I’m going to apologize for you!”I barrelled out of the quad, my precipitous exit and shout startling a wandering group of Indian students.  I swung wide of them and went on, hardly seeing where I went, until I found myself in the same colonnade wherein Li had brushed by and disappeared.  I had to ask several girls in a staggered, Orion’s-belt pattern across campus where I would find her; though I was in no mood to talk to anyone I was also in no mood to go banging in stall doors in the ladies’ lavatory.  Don’t have let her walk back to her dorm alone, I prayed, moving at a quick half-shuffle, half-jog down a long dipping sidewalk.  I scanned the crowds as I took a left and dropped down a flight of broken stairs that had seen better days and worthier feet; stunted yews grew over the staircase and shut off the sunlight, shut off the world, and I soon found myself wrenching open a narrow wicket gate into the butterfly garden, cut off from the world, alone, save for the uncertain notes of a thrush and the muted but ever-present rumble of the traffic.  I stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked around the garden.  The watered sky, empty from last night’s rain storm, arched above me, pillared by the ancient weathered stones of the surrounding buildings.  The garden was a wet mess, a tangle of flowering bushes and tracts of dewy lawn, but nowhere did I see Li.  My informants had assured me she had ducked down here; the only ways out were by the stair or the decrepit chapel, generations since unused, which formed the east end of the butterfly garden.  With a sigh I struck out from underneath the yews into the face of a sudden sharp wind, trekking up the aisles of damp toward the chapel.  I supposed that, if I were a girl, I would go cry in a place like that too.I walked until the dew had soaked my socks and stained my Oxfords, fighting sprays of honeysuckle, until at last I stepped up on the broken threshold of the chapel and slipped into the dank dark of the vestibule.  The sound of traffic was silenced behind me; somewhere in the gloom as my eyes adjusted I could hear the soft rushing sound of running water.  I took a few careful steps forward, for the chapel, like the kingdom, had seen better days—like the stonework stairs, worthier feet—and I did not want to catch my foot in a hole and break my leg.The chapel was very small, very long and narrow, with no chairs or pews but an altar at the far end—undecorated now—which was lit up by a single high window in the south face of the walls; the north-facing window had been boarded up, but the south-facing window’s board had been pulled down and lay scattered on the floor under years of dust.The altar was not the only thing lit up in the early morning light.  Sitting on the floor, propped up against the altar, was Li, her arms around her dirty updrawn legs and her face hid in her knees.  My stomach clenched but I forced myself to walk calmly across to her.  She did not seem to hear my coming; hesitantly, silently, I set my hand on her head.She started and looked up; her mascara had streaked and was running, the soft pink winging shadows of her eyes had been rubbed and smudged on her temples.  Her little dark eyes were puffy from crying, but the odd thing was that the vulnerability, the complete dashing of all her careful feminine appearances that made her look unapproachable like a goddess, only endeared her to me still further.  I swore softly and dropped down on the balls of my feet.“What are you doing here?” Li sniffed and, turning, hid her face from me.“I come here every Thursday,” I replied glibly to her blunt, stupid question.  “This is where I worship.”  Then, when she said nothing, I added quietly, “I made Vince tell me.  I’m…I’m really sorry.”She shuddered and hitched her arms further around her legs.  It was a bad position to be in: her skirt was too short even to walk about in, I thought, and the cold stones were raising goose-bumps on her skin.  Wordlessly, because I was suddenly angry again, I unbuttoned my cardigan and flung it around her knees.  “You shouldn’t have come down here on your own,” I told her more forcefully than I should have.  “It isn’t safe.  This place is far too secluded and—” I almost mentioned the skirt, but thought better of it just in time.But I had said enough.  Drawing herself up, fury clenching her face—she had, apparently, not got done crying and I had interrupted—Li retorted, “What do you care?  Why can’t you just leave me alone?”  She balled the cardigan into one hand and thrust it back at my chest, nearly knocking me over.  “Go away and leave me alone!  I don’t want to hear about Vince.  I don’t care what you have to say in his defence!  He made himself perfectly clear and he won’t get me back—you tell him that!”“Stop shouting!”  I recollected myself and unfolded the cardigan again.  “Someone might think I was hurting you.”“Maybe you are!”  Her voice rose to a reckless pitch.  “It’s all you men ever do!  Well, I’m tired of it!  I’m tired of your lies!  I’m tired of your stupid, stubborn brutishness!  Do you think I’m just a scarf, to be put on whenever the weather gets cold and taken off and tossed in a corner when you get too warm?  Do you think I’m just a toy that a boy can get bored of?  Do you think I’m not good enough?  Maybe I’m not good enough!  Maybe Vince is right!  Maybe I was kidding myself all along, thinking this would come to anything.  Why would anyone want me?”She was spiralling out of rage into self-guilt and I had to do something before she pulled us both in over our heads.  I laid the cardigan back over her—my hands were shaking rather desperately, and I did not know why—and cut her off by saying levelly, “I didn’t come here to defend Vince.  I nearly throttled him a moment ago, if that means anything to you.  And I don’t think you’re not good enough—it was Vince who wasn’t good enough—and you’re not a scarf.  You’re just in pain and you’re blowing this all out of proportion.”She looked at me in silence, her narrow, angry eyes telling me “Don’t you lie to me” with a force that was almost physical.  It chilled me.“What do you want me to do, apologize for the entire male sex?  That is a tall order, even for me.”  I shifted and thumped down on the floor beside her, my back to the altar.  “I came to apologize for my brother’s assish behaviour—that’s the best I can do.”  After a pause I added, “I really mean it.”“You really mean what?”To be honest, I was not sure.  I sincerely meant my apology for what Vince had done—for what Vince had undone—but after a moment’s reflection I found what I really meant was that she deserved better.  People were stupid and cocky and did not see how vicious the world could be nor how vulnerable life really is: but in the half-light of the chapel, with mascara streaking her face and her bare legs shivering, one had only to look at Li once to feel how delicate the beautiful things of life were and how easily they were crushed.  Did no one care?  How couldVince look at this girl and think, “She doesn’t need me and I don’t need her”?  On an impulse I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.  She tensed, but did not resist.  “I mean that I’m sorry I can’t fix everything.  I’m sorry you think you are rubbish, and that there are people like Vince in the world, and that—here.”  I dug into the pocket of my cardigan and pulled out my handkerchief.  Li started back as I scrubbed at her mussed face; mascara came off in blurs and smudges, but she looked a little better.  She would have to dry her face and do it all again once she had stopped crying—she had not, quite, even now, but the tears were tracking silently out of her eyes—but the worst of the mess had come off on my once clean, starched kerchief.  I pressed it into her hand.  “A gentleman never goes out without a pocket handkerchief,” I said.  “He never knows when he may need to assist a lady in distress.”She hid her face in the handkerchief.  Her pale cheeks began to colour with embarrassment as it dawned on her through the torture that she looked as though she had got in a fist-fight with a road-worker.  “Who said that?”“I did,” I admitted in a gallant tone, though I felt suddenly awkward.  “Are you feeling any better now that you have punched me in place of Vince?”There was a pause.  “No…  But I think I can stop crying.”  But then she sobbed again and hid her face further in the cloth, and I sat in the damp chapel, swimming in its watery morning light, my arm around the shoulders of the beautiful Asian girl I had come to know so well.  The world was a skin-thin place, starkly normal, going about its normal business, and it came to me as a crude, circus-coloured thing, and I was glad yesterday’s quiet gathered in yesterday’s chapel, hiding us while the huge world of Li’s heart cried itself in pieces.  After awhile she stopped, and long after that she broke the silence shyly.  “I am sorry I was mad at you.”I lifted my head off the side of the altar.  “You weren’t mad at me, no more than I was cross with you.  We were both mad at Vince, that is all.”She nodded and we fell silent again, listening to the soft purl of water down the old stonework and, from the butterfly garden, the full-breasted trill of the thrush.Li said presently, reluctantly, “I should go.  I have class.”This stirred me to action.  Rising, I held out my hand for her.  “Not today,” I said as I pulled her up.  “You are much more important than class.  I am taking you back to your dorm so you can change out of that ridiculous skirt—please don’t wear it again—and then I am taking you for ice cream.”“But—class—” she began, looking frightened and bewildered.  Her eyes were at once humorous and adorable widened like a startled doe’s.  “I don’t want ice cream—”“Yes, you do.  Dorm first, then ice cream.”  I helped her over the rough chapel floor and out into the sunlight.  “There are times in one’s life when it is perfectly acceptable to run from trouble.  This is one of them.”The wind, when we climbed up the stairs and out from under the yews, caught us in the face.  Li’s thrush-brown hair flew back into the level morning sun, sparking wild fire, and suddenly I laughed—I could not help myself.  Would that a spirit of the past might visit my brother years from now and show him a glimpse of what he might have had, what he had forever lost.  Li looked at me quizzically, but pleasantly: I saw the rage and much of the sorrow had been soothed from her face.  Contented with that I put her arm in mine and walked her down the long south road, her hair and the cardigan, hitched up over her shoulder, flowing in the wind behind us.

As Bright & Moth-Wing Blue As the Blue in the Heart of a Flame

Rachel just featured an intriguing post on eyes.  She said she is guilty of describing them too much in narration and, when I think about it, I probably am guilty of that too.  But, as she pointed out, eyes are the window to the soul - they really are - and can one go wrong fixating, even to detriment of other physical description, on the character's eyes?  How much one can learn about a character just by looking in the eyes, watching for that one unguarded moment when the person's eyes betray the thoughts beneath! 

So I like describing eyes.  Indubitably I describe them a little too much, but that's what editing is for, I suppose.  There is a crazy range of colour for eyes, which are well worth studying even if you don't like studying.  (I would also suggest a dip into biology so that you have a basic understanding of how eye colour shakes out and so that your choice of character eye colour makes sense.)  Julius and Julianna - you've met them - are both albino, and so have the characteristic violet eyes of albinos - which are caused by the lack of pigmentation and the filtration of blood through the eye, which sounds far less romantic than "violet," I admit.  The de la Mare line of Plenilune is famous for its pale, ice-blue eyes, which makes looking at them all the more unnerving...  The royal family of Thrasymene waver between brown and yellow-brown, but the heavy speckling of people with yellow-brown eyes throughout the lineage has given them some fame as well: their yellow eyes turn out owlish and uncanny, and really very beautiful.

Skander and I have the same eye colour.  Though his mother was from the de la Mare family he got his father's stark brown eyes.  Just brown.  You have to look really hard at our eyes to conjure any romanticism about them.  They have some falcon-barring of gold and black, but mostly they are just that rich, dominant, chocolate brown which is warm and familiar and totally unremarkable.  But then his, at least, fit him: he is a warm, familiar, chocolate brown kind of man and only occasionally, when severely provoked, will you see the falcon-barring flutter in agitation.  So I like to think there is something to be said even for the dull, dominant brown that is almost never looked at twice in the faces of the whole world over.

In this high-tech, sleek, graphic world of film, we're used to seeing the richness and starkness of colour.  You can over-describe anything, I know, but eyes are worth description!  Eyes are actually very complex just in colour, let alone in their anatomy (which would get boring if you tried to include that, so you probably shouldn't go that route...).  I like watching people's eyes: the way the light plays on their surfaces, the way different-coloured lashes or eyeshadow mute the irises or make the colour stand out more.  Stare at your eyes in the mirror.  If you do make-up, take a good look at what your eyes do when juxtaposed to different colours.  Stare at other people's eyes.  Stare creepily.  And then run and hide and use a pen-name. 

Inclining round to the soldier, [Rhodri] asked, “Was anyone killed?”The soldier hesitated.  He looked as if he might have refused an answer, but Rhodri unexpectedly lifted a brow and fixed him like a basilisk, so the soldier said in a quiet voice, “I don’t know, sir.  I don’t think so.”For a moment longer the two regarded each other, the one caught in the other’s gaze.  Then Rhodri released him, turning his head away.  “Very good, soldier.  We will be out of your way in a moment.  Thank you for the drinks.”“Sir.”  The soldier half-drew to the salute, checked himself, and swung away to the jinkeh-jinkof accoutrements.Adamantine

God, We Reach For Ancient Skies

May you be brave in times of trial when others lay crosses on your shoulders.
"What happened to Between Earth and Sky?"
No, I'm not suddenly veering off from Plenilune to attend to yet another novel jostling in my head to be written.  But Joy asked me this question on Facebook and I figured, hey, I haven't talked about Between Earth and Sky in a long, long time, so I thought I would jot down a little about it and tell you why I put it aside for awhile. 

I told my husband just last night, after reading back over a theological, philosophical discussion that had made it into the manuscript of Between Earth and Sky, that the novel is like The Shadow Things , but on steroids.  Honestly I haven't picked the manuscript up in over a year, but having run an eye over it again, I can truly say that it's good stuff.  I recall being peeved and fretful over it before, but after a brief perusal I found it to be tightly-knit with sound dialogue and description and (my favourite, and the hardest thing for me to work in) foreshadowing.  I was actually really pleased with what I found and really excited to begin on it afresh.  I can't right now, of course - I'm in the middle of Plenilune.  (Figurative middle.  I have no idea how far into the plot I really am.  Plots are like that, you know...)

Why did I stop?  Two reasons.  Well, three.  One, I was in the middle of seriously editing Adamantine.  I always have shards of ideas coming off my imagination, but I don't multitask on two demanding stories very well so when the second reason for my leaving off working on Between Earth and Sky hit I had that excuse to fall back on.  The second reason is that I got stuck.  Probably no more stuck than I normally get in the course of writing: I just got gummed up.  The third reason I stopped is that, at that point, I had not learned to push on.  I've learned through writing Plenilune that if I put my back into it, more words will come.  I simply have to plough through the mess.  Back then I hadn't learned that, so between Adamantine, being stuck, and having a bit of a squishy backbone, Between Earth and Sky was put down.

Don't despair, though!  I love that plot.  I love those characters.  It will demand everything and more from me, but I am looking forward to it, to the curve-ball questions characters will throw at me, the moral conundrums we will find ourselves in, the stepping out into the darkness in faith which all of us experience.  Perhaps I was too small for the story before, and that is why I put it down...  But now I am wildly afraid of it as you are afraid of a huge wave that is about to break over you, and yet loving to be caught up in the ruthless glory of it.  It will demand everything and more from me, and I am glad of it.

The manuscript of Between Earth and Sky is only 74,341 words and, where I left off, I was only just cupping the little ember of its plot in my palms and blowing it to life.  What is it about?  It's about the demands placed upon a man of God, serving a people who do not know Christ, bringing the light of the Gospel to the uttermost ends of the earth.

Walking alone.  Valerian’s face returned, distant and contemplative; but always sure of itself, as though from some high and lofty quarter, an eagle’s eyrie, perhaps, the man could see the world as it turned.  Had Valerian known?  The thought chilled him colder than the brisk evening wind.  Had the man stood beside him that honey-yellow evening in the cloister and thought, ‘This boy will walk alone’?  He might never know.

Read an excerpt.

We Are Glad the Dauphin Is So Pleasant With Us

There is a balance of realism and artistry to be found in writing dialogue.  It is not always an easy balance to find. I confess that a personal pet peeve is to find contemporary dialogue in "pre-modern" settings: such as a Revolutionary soldier saying "Okay" or Charles the Mad saying "Darn" after killing the Bastard of Polignac...  But speaking of Charles the Mad, my particular psychosis which we are going to indulge today has to do, not with period-accurate slang, but with the use of names in dialogue.

use of names
When the character is in a group the use of names in dialogue is rather necessary.  In this instance literature does not quite reflect reality: in a realistic situation you would not keep saying "Well, Euripides, I think - " "Of course, Euripides, I see that - " "Euripides, when you put it like that - " etc.  In reality you would rely on physical prompts to tell people who you were talking to directly: the inclination of your eyes, a gesture of the hand: unspoken signals that may, if used excessively, gum up a piece of writing.  But in a piece of writing, repeating the character's name over and over is unrealistic and undeniably tedious.  Look to strike a balance between the use of given names (or even pet names) and nonverbal prompts to keep the dialogue on a level with smooth, polished literature but recognizable as reflecting reality.

use of character relationship
This gets me probably more than the excessive use of proper names.  It may be a mere pet peeve of mine: I will let you judge.  Very few people, except perhaps Mrs. Bennet, can get away with referring directly to a sibling as "sister" and "brother" all the time in conversation.  Typically, brotherhood and sisterhood are relationships that people do not consciously think about, nor, when they do, do they tend to assign "brother" and "sister" a place of proper noun-ship.  In some time periods and cultures you can get away with this on occasion (Mrs. Bennet) but in my perusals of writing I have found it to be often the mark of amateurism.  Avoid referring to the obvious.  This also goes for an excessive use of "mother," "father," "lord," and "lady," though those titles are closer to being proper nouns in some instances than "brother" and "sister" might be and, as such, have a little more leeway. Again, look for a balance between realism and a translation from the image in your head to the written word to the reader's imagination.

judging by emotion and situation
I gave you some don't-do examples, now I'll try to give you some examples in actual settings.  Dialogue encompasses the entire range of human emotion and just about every circumstance humans can find themselves in.  Names will be used (or not used) differently depending on these factors, and they can mean different things depending on these factors.

Anger.  Everyone knows that you are only given a middle name so you will know when your parents are mad at you. Calling a person by name is a way of grabbing hold of them - in the right tone, it acts in lieu of a physical shaking.

“We need a Caesar! If you can see another way, God help you, but we cannot. Rome cannot help us—she made that very clear. She can barely help herself.” There was a heavy silence, hollow and dark; Lord Alan’s next words fell in the silence like the ghostly pall of snow upon his heart. “We are alone, Ambrosius.”

Contentedness.  When God is in his heaven and all is right with the world, you don't tend to refer to your friend by name while talking to him.  You don't need to get his attention: you already have it, and you're both in a happy state of friendship.

Love.  Again, pet names aside (and those can be many and varied and are up to the discretion of your imagination), people in love don't tend to refer to each other by name when conversing.  They know intuitively that their minds are linked and have no need to draw the person's attention.

Fear.  When you are afraid every moment counts: you won't take the time to string out the entire name of a Spanish character - you will stamp him by his short little Christian name and that will be that.

Embarrassment.  Avoid names.  Using names is like making eye contact, and when you are embarrassed you do not want to have anything to do with the other person.

Extreme happiness.  Unlike contentedness, when you are absolutely, full-to-the-brim happy, calling out the other person's name acts as a relief and to link the other person with your own ecstasy. 

These are just some random feelings and situations that I plucked out of the dark attic of my mind.  Again, think about realistic situations in which there is dialogue and then think how best to translate that into writing.  Things will have to be tampered with when they go into writing otherwise something will be lost in translation (such as nonverbal indicators), but in general keeping a firm touch of reality goes a long way to keeping tabs on names in dialogue.  It may be apparent in these examples I gave that I steer away from using proper nouns in dialogue.  I do that, not because I think it is taboo, but because people don't usually speak that way.

Sum up: keep in touch with reality, attend to period-accurate address, and maintain a good feel for when proper nouns are used by what emotions in what situations. 

A Quiet and Teachable Spirit

it is easy to give advicenone too easy to take itand nearly impossible to implement it
I confess I have been so caught up in working on Plenilune (which has been going well, by the way) that I have been somewhat neglecting my email inbox and The Penslayer.  Though I am not sure you would be so very angry with me for that...

I have a Shadow Things announcement to make before I roll into the bulk of my post.  First of all, Elizabeth Rose (whom I have had the pleasure of hosting here on The Penslayer) has read The Shadow Things and recently posted her book review on Living on Literary Lane.  If you wanted to hear someone else's views on the book, please check it out!  Additionally, I had the honour of being the first individual ever interviewed on author Audrey Hansen's blog just this morning.  I was really peached by that piece of news and really pleased by the questions she asked me.  So be sure to check that out too!

Now on to the main event!  Which, incidentally, features yet another blog - The Destiny of One, by Sarah Holman.  I recently read an excellent, concise little post by her on how to handle criticism.  As I mentioned with honesty and chagrin in a comment on the post I am a very sensitive soul (do you think it shows?) and I don't tend to take anything but the kindest of criticism well.  Thankfully I have gotten almost nothing but the kindest of criticism, but that is unusual and as I am at the mere beginning of my literary career I can expect harder nails to claw at me in the future.  Sarah Holman's post was brief, and I will add to it with a few of my own thoughts, but her points were so excellent and so spoke to me that I took the liberty of reposting them here.

1. Know that you cannot please everyone. Even the books on the bestseller lists get negative reviews. There will be people who don’t like your genre, your style, or the fact you mention God. However, there will people who love your book for those same reasons.

2. Give the book to some friends first. Tell them you are learning and would like their opinions but can’t take harsh ones yet. Your friends will often respect that and you will learn to take some criticism, along with the good things they have to say about your book.

3. It is okay to give the book to people you know will like it. Family members and friends who will like it no matter what can help boost your confidence and make taking the criticism better.

4. There are some days that you should never try to read what others are saying about your story. Make sure that you are emotionally ready to handle it.

5. Know that as long as you are honoring God in your story (this does not mean it has to be preachy) he is pleased with your work.

These are really good, down-to-earth pieces of advice for writers.  Just because someone doesn't share the same taste in style and genre as we do doesn't automatically make us failures at our craft.  I've already said that a touch of blind "I-am-the-greatest" attitude will further you in your writing, because that nagging sense of not doing a good enough job while you hone your craft will only discourage you and drag you back.  Of course you have room for improvement.  We all do, and we always will.  But fixating on that is detrimental to your morale, trust me.  Tie up your own boot-straps, put up your own chin, and stride out among your own scrawled words with a sense that you own the place.

If you have good friends (our choice of family, as was the case with Mr. Bingley, cannot be helped), they are the sort of people you can assume know you best and can make a good assessment of your potential.  In short, they will heartily give praise where praise is due and urge you on to do better.  Invest in those friendships!  

Author Anne Elisabeth Stengl has said several times that she does not go out of her way to find reviews.  I am guilty of doing this (if you can call it a guilt) because I like to know what people think.  However, her point is very valid, especially for souls like hers and mine.  Glowing reviews are always wonderful, but that one negative review, heartless and demeaning, can ruin everything.  So don't tempt the devil, as it were: don't stick yourself out there to be criticized if you aren't ready to handle it.  And, as always, there are many different aspects of our faith that we may address in our novels: but so long as we adhere to the faith, so long as what we write is not only done "to the glory of God" but accurately reflects his own self-revelation, I would say you have nothing to fear.  The content of your writing is sound, even if your skill may need improvement.

Those were Sarah's points and I am really appreciative of them.  I have just one more overarching piece of advice to give and that is: have a quiet and teachable spirit.  We are in an ancient and venerated business - the writing of books - and there is no place here for a puffed up spirit.  We have countless people to teach us our craft, many of us have a good crew of folk still alive to come alongside us and point out from a more objective viewpoint where we have done well and where we need to improve.  These moments may sting, but then blessings have been known to come in disguises.  Take stock of your own smallness in this literary world, the sheer dependence you have on the writers who have gone before you, the miles of improvement you have left to go, and learn to bear gladly the criticism of others.

I'll be learning it with you.

Now and For Always

sit by the firelight's glow / tell us an old tale we knowtell of adventures strange and rare / never to change, ever to sharestories we tell will cast their spell / now and for always
I just finished reading J. Grace Pennington's post on reading while writing and I confess it is something I've thought about idly for some time.  I was just arguing with myself last night, trying to reconcile myself to my own sporadic reading habits juxtaposed to Abigail's flogging-molly determination to chug through books.  Personally, I tend to go in cycles: while I am writing, my reading will take a dip in attention; while I am reading, my writing will go back on the hob.  I don't usually do both well at once, but I am always doing a little bit of one while doing a lot of the other, so Pennington's point still stands even for me: should I write and read at the same time and, if so, what should I read?

I'm as impressionable as the next writer.  The tones and topics of whoever I am reading will bleed through into my writing.  Taken to extremes, as Pennington pointed out, that is a bad thing: that leads to plagiarism and can steer your plot wildly off course.  But this is a danger that can be consciously avoided, and I think it should be.  However, just as I have learned that I run dry and crack and break when my spirit doesn't spend time in the Word, I find my creativity empties and flounders in the mud-pits when I don't deluge myself with above-and-beyond-me literature.  It is easy to be depressed when comparing one's writing with the masters, but again I feel that is an attitude that can be avoided.  The wise spend time in the company of their betters, and grow better for it.  I recall sitting with the full weight of The Worm Ouroboros on my chest, feeling as if I couldn't breathe and as if my soul was going to burst out of my body because the prose and world and plot was just too big and too awesome for me to contain.  And then I picked myself back up, sat back down at my computer, and began writing again.  Writing better.  Because I had learned new things, new ways of seeing the world, new chancy images of characters, new magic in spinning words.

I'm reading a mix of things right now: A History of Christian Thought: Volume Two, Bonnie Dundee, The Atonement and the Modern Mind...I just finished the amazing Riddle-Master series by Patrica A. McKillip, courtesy of Mirriam Neal.  And all the while as I read these things I am steadily writing, working away at the plot of Plenilune, and I find that my reading is giving my writing new dimension, perfectly pertinent dimension.  My writing would be idiotic, flat, meaningless, untrue, without these books and the legions of books that have come before them.  My one rule is: be reading at least one fiction at all times; without that slight taste of fiction I find I don't write very well; otherwise I can read whatever I like - histories, theologies, etc. - and the topics will fit themselves as they please into my writing. 

I'm all for reading while writing, just as I'm all for reading Scripture while battling through the day-to-day grind.  Without that spring of images and imagination, my own waking dreams run dry.  What you need to read may depend on your own personality and your own story; you have, of course, no excuse to be reading books that don't challenge, encourage, and stretch you beyond your limits at least a little.

The mind is too precious and immortal a thing to waste on drivel. 

A Strange Power in Those Riddling Words

Snippets again!  I was kind of amused by the responses to my Lookinglass post: I felt as if the snippets I chose as descriptive examples weren't my best, though they were adequate for the points I was making, but everyone seemed to rave over them!  I'm not complaining, I'm just questioning your sanity...  I'm still reeling from meeting my goal to reach 100,000 words on my manuscript and thinking that I'll plot another goal of 10,000 by the end of September.  Nothing happens in September, anyway.  But here are snippets!  I hope that, in your cheerily bizarre minds, you enjoy them as much as I do.  We can all be insane together.  And I must warn you in advance: having looked over these snippets as a whole, I find none of them very happy. 

September Snip-Whippets
Autumn lay like beaten copper over the land, beaten by the wind, enamelled by the faience-blue sky.Plenilune
“They liked me better for it,” Margaret said with hard, cold iron in her voice, “but I think they would have liked it better still if Aikin had not been just in time to save me.”Plenilune
The puzzle had much the same effect on the fox as it had on Rupert. He rose swiftly and backstepped as if from a viper that had been dropped suddenly in his path. It frightened Margaret to see his face unguarded—she had not known how guarded it had been before—and to know she carried a strange power in those riddling words and to not know what that power could do.Plenilune
With one hand on her shawl wrapped about her head, her other gathering her skirts about her ankles, she ran across the yard and ducked out into the face of the wind. The roses bunching and climbing up the yard walls were roaring like a storm-tossed sea of silver and green. The windbreak across the pasture was struggling at its job: the wind was in everything, roaring, thundering, buffeting, drowning out everything but the water-droplet notes of a blackbird who was perched in one elm, very high up, where the wind was tossing it about with reckless abandon.Plenilune
...through a few black bars of lettering, a dead theologian from an alien world had managed to thrust her awareness down, like a spade into dark loam, into a deeper world where things could be felt but not touched, believed but never seen.Plenilune
At the end she signed it, which was the hardest thing of all. A horrible confusion welled up at her out of the characters: her own surname seemed meaningless, detached from herself; she did not want the title ‘de la Mare,’ or even ‘of the Mares;’ to belong to Plenilune was a thing she did not dare assume, nor was she at all sure, even now, if she wanted such a place. She stuck with her thin, brittle little English name, whose Saxon overtones and history meant nothing now—but it was all she had.Plenilune
His touch was like the fire-glow of the autumn wind, cold, personal, searching in a horrible, painful way, wearing at her defences so that, even as she knew it was hopeless, she wanted desperately to loose herself from earth and fling herself into the grip of that crimson gale.But how could she, when the creature asking to carry her cross would not even crawl out of his own prison?Plenilune
In the end she chose a gown of pigeon-coloured velvet that purled back in places to let out the silky sheen of the ocean at sunset. With the muted flame of colour she moved across the barred light of the room, paused only to thrust her hair up and hold it in place with pins and sky-fire gems, before stepping out of her room, as one stepping out onto a battlefield that has already been lost.Plenilune
 ...a dog barked down the lane and the wind, changing direction for a moment, brought through the gloam the soft drub of hooves on turf and dirt. There was a momentary jink of light down the hill between hawthorn and wind-swept barberry. It was only for a moment, then it was lost again in the curve of the pasture; but it would reappear shortly at the end of the lane and come steadily toward her, horses emerging like wraiths from the night tide, travel-worn faces awash with the moth-shuttered lantern-light.Plenilune
As he turned the horses over to the hands of the stable servants and stepped into the full glare of the light, his hood falling back off the crown of his head, she saw the long road up from Darkling-law had left him very tired. And, as his eyes slid past her to Rupert, who had appeared with a soft breath of warm air from inside but without a sound, she saw in his face the unmistakable look of a man too tired to fight.Plenilune
She went, and they set her down between Aikin and Huw on the settle—it was a narrow seat, and she had to ram her feet against the floorboards to keep from slipping off—and handed her a horn cup of perry that was light and chilled but made the blood run hummingly warm in her veins afterward. Plenilune
What might he do next, she wondered, and might there come a time when he so changed that she would no longer know him at all? Plenilune

Lookinglass

ceci est la couleur des mes revesthis is the colour of my dreams
You all know how much I love description and how I seem to hang my hat on that point.  Abigail recently wrote up a post on describing characters which I thought was really good and well worth reading.  Abigail is, of course, very logical and more clear on points than I ever am.  I'm a happy-go-lucky kind of writer.  Anyway, I recommend reading the post, but the gist of it is, don't get locked into the cliche venues of describing characters.  Keep in mind Point of View; make sure the character making observations is in character by and while doing so; and don't info-dump description: "the alabaster-skinned girl flung herself over the balcony, slim figure caught against the beryl-blue sky, her daffodil-golden hair floating around her narrow, freckled face, making a kind of halo for her until she put up one slender hand - a pianist's hand - to push back the heavy yellow locks from her exotic features..."  She may have all of that, but for goodness' sake don't drown us with it all at once.

I think my strength tends to lie in exposition of emotion.  I still war with Skander over his hair colour: it is brown, a rich, aristocratic brown, but he's a blond kind of guy.  And typically I simply don't mention it.  I tend to deal with his emotions, and the emotions of the other characters, to give the readers not only a view of the person's physical expression, but a clearer expression of the soul.

He did not say anything, but there was in his eyes for an instant a look almost of despair, like a weaponless man getting a glimpse of the dragon’s yawning mouth.

Later she understood what he had said, but her mind had wandered to Rhodri again. Blue, blue like lightning, blue like the sky breaking through the storm: odd, disjointed, broken images of him flickered across her vision. 

Here are two instances of the same character being described in my typical emotional way, but from different angles.  The first excerpt channels his image at you and the main character through his own emotion, fairly purely and unbiased.  The second excerpt, though of the same character, filters his image to you through the emotion of the main character.  It is a very slight different and I want to assure you that I did not write these two passages that way consciously (so don't overthink your writing), but the difference is there: in the first the image is very clear-cut, fixed, concentrated and vivid; in the second it is diluted by the oppression of sorrow and sheer blind weariness.  The same character is being portrayed, but just as in life the person is seen differently through different circumstances.

It was a pale, sorrowful face that looked back at her; but somehow it was a different paleness than her former sickly one. She looked haunted. But beneath that pale hauntedness was a harder, firmer skin, and something that was shockingly masculine.

This is a case of negative appeal.  Not all of us look our best all the time.  Sometimes it seems like nine time out of ten we look kind of shabby.  So the character doesn't look ill anymore, but her adventures haven't exactly left her with perfectly formed nails and cheeks of alabaster.  What she has, has a kind of appeal: it's nice to be hardy and to survive; but under the surface of this piece is an exchange of things, something unwanted given up for something probably not wanted either, and that coats the passage with a sense of something lost.  She doesn't want to look hardy, like a survivor.  She's a woman.  She wants to look beautiful.  She didn't want to give up her pale, pinched looks for a set jaw and a hard cleft between her eyes.  This isn't a case of someone turning grotesque: it's that sad case of life turning our appearance into something we don't want, something we can't avoid.

[Rupert] sighed and seemed suddenly very weary, worn out, a huge, sharp-angled shadow: his profile was the grim sketch of all great men. “I forget that you are English.”

Appeal in the bad guys.  Not always that shining, swaggering, impossibly-gorgeous appeal (though that has its place, believe me).  Here I've given you, not a description of his clenched brow and frown, etc., but a sense of heaviness and cast you back on the memories of the terrible great ones who have stamped themselves on our history.  Sometimes description isn't a case of telling how something looks, but diverting you to imagine what something is like, and I tend to do that with an emotional link, which, I find, helps bridge the gap between the image, the reader, and the tertium quid to which I am alluding.  "Fair to see and slender as a racehorse" - one of my favourite descriptive lines, though not one I can claim, does that for me.

Just for once, take a look into how you favour description.  I filter mine through layers of emotion, but what do you do?  Please don't suppose I think all description must be that intensively emotional.  I don't always use emotion as a filter: sometimes I use objective description ("fair to see and slender as a racehorse") and play upon the emotions of the main character with those images.  If you're not too shy, I would love to see posts on this chock full of your character-descriptive passages.  I love blundering through other writers' work and seeing how you paint the world!  Go on, have a go at it!  

Shy, Pale-Lit Things

I challenged myself to reach 100,000 words on Plenilune this week.  I did it, with time and impetus to spare, but it got me wondering: where does that place me in the plot of Adamantine?  Every now and then I like to compare and see how quick or slow the two plots move inside themselves.  On a whim I thought I would grab the text from the corresponding pages in both stories and show them to you.  (Is it only my bizarre, twisted perception, or does 100,000 not seem like a lot?)

Adamantine
Eikin got up off the balls of his feet.  “Come close to the hearth.  I will have a look round for dry wood and get a fire going.  I don’t reckon anyone will see us in this murk, and we should be safe enough.”She crossed stiffly to the hearth and knelt down on the slate flags, shivering with her arms around her damp knees while Eikin poked about the long room, breaking apart old chairs and testing fallen beams for any dry soundness.  She watched him in a kind of daze as he returned, knelt, and began to build a little fire.  The tiny spark which caught the dry tinder-moss was the only clear thing to her: a small and shining, golden thing, a perfect petal of light.  How many memories were trapped in a single petal of flame? she wondered.  How many memories were made around fires, and caught in fires, and lay silent and secret in fires forever…“Mind the fire.”  She was aware of Eikin getting up and standing over her, looking down at the uncertain flame that was licking along the moss and twigs.  “It will be cold for a while, until it can be built up.  Mind it.”“Where are you going?” she asked mechanically.“To the wood,” he replied, “to look for dry bracken, to make a bed for you.  Be quiet and mind the fire.”He went, making no more noise than a shadow, and left her alone in the long low room that had once been the centre of a farmhouse, alone in the quiet and the drip-drip of water that came through the thin patches of thatch, and the rush of wind and rain overhead.  The noises, she felt, only added to the depth of the quiet, and to her aching lonesomeness.  She was almost too tired to remember to tend the little flame in front of her, except that it was the only thing to do to stave off the last sharp thrust of loneliness that threatened to break her breastbone.
Plenilune

Margaret took the book, then, but she took Julianna’s hand as well, hard in the grip of her long fingers.  “I will take it, but I will not let you go until you tell me what you mean.  Too often people have slipped by me, leaving me without answers.  Not this time.”She expected Julianna to spook and bolt, and for a moment the girl looked completely abashed by the powerful fingers locking over her wrist.  Julius, linked to her, also started, drawing in a swift breath of surprise or pain.  But she held the beautiful things and would not let them go, no matter how frightened they looked, no matter how beautiful.  Finally Julius moved toward his sister, his hands going out gingerly, steadily, toward the captured hand.“Everything makes a sound,” he said patiently, as if he was speaking to a wild animal.  “And all sound makes a pattern.  Did God not speak, and did not his voice makes the form of things?  The sound of your soul and the sound of the soul of this book make a pattern together.”  His fingertips touched the back of her hand, cold, pressing, begging her to let Julianna go.  “So we know that you are meant to go together.”“You can see that?” Margaret whispered.  She was not sure if she believed him or not.Black-spangled, flushed with lilac-colour, Julius’ eyes turned her.  The fingers worked around hers.  “No, but we can feel it.  We can’t often hear it, but we can often feel it.  Madam—”  His voice grew audibly pained, and Margaret suddenly let fly her fingers, letting go of the brittle wrist.  Margaret took a step back, feeling the wings of the darkness fold about her shoulders.  Concerned, shy, pale-lit things, the twins watched her from the doorways of their bedrooms.  “My world is flat,” she said at last.  “My world is flat like a pan overtop of hell.  We don’t believe such things.”“You are only blind,” said Julianna, as if that was a comfort.  “Those who have eyes to see can see.”Where had she heard those words before…?  “But I am not blind.  I keep waiting for the end of your world to come up but it keeps curving on toward the sunrise and I do not know if I can take the roundness of it, nor what the sun keeps showing up.  You live in an awful world,” she said huskily.  “How can you bear the spice of it?”“It runs in our veins,” said Julius simply.  Then he added, “Yours will empty into ours.”She stared at him, almost beyond wanting to understand, yet that tenacious germ of human spirit drove her inexorably on, on toward the blinding sunrise.  “I think yours must empty into mine, young sir, but either way I will die.” 

The Fierceness of Defending Life

After a long day of working on Plenilune and trying to catch up to a massive amount of work-related papers in the office, I came back home this afternoon, hunkered down at the computer, cranked up Breaking the Yearlings, and wrote another spin-off piece for Plenilune, just for the fun of it and because I've felt a little clogged lately.  It seems like spin-offs may happen at odd intervals in the future (and past) so I will probably begin tagging them "Memoirs of Plenilune."  Just so you know.  A place for everything and everything in its place, as the saying goes.  Enjoy!  It's all you're going to get until the next snippets session. Heh heh heh.

* * * * *
It was the end of the summer of my tenth year.  I had nearly caught a falcon’s baby, but had let it go to save my own hide; I had bartered chicken eggs for three small red stones that glowed like sun-fire when the day is late; and I had been with my family as far as Helming Side where, the farmers there told me, they could still plough up old boots from the war.  A farmer showed me one, loam-eaten, rattling with someone’s foot-bones still in it and the laces grown stiff with dirt.It had been a good summer.  I leaned back on my low rock, digging my toes into the thick mossy carpet of the glen, watching while our piebald destrier Gavrielle splashed her forehooves in the stream and took a deep, long drink.  I had already been in: the day’s dust was washed off me and I had mostly dried in the patchy, late light that filtered through the leaves, and now I sat with my trousers and tunic sticking to my hide in uncomfortable places, my soul easy and full within me.  If I turned round I could see, over the top of the glen, through the crooked alder trunks, the smudge of blue on the peregrine-blue sky that was smoke trailing from our cooking-fire.  The smell of it hung thinly in the air and tickled my nose.  There would be a whole grouse for supper tonight, stuffed with cranberries.  My stomach, which had not been filled since morning, tried to get out and roll its way back to the cart-house.  I did not turn round.  I lazed in the old summer twilight, one eye on Gavrielle while she had her fun, to be sure she did not go off and have too much fun, and I thought about—I do not know what: odd, lazy things which were each hugely important, like the three red stones and the falcon’s baby.  Maybe I would catch one next year and train it, and sell it to some rich lady—or, better yet, barter myself and my fledgling into some land-owner’s mews and make something of myself.  I thought about that until it seemed it had really happened and the glen became confused with the rich scenery of a hunt, lazy with the end of summer, full of lords and ladies and the jewelled shadows of their laughter…I came to with a start.  Gavrielle had cried out sharply, smashing my shallow dozing with the power of one of her dish-sized hooves.  In a flash I was up, flinging the sleep from my eyes, but before I could see clearly what the matter was, a pain exploded across my face, digging into my right brow and spilling blood in my eye.  I went down on one knee, my fist in the moss, stomach clenched as I got a handle on the pain.  One thing came clearly to me through the swelter of red and rawness: I needed to get to Gavrielle.  Stumbling up, blinking with one blind eye and looking out of the other, I saw a group of boys not much older than myself ringed round my big mare, teasing her with stones.  She was a placid, amiable girl, used to taking the rough play of children, but the stones were something new.  We had never struck her and rarely ever chided her.  She was the throbbing heart and soul of my family.  Without her there would be no cart-house, no wandering and bartering, no livelihood at all.  She was everything, and as the blood filled one eye and the sight of her being tormented filled the other, a dark, thick shadow fell over my mind and my heart seemed to well up, thick with blood, into my throat.  I hit the boy who had flung the rock at me.  I hit him wildly, hard, heedless of the pain that shot jaggedly up my arm.  He was big and only staggered back a little, surprised, but already I had hurtled myself at the next, thrusting myself like a spear into the side of their ring, wedging and wrenching them apart.  Gavrielle was squealing and wheeking in confusion, kicking out in fits and starts, half-heartedly, not knowing if she should fight for herself or if, even now, it was forbidden to strike a human being.  The boys began to realize that I meant business.  Several of them ranged across the stream to keep Gavrielle from running off, but the rest converged on me.  I did not see them very clearly.  My right brow was beginning to swell and I kept my lid closed lest the blood sting in my eye, and anyway we were all moving so quickly that I am not sure I would have seen them clearly even with two sound eyes in my head.  I hit and kicked and swore deliberately, my teeth set, until the biggest boy, some eight years my senior, put me in the stream on my backside with what felt like a broken collar-bone.The cold water brought me to my senses.  Then, before I could feel the pain or think what next to do, a sound ripped through the glen: a falcon’s scream, full and golden and enraged.  Falcons never keep so close to humans, brawling or otherwise: we all whirled and looked up.In the low saddle-top of the glen with the darkening eastern sky breaking through the trees behind them, the late light falling on bridle-bit and signet-ring, were the three young lords of the Mares.  I had never seen them before, but that did not matter: they were unmistakable.  The eldest was not over twenty years old, the other two ranged close behind him, but already they bore the fierce, cool, supercilious stamp on their faces of undisputable lordship.  They sat their horses deftly, easily—I had the impression that they were woven into the fabric of the ground under their feet and that, if they moved, the loam and moss and glen-wall would uproot with them.Badger’s horse, catching Gavrielle’s distress, flung up its head and snorted.His falcon-scream dying into the twilight, his eyes full of a gently veiled, latent energy, Goddgofang, the eldest, looked down on us all, gaze landing lightly on us one by one, hesitating, hovering, measuring: when their cold blue shimmer fell on me I felt something ache inside my chest, a sudden longing after the beautiful summer that lay long and broken at my back: it seemed to slip out of my hands so that I would never have it again—it seemed to recede into the young man’s eyes and hide there.“I mislike the odds of this fight.”  His voice was low, gentle, musing, and as yet held no mockery.  “What are the stakes?”No one spoke.  I dared not look round nor break my gaze from that terrible face, but I felt as one might feel the laced whispering of tree-leaves how the other boys were worrying among themselves, catching the scent of each other’s distress, hunting for a way to break out of a fight which had suddenly become too hot for them.  But I caught a little movement to one side of Goddgofang and found Bruin had turned his head a fraction and looked down on me, a touch of smile on his lips, a fairness and a gentleness about his face which was oddly more like a woman’s than anything else.  I realized then that they had been there for the whole thing.  They knew who had started what, and Bruin was laughing at me for not stumbling up and blurting out who was at fault.  Goddgofang twisted in the saddle, fetching a look back at his brother.  “Nigh on a baker’s dozen boys against a gypsy’s pup and a big old girl-horse.  I mislike the odds.  You?”Badger’s face became bright and playful.  “I mislike them too.  Dost think we even them?”“Thin them, rather,” replied Goddgofang ominously.  With an imperceptible gesture he turned his horse a little and the late light clanged off the polished head of his sword.  I wished I could scrub the blood out of my eye to see better, but I did not dare move.  I wished I could go to Gavrielle’s side and hush her, for she was in a bad state and sobbing softly, but I did not dare move.  Bruin spoke up for the first time.  His voice was like his face, like his soundless laughter: gentle and light, as mocking as Goddgofang’s was serious.  It was weirdly beautiful, like the haunting spell of a dream that you know will shape your life forever.  “Nay, we overset the odds.  What are stones against gentlemen’s swords?  Come down, Goddgofang: give them a fist in the teeth.  ‘Twill suit me better.”And Goddgofang swung down, tossing his horse’s reins back to Badger, who was also laughing in that shining, soundless way.  I could look then: the faces of the boys were very white.  They had been worried enough before: the sight of Goddgofang, brilliant in the evening light with the dark plumage of his hair made rich with slumbering gold, his pale eyes alight over his aquiline nose and despotic mouth, striding down the slope to meet them while he stripped the glove off his right hand made them realize the man was serious.  I was scared too, more scared than I had ever been in my life, but at the same time a ruthless fluttering was beginning where my heart should have been, glad beyond all measure of gladness.  “Sir—” began the biggest boy, starting back and dropping the rock which he had forgotten was in his hand.  “Sir, I can’t—we’ll go—we can’t—you’re a land-owner—!”“ ‘Twill suit me better, too!” cried Goddgofang happily.  He flung his glove into the moss.  “Art Magnus’ boy?  Your brother takes after him better.  I rode with him last autumn to the University.  I would stake my ring that I would never find him hurling stones at a cart-horse and a gypsy.”  His voice dropped and seemed, like a fist, to reach across and take the boy by the throat.  “ ‘Tis churlish work, and never a man’s.  Yet you are but young: show me your mettle—if you dare.”I hated that boy, but as I watched him take the full blame for them all and stand up mute and white under Goddgofang’s falcon-gaze, without a single waver, I almost loved him; especially when he said, after a long moment and a swallow, “It’s not my place to strike at you, sir, but yours to strike at me.”Just in time I caught the look that passed between Badger and Bruin, a little nod, a little flick of approving brow, before I was drawn back to Goddgofang.  He, too, stood a moment in silence, then he put out his bare hand, long and lean and scarred already with the fierceness of defending life, and set it heavily on the boy’s shoulder.  “There is not room for boyhood in life, young sir,” he said grimly.  “Harken to that.  Nor is there room in the Mares for men of mean spirit.  Harken to that, too, and remember that the gypsies are always welcome to us as spice is welcome to life.”It seemed the boy could finally look away, for he dropped his eyes and blinked—as if waking from an awful dream—and said, “Yes, sir.”How easily one forgets how young these young men are!  Wordlessly Goddgofang took back his hand and seemed to release them all with a mere thought, with an odd little pulse of his presence, for after murmured obeisance the boys seemed to melt into the dusk.  The sounds of their going rustled in the wind and the wood until it was only the stream again, clattering away, and the uneasy churn of Gavrielle’s hooves on the stream-bed.I actually wished they had forgot me altogether.  I knew Bruin would not, but Goddgofang looked, for a moment, as if he had, staring up into the crest of the trees at the foot of the glen, listening with a strange intensity to—something, something just out of my reach.  But then he seemed to let it go and he swung round, stabbing his eyes into mine.  “You’re a fool,” he said warmly, coming to the stream-side and putting out a hand to fetch me up, “but a strong-hearted fool with a full-blooded heart.”His hand closing over mine was a dreadful thing.  I felt the roughness of it, the power of it, and under the scored palm I felt a pulse that reminded me of plum-coloured evenings much like this one and the sort of power one only hears about in fire-coloured stories.  I realized I had only just begun to be afraid.“Ship-ship,” whistled Badger, who had got down and was approaching Gavrielle.  “There’s a good girl…”An inexplicable anguish seemed to break open inside me.  “You needn’t have bothered,” I said, hoping I did not sound ungrateful and not fully aware of what I was saying.  “I would have managed.  I am sorry, for I did not mean to cause a fight.  I know that—”His hand came down on my shoulder.  The heaviness of it shocked all through me—but the curious thing was that the grinding pain of my broken collar-bone suddenly, inexplicably, ceased.  “What do you know of us?” he asked, and there was no mockery in his voice.  I swallowed.  Once again I felt my beautiful summer losing itself in a kind of black misery.“When the robin can fly as high as the falcon, then he may understand the high winds that tease at his wings.  Until then, best let the falcon plot his own course.”“ ‘Twas not for me?” I asked blindly around a lump in my throat.  Then I shook my head, beginning to see a little more clearly through my misery.  “But the robin can’t see whole things as the falcon can.”“No, it can’t.  It flies too low.  But it was partly for you.”  The laughter came back into his voice.  “Partly because I can’t stand to see a decent mare scared out of her wits.  How is our cousin?”He turned from me to Badger, who had fished Gavrielle out of the stream and was looking her over thoroughly and gently.  I went to her then, dragging Goddgofang’s shadow with me as if his hand still clutched my shoulder; I put my arms around the mare’s muzzle with its old-woman whiskers and snuffled reassuringly into her nostrils.  She huffed and sneezed contentedly.“She seems right as rain,” said Badger, getting up off his heels and stepping away from her bulk.  He skritched her flank—just where she liked to be skritched.  “She has a few wounds but nothing deep, nothing that needs more than cleaning and bandaging and a few days free of road-dust.”  He looked significantly at Goddgofang and Bruin, who was holding all three horses at the foot of the slope.Goddgofang’s lips curled and the late light caught on his dog-teeth, sparking ivory.  “The north pasture would do, I am thinking.  It is very quiet up there.”“I am thinking that, too,” said Badger.The eldest of the three young lords of the Mares turned to me.  “Well, sirrah,” he said mockingly, “are our walls too thick for you, or would you honour us with the shadow of your gaudy cart-wheels for as long as your mare needs rest?”I could hardly speak, but somehow I managed it.  “Yours the honour, sir!” I gasped.  “We are the least of your servants.”“The bloodiest,” he said, “but, I think, not the least.”  He nodded to Badger.  “Best tell the young master’s family where to find him and bring them hither.  Bruin and I will gentle them back home.”Somehow I found myself walking by Gavrielle through the mellow twilit wood, back across rolling pastureland toward a big old house full of lights, the shadowy shapes of Goddgofang and Bruin of the Mares jinking and drumming before me.  One of them—I think it must have been Bruin, judging from the pitch of it—began humming a song as we went.  It was a road song.  A gypsy song.It was the end of the summer of my tenth year.   It had been a good summer.