C.A. Gray's Blog, page 87

Age is just a number

I watched a movie this weekend (“Liberal Arts” — I don’t exactly recommend it, but don’t not recommend it either), in which one of the supporting characters said to the main character, “I know you still feel like you’re in college… but the fact is, you’re not in college anymore, so you’ve got to stop acting like you are.” (The main character was 35… and was dating a 19-year-old.) 

This got me thinking. 

I remember my grandfather saying that he still felt like a teenager, and he was shocked when he looked in the mirror and saw an old man. I thought that was peculiar when I was in eighth grade (the age I was when he died), because I think I’d always assumed that adults sort of… I don’t know… knew what they were doing. After all, I felt my own age… why should he not feel his?

But recently, I met up with a friend of mine down in the university district of Tucson. I still drive around down there relatively often, but I don’t usually hang out there anymore. I was struck with a combination of nostalgia and this idea that, even though it’s been almost a decade since I was an undergrad (don’t you dare do the math), I still *feel* like a college student. I almost could have been one (until I saw how young they all looked!) 

When I was in college, I had all kinds of dreams… I wanted to travel and explore and have grand adventures, and I definitely did not want to settle into the “American Dream” (in fact, I didn’t want to have roots, ever. I wanted to move around 30 times in my life. The idea of a little white picket fence and 2.3 kids and a dog made me want to pull my hair out.) I still want to travel and have adventures, but life has a way of settling you in a single area for the most part after awhile… and there are good reasons for this. Being a vagabond has nowhere near the same appeal that it used to have. 

Still, when I talk with my friends now about topics I used to relegate only to the most “boring” of adults (such as finances and babies and mortgages), I stop and think in shock, oh, look at us, we actually grew up!, like I never expected it to happen. I don’t have my own kids yet, but when I see friends with their toddlers and especially school-aged kids, I stop and remember what I thought of adults when I was that age. And I realize, that’s what they think of me.

Weird.

I’m not that old yet, but I’m already beginning to understand what my grandfather meant. I wonder if I’ll still feel about 22 when I’m 75.

The post Age is just a number appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Stealing through the mangrove trees in the dead of night…

I had this experience in Puerto Rico that I am sure is somehow going to make it into my next book series: kayaking through a narrow canal of mangrove trees to reach a bay, where single-celled organisms in the water give off light much like fireflies in response to agitation (it was called bioluminescent bay, for obvious reasons). 

The experience was not spooky only because we were with a tour group, but on the way back through the mangrove trees, it was pitch dark, and the only reason we did not run aground was because we were following the tiny yellow light of the kayak in front of us (although we did crash into the mangrove trees more than once). 

But the whole time I was imagining how this would fit in… 

She steals into a single kayak in the dead of night, turning off the single telltale light there to prevent the coastguard from finding her (or… anyone else). Paddling as silently as possible, but putting all her weight behind her a backwards thrust, she guides the kayak as quickly as she can out of the open ocean and into the little cove. The winding canal is only about three feet wide at best, and she can’t see, but she has to hope that her eyes will adjust. 

To her shock, though, her paddles themselves seem to give off a faint glow the moment they touch the water’s surface. Of course! she suddenly remembers. The scientist had told her about the mangrove trees… how they somehow manage to convert the sea water to fresh, and their root system somehow deposits high amounts of vitamin B12 into the water, which he said in turn feeds the dinoflagellates and makes them glow. (She remembered the word dinoflagellates only because it reminded her of the word dinosaur.) 

She uses the faint illumination to guide her, grateful for it, meager though it is.

She must reach the bay on the other side before dawn. If she doesn’t… 

But she cannot think about that. Failure is not an option.

The post Stealing through the mangrove trees in the dead of night… appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Inspiration

I’m nearing the end of the “Piercing the Veil” trilogy… my goal is to have Book 3 (“Impossible”) out by the end of July (which might be a little ambitious, but a lot of the first round of editing is done already). I knew that I’d be really sad when I finished the trilogy if I didn’t already have another project coming down the pipeline. After all, I’ve been working on this series since 2008 in some capacity… Peter and Lily are some of my best friends at this point!

So last week, while on vacation, I was running on the beach in Puerto Rico (which, side note, is one of my favorite things to do — surpassed only by running on the beach in the rain) . When I got to the far end, I stopped to crawl up an outcropping of black rocks, waves crashing around my ankles and sending little black crabs scurrying into crevices while I furiously typed notes into my iPhone. I stayed there for about 30-45 minutes, pacing, asking myself questions and writing down the answers. I’ll just tell you a little bit of it…

The next series is going to be dystopian, set in a futuristic world post-WWIV. After much famine and disease, the world is thrust back into another Dark Ages.

It’s going to be epic, eventually involving not just North America but the world.

There’s going to be a princess. And a prince. And a peasant boy. (You figure that one out.)

It’s going to have a medical flavor to it (after all, that’s what I know. Might be easier than writing about Arthurian legends and quantum physics, which were completely foreign to me).

I can’t wait to start writing it!!!

The post Inspiration appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Spanish in Puerto Rico

Ten years ago I lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for a summer. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a missionary doctor in Latin America, but I didn’t know Spanish yet. So I volunteered with a company called Manos de Vida, lived with a family that didn’t speak English, worked with a doctor and a nurse and a team that didn’t speak English, and went into the mountains in the surrounding areas where we still needed a translators from either Mexteca or Zapoteca to Spanish, in order to make ourselves understood by the natives. Three months later I came home fluent in Spanish… although I use the term “fluency” loosely (in this case it means I was able to carry on a conversation—although not necessarily with a great deal of eloquence.)

A decade later: I am a doctor, but a naturopathic one (here’s the description of what that is, if you care), and I have my own practice in Tucson, AZ (I won’t give you the link to that because if I did then you’d know my real name! Hint: it’s not C.A. Gray). I did use my Spanish on and off in medical school, when we had rotations either in Mexico or in certain parts of AZ where that was the dominant language. But at the moment, I’m seriously rusty and my grammar is appalling.

All that to say: right now I’m in Puerto Rico with my family for vacation. My brother and sister-in-law arrived before my mom and I did, and before we got there, my brother told me he had a hard time ordering lunch in Spanish. (I think he said he’d mastered the words “taco” and “baño.”) He told my sister-in-law he was glad that once I got there, I’d be able to help.

Uh, yeah, not so much. When we were driving around, I saw a fast food restaurant sign that read, “Servi carro,” and at first I translated in confusion, “We feed your face?” Then I realized that must mean they have a drive-thru. Then when we went hiking in the El Yunque rainforest for the Baño Grande and Baño del Oro, my first thought was, “Bathroom of Gold?”

Clearly I’ve lost a lot.

So I bought a few National Geographic magazines in Spanish, and did what I used to do when I was learning the language the first time (except this time at the beach, of course): I highlighted the words I did not recognize and looked them up. A decade ago I did this with an actual Spanish/English dictionary, but now I do it with a slick app on my iPhone. (Side note: super sad how my iPhone has become an extra appendage.) By the time I finished, I felt pretty proud of myself, and I had also learned a little bit about agriculture and the world domination of the tomato. (Yes.) 

But alas, when I get back to Tucson, will I still have reason to continue studying, given the paucity of opportunities to actually use the language? I’ve made attempts a few times throughout the years to get together with Spanish-speaking friends and insist that we are not allowed to speak English for a few hours at a time, and it always degenerates into charades, laughter, and eventually, English. (Once I had a roommate who spoke French but not Spanish, while I spoke Spanish but not French, and we tried to make a rule that each of us would speak to the other only in our respective foreign languages while at home. That lasted approximately an hour.)

There are just too many things to learn, and not enough time to do it!

The post Spanish in Puerto Rico appeared first on C.A. Gray.

“Intangible”: What’s True and What’s Not

In preparation for the release of Invincible:

It took me almost a year to research the “Piercing the Veil” series before I actually started writing. For those who are curious, here’s a breakdown of some of the concepts I didn’t make up, appearing both in Intangible and Invincible (this will appear over several blog posts).

From Intangible:

Concepts from the Arthurian Legends: most of my research on the legends came from “The Arthurian Legends, An Illustrated Anthology,” by Richard Barber; “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” by Simon Armitage; “The Book of Merlyn,” by T.H. White; “The Once and Future King,” by T.H. White; and the legendary “The Death of King Arthur,” by Sir Thomas Malory.

The Fata Morgana: According to legend, Arthur’s evil half-sister Morgan (or Morgana, depending on the version you read), also called the Fairie Queen, created a castle in Avalon that was half part of our world and half part of another. Sailors claim to see the mirage of a castle off the banks of the Straits of Messina in Italy, but regardless of how long they sail towards it, it always hovers just out of reach, and they are said to drown in its pursuit. They call it the Fata Morgana.

Excalibur: Famously, Arthur pulled this mystical sword from a stone, fulfilling the prophecy that the one to do so would become the rightful king of England. I chose to make the sword gold because of its relationship to alchemy (gold represents “spirit” or otherworldliness, which is why the sword can bar the Shadow Lord from his return into the world of men). After the Battle of Salisbury Plain where Arthur died and Camelot fell, one version of the legend has it that Lancelot and the last remaining Knight of the Round Table, Girflet, throw Excalibur into the Straits of Messina.

The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Huns and the Visigoths (warring Germanic tribes) attacked the Roman Empire around 470 AD, displacing Roman soldiers to Britain. These soldiers intermarried with the native Celts, and that is how Britain came about. This is also around the time that historians estimate the real Arthur might have lived.

Guinevere: Queen Guinevere (or Guenever, nicknamed Jenny in some versions) was Arthur’s one and only wife—and she was human (there was no Cecily.) She had an affair with Arthur’s best knight Lancelot, forcing Arthur to charge them both with high treason.

Mordred: most versions have it that Mordred is Arthur’s nephew, the son of his half-sister Morgan, rather than his son (although in some versions, Morgan tricked Arthur into sleeping with her, and she became pregnant by him). In either case, once Mordred grew to adulthood, Arthur left him in charge of Camelot. In Arthur’s absence, Mordred set himself up as king, and Mordred and Arthur killed one another in the Battle of Salisbury Plain.

The Order of the Paladin: the name was originally used to refer to Charlemagne’s Twelve Peers in fourteenth century France, his best warriors. The word paladin is also associated with Arthurian legends in general to mean any chivalrous hero. (Isdemus tells Peter that this was the original name of the Watchers, and the name lingers in Carlion here and there—for instance, it is the name of their secondary school, Paladin High.)

Carlion: Again according to “The Once and Future King” by T.H. White, the city of Camelot was situated in the greater region known as Carlion.

The Pendragon Crest: Most versions depict only one golden dragon on a red background (or red dragons on a gold background), but for my purposes I made them two. This obviously became critical in Invincible—which was originally titled Double Dragon. 

The post “Intangible”: What’s True and What’s Not appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Cut Scene: Arthur Finds Excalibur

This scene is from the first or second draft of “Intangible.” It never made it into the final draft, although Peter references it in Chapter 5 when he’s summarizing the story for Lily. …But I really like it so I wanted to post it anyway!

Amid the hubbub of the castle, Arthur snuck downstairs unnoticed.  Nobody bothered to pay attention to him as he threw together provisions, including a lantern, skins of water, parcels of food, and extra clothing that could double as a pillow.  His step-brother Kay noticed, and slipped quietly behind him.

“Are you going somewhere?” Kay finally asked suspiciously, making Arthur jump.

“I… thought it might be a nice night to go camping,” Arthur said evasively.  “On the battlements,” he added quickly, because those would be even less likely to interest Kay than the forest: they had slept on the battlements many times before, and there was no novelty about it.

“Now?” Kay asked incredulously.  “Look, I know you’re oblivious half the time and all that, but I thought even you must’ve heard that our king has been killed!”

“I heard,” Arthur replied vaguely, picking up his pace.

“And you thought, ‘I know!  Camping!’” Kay repeated sarcastically.

Finally Arthur heaved a great sigh.  He had spent too much time with Merlyn to be very good at lying.  “All right, if you must know.  Merlyn says the only way to protect ourselves against the Saxons is if we have a king, and the king will be the one who can pull Excalibur from the stone.”

“Yeah?  So what?” said Kay suspiciously.

“So, I know where it is,” said Arthur.

Kay gaped at him.  “Excalibur?”

“Of course Excalibur, what else would I be talking about?” Arthur snapped.

“But… how?  How in the world do you know where it is?”  Kay demanded with a mixture of derision and envy.

“Because I found it once before, all right?  It’s been a long time, but I think I still might know how to get there,” he said, though he didn’t sound convinced.  Then he rallied and added, “And anyway, I have to try.  It’s our only hope.”

Kay watched him for another second before he declared, “Fine.  Then I’m coming with you!”

“Shh!  You mustn’t!”  Arthur hissed.  “Didn’t you hear what the servants were saying?  King Uther died looking for this sword!  If anything happened to you, Sir Ector would never get over it!”

“A knight never refuses a quest!” Kay rejoined, puffing his chest up importantly.  Kay was almost eighteen and would soon be knighted, unlike Arthur, who was essentially considered one of the servants.  Arthur would be lucky to become Sir Kay’s squire.  “And anyway,” Kay went on, “I’ll be hanged if you find the sword and come back king, because there was nobody else of higher rank along with you.  You, the king of all of Britain!”

“I never said I wanted to be king,” Arthur said crossly.  “I only want to find the sword, so there can be a proper tournament to decide the matter.”

This idea seemed to appeal to Kay, who then added eagerly, “We’ll bring something to mark our path, so we can find our way back to it again once we find it.  But we mustn’t tell anybody where we’re going right now!  They would only try and stop us!”

“Stop you from what?” came a voice from the hallway.  Arthur froze.

A young girl, Arthur’s own age, with curly brown hair and flashing green eyes stepped into the storeroom suspiciously, her hands on her hips, and her cheeks rosy from dashing to and fro with all the commotion in the castle.

“Don’t—you—dare,” Cecily said, emphasizing each word as she approached Arthur.  “You’re going to try and find Excalibur yourself, aren’t you?” she demanded.  Before Arthur could even answer her, she snapped, “Don’t give me that look, I’ve been listening to you talk about it for years now.  I know you think this is the moment you’ve been waiting for.  Well, I won’t let you go!”

“And how exactly do you suppose you’re going to stop us?” Kay drew up to his full height, for once fixing the little serving wench with his full attention.

“I will tell everybody!” Cecily threatened. “Do you think they would let you, Sir Kay,” she added his soon-to-be title mockingly, “out of the castle on such a mission?  One word from me and they won’t let any of you out of this room, let alone into the forest—”

But before Cecily could utter another threat, Kay violently clamped his hand over her mouth and hissed, “Then you’ll just have to come with us, to make sure you keep quiet, won’t you?”

Arthur’s eyes grew round; this wasn’t going how he planned at all.  “Kay, really!  We can’t drag Cecily into this…”  He desperately racked his mind for a good reason. “Think what they’ll say if they find out you dragged a maiden into danger on purpose!  They’ll refuse to knight you!”  He didn’t bother to define who ‘they’ were.  He thought the threat was a good one, chivalry being one of the codes upon which knighthood was based.

Kay, who had been in the process of binding and gagging his hostage, hesitated for a split second, and seemed to consider Arthur’s argument.  But then he said, “Not once we find Excalibur they won’t.  They’ll be kissing the ground we walk on, and won’t care what we had to do to find it.”

Arthur, who was far too small to do much good on Cecily’s behalf, meekly pled with her for forgiveness with his eyes as he packed the extra parcels of food for his unexpected traveling companions.  Cecily looked away haughtily.

 

Arthur was correct: nobody seemed to notice them in all the commotion—particularly because Arthur and Cecily knew every secret passageway in the castle and were experts at making themselves invisible when they wished to be.  Cecily, of course, was not helping that cause at the moment, but bound and gagged as she was, there was little that she could do to prevent it either.

“Don’t you think we’re far enough out now that we can untie her?” Arthur pleaded once they entered the forest.  He shot a sideways glance at Cecily, which she shunned.

Kay looked back at the walls of the city, which were still visible.  “No.  She’ll scream,” he said curtly.

“She won’t scream.  Cess, will you scream?”

She nodded vehemently, her eyes flashing.  Arthur sighed and Kay gave him a look that said I-told-you-so.

“All right then.  Stop for a minute and let me think.”  The sky was just turning pink and the shadows of the larches and beeches in the forest grew long.  He drew a shaky breath which he hoped Kay would not detect and closed his eyes in an effort to concentrate.

And then, all at once, he opened his eyes and set out with such determination and eagerness that Kay had to hurry to keep up, and poor Cecily tripped more than once without having her hands free to break her fall.  Arthur turned around once just in time to catch her, and saw that her face was scraped up.  He looked at Kay angrily.

“Oh, don’t be such a beast!” Arthur snapped, and pulled out his hunting knife to free Cecily’s hands.  While he was at it, he un-gagged her as well.  But the moment she was back on her feet, Arthur was off again at breakneck speed.

“Arthur!” Cecily cried at last, winded.  “Slow down!  We can’t keep up with you!”  He obliged unwillingly and slowed long enough for her to catch her breath.  “How on earth is it that you know where you’re going, anyway?” she panted.

“Shh!” Arthur hissed.  “Hear that?”

The other two froze, and then finally Kay ventured, “Hear what?”

“The water.  Doesn’t it sound like water?”

“So what?” asked Cecily.

“So, the last time I saw the sword, it was lodged in a stone at the top of a waterfall.  If we follow the sound of the stream, it should take us right to it.”  He plunged forward determinedly into the darkness, and Cecily followed so closely behind him that she slammed into him when he halted again to get his bearings.

“Ow!  Cess!”

“Sorry,” she whispered back, “I can’t see where I’m going.”

“Where are all those glowing plants everybody talks about, anyway?” Kay muttered.

“They change places, remember?” Cecily whispered.  “Guess they’re not here right now.”

Forgetting about his lantern altogether, Arthur muttered, “Laimh trí thine ag!” and his right hand went up in flames.

Cecily screamed, and then clamped both her hands over her mouth.

Arthur saw Kay’s and Cecily’s expressions, and said quickly, “Don’t worry, my hand isn’t burning,” and held his arm up like a torch.

“Did you know he could do that?” Cecily whispered to Kay, who shook his head in a peculiar combination of wonder and envy.

Suddenly a light appeared in the thick darkness.  It approached them from behind.

“They’re following us!” said Kay.

Mustering all the bravado he had, Arthur cried out, “Who’s there?”

“Arthur?  Is that you?” It was the desperate voice of Sir Ector, who started to run toward them when he heard Arthur’s reply.  When he got close enough, they could see that Sir Ector was not alone: he had brought a large search party along with him, and several more lanterns crowded behind him.

“Cecily!  Are you with them?”

“I’m here, Daddy!” she cried, shooting a defiant look at Kay.

Kay said desperately, “Arthur, get back to the trail!  We have to find Excalibur before they catch up to us!  They’ll make us turn back if you don’t!”

It took Arthur only a split second to decide.  “Cuir amach dóiteáin,” he said, and instantly they were enshrouded in darkness once more, except for the light of the moon and the rapidly approaching search party.  “Run back to them!” he told Cecily, and he tore off down the path known only to himself, leaving Kay too stunned for a split second to move.

When Kay recovered, he called out, “Wait!” He caught up with Arthur a few seconds later and huffed, “Are we almost there?”

“Almost,” Arthur returned, his feet pounding the turf below him in rhythm with his breath as he leapt over stray roots and ducked beneath the moss and uprooted trees that barred his path.  “It’s just through that next clearing, I’m certain of it.”  They could hear the heavy footfalls of the search party just a few kilometers behind them, which drove Arthur to pick up his pace.  

And suddenly, with Kay right behind him, Arthur burst through the clearing.

It was like an oasis in a desert, so different was it from the terrain of the rest of the forest.  Where the forest was opaque, here the ground was alive with mosses glowing in iridescent greens and blues, and the larger foliage leading up to the waterfall was lit from within in orange, red, and magenta.  The skies overhead shimmered with starlight, and the water reflected it back to amplify the illumination.  The waterfall splashed cheerfully over smooth stones that looked like they did not belong there at all: it was not obvious where the water came from or where it was going, but it no longer seemed important.

At the very top, a sword protruded from a stone.  Heartbreakingly beautiful, Arthur thought.  Those were the only words he could think of, because it felt like something within his chest swelled to the point of bursting when he looked at it.

Seconds later, they had an audience.  The search party broke upon them easily once they stopped moving, and since Arthur and Kay stood just at the edges of the clearing, there was hardly room for all of them: it turned out that the company included not only the entire Castle of the Forest Sauvage, but also nearly every one of King Uther’s remaining knights who had not vanished with him on his last quest.  A hushed silence fell over the group when they came in view of the sword.

“So it does exist,” murmured a knight called Sir Grummore.

Sir Ector put an arm silently around Kay’s shoulders but said nothing.

Cecily silently wrapped her arms around her father’s waist, both of them gazing fixedly upon the legendary blade.

Arthur himself shrank to the back of the crowd.  It was another few moments before he realized that Merlyn stood silently beside him.  He looked up with a start.  Merlyn winked.

“So!  How ‘bout it?” boomed Merlyn cheerfully, and everybody jumped.

“How about what?” said Sir Dedelaus.

“Men of renown have been searching for that sword for over half a century.  We all know that it is not of this world, and could only be found by the one destined to pull it from the stone.  If we apply the fundamentals of logic, that means the future king of Britain must be here among us tonight.  So!  Who’s first?  How about you, Kay?”

Kay’s eyes grew wide, as if he couldn’t believe his luck.  But then he set his jaw, and stepped forward, climbing the waterfall eagerly.  When he reached the top, he closed his hands upon the pommel, and began to pull.  And he pulled.  And he yanked and he gritted his teeth and he cried out until he felt his shoulder come out of its socket, at which point he yelled in earnest.

“Come on, now, come on down!” said their nurse, who was among the party from the Castle.  She saw the dislocation and stepped out of the group, motioning to the soon-to-be knight with the soothing tone of a mother hen.  She knew exactly how to reduce a dislocated shoulder, and Kay gritted his teeth as she did it.

Arthur actually felt a little sorry for him… but only a very little.

“Too bad.  Grummore?” said Merlyn cheerfully, evidently enjoying himself.  He gestured to one of Uther’s knights, who needed no further encouragement, but bounded up to the top of the waterfall far more gracefully than Kay had done, his eyes wide and his round face flushed.  He licked his lips.

But Sir Grummore failed, as did Sirs Faust, Dedelaus, Moriah, and twenty others, all of whom took their turn in a neat little queue as Merlyn called their names.  The moon rose higher and the waterfall seemed to laugh at them.  On and on it went, as Merlyn called out names of the next challengers like a Master of Ceremonies, his grin widening with every failed attempt.

“You look like you’ve just swallowed a canary,” said Sir Ector in ill humor after he himself failed.  “Why don’t you tell us why you’re so pleased with yourself?  What have you got to gloat about?”

“You’ll see, you’ll see,” said Merlyn, eyes twinkling.

Behind him, Arthur edged further toward the edge of the crowd, melting into the shadows.  Silently, Cecily slipped from her father’s embrace and crept up beside him.  Before he noticed her presence, she slipped her hand in his.  He looked up, surprised to see her solemn, knowing expression.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” she whispered.

Arthur’s jaw dropped open a bit and he stared at her.  He refused to understand what she meant, but his face turned red anyway.

“I knew it was you.  It had to be.  Why else were you the only one who knew where to find the sword?”  She struggled to keep her emotions at bay, and finally she said with effort, “Remember me when you are king, my lord.”  And to Arthur’s amazement, she dropped to her knees and kissed his scabby knuckles.

“That’s everybody!” cried Sir Ector desperately to the group.  “And we still have no king!”

“There is just one more,” said Merlyn, in his gravelly voice that carried more clearly than a bell, eyes never leaving Arthur’s face.  “I call the young squire… Arthur Pendragon.”

The reaction to his surname was immediate.

“Pendragon!  Do you mean to say—?“

“It can’t be!  The ward of Sir Ector, the son of—?”

“Good gracious!  We never did know where the boy came from, but who would have thought…!”

Amid the clamor of voices, almost mechanically Arthur dropped Cecily’s hand and began to move as if in a trance.  His feet propelled him forward: he had no choice but to go with them.  He did not know that from the outside, he wore a kingly expression and carried himself regally from the moment Cecily had called him “my lord.”

When he reached the top of the waterfall and clasped the pommel of the sword, Arthur’s limbs knew what to do.  His right leg wedged against the adjacent rock and he positioned his left leg to ground himself.

The blade dislodged with no trouble at all.

Arthur stood staring at it incredulously.  He blinked, realizing that there were words written on the blade, and they were written in the language that Merlyn had taught him, the one called the Ancient Tongue.  With another start, he realized that he had been speaking those very words only a second before, as he had pulled: “Ghlacadh mé suas,” it said.  But he had no idea what they meant.

As he stared at the sword, the sudden silence made him self-conscious.  He looked back up at the crowd, and then he saw why: every knee had bowed, with the sole exception of Merlyn’s tall, robed figure, who stood smiling at him with paternal affection.

“Long live the king,” he said.

The post Cut Scene: Arthur Finds Excalibur appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Superstring Theory

This scene, where Peter explains superstring theory to Lily, never made it into the book. It was originally part of the first conversation Peter and Lily had in Mr. Richards’ class. That scene is now from Peter’s POV, although this one is from Lily’s. Instead I ended up putting some of these words in Isdemus’ mouth a few chapters later.

Peter thought for a minute. “Let’s say, and it’s only a theory, that the universe is like a meshwork of fibers instead of individual particles – like a trampoline.  If someone jumps on the trampoline in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the rest of it will vibrate in Greenland, or for that matter at the outer edge of the Milky Way.”

“Everything is connected,” Lily summarized.

“Right – if the theory is true, which hasn’t been proven,” Peter said again.  “What that means, of course, is that addition of energy in one place can alter the energy in another, seemingly unrelated location, and aspects of that have been proven in things like entanglement and such.  That’s not related, don’t worry about that now,” he said as an afterthought, shaking his head.

Lily had the impression that he periodically forgot he was talking to another person.

He went on, “But if the theory of superstrings is correct, if there is a trampoline, it sort of presupposes the question of what’s behind it?  From within the trampoline ourselves, we are somewhat limited in our sphere of influence.  But if we could step outside of it for long enough to understand how the whole thing is put together, if we could comprehend how the addition or subtraction of energy in one place could affect the energy in another – well, theoretically, there would be nothing we couldn’t do.  Metaphorically, it would be like finding the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Lily was hung up on a particular image that his words had suggested.  Instead of solid humans in the room, she saw a grid.  A few of them milled about to sharpen pencils or go to the bathroom, and as they moved the air in front of them rippled and moved forward in an arc until it encountered another solid object.  If the object was another person, then ever so slightly the arc of wind ruffled the tiny hairs on their arms, making those more sensitive to a chill shiver and draw their sweaters tighter.  And all around, behind the latticed canvas, she saw the penumbra.  They seemed transparent to her only because she, too, was part of the canvas, but now she saw them as behind, outside, plucking threads and creating tiny, seemingly insignificant ripples that amplified as they moved further away from their origin.

“And you – think that’s possible?” she whispered, hardly daring to breathe.

“Bits and pieces of it.  The Chaos Theory seems to imply pretty strongly that actions in one place can affect events very far away, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the cause and effect happens through a ripple of superstrings.  As I said, entanglement theory demonstrates that once two particles are linked, alterations in one will affect the other in a complementary way.  But this idea of an underlying fabric of the universe has yet to be proven, as far as I can tell.”

The post Superstring Theory appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Arthurian Legends (What’s True and What’s Not)

Peter Stewart grew up on Arthurian Legends. Here’s a few little-known facts to get you up to speed. (Bolded facts appear in “Intangible”.)

 

Legend has it that Arthur probably lived in Wales, but some versions place him in England, and even France.
The city of Camelot is set in a region called Carlion.
The name of the wizard can be spelled “Merlin” or “Merlyn.” The latter was favored by T.H. White.
The famous queen’s name can be spelled Guinevere (most commonly), or Guenever (nicknamed Jenny), depending on the version. She is described as having black hair and blue eyes.
Arthur’s dad, Uther, died when Arthur was fifteen. He was raised as a servant, because nobody knew he was Uther’s son until he pulled Excalibur from the stone.
The older name for Excalibur was Caliburn (as given by Geoffrey of Monmouth).
According to T.H. White, the sword in the stone bore the inscription: “Whoso Pulleth Out This Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England.” Other versions had the sword itself inscribed with “Take Me Up” on one side, and on the other, “Cast Me Away.”
Arthur’s symbol was that of a single golden dragon (hence his surname, Pendragon, or son of a dragon).
Lancelot’s castle is called the Joyous Gard, and it is described as having a faintly gold sheen.
According to the same historian (Geoffrey), Arthur conceived a plan of European conquest much like Alexander the Great, and ruled Briton for thirty-nine years.
Many of the Arthurian legends in some way relate to the quest for the Holy Grail (sometimes called the Holy Sepulchre)… and in many of them, Arthur himself is not even a central character. Many more refer to quests of his Knights of the Round Table and not to Arthur himself.
Most versions of the legends hold that Mordred is Arthur’s nephew.  T.H. White describes him as “a thin wisp of a fellow, so fair-haired that he was almost an albino: and his bright eyes were so blue… it seemed that there was no part of him which you could catch hold of, neither his hair, nor his eyes, nor his whiskers…”
The battle in which Arthur died is called alternately the Battle of Salisbury Plain and the Battle of Camlann, depending on which version you’re reading.
Because Lancelot had betrayed Arthur over the Guinevere affair, he was not present during the Battle of Salisbury Plain. He rushed back to help, but arrived too late - everyone was dead when he got there.
There were rumors that Arthur and Mordred perished upon one another’s swords.

 

The post Arthurian Legends (What’s True and What’s Not) appeared first on C.A. Gray.

God Will Fight For You (if you let Him!)

(This is a true story, but I’ve purposely left out all names to protect the innocent and the guilty alike!)

God is a God of justice.  He can be trusted.  He will fight for you… but only if you let Him.  Take matters into your own hands, and that’s all you get.  (And His justice is WAAAAAY better than yours.)

In medical school, I was that kid who studied twelve hours a day, six days a week. Everyone else was social, but I didn’t ever have time to go out; I’d have one social evening per week, if that. I was rewarded with a residency in Portland, Oregon. This was significant because when I graduated, there weren’t enough residencies to go around — only the very top students in the (at the time) six accredited naturopathic schools in North America got residencies.

Then, six months before graduation, we had a weekend-long class, evaluated on a single paper.  I wrote the paper weeks before anyone else did, and turned it in. I only later found out that the instructor had uploaded a template that we had to follow, and I hadn’t known about it, so I hadn’t followed it.  The instructor failed me because of that, which would mean I’d have to re-take the class.  But the class wasn’t offered again until after graduation… which would mean I wouldn’t graduate… which would mean I’d lose my residency… which would mean I’d get pushed back six months and couldn’t take boards and start practicing.

You can imagine how much and how long I appealed and begged all the “powers that be” for justice, but to no avail.  Months went by; all my classmates, who had studied much less than I had, were making graduation plans and lining up jobs.  But I rehearsed what I knew about the Lord:

“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret — it leads only to evil. For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land” (Ps 37:5-9).

I had to turn down the residency — I’d actually planned to do so anyway, but the fact that I “lost” a residency made my story much more sensational (since I was one of many who had failed this class for the same reason, and suffered similar consequences… but there had never been a residency at stake before).  I appealed multiple times each to the instructor; to the head of the department; to the dean of students; to the Academic Progress Committee; and finally to both the medical director and the president of the school, only to be told “no,” for months.  But I still believed that the Lord would deliver me — and because I believed it, I paid the $1000 for boards and continued to study my butt off, in faith that I’d be allowed to take them.

Two days before graduation, a friend asked me what had finally happened, and I told him nothing but solid refusal. All I could figure was they were afraid if they passed me, it would set a precedent they didn’t want. The friend was outraged on my behalf.  He circulated a petition to the class, and every one of them signed it, demanding that the Academic Progress Committee reevaluate my case. The APC called a special meeting that day. The head of the department of the class in question showed up to that meeting to defend why they should not pass me, even though she wasn’t normally part of that committee.

The APC refused me again. It was now the day before graduation.

My class was so outraged, they all got up and stormed out of our last lecture ever, and camped out in the president’s office for an HOUR AND A HALF, each telling stories about me.  “You can’t do that to this girl.  Let me tell you about her.” “Of all the people you could do this to, her!?  She’s the one we all went to for notes. She’s the one we ask for the answers after the exams. She’s the one…” One by one, they went around the room, sharing stories about me that I didn’t even know they’d noticed — up until this point, I didn’t really think any of them cared about me. I sat in the corner, listening and crying.

The dean of students was present too, and she came up with the following idea: the class I’d failed was offered again after graduation, but the weekend before boards.  To keep the professors happy, I had to re-take the class (and submit the now-correctly formatted paper that I’d written months earlier, but no one would grade). So I still could not take part in the actual graduation ceremony. But if I re-took the class and passed, they could “rush” a graduation for me and I could sit for boards, literally the very next day.

The class was still angry — this wasn’t justice enough for them.  So the graduation speaker wrote me into his speech: “Some of our best and our brightest should be up here with us today.”  Then he called out my name, and that of another girl who had failed for the same reason, and asked us to stand.  My class stood and gave us a standing ovation, and then the speaker motioned entire auditorium to their feet as well.  (The only people neither standing nor cheering were the administration faculty on the stage, all of whom looked distinctly uncomfortable.)

I re-took the class (and the head of the department still gave me a C on the paper, the minimum passing grade — I suspect because it was the most she could do to me for inadvertently making her look foolish in front of the entire administration. That made me laugh). The next day I had the first-ever private graduation ceremony in the president’s office, with half my class in attendance.  As we left, the president said to me offhandedly, “I hope you do well on the boards, after all of this.”  Without even thinking, I replied, “Oh!  I’m gonna obliterate ‘em!”  He muttered, almost under his breath,  “I know you will.”

I sat for boards the next day, and passed, of course.  Six months later, one of my classmates who had fought for me ran into the president, who made the offhand comment that I had, in fact, “rocked the boards” — apparently he’d been curious enough after all of that to look up my score.  (After all, for all they knew, I had no more than a few weeks’ notice that I would even be allowed to take the boards. But I’d actually been studying for months, long before I knew in the “natural” that I’d be allowed to do so — and whenever I’d gotten discouraged, I had envisioned the looks on the collective administration’s faces when they heard my score!)

Even up to two years later, students who never even knew me were still talking about that story… and not just the story, but the way I’d trusted in the Lord to deliver me, and then He had — spectacularly.  A lot of important people who had denied me ended up looking very foolish — by no actions of mine.  And to my knowledge, no one has ever failed that class for the same reason again.

Proverbs 20:22 says, “Do not say, ‘I’ll pay you back for this wrong!’ Wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.”
Prov 21:12: “The Righteous One takes note of the house of the wicked and brings the wicked to ruin.”
Matt 5:44: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”
Matt 5:5: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
Matt 8 (The Faith of the Centurion): trust the word that Jesus speaks, regardless of how the circumstances look.
Prov 25:21-22: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”
Luke 18 (The Parable of the Persistent Widow): God will grant justice to those who are persistent in prayer, but you must have faith that He will do it.

The post God Will Fight For You (if you let Him!) appeared first on C.A. Gray.