Colin P. Druce-McFadden's Blog

Hardcovers are here!

After months of work, trials both met and failed, and many a customer service representative, I finally have them in my hands! The limited edition, numbered and signed first run of books are in the process of being addressed to and sent out. What an exciting day!

"The Unshorn Thread" - Now Available!

This is a world in which gods and mortals meet. It is a place in which Faerie Stories and Tall Tales are true. It is a place where every god ever prayed to spoke back, and every demon ever feared stalked through the darkness, creeping ever closer to their unwitting victims.

The first book of the Tales Misforgotten trilogy: The Unshorn Thread is now available in the Amazon Kindle Store! The price is set at just $2.99, and the book is also available for free borrowing through the Amazon Prime Lending Library program.

Update: Paperback copies of The Unshorn Thread are now available on Amazon.com! Copies cost a paltry $12.99 each, so get 'em while they're hot!

The Unshorn Thread, part one of the Tales Misforgotten trilogy, is a tale of Merlin and his charge Arthur, the boy who would be king. Though their tale may seem familiar, The Unshorn Thread guides us quickly down unmarked paths and into new surroundings. Through the lens of Merlin and Arthur, we are told stories which span millennia — from Ancient Greece to the Steampunk future of American Reconstruction in the 1870s.

Want to know more about the book before buying your copy? Read the first chapter Here!

Want even more free content? Check out the short stories "Eyes" and "The Night Before"! Each of these leads up to the very beginning of The Unshorn Thread and is hosted here exclusively. They won't even be appearing in the book!

Flight Rising Short Story

I've got another small project to share with you today as the final editing and formatting process for The Unshorn Thread continues. I wrote this one in celebration of a friend's video game project: Flight Rising. The game has been in development for quite a while and looks both fun  and dazzlingly beautiful. The game is based on the raising of your own flight of dragons. The lore of the game is also fairly layered and interesting. There are a number of dragon deities for instance. It is this group of deities that inspired me to write my little story "The Discordant Assemblage". The story is told as a series of vignettes, each of which showcases a different one of these dragon gods.  All images used in this post are original work, done by members of the Flight Rising team. Here's a link if you'd like more info on Flight Rising.
And here's my homage to the hard work of the Flight Rising Team:
The Discordant Assemblage
The Tidelord awoke with a start. His eyes darted about in the silty murk. Something was amiss upon the current. He could not place a talon upon precisely what it was, and this disconcerted him. As always he had this day kept a weather eye upon the shiftings of the sands and the tugging of the innumerable tidal eddies that whispered of events both past and yet to be. He had not slept long. Yet now, at his waking, it was as if all the sea had gone wild. The sands bubbled and frothed as if dredging themselves for plunder. The eddies, rather than winding their own paths across the sea, pulled and pushed in unison like the beating of a drowned heart.             It unsettled him. So attuned was The Tidelord to the whispers of the sea that little ever happened below the waves which he had not expected. Yet here, before his very snout and everywhere else he could sense, was an event he had not foretold. A shiver ran across his gills, enticing him to stand. He did so rapidly, violently churning up the waters of the cave he had selected to bed down within for the afternoon. Silt spun and coursed about the tight space, obscuring The Tidelord’s view of the sea. Flecks of gold dust and mother of pearl whirled about before his eyes. Their properties as conductors of the wisdom of the sea had been what had drawn him to this resting place, yet now — even flung before his all-gleaning eyes — they remained silent.            The Tidelord roared with the indignity of their silence. His voice buffeted about the cave and went pulsing out across the sea. His eyes shone a fierce cobalt blue, lending his gaze the ability to cut through the silt and the muck which bubbled up from the seabed. With one mighty stroke of his wings, he swam free of the cave, and there beheld yet another unnerving sight. All along the seabed, erupting from beneath the shifting sands, were hundreds of lost treasures. In his immediate vicinity, the Tidelord could see an exquisite marble statue, a cache of very large and pearl-pregnant oysters and even the scrying glass he had known to be hidden somewhere in these sands. Yet none of it mattered. The plunder and prophetic tales that it would speak to him was as nothing to the pulsing sway of the sea herself. He needed to know what was going on, needed to glean what sort of force might be at work upon the fabric of his realm. For that he would need focus, would need the deep knowledge. He would have to seek the place which his flights dared not enter. He would need to delve down, down and down again to the vents of the chasm-floor. He would need to breathe in their sulfuric vapors and scratch away at their molten mouths. Only then would the sea tell him truly what had stricken her. Another beat of his mighty wings and he was off, keening into the deep a warning to those who might lie in his way. The Tidelord was angry, and all other denizens of the sea would do well to be wary this day.

Fussing won’t do now, fussing won’t do. That the shift has already begun must be read as a grand sign. Yes, a grand sign in the affirmative of my actions. Nothing to do now but forge ahead — where did I leave that tome? It’s all fine and good, fine and good. As long as I didn’t misread anything. Oh where is that infernal book? Well. It’s likely fine. I’ll... wing it. I’m sure I remember the timing of the next bit. Yes, I’m sure of it.

            It tore at him, the strange migratory feeling. The caves of his brethren were perfect, had stood perfect for millennia. There was no place better, and The Earthshaker knew it... and yet. Yet here it was, this strange itching beneath his stone skin, impossible to nurse and ever growing. He swapped corners of the great hall, one for the next, yet nothing provided comfort. A sigh like an avalanche rumbled up from his belly.         He had never felt this way before. Even during the long-lost years of his youth, The Earthshaker had dug in, had preferred to gain the most intimate knowledge of every stone and gem in the labyrinthine mine below the great hall. Rather that than seeking a shortened life out in the wild and untamed world beyond the shrine of the Pillar. And yet...            But no, for now he had hit upon it in earnest. The Pillar of the World was his to guard, and his alone. He gazed along the grand court of Dragonhome, finding in an instant the beatific shape of the Pillar. ‘What would mother say?’ he mused to himself, smiling at the thought. He had not remembered his mother for aeons, and yet here she was upon his mind. ‘Truly this feeling of unsettledness must be a horrendous notion to evoke her memory,’ he thought. What would The Earthmother say to this wanton disregard for home and hearth and duty? ‘I must have grown too long in the moss to even entertain the idea,’ he assured himself.
            And yet... here he stood: the final guard of all the first. Mother had gone, and the rest of his brood as well. The second breed was naught to those of his ilk, and they could no more defend the Pillar than they could cease squabbling amongst their own flight. Yet had it not been the way of the first brood to sojourn in their centuries after their weaning from The Earthmother? And had The Earthshaker not foregone this rite, the better to know the Pillar and its locale? He shifted his great weight once more, finding no relief.            It tugged at him, this unknown commodity, which he had so recently purchased at the cost of his own solace. ‘The Pillar has stood since time immemorial,’ it whispered to him. ‘It can stand alone for what scant few hours you leave it.’            “I cannot abandon the Pillar!” he said aloud, his cavernous and ill-practiced voice caroming across the great hall. He expelled a dry and haughty sigh, letting his massive head thunder down against the floor of the hall, the impact of this adding to the echoes of his voice which could now be heard reverberating like a tidal surge against the stalactites and endless causeways of the caverns below his chamber. He listened as the sound slowly began to die away, listened for the silence that cohabitated with him, which defined his natural environ.             Yet the silence did not come. If anything the surging sound that he had taken for echo seemed to be growing. Had his voice awakened some denizen of the deep caverns? He knew of no creature which dwelled in the earth which made such a sound. And he knew every denizen of the under-earth by name and voice. The Earthshaker listened closer. ‘What is this new sound?’ he wondered. ‘First I am gripped by a sensation both alien to my nature and my way of living, and now the unknown rises to greet me from the very place I know best in the world? It is a strange day indeed.’The thought suddenly struck him that the exploration of his own labyrinthine den would not necessitate his leaving the Pillar unattended, that it might too provide the discovery and movement his stony frame itched to take up. The Earthshaker stood. He sounded his intent to whatever it was that rumbled and tumbled and swelled in the deep places of the earth. “The Earthshaker comes!” he bellowed. “Let all that lurk in the deep places of the earth kowtow to their lord, for I am among them this day!” A smile cracked across his cheek, and The Earthshaker delved into the darkness, his eyes smoldering with a glee he had not felt in many an age.
And yet... was it not all too convenient? Did this new sound, this new presence, not precisely fulfill the need which had so nearly taken The Earthshaker from his all-too-important post? The Earthshaker mused on this as he rumbled down and down into the earth. He could not help but feel as if he had forgotten something, something ancient and important. Very, very important...

Ah, here it is! No... no that is a lovely tome but not the right one. A pity. There are ever so many interesting scrawlings in that one. That last bit went less smoothly than I thought it would. But then, this is a very volatile — no, I’ll say exciting — a very exciting bit of work. I doubt anyone’s truly completed it in the last thousand years. Oh! What a charming thought. To be the first in a millennium! Oh, they’ll envy me from the four corners of the realm... that is if I pull it off. I’ll go from my notes until I find the damn book. There aren’t many places left to look after all! Let’s see here... Oh. This bit is simple as catching a canary and baking it in a pie! Notes will suffice for this! Oh, it’ll be fine! I do wish I’d written anything about the following step though. I’ve plum forgotten all about the specifics. Oh well... spilt milk, and not worth crying over the death of the cow, as they say. Do they say that? Well, something like it anyway...

“Something is wrong in The Green,” thought The Gladekeeper. “There is a tinny taste to the soil and a fell damp to the air.” It left a lingering flavor in the veins of her roots, one she did not deign nourishing. She expelled three short bursts of spore from her uppermost branches, sending the little bits of life out to see what there was to be caught along the breezes. They would return shortly with news of the air and the sky. The Gladekeeper would not be idle as she awaited their return. She walked silently to the banks of The Source. Tiny aromatic bubbles rose from the depths of the well, releasing long-captured nutrients back into The Green. The Gladekeeper dipped her toes into The Source, allowing her claws to sink deep into the silty bank. Her roots stretched down and down into the fertile soil. Here there was no tinny corruption, and here she could see far into the earth’s deep heart. Her roots wound and gathered the deep nutrients of The Source. Images poured into her mind.In the past these visions would be of growth and of green, sapling and sage. Today, however, there were images of fracture and of fault, of heat unwanted and of blade. Her closed eyes darted about beneath the bark of her eyelids. One image seemed to surface most frequently. It was a storm without rain, a tremor without impetus. The Gladekeeper held this image in her mind as she drank from the deep water. Upon her shoulder, just above the waterline, began to grow a new stalk. It was warped and stretched, and gleamed with odd colors as it grew. A leaf, and then another unfurled from the twisted thing. They were deepest purple and orange like fire, and they singed her skin as they grew. A bud and then a flower popped up from between the leaves. The orchid opened its petals: long, stringy cords of maroon velvet. They were speckled with black and orange spots which seemed to engulf one another as they grew. The orchid’s maw was a wretched, stinking wound of a thing, bubbling forth with sulfuric pollen. The Gladekeeper took a single look at the thing and sheared it from her shoulder. The flower burnt to ash before it could find the ground. Seeing this last ill omen, The Gladekeeper dredged herself up from the waters of The Source. She stood straight and tall, calling back to her the spores which she had loosed moments before. They returned to her in an instant, bringing with them the scent of discord in the southern straits. She would have to leave The Green to see to this threat. And so she began the complex task of exiting her home. It would grow without her presence within its green heart, but there would be much tending to do upon her return. The maintaining of the Viridian Labyrinth was an ever-constant task, and the flights would begin to become isolated from water and sky and earth if she was gone too long, such was the crush of The Green. The forest parted for her as she went, hungrily eating up the path again behind her.

Ah! Here it is! The tome of The Sealshatterer! What a fine find it was, hidden in that stormy desert of a wasted plane. I veritably rescued it from an instantaneous destruction at the hand of those bothersome storms, and look at what it does for me in return! I shall be remembered by the flights of every realm for this. I shall shape the lands to my liking and reap their hidden bounty far more completely than even the first of our pristine order! And here at last I begin to be able to see the fruits of my labors. Now let’s see... AH!   “Let the strait boil and the earth rise. Let the glades putrefy and the sky flow red with fiery aether! En Phobos annum, Aequitas et olethron!”   Oh my! Oh, that IS tantalizing! I can feel it upon the back of my neck. The gravity of the starry sky draws great. It shall be soon! I wonder if I have tome to scrounge up a snack. Oh, that would make the moment perfect... what’s in the larder?

“Sir, we’ve got a net loss in sector beta-niner, please advise.”“Beta what?!”“B9. Someone took our stuff in grid B9... sir.”“Honestly, Stephens, I don’t know why I went and designed an alphanumeric grid if you’re just going to mess with the names, and did you seriously just say ‘niner’ in groupchat?” “Sorry sir, but I really think...”“And that’s another thing, Stephens: I have like... the coolest name ever and you’re just gonna call me ‘sir’? What kind of a wasted opportunity is that? Ok now try your alert again in proper procedure. We’ve had this chat system up for like... a week now. You gotta get used to doing it right or you’re gonna suck all the awesome out of it.”“Ok, ok! Agent Stephens to Stormcatcher! We have a confirmed loss of archaic assets in grid... B9.”“You sunk my battleship!”“See... I knew! I knew you were gonna do that!”“Hahahaha! Point for Stormcatcher!”“Dude! Can you just pull up your map and look at what grid I’m reporting? For like a minute?”“Stephens, your new code name is killjoy. Now seriously what can be so... aww, $#! . You said B9, didn’t you.”“Yeah, beta-niner.”“Ohmygod! Dude! This is so not the time to screw around! Do you know what we were keeping in grid B9?!”“Um, yeah. That’s why I called it in. Way bigger deal than the crackers Gregory’s been pilfering from the pantry, you know?”“He’s been WHAT?!”“Sir, er, Stormcatcher. Grid B9!”“Okokok. Ugh. The thing is I know of one and only one %#@&-bird who would take my junk! I hate that guy! Ok, seriously, now that I think about it, I really am pissed. I was gonna figure out how to read that thing one of these centuries. It was on my list... right after... ‘duct tape Plaguebringer to Flamecaller for the hell of it’. See? I was practically doing this already! Ok, where’s that new doo-hickey I was messing with earlier? Grab me a lightning rod and a copper coil from the cellars. It’s boom-stick time!”

Oh. My. We still have Rambra loin in here. Score one for papa Arcanist! Ok, now back to the show. I can already hear the magnetosphere sundering. I wish I had fire breath. Flamecaller gets all the convenience abilities. Oh well. Raw Rambra loin it is. Time for a bit of geoscrying to see how the core elements are doing. With luck they’ll have risen another thousand feet.

Hello. What’s this? Wow, is that ever a power spike. And it has a sort of a rhythmic pulse to it. Could it be alive? Wow, I wonder if I woke something up from way down there. If I did, and if it’s angry, whatever flights are down there are in for a world of hurt. Geez, it’s still rising! As if the thing is... wait. Swapping to perpendicular swipes at the scrying glass might... no! He never leaves home! How the... but that would leave the Pillar unguarded. And that would be entirely interesting if I wasn’t doing something ridiculously important! Why would The Earthshaker be here? Ugh. He’ll be here to mess with my magicks, I just know it. Good thing he’s the... oh, COME ON!”

The water was too warm, even for the surface. The Tidelord did not like others disturbing his domain, especially those who did not come close enough for him to eat them in retribution. He burst forth from the sea, carrying with him a torrent of whitewater. The sky above the waves glowed a deep and lustrous violet. The Tidelord was not sure, but this struck him as irregular. Circular arcs of cloud wove in and out of one another, whirling in concentric arcs above his head. In their center was visible something that looked like a very large or very close star. This he knew was wrong. As he began to crash back to the sea, he spotted the offender. High amongst the clouds, sitting upon a floating bit of earth, was The Arcanist, a scrying sphere in his claws.Just before he sank back into the sea, The Tidelord let out a piercing scream. So directed and violent was it, that the last thing The Tidelord saw before he was back in the world below the waves was the shattering of The Arcanist’s sphere. The Tidelord circled about, hoping that his first volley had enraged the interloper enough to incite a frontal attack. He welcomed the challenge.

That crazy buffoon! Now how am I to control the impacts? Oh, I hate him.

 — “I hate you, do you hear me?!”
The Earthshaker emerged from the newfound exit of his labyrinthine cave to a sight like nothing he had beheld before. The waves of the northern channel swirled and bubbled, and beneath them could be seen the leathery wings of The Tidelord. Above he could see the wiry frame of The Arcanist, shaking his frail fists in what appeared to be a shade of pink anger. This much was no great surprise, but the rest of the atmosphere was worrisome. The Pillar of the World gave of radiating waves of energy, the pulse of the earth he had come to call it, but the air here was crisp with a dangerous current, as if the very air might explode at any moment.  There was a sense of earth here too, but not the true earth. It was a foreign earth and carried with it a deadly rumbling. The Earthshaker looked up to the heavens, searching for the source. The thing that he saw was like to the harbinger of the end days: a giant whirling, burning mountain of immense density and destructive power. It was just like the stone that had brought about the end of the first age, Phobos. But Phobos had already fallen, there was no way that it could be called from the heavens again... and yet...‘If that truly is Phobos, I must stop this madness,’ The Earthshaker thought to himself. ‘But what can I do, here upon the shore and so far below the fall of the end-bringing stone?
The Gladekeeper stepped lightly out from the edge of the Viridian Labyrinth. She had known what it was she would behold since her spores had told her, but to truly behold such an unnatural, wicked happening as this... it took her aback to see. The Arcanist was at fault here, she knew that, and so she found him out at once. He was floating high above the earth, upon a mountain in the sky. Her eyes glowed bright and she began to shape her leaves for flight. She would eat The Arcanist this day and rid the world of his blighted unnatural existence once and for all. Just as she had prepped her leaves, widening and strengthening them, for flight, a voice stammered to life beside her.“E-excuse me, ma’am,” it said. “I have never spoken to another such as I, and I can sense that you are somehow altered in form from myself, yet you may be nigh as ancient a being as myself. In the spirit of whatever kindred nature there lies between us, I ask you for your aid.”“Did... you just call me ancient?” The Gladekeeper knew she was a great and well-cultivated being, but to be called ancient was overstepping a bit, she thought.When she turned to behold the creature that beheld her, she was shocked to have to crane her neck upward. Nothing living, save for the Viridian Mother-tree of The Green, stood taller than herself. And yet this creature, this stonework dragon-god stood a good thirty feet taller than she.“You...” she gasped, “you must be The Earthshaker, the oldest of our ilk. Yet I was ever told that none had ever seen you leave your throne beside the Pillar of the World. What is it that you are doing here?”“I am indeed The Earthshaker,” he replied, “and I would ask you the favor of delaying your assault upon The Arcanist a moment — that is what you were planning on doing, is it not?”“It is,” she replied, “and believe me, there is no creature more in need of my wrath this day.”“I agree with you,” rumbled the voice of The Earthshaker, “but if you turn your eyes skyward, you shall see that he has somehow conjured or created the Phobos stone high in the sky. I believe he wishes to destroy this place, or at least to rip it asunder for some private reason of his own. I believe I can stop this event, but I would need to commune with Phobos directly, and for that I shall need to be closer.”“You do not expect me to carry you upon my back into the heavens, do you?” asked The Gladekeeper.“I do not know if that is within your power,” said The Earthshaker, “but I must commune with Phobos. What solution can you give me?”The Gladekeeper thought for a moment. Then, digging her roots into the earth, she began a rumbling chanting, her eyes closed in meditation.

Three?! There are three of them down there now?! I didn’t even see the Gladekeeper coming without scrying. I’ll need to mount defenses. Oh, that I still had my scrying sphere. I hate that Tidelord, I hate him! Well... what’s done is done. What other manner of defenses can I mount?

“Lightning PUNCH!”

Ow! What the hellfire was —

“Lightning PUNCH! Oh, that was epic! I floored him! Stephens, log the Lighting Extendo-Gloves as officially awesome in the ledgers.”“Sir, that’s not the official shorthand for...”“Dude — buzzkill — write the word awesome in the ledger, ok? I just totally bushwhacked The Arcanist. I think he’s out cold! These things OWN!”“Affirmative, sir.”“What did you just call me?”“Uh... Affirmative... your holy lordship?”“Did you for reals forget my name again?!”“Oh! Nope. Nope, I did not.”“buzzkill... what’s my name, B%#&@?”“Sigh... Stormcatcher.”“YEAH it is! Hells yeah! Now where’s my stolen bookie-wook?”
Root and vine rose like massive arms from the earth. The roots grew and grew until they were as strong as steel and as wide as the Pillar of the World itself. Vine wrapped and knotted and braided its way about the roots, forming a grand and elastic mesh. When the mesh was complete, The Gladekeeper motioned for The Earthshaker to get in. Then, with all her might she stretched the vines to their utmost and flung the great stone dragon-god into the sky.‘I wonder if he’ll shatter upon impact,’ she thought. ‘Ah well, it serves him right for calling me ancient. Why, in the wide world of adjectives, he went with ancient is beyond me. Seasoned maybe, or primal... venerable even.’ She did not wait to see the impact.
The Earthshaker realized quickly the folly of his plan. He had neglected to tell The Gladekeeper how close he had needed to get, and so she, likely out of an over-abundance of care, had shot him directly at the Phobos stone. Communing would take a few minutes, after which he would be able to impose his will upon the stone. Rock was rock, after all, no matter how foreign. This was all a moot point, however, for he would collide with Phobos far before he would be able to commune with the stone. This left him with one decidedly indelicate way of dealing with the Phobos stone. He lowered his head, and gritted his marble teeth. This was likely going to smart.The impact was violent beyond his reckoning. For a moment he felt as if he had been the one to shatter. The sensation of rock crumbling away against his limbs and head was like being ripped apart. Phobos was one hell of a dense stone.When The Earthshaker emerged from the far side of Phobos he was whole, but delirious. He had chipped here and there, but the  end-bringer was shattered. As he fell back to earth, The Earthshaker smiled, and then promptly lost consciousness.
He awoke drenched in saltwater. Beside him upon the land stood The Tidelord. A hissing, drowned voice greeted his still-pounding ears. “Thisss once the ssssea has risen to sssave the earth,” said The Tidelord. “Recompensssse has been paid. If the earth or its treasures descend into the depthsss again, the ssssea shall sssswallow them whole. The earth hasss been warned.”
The Arcanist awoke alone upon his floating isle. The sky was clear and the stone was gone from the heavens. His scrying globe lay in pieces, the tome was gone, and he had a raging headache. His place in eternal memory, it seemed, had been stolen away this day.‘There are many more books,’ he consoled himself, ‘and many days yet before the end-times to make my mark.’He would return to the watchtower for the day, bury his nose in another tome for the night, and rise again on the indigo wings of knowledge in the morning.
The End

The Unshorn Thread, Chapter 1 (Full)

Hi again, folks! It's finally Kickstarter time! Which means that this is the post I've been waiting to share with you. Without further ado, I give you Chapter 1 of The Unshorn Thread, Book 1 of the Tales Misforgotten trilogy:

Chapter 1: Wart

        At the edge of the grounds of Castle Ektor, named after its self-titled Lord, there sat a tiny shamble of a thatched cottage. This was the dwelling of Bedwyn, the groundskeeper of the tower-house turned manor. It was also home to Bartholomew, Bedwyn’s fat and fluffy feline friend, as well as a young whelp of a lad named Wart.        Late on the night of the spring snowstorm Wart lay in bed, his eyes arguing with his mind as to the value of sleep and, for that matter, bed times in general. He had just sat up and was about to go back beside the fire when the thing had come into his room. The air had gone solid and the room had filled with a gripping cold. Had Wart been brave enough he would have drawn the covers over his head, but the very presence of the warped thing at the foot of his bed stopped him. Wart stared into the dark in a vain attempt to fool both himself and whatever this creature was into believing that he knew exactly where it lurked and that he was not afraid. There was no seeing it. Only the deeper darkness at the foot of his bed and the sense of ice forming along his spine told him of the sudden danger in his room. A shambling, splintered figure had slipped through the crack under the door. It was a good foot taller than a man, but nowhere near as solid. A windy shadow of a thing, it hung there between him and his only escape. Wart could hear his heart pounding away against his ear drums. He knew they were red with blood as he felt the cold sweat beading upon his forehead. He thought of how he wanted desperately to run screaming past it and into Bedwyn’s room. He would be safe there. Bedwyn would be able to stop it.        His eyes burned. He had been staring into the blackness, not blinking, for what seemed like forever. He had not dared move for fear of breaking whatever trance held the twisted figure in its place. Then it moved.
        Wart’s eyes were opening before he knew that they had closed. He must have been clamping his eyes shut as tight as they would go, for all Wart could see now was the shadowy after-image of eyes staring back at him in the darkened room. He was on his back, lying against his pillow. The thought that it had been a dream settled into his mind, starting his heart again, allowing him to breathe in. It was a strangely labored breath. Wart wondered if Bartholomew, the groundskeeper’s cat, had slunk under the covers to fall asleep upon his chest.        His eyes were not focusing correctly. The clouds still hung there, just in front of his face.  In fact they were getting darker, and if at all possible, deeper. Wart moved to sit up. His little arms did not budge. An icy hand was wrapped tightly around each of them. Cold sweat began once more to trickle down beside his ears. He choked. There had been no dream. The creature was sitting upon his chest, its crooked legs crouched in a spidery squat. They had not been images of his own eyes that Wart had seen, reflected through sleep, they had been those of the creature. The pressure on his chest had been its cold weight settling upon him, pushing him down. Wart felt as if the mere proximity of the thing was keeping his eyes heavy. It was as if he were fighting to wake from a deep slumber, but he now knew he had not slept a wink. He tried to scream. The sound trembled out of his lips as a shudder, too weak for Bedwyn to hear. The creature's eyes were fixed upon him. It did not move. Its face hung so closely to his that only his weakening breath could pass between them. Its eyes, those dark pits, hung in front of his, staring into him, burrowing into his heart with their icy gaze.        Wart’s heart was trying to escape his chest. The beating was so forceful that he could feel the blood pumping along his veins and into his head and arms, the creature's grip too tight for the blood to pass his elbows. He felt as if he were going to pop from the dizzying pressure. The throbbing of his head seemed to be flowing through the air now, the pain and blood lifting out of his skull and into the caverns that hung before him.  Focusing on the blood in his eyes, Wart could see the foul thing pulling at the strands of his life that flowed towards it. With every strained beat of his heart those winding funnels of ash were swelling, their edges pounding closer and closer to him. It was as if a part of him were being torn away from behind his stomach and being pulled out through his eyes, towards those swollen pits of dark. Wart knew he had only moments left before he could fight no longer. His lungs shook with the strain of rising, desperate to gather their last few scattered and shallow breaths. His head was so filled with blood that his vision had been tinted a dark maroon. Something beneath the skin under his left eye popped and a thin trickle of the vital fluid began a steady crawl down the pale surface of his upper lip.        As it all faded away, Wart thought of Bedwyn. He thought of how Bedwyn cared for him and of how Bedwyn would be left to keep the grounds of Castle Ektor alone without him. He thought of how old and weak Bedwyn was and how the poor man could hardly get through his share of the grounds-work without developing a severe case of the shakes. These thoughts made Wart’s already over-worked heart heavier still. It wasn’t right. Bedwyn was a good man, and his was the only care Wart recieved from the world. The thought of Bedwyn alone was too much for Wart. It just wasn’t fair. He struggled once more against the drain he felt in his stomach. Wart knew he was going to die, but he didn't care. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. He may only have been a groundskeeper’s apprentice for these first seven years of his life, but he was living on the grounds of a tower-house and a defender thereof by default if not by right.  He was young, yes, and weak, but Wart had to fight.  He had to fight for Bedwyn and for Bartholomew and for himself, even if he was going to die. His heart told him so.        It was at that moment that something strange happened.  Wart’s vision cleared, but it was not the wraith that he saw before him, nor was it his room, but another place, and he saw it through different eyes:
        Staring at the collapsed cottage through the bleak world surrounding him, the old man wondered how long he had been standing there. Standing across the lane, he was a good stone's throw from the shrunken cottage. Even with the blades of ice falling like sundered chandeliers between them, he saw every sad detail of it without even a squint of his weathered eyes. Every now and again a tattered wisp of gray flitted before his face. He did not raise a finger to pull the strands of hair back.  He did not stir at all.          Had he been there to see it? He wondered. Had he watched in morbid fascination as the thatch had fallen and the cold death had slid in? Or was it merely too predictable a set of happenings not to have been guessed? The bedpost, barely visible now above the snow, seemed to shout out to him. “Horror! Death!” it cried, and from somewhere deep within him a sigh began to build. It bled out from his stomach and flooded up through his chest, churning the emptiness therein, giving it weight. Passing through his scarcely open lips the sigh hung in the air for a moment, solid and white, before it was carried away by the gale. For a moment he had forgotten the wild winds and the heaping icy siege. Watching his breath dissipate into the falling ice, he noticed that his face stung as if lashed by a thousand stinging nettles. The pain forced his eyes away from the sad, broken home. He wondered again how he had come to be in this place. There was no path to be seen in the snow, no telling dip in its level to discern how he had gotten to this place.  The snow was so flat around him that he, buried up to his knees, tendrils of snow climbing the folds of his cloak, looked more like some warped old oak tree than a man.  It seemed to him that the land had simply forgotten how he had gotten here, and in truth he was inclined to echo it's sentiment on the matter.  He hadn't the slightest idea how he had come to this place of frozen death. In truth, it seemed, he had no solid memories whatsoever. Only shadows and ghosts danced and faded through his mind.        ‘It must be this damnable storm,’ he thought to himself. ‘The cold and the discovery of this sad affair must have jilted me of my faculties,’ he thought, glancing again at the tomb that stood in the darkness ahead of him. ‘Best to take myself away from this place, find somewhere I can regain my senses.’        Turning his eyes away from the ruined home, however, yielded no such refuge. He closed his eyes and stooped his head, and for a moment seemed to admit defeat. His back hunched forward slightly, and masses of tangled, ice-encrusted hair fell beside his face. For a moment he was again motionless, a gnarled mass for the winds to beat against.        A thunderous burst of frozen air swept through the yard, toppling the ice from the signpost, as it had done many times over that night. The small lump of white plopped down upon the old man's foot. The old man's neck creaked as it swung slowly upward toward the sign. Glancing at the language thereupon, the old man's eyes inspected the single word carved into the wood: Myrddin.         A spark skittered across his mind. A small but definite flame appeared behind his eyes, and the man set off, down the hill towards town. The wind billowed across his back, sending icy tendrils of hair ahead of him. They seemed to strain in an attempt to hurry him along whatever path it was he had chosen. Try as they might, however, they could not speed him on his way. His progress was slow, every step seemed heavily weighted. His muscles felt as if they had shrunk with age and lack of use while they had been holding him, rooted to that spot before the cottage. Even so, it would have been hard to make him out a moment later from where the disemboweled cottage stood, a figure fading into the storm as it slunk down the hill.
        Back in his room, Wart breathed deeply. His chest rose, despite the dark weight pressing down upon him. His eyes flew open, the fire of resolution burning behind them. He stared back into those black wells that had so nearly sucked the life from him.        Loosing a piercing scream that sounded as a thousand birds dying the creature pitched backwards, bristling with rage. This sort of resistance to it's witchery it had not known to be possible. One instant, the boy had been nearly dead, drawing his last breath, and the next he was fighting as a man possessed by some great beast. The creature's grip on Wart’s arms loosened.        Knowing his only chance to free himself had arrived, Wart tugged with all his might at his right arm and, to his everlasting joy, it wrenched its way free. At his bedside there was a pewter goblet filled with water. Bedwyn had left it for Wart to drink when he got thirsty in the middle of the night. Wart’s hand reached out desperately for the cup. With an earsplitting howl, the creature raised its left arm to crush Wart’s skull, but the boy acted quicker, bringing the goblet down onto the creature's shoulder with all the force his young arm could give. Water sloshed over the bed.  There was a sound like the crackling of leaves, and the creature's arm gave way, dissipating as it scattered across the bed.        The goblet burned cold in Wart’s hand, forcing him to let it fall clattering to the floor. The creature’s arm was beginning to rustle itself into clumps now. It was going to re-attach itself to the murky well from which it had fallen. Tugging his left arm free, Wart clasped his hands together. Years of torment from Sir Kaye had shown him how to fight those larger than himself. Clenching both his hands together, Wart swung his arms, slamming them into the right side of the creature's head. The sound of leaves came again and the creature lurched sideways off of the bed, unable to catch itself with its damaged arm.        Wart was up like a light, and running to the closed door. The creature, now crumpled on the floor, threw its good arm toward him. It was too long a distance for the thing to have caught him, but just as the creature's fingers stopped short, Wart was gripped ‘round the heart, fingers of cold piercing his chest. His pulse raced. He was slowing down, running through torrents of murk that rushed back towards the broken figure on the floor. The haze was thick around him, but Wart could still see the doorknob ahead. He reached out through the currents of black and grasped it. Turning the knob, Wart heard the creature issue a low and rumbling wail, a final attempt to keep him from escaping its grasp. Wart flung the door open and ran screaming into the hallway, slamming the door back against its hinges as he went.
UPDATE:
        The scene that met Wart’s eyes was one of utter horror. The heavy oaken door that led into the cottage from the cold was dashed to smithereens. Splinters were all that hung from its iron hinges. It looked as if the door had slammed heavily into the chair that sat before the fire. Bedwyn’s chair. Cloth and framework were scattered across the stone floor, mingled with traces of blood. Against the mason-work at the far end of the room was a large red mark. It was thick and wet, and little rivulets of blood were still winding their way down the canals of the rough stonework wall... winding towards a small, crumpled shape lying broken upon the floor. A shape almost too small to have been the old man. Yet it was. Bedwyn was gone. For a moment Wart’s world stood still. There was no feeling left in the world. All was numb. It felt like it must be a wicked prank or some dream from which he would soon wake.         Then the cold returned. Cold from the shattered door, and cold from that which slouched ever closer to Wart from behind. Wart turned to see the thing forcing itself to its full height from beneath the door from his room. It grew in short bursts, each of them sounding like the snapping of tinder. The fight withdrew from Wart's heart. The man of which he had been so sure, his savior, was dead and gone; a battered corpse clotting upon the floor. Tears began to be drawn up from the well in his stomach. Tears of loss, of fear. Tears that told him he could do no more against this evil that had come into his world and destroyed his everything. Wart fell to his knees. What good was being a defender of the castle if there was no good left within it to save? Wart closed his eyes and waited for the thing to grasp him once again.          A a ripple in the cold wind from the door told Wart that someone was in the room with him, someone already standing between him and the vile creature. He would not yet open his eyes, but Wart was sure it was the strange old man he had seen in his mind’s eye. A voice heavy with age, but strong as that of a lord rebounded against the walls of the small cottage. “Your ilk have seen their last, creature! This child is now under the protection of something you cannot revoke with your darkness! Your hate and your hunger are now your own to bear. Sate them, now, as you have made so many others do in your time. Sate them and be undone!”          There was a hideous noise then, a scream like that of many dying birds mingled with the low moan of ancient despair. Then followed a strange and deep crack, as if some great breach had opened in a wall of ice. A ripple of air swept past Wart’s ears and all was still.        “Child? You are safe now little one,” came the voice again, emanating from the world beyond Wart’s shut eyelids — a world Wart was very much trying to deny existed. “Come now,” it insisted, “what good is it to shut out the light after so nearly letting in the dark, eh?” At this Wart began to sob, his chest heaving up and down violently with each breath. It was too much to be reprimanded now, too much by far. Trying to shut out every last inch of the world he now hated, Wart cupped his hands over his ears. If only he could find a way not to breathe, he might not have to take in any of it any longer.        “Haha, well this just won't do, now will it?” the man said. “Up we go.” Wart felt two strong hands scoop him up from under his arms and into the air. A strange and not altogether comforting bristliness met his face, accompanied by a rough cloth, which Wart grabbed ahold of out of some instinct which all children share. They were moving now, out into the storm. Wart had thought the ice and snow would have frozen him to the core instantly, and just as he was about to utter a whimper to that effect, he opened his eyes. The flakes of snow and ice were, it seemed, whirling all about them and landing upon the ground. Few, no none, of them were striking either he or the old man he could now see carrying him. The bristliness had been a long grey beard, stuck here and there with a small twig or a bit of leather. Was it the beard that smelled of sage? Bringing a strand to his nose, Wart thought it must be the bits of leather that did so. It was an odd sort of thing to do, he decided, but not altogether stupid.          Wart glanced over the old man's shoulder at his home, immediately regretting that he had. Thankfully, Bedwyn’s cottage was already being gobbled up by the sheets of snow that still strangely refused to touch Wart or the old man. Wart shuddered and turned his head to rest on the chest of his unexpected guardian, making an even less expected realization as he did so. They were headed towards Castle Ektor! Surely the old man must be heading past the tower-house. Even a weathered transient like him would have heard of the temper of the lord of this land. There was no mistaking it now. The path they were walking was a bee-line, its only possible destination the main gate of the castle. The main gate. Wart had never entered through the main gate before. A small door around and down the rocky foundation was reserved for the servants and grounds-folk.          “We mustn’t,” he blurted out. “Lord Ektor will throw us in the dungeons for it.” Neither their pace nor their direction altered in the slightest. “Sir, please,” Wart said, “I do not wish to see you imprisoned, sir. We mustn’t —”        “Quiet now, child. All is well,” came the quiet reply. Wart didn't know why this calmed him, only that it did. “What’s your name, eh boy?” asked the old man.          “W-Wart,” stammered the boy, “or least-wise that’s what I’ve been called more often than anything else, far back as I can recall.”          “Well Wart, you will soon be warm and safe again. You have my word,” the old man said. Wart kept silent as they crossed the last few feet to the gate.          As they reached the castle there was a scuffling sound from behind the large wooden door. A small porthole opened and a pair of large eyes and an even larger pair of nostrils pressed themselves up to the opening. “What's this then?” the guard asked. “Are you expected? No one’s told me of any arrivals after supper.”        “We’re coming in,” The old man expounded. “It’s cold and the child has had a terrible shock.”        “Not expected?! Raggamuffings at the door? Oh you’d do well to remember whose manor this is, you rusted old plough-share!” the guard nearly screeched.        “I don’t care one iota whose manor this is,” retorted the old man, his grip tightening ever so slightly around Wart’s middle-section. “I shall repeat the damn well obvious fact that it is frigid out here and that there is a child in need! If that is not reason enough, then let me tell you that I have just come from across what I assume you call a green in the summer-time and that the cottage just a stone’s throw away has been broken in! Does the fool who lords over this land care at all for the safety of those who dwell in it? At the very least he should care for his own!”        The words were of such force that the guard shuddered back from the timbers of the door. He stood there a moment, a barely visible pair of eyes in the dim light of the entry-hall. Then the eyes squinted and the porthole was slammed shut. An instant later there was a loud clanking and a rustling, the like of which was usually associated with a sword clattering against a metal sheath as it was drawn. The door began to swing heavily open, the guard behind it most likely about to yell something to the effect of “how dare you threaten the safety of our Lord Ektor,” as he charged out the door at the old man. These words, however, never quite made it to the outside world, but were instead stuffed back down into the guard’s stomach, just as the guard himself was stuffed back into the entry hall and pressed against the stone wall behind the main gate.        The instant the latch had been undone, the old man, with remarkable swiftness, had swept forward and gripped the door by its edge and, one hand still carrying Wart, slammed it and the guard well and hard against the wall. In they went, man and child, to the warmth and refuge of Castle Ektor, the Main Gate thudding against its frame as the aged conqueror kicked it shut behind them.

Kickstarter and a new Short Story!

Hi everyone! I told you I'd have big news soon, and here it is! The Unshorn Thread, book 1 of the Tales Misforgotten series is launching a Kickstarter! That means I'm closer than ever to realizing my dream of having this book out there for everyone to read! I've got special art rewards, limited editions of the book, and some very very cool special surprises in store for everyone, and it's all kicking (ugh, puns!) off in just 2 weeks!

To celebrate this announcement I'm uploading a little piece entitled "The Night Before", which is both a sequel to my previous entry "Eyes" as well as a precursor to Chapter 1 of the book, which I hope to share a part of with you during the course of the Kickstarter itself. So hooray Kickstarter and here it is, your final extended prologue to The Unshorn Thread:

"The Night Before"

Raw, crackling fingers of pitch snapped as they closed around Wart's neck. Scraping and scratching against his flesh, their tightening latticework slowly eclipsed the starlight. Instantly the boy's heart crushed itself against his ribs, beating in rapid, irregular rhythms in its attempts to escape his frame.
'No!' thought Wart. 'It's found me again. How can it keep finding me, night after night?' He could feel the dark bracken weaving its way through his hair, scratching his scalp. He felt at though it was trying to swallow him, to bury him in its black mass, never to be seen again. 'What will happen then?' he wondered. 'Will it take up root in my skull? Will it send roots down my throat and grow fat on my entrails?' The terror of these thoughts was too much for his young mind, and yet he could think of nothing to do to stop the slow encroachment of the thing's crackling, ashen presence upon him.
Feeling his muscles freeze from terror, the creature crashed against him, a wave of predatory ashen shards.

"Aaaaugh!"
Wart sat up with a shock. He was drenched in a cold sweat, and shivering from a place just behind his stomach. Lurching forward, he wrapped his little arm about his knees and stared hauntedly down at the straw and cloth that was his mattress. His eyes focusing on nothing in particular, Wart tried to regain his breath, tried to gulp down air or to expel it. Nothing worked. The giant lump of fear and strain which clogged his windpipe would not budge.
It had come back. That shambling, crackling thing from the night before, and the night before that. Even in his dream, he had recognized it, had known it to be the same faceless evil which had terrorized him each night this week. The lump of terror in his throat finally shifted, and Wart let loose a calling, fearful wail which had been stuck within his chest. Its brothers and sisters followed it in quick succession, and desperate tears pushed their way down his cheeks. His chest heaved, finally drawing in the breath he so needed.
As he heaved labored gulps of air in and out of his lungs, a little voice in his head told him that the creature had not really been there, that it had only been a dream. 'What had Bedwyn called it?' he thought, 'a particularly pernicious strain of nightmare?'
Be that as it may, he could not shake the creature's strange and wretched image from his mind. He had gone to bed fearful that of its return, and had been proven right to do so. He wished with all his being that he had been wrong, that it would have let him be tonight. He tried to blink, but his fear would not let him. 'The creature might be waiting,' whispered his fear, 'right behind your very eyelids.' His heart skipped about against his chest at the thought. Another great big sob forced its way out of his lungs, even as the boy tried to shake away his tears.
It was no use. The fear was too great for him to tackle alone, and so Wart stood. It was a difficult process, so tightly wound were his arms about his knees, but he managed it. Once standing, he felt exposed to the cold and dark of the night, and so, still wailing he darted out through the door of his bedchamber. He would find Bedwyn out by the fire, would find warmth there and safety as well -- and maybe, eventually, even a bit of sleep.

Dvice Articles (running list)

Hi there again ,folks! I've got a big announcement coming up soon regarding my book series, Tales Misforgotten! For now, though, here is some of my published writing, via DVICE.com, that is!

Forgotten Firearms

Li-Fi and how it will make your life better!

Post-Apocalyptic Mobile Homes

Robots already integrating into society

homesteading on Earth's final frontier

8-Bit Horror Games

Geek Caves 

Tech Woody Allen Predicted

Winsor McCay's Legacy 

14 Geekiest Bars

Internet Memes as Gifts NEW!

Gifts for the Dapper Geek NEW!

Once Upon a Dreamy Time

As promised, I have a new tale for you today. This one I thought up a while ago, but never wrote down until now. I hope you enjoy it. It's a bit longer than the last two!

Once upon a dreamy time, I found myself walking along the southern edge of Manhattan's Battery Park. In my company were a very large hare and an equally strange haberdasher, which is to say hatter. We strolled along the waterfront, gabbing about this and that, until my shoelace became untied and I began to float away into the sky. The haberdasher noticed my plight and, ever so casually - so as not to cause a stir - took hold of my untied shoelace. This fixed the problem perfectly, as we could now continue our perambulation, and myself with all the better view for it as well. We came, after a while, to a very long and dilapidated old dock which struck me as familiar.
"Did not this pier once keep moored an old ferryboat?" I asked. "One with which, by use of a bit of punting skill, a person could reach the little islands across the way?"
"Ah, yes," replied the haberdasher, "but that was before the causeway!" He then pointed up to a very tall and distinctly impressive roadway high above us. The thing was suspended upon needle-like pylons which delved deep into the wild and frothy waters of the bay."The islands are hardly ever thought of now," the odd fellow continued, "what with the convenience of the causeway and the dangers of the Kelpie."
"The What?" asked the hare.
"The Kelpie," repeated my topper-wearing friend, "the water-horse who has taken up residence in the bay. Why you can see the evidence of his presence even now in the churning and crashing of the waters."
Indeed, the bay was quite ferocious that day. The waves crashed against both the battery and one another remorselessly, and the color of the water was nigh on black. Yet the idea of the old ferryman's punt had stuck in my brain. I yearned to take her out on the frothy chop and to visit the forlorn isles which had once delighted the city-folk so. It was then, owing either to chance or to my elevated vantage, that I espied her! The ferryman's punt was still there, floating ever so listlessly, just under the end of her little old pier.
"Oh, my!" I cried out, "look and see! The ferryboat waits there still! Let us all go and take her out again, as the city used to, to visit her fair little isles. What say you?"
"Seems a fine idea!" said the hare.
"But what of the Kelpie?" asked the haberdasher.
"Oh the voyage isn't far!" I said, getting caught up in the idea of the venture. "We shall only go to the nearest of the isles, if you are afeared, hatter, and I can quite easily see the pier that stretches from it already. Why - it mustn't be but a few hundred yards between the pair of peirs! We'd be across in an instant!"
The haberdasher looked queasily at me but accepted my proposal nonetheless. He plopped me down upon the ground again, upon my reaching of the which I promptly retied my shoelace. It wouldn't do, I thought, to go floating off into the air while punting my companions across the bay.
I set about readying the ferryboat for launch, which was a short affair, simple as the workings of such a vessel are.The hare fairly bounded into the craft, himself nearly as eager as I for a spot of adventure. The haberdasher, I will say this of him, was a far more reticent fellow, needing any and all sort of coaxing - short of threats of violence - to come aboard.
Though he protested, we did in the end get the haberdasher aboard. It was then the simple work of pushing off the dock and we were on our way. The distance was exactly as I had stated, a mere few hundred yards, though our voyage was decidedly less simple than I had either described or hoped. We had made only a few yards progress when there came such a violent thrashing about beneath the sea, that I at first thought some yet-undiscovered volcanic fissure had awakened beneath us! I was only able to hold this comparably benign thought in my head but a moment, before the grave truth asserted itself. Up from the deep came the Kelpie, thrashing and flailing about like a wrathful god! It was indeed partly equine in nature, though it seemed equally serpentine to my reckoning. Its head burst forth from the waves, a giant gnashing, snouted thing bedecked with row upon row of needle-like teeth. Behind this coiled and sprung the creature's thick and muscular anatomy. Innumerable hooves kicked forth from the waves as the beast breached, each attached in a pair of long lines to the thing's endless torso.
When the Kelpie returned crashing to the sea, all manner of turbulent motion was set about, so much so that I had a devil of a time in keeping the little punt afloat at all, let alone upon her determined course. Let me say at least that this event encouraged me to redouble my efforts in reaching the far shore. At most - well, that is not for mixed company. Suffice it to say that I was well motivated to punt as I had never done before, and that both the haberdasher and the hare were quite vocal in their goading me on.
The next we saw of the Kelpie was not so dramatic as its entrance into our midst, but was all the more damning nonetheless. There appeared just behind our little craft one and then two tips of a monstrous tail, akin to that of a tuna if my memory serves me correctly (and I dare say that it should, for never in my life have I been so afeared, before or since, as I was that day). Each tip appeared upon an opposing side of our stern, none of us noticing them until the haberdasher let out a yelp of the sort to startle even the steeliest of adventurers. By then each of the tips of the Kelpie's mighty tail were night on six feet out of the water, with no end in sight. And, though I was already punting along as quick as could be, I dare say I redoubled my efforts when I saw them.
It made no difference, in truth. The Kelpie's tail kept easy time with us as we made our way across those deadly waters, rising all the while. When the twin tips finally did come together, into one massive fin, they stood nigh on fifteen feet in the air. The Kelpie's tail was iridescent and gigantic, and was bedecked with the coarsest of horsehair imaginable. I would have marveled at the strength and potential use of such fibers, but alas I was too bent upon saving my own neck to muse upon such things. At any rate, the tail did not tarry at our stern so long as would have suited such a pursuit. it came crashing down again, with such utter ferocity that, had it done so upon us, we would have been obliterated man, hare, ferryboat and all. As it happened, the tail crashed down in the opposite direction; and this was doubly fortunate for us - as we were firstly not crushed, as I have already mentioned was possible, but were quite rapidly propelled forward by the eddies which were churned to life by this action.
Indeed the beast, it seemed for an instant, had actually aided us in reaching the far shore. Ah, if only that had been his intent. We were nearly upon the far pier, the haberdasher already beginning to alight his first careful toe upon the dock, when the creature struck! Crunch went our little craft, ripped asunder by the Kelpie's wretched needle-thatched jaws! Dash went the haberdasher, sprinting down the pier as if the wrath of many a god were upon his heels! Spring went the hare, for that is what hares do! And I? I who was not yet upon the pier and who does not go spring in the manner of hares? You might think that I was eaten all up that day - but in this you would be wrong! You see - at the very instant that the Kelpie had sundered our tiny vessel - my shoe had once more come untied! I was already in the usually unenviable predicament of floating off into the great wide yonder when the beast struck, and so was spared.
I made all progress that I could toward the little island in my skyward state, but alas it is harder to gain traction when one is upon the air than it is upon land, and so my progress was slow. Below me the Kelpie thrashed about, enraged at his having been eluded. Not only the ferryboat, but the pier itself became his prey. He shattered its seaward tip first, and then, whinnying and hissing, he took to dismantling it plank by plank.
The haberdasher and the hare were both upon the shore by then, and well out of harm's way, and oh! did I gain an earful more of their vulgar encouragements! I was gaining as much altitude as I was forward motion, which at a certain height begins to present a new set of problems, and so decided to take drastic measure. I tied my own shoelace there in the air. Immediately, as you may rightly assume, I plummeted back to earth, barely catching the remaining edge of the pier in doing so. The Kelpie saw me fall and was quick in striking. I - I am relieved to report - was faster. I sprinted along the pier, all the while its boards splintering in my wake, until I found solid ground, even then ceasing to halt my sprint until I was a fair few paces inland. The haberdasher and the hare cheered my arrival on dry land, and there we stood a while, marveling at the strength and fervor which the Kelpie employed in destroying the rest of the pier.
We then turned our gaze to the isle, our reaching of which had cost the ferryboat its timber. The place was truly a marvel to behold. General disuse had allowed the plant life of the isle to grow to gargantuan stature! The grass cam up to my chest, the ferns to my eyeballs!Trees thrust their branches skyward with utter abandon, scraping the very heavens! It was, in short, a place ripe for the exploring - and we just the three to delve into its secret places.
It was a short walk to the edges of the treeline, but a slower one than we would have liked, for even the roots of the grass were as fallen boughs, and easily tripped over. It was because of the combination of their size and the shade of the giant trees that a very strange thing then happened.
Blinded by the lack of sun, I did not see a particularly up-raised root and went tumbling over. There followed a series of somersaults on my part, for the ground sloped downward within the shady glen, and so carried me forward. There was also upon the forest floor a goodly amount of leaves, all of them slick with what seemed must be an ever-present dew. I ceased my tumbling, but continued to slide forward upon the slick, brown and red floor. I could hear the alarmed calls of my companions, now echoing from what seemed very far away indeed. I looked about, now able to at least maintain my perspective as I had stopped my tumbling. There loomed before me a vast wall of rock, of the sort that is indiscernible if tooled by man or nature herself. So sheer it was, and so tall, that it seemed as if the hand of the almighty had placed it there, a monolithic homage to the greatness of creation. And yet, the thing was not perfect. Here and there a shrub had found a way to take root upon the wall's sheer flank. Thin wisps of vine scrawled strange calligraphies along it at odd angles. And, most interesting of all, there was a great hole in its base. This hole, lined with stout little trees - which seemed as bonsai when compared to their gargantuan brothers overhead - looked to serve as a sort of cistern for the glade. All the little grooves upon the earth wound toward it, like rivers to the sea. Even I, sliding along one of these grooves upon my mattress of leaves, found myself being pulled toward it, as if by some magic.
In truth, the grade of the slope had likely increased in severity, but nonetheless the effect was mesmerizing. by the time I thought to try and slow myself it was already to late, my hand merely glancing off from the stout little trunk of one of the squat trees at the cistern's mouth. I spun upon my back as I flew through the open thing's mouth. Down past stone and root and wet earth I went. My last glimpse of the light that lay outside the chasm that was the traverse of the cistern was of a very fine hat and a pair of ears popping up from either side of the great hole's mouth, and though I could not see their faces, I could tell that my erstwhile companions were both quite bewildered.
I tumbled on for an indeterminable while, the only sights to mark my way fleeting glimpses of the sprigs of root which had found their way down to the cistern's chute. Then, like a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning, out I popped from the hole. A thick curtain of moss had hung down from the hole's back end, entirely eclipsing its approach from my view.
Moss in my hair and about my face, I began to tumble once again, for here there was no bed of leaves upon which to slide, but only a greenish sort of something (which I took to be grass, but could not be entirely sure of the validity of my analysis of) which flew by at an alarming rate. I was only ever stopped (as I feel I might have tumbled on for the remainder of my years, so fast was I going) by the presence of an enormous elephant's-ear fern, nearly twice the size of my chintz armchair back home.
I remember lying there, the world whirling about me upon my giant leafy chair and believing that I had never before beheld a forest of such innate beauty. If the glade beyond the wall had been grand, this place was unfathomable. For hundreds of feet above there was nothing but green, green in all its shades and sorts. a speck of cloud or a hint of cloud was all that could be seen of the sky, and I was loathe to see even that, so beautiful was the forest. It seemed a shame for it to not have capitalized upon those last vestiges of light, to have robbed me of even the slightest bit of its own grandeur.
My head spinning less, I was suddenly aware of a sort of snuffling sound and a scratching about. I looked up, which was actually down, and beheld a new sort of wonder. There before me stood a great lump of a porcupine. He stood upon his haunches, as men do, and was wearing a very dapper sort of leaf atop his head - the which was affixed by judicious perforation upon his quills. he sniffed at me in a sort of down-ones-nose sort of way, beckoning me as he did so to turn myself over and to act civilized. All this he communicated wordlessly, excepting a few well-utilized grunts which one would have understood no matter what language they were conveyed in.
I could not disagree with him, for if I were to find a strange creature - for so I was to him - lying downside-up in my garden, I might have treated it much the same. He bade me follow him, which I did, and after a little while brought me to an interesting village, carved into the very backside of the great wall which I had unceremoniously traversed. There stood a number of little burrows, carved into the side of the wall, some with little gardens out front, others a little ways up the wall, and led to by way of earthen stairways.
I followed the creature into the mouth of one of the largest of these dwellings, which I, immediately upon entering, saw the appeal of. The floor of the hole was layered with broad banana leaves, sewn together as a charming sort of rug, and in the corner there stood an inglenook, carved into the earth. A small fire crackled and popped away in the hearth there, lending a warm orange hue to the interior.
As I had been busy enjoying the quaint beauty of the place, so too had my prickly host been. He emerged from a small pantry, partitioned from the main room by a hanging curtain of moss similar to that which was likely still entangled in my hair. In his paws was a wooden plate bearing a great assortment of what I assumed passed for cakes on the deep of the forest. One was as a pea-pod, but held within it what looked to be lemon custard. Another was wrapped in leaves, the shape of a small shipping parcel, and smelled of rhubarb. A third looked as spiny as my host, but was a fabulous Kelly green, and when turned over by careful hands, exposed a pink underbelly the color of strawberry. Both the dangerous nature of the thing, as well as the enticing pinkness of it, lured me to have a go at it. I was just about to take my first lick of the thing's soft strawberry underbelly when there came a loud crashing from outside.
I turned around, startled by the sound of it, but my prickly host merely sighed, put down his tray, and scurried to the doorway to see what was the matter. I followed him, myself very curious as to what might have happened, and beheld a marvelous sight. There, piled upon the elephants-ear, were my friends the haberdasher and the hare.
I tell you - once they had been righted and welcomed in by our good-natured, quill-ridden host, there followed a tea the likes I shall not soon forget.

How we returned from that strange isle, and how indeed we shall ever go back, is a story for another day, I am afraid, for the kettle is on and already beginning to whine, and I shall be expecting company soon. It is the hare, you see, and a new friend of his - a mouse of some sort, I believe - who is, I am told, quite the riot to have to tea. Cheers and all the best, until the next time - which I hope shall be very soon.

Just a little image relating to my next story, one which ...

Just a little image relating to my next story, one which I hope to share with you later today.

Eyes

Hi again folks! One of the reasons that I've created this blog is to give myself a place, away from Facebook's awful proprietary content policy, to host some excerpts from my impending book series: Tales Misforgotten. The first book, The Unshorn Thread comes out later this year, and in light of that I've dug up a short little piece called "Eyes". It's one of the very first pieces I wrote concerning the stories that will be told in the book series, and it later informed my writing in The Unshorn Thread. Anyway here's the piece, and if you want more info on the book series, just follow the link.

"Eyes"
          At first there was only darkness and clouds - clouds which flowed forth from twin wells as deep as time and as dark as the memories lost to it. They spilled forth in all directions, fading slowly into the black nothing that was all the rest of the world. The wells fed them outward ceaselessly, as if in some vain attempt to fill the void which was the world around them. First ash and then brimstone began to choke their way out from the bottomless pits. Then, as if galvanized by their creation of these things more corporeal, the wells themselves began, as the rhythmic beating of a heart, to throb. It was not begun suddenly, but was rather a sort of thing that crept up and, before it could be recognized, was there - as if the wells had been alive all along. Thump, thump, thump pulsed the wells, keeping perfect meter with one another. At every thumping beat the clouds and sulfurous ash surged forth all the more rapidly, as if even they could stand no more than they must of their foul creators' presence. Indeed their efforts were not wasted, for in the center of each gaping maw became visible a space made solely of pitch, a place from which even the foul clouds had escaped. In these twin spaces was hid a dark presence, a sort of looming intelligence that saw through its cloud-ringed pits of black. It peered out into the dark - and beheld that which had once been hidden beyond the world's edges. It peered with those two dark eyes into the worlds beyond its own, boring into the very souls of those foolish enough to look back.
           All the while the ash-encrusted clouds mounted, and all the while the heartbeat of the wells-turned-eyes grew stronger, as if in impatient expectation of the moment when the creature would break free from the world of the dark and roam those that lay beyond.

Welcome to The Misforgotten Press, my depository for all ...

Welcome to The Misforgotten Press, my depository for all writings creative and whimsical. My name is Colin, and I will be your host.

For now, here is a little musing of a poem to whet your appetites. It's something that has been buried in my writing journals for some time now, languishing in obscurity. If you asked me what it was about I could have told you, but I wouldn't have remembered the details. So here it is, a poem misforgotten:

The Introspect Fool

To dance, To sing, To shine
                  of all vocations, mine
My tools of trade
                  The masque, The mirror, The charade
Some laugh, others poke fun
                  I hear each and every one
I babble and cavort
                  'Fore the touted members of The Court