M.A. Ray's Blog, page 16

What Not to Say When You’re a Writer (and What to Say Instead)

These are things I hear a lot in the sideways world of Internet writing. No matter how long you’ve been doing this dance: rookie mistakes. This is what I’ve learned about the attitude serious writers bring to their work.

Don’t say: “Can I do (X) in my manuscript?”

I don’t know. Can you? Of course you can—you can try whatever you want. The first draft is the playground draft. POV, setting, character, plot, everything. Just tell the story. If it doesn’t work, go back and fix it on the rewrite. Besides, who knows? Maybe you’ll come up with something genius. But if you don’t stretch your muscles and try new things, even if they’re just new to you, you’ll never grow as an artist. “Can I make my character a daywalking vampire who loves frosting?” Sure you can. I think what you’re really asking is, “Will people be interested in this? Because I don’t want to spend a year writing it if nobody’s going to buy it.” Nobody can tell what the market will do. Just write the thing, if it’s in your heart.

Say instead: “I have done this thing. Does it work?”

Do it, clean it up to the best of your abilities, and get yourself some beta-readers. Don’t show me an idea. Show me writing.

Don’t say: “Has it been done?”

Yes. But you’ve never done it. There’s so much out there. Of course it’s been done. Do it your way. Don’t apologize for retreading familiar ground; instead, tread it how only you can.

Say instead: “This is my project. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

See above. Do it, clean it up, send it out to readers. Don’t show me an idea. Show me work.

Don’t say: “I suck.”

You’re right. You do. So do I. So did Flannery O’Connor. Every artist knows it. If you’re new to writing or creating, it hurts so hard to realize this, but if you let it stop you, you’re not going to get any better. Dwelling on your suck is not going to help you.

Say instead: “I’m learning.”

Practice is going to help you. Every time you put words down, you’re learning something, whether you realize it or not. That’s why it’s important to put words down regularly. If you’re serious about this, it’s only going to get better, every time.

Don’t say, never say, never ever: “I quit.”

I’ve got to try to be rational here, because when I hear this, I see hot red. If you want this, don’t ever say that. It’s garbage. You can’t quit. This is hard. And there will be days when you’ll wonder, and days when you’ll doubt yourself, and days when you’ll hate everything. Writers don’t quit. Real writers don’t quit. If you want to be a “real writer,” whatever that means to you, you’re not allowed.

Say instead: “I need a break.”

Sometimes, you just need a day. Or a week. Or a year. Or more. But come back to the words. They need you—you’re a writer. You need them for the same reason. The toughest, stupidest, most frustrating years of my life were the ones when I wasn’t writing fiction. I need this. Maybe you do, too. If this is what you’re meant for, what you love, what you really want out of life, you’ll come back. And you’ll be better than ever, because you’ll be ready to learn all over again.

What about it? Do you want to be that jackass at parties, saying languidly, “Oh…I’m writing a novel…“? Or do you want to stand up straight and say, “I’m writing my fourth novel”? If you want the second, you know what you have to do.

Why I Chose Self-Publishing

Today, I want to talk a little about why I decided to self-publish Saga of Menyoral. I don’t want to tell you anything about what you ought to do with your creative work, because I’m not qualified, and I’m not you—but these days we have choices, and maybe you’d like to hear why I made the choice I did.

Menyoral is a big story. I’m only just beginning to tell it to the people who are willing to listen, and Dingus has a long way to go before he’s through. I have a great love for superhero comics: the continuing nature of the stories, the colorful heroes, the characters so many people have come to know and love over the years. I also love classic fantasy, especially set in alternate worlds, where anything can happen as long as it’s according to the rules the author’s set out, and where titanic forces clash over the fate of the world. The book I want to read has all those things—but I also love, love, love deep characters, love developing characters, and in so many comic books and fantasy epics, the characters either don’t change much over the years (remaining the same age throughout, for example, no matter how many stories are told). Who they are takes a back seat to what they can do.

I wanted more. I didn’t want to exchange Real People for Epic Awesome, or the other way around. I wanted both, but if I wrote Menyoral as a traditional-style novel series, I’d be writing ridiculous doorstops, for which the market is punk unless you happen to have a name already. If I wrote it the way I wanted to, I didn’t think the world of legacy publishing would be interested, since I’m still not sure how many books it’s going to be (my best guess is upwards of twenty). But oh, I wanted to share what I had, and I kept working on it without much hope of anyone seeing it, or much thought to anyone enjoying it but me and my husband, and eventually a very good friend (Casey Matthews, I’m looking at you). Years I worked on it, and I never thought anyone else would be interested.

Then I bought a Kindle.

Two years ago, I didn’t know self-publishing online existed, but the more I read and the more I studied, the more I came to think it was the best option for what I wanted to do with my work. It was hardly a year ago that I decided to take the plunge; and last December, I got all my ducks in a row, from cover art to editing, finalized the draft, and clicked the “Publish” button.

My other friends, less close, but still blazingly awesome, were interested. People were interested. I sold more than I thought I would, and I wrote another. People wanted that one, too—and when I ran a free promotion through Amazon, I gave a lot away. I expected sales would slack off, but they’re steady and growing.

It’s nice. It’s really nice. But even if people drift away, even if I never sell another book, I won’t be bound by a contract, I won’t be dropped if I don’t earn. My stuff won’t go out of print, and I can tell the story to the end, the way I want to tell it.

So that’s why I chose to self-publish. What about you? What choice did you make, or what are you considering, and why? Let me know in the comments, if you’re so inclined.

Beauty’s Champions

So I’ve been reading a lot these days about Amazon and Hachette. It’s been a polarizing debate in writers’ circles for over a month now, and I’ve seen tons of different theses, tons of different items presented as “fact,” so please forgive me if I don’t go over all that. What bothers me is one side or another being presented as a champion of authors.

That just isn’t true of either side. Just like every company in the history of companies as we know them, Amazon and Hachette are both in this to make money. From you. Yes, Amazon is offering a tempting option to every writer out there. Yes, Hachette is offering recognition and the cachet that comes with an old publishing name. Whether authors want to pursue one option or the other, or both, is not my concern here.

Listen to me. The market is beyond saturated with writers. If the market were a dish sponge, it’d be sitting in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Whatever option you pursue, traditional or e-publishing, your chances of making a living wage, let alone hitting it big, are getting chewed up in the pool filter. Most of us are not in this for the money, or we’d have quit a long time ago, but I don’t think any of us would deny that we would like to support ourselves with our writing. To earn money doing something we love. To be recognized as Good Enough To Make It. Increasingly, though, this is not a merit-based game.

Difficult, isn’t it, to look at all this madness and not let it embitter us? But to make lovely things, we must remain with hearts soft toward a hard world. Don’t let all this stupidity get in the way of art. Let it drive you closer, instead. With a ridiculous glut like we have in this business, why not do something you desperately love? Put your very best into that, first and foremost. Pour yourself into it. If you do everything you can to make it beautiful and professional, it has absolutely as good a chance as anything else these days, and you can’t really ask for more than that.

Protect yourself, oh yes. I’m not telling you not to protect yourself and your art. If you’re going to sell it, be careful. Don’t give yourself away to abuse from anyone, because whatever the world wants to tell you, what you have made is deeply precious. I’m only saying that money doesn’t have to equal success. When you’ve run your race, are you really going to look back and say, “I wish I’d made more money”? Or are you going to turn, gaze over the course, and say, “I have done nothing less than my best, and look at the beauty behind me”?

So if you’re like me, and want the latter: go. Write today. 

Don’t give in to despair over something as silly as money. Write. Paint in blood or machine oil. Bring us the hormonal sparkle of attraction, the heat of dragon fire, the sizzling of a damaged battlesuit, the alien chill of the void. Make love, make war, make magic.

Give the world something beautiful.

Excerpt from The Service

Foul Winds

Dreamport; The Cathedral of the Winds, apartments of the High Priestess

A tiny old woman slept, curled in a massive, blue brocade armchair under a window, nested with at least three blankets. Sunlight peeked through the thin cracks between the blond wood shutters, illuminating little of the woman’s form. When the shutters stood open, which wasn’t often these days, the armchair showed its age with faded upholstery, and when the woman wasn’t in it, one could see the lumps where the stuffing had migrated to accommodate years of sitting and sleeping. A long white curtain, the woman’s hair, draped over one of the chair’s arms, nearly to the floor. Near her face, it was stained yellow with smoke, and it always smelled strongly of incense, a wild, perfumed mix of a hundred different things.

The old woman’s breathing rattled. When she slept her lined face relaxed into openness, and the great beauty which had faded like the chair showed again. Like the chair, the woman had been born Before, born with the magic, and like the chair, she had survived when the magic died; they were two relics of a bygone time. She still, every so often, dreamed about the divine ecstasy of her Lady’s power flowing through her frame, when she’d felt unbreakable.

The door to the antechamber snapped open. The younger woman who ran in across the fine Hayedi carpet, sword banging against her thigh, had never known magic, but she knew the woman she served. “Disa!” she said sharply.

The old woman in the chair stirred and groaned.

“Wake up, Disa!”

“Is it Nones already?” Disa sat up in her chair and flailed at the blankets. “Gudrun—my vestments—”

“No time,” Gudrun said, and tucked her thick arms under Disa’s withered little body, and the blankets. She lifted the old woman from the chair and gathered her to a bust hard with muscle beneath large breasts.

Disa blinked, bemused, but wrapped her gnarled arms around Gudrun’s neck. “What’s going on? I don’t want to give service in my shift.”

“No prayers. Tell you later.” Gudrun strode from the chair to the door out of Disa’s sitting room. Over the younger woman’s brawny shoulder, Disa glimpsed big, bloody footprints tracked over the patterned carpet, and blankets in a messy tumble where they had slipped from Gudrun’s arm.

This had never happened before, in all Disa’s long years, even when Hengist was Champion and she was a young woman gone silly over the muscular slab of him. She hitched the remaining blanket up around herself with one hand, keeping it clear of Gudrun’s feet. “Where’s Flannery?” she asked, of her five-year-old great niece, who was up from Ennis for the month.

“Don’t know.” Gudrun dashed out of the bedroom, giving Disa another view over her shoulder, this time of a black-clad corpse in a spreading crimson puddle, and the golden disk-and-rays of an Aurelian monk resting on his chest, pulled haphazardly out of his clothes.

“Where’s the other one?”

“Didn’t make it up here. Might be more. I’m moving you.”

“Horsefeathers!” If Disa had been on her feet, she would have stamped one. “Put me down this very moment, Gudrun. If you got both of them, that’s all there is to it. I’m not in the habit of letting anyone interrupt services, let alone these blasted doom-crows. I want my vestments.”

“No, Disa.” Gudrun hurried through the hall to the door that cut off the High’s apartments from the rest of the Cathedral, her usual station when Disa wanted quiet. She put her back to it and turned the knob, inching backward to press it slowly open, peering out of the crack. She didn’t give Disa even a moment to see the situation for herself, only bolted to the left, up the side of the west gallery. The sanctuary flashed past between the caryatid statues of the Lady’s saints: blond wood pews, the rich, sky-blue carpet of the aisle runner, purest white marble. When Disa saw the altar, she screamed.

“Gudrun! Stop!”

“I see them,” she said grimly. “Now they know—”

“Stop, I say!” Disa slammed a bony fist into one of Gudrun’s breasts. Gudrun gasped; her strides faltered, and Disa writhed free. When her body struck the marble floor, she gasped, too, but immediately scrambled away and won her feet. “You, there!” she shouted at the Aurelian doom-crow at the altar, about to touch a brand to the coals that filled the thirty-foot, white-marble dish. “Don’t even think it, you fiend!”

The Aurelian monk, a Militant from the sword he wore, bared his teeth at her and lit the brand. Disa let out a shriek of rage and ran at him, forgetting about her aches and pains, forgetting her fragile lungs. He dropped the burning torch onto the carpet and drew his sword. Gudrun sprinted past Disa, knocking her to the floor with a stiff arm, and charged to meet the Aurelian in a sparking clash of steel. “Fire!” Disa screamed, or tried to, as flames crawled across the carpet. Instead of the howl she’d aimed for, the word caught at the back of her throat and was lost in a fit of wracking coughs. She pounded her fist on the floor, clutching her chest.

Gudrun pushed the monk forward, stepping out of the flames. Her boot was on fire. She kicked at him once, twice, until his black linen clothing caught. It went up with an audible whoosh, and he started to scream, at least until Gudrun ran him through. Disa coughed on.

“Disa! Move!” Gudrun shouted in agony, beating at her flaming boot. Disa crawled forward as best she could. The thump from behind her made her start and forced out a last, bone-rattling, coppery cough. She rolled to her back, rasping shallow breaths into her aching chest.

“Aunt Disa?” Flannery asked from her left. The sneaky little thing had knocked a candelabrum onto another Aurelian, and he rose with difficulty, groaning. Disa tried to force a warning out of her mouth. “Are you—eek!”

The Aurelian lunged, snatching the front of Flannery’s blue dress and pulling her off her feet as he stood. He raised a stiletto, ready to drive it into her little body. She thrashed and struggled for all she was worth, shrieking. Disa fought her way to her knees, gasping, only to take a ringing backhand slap from the Aurelian.

Gudrun plowed into him from the side, still trailing smoke from her boot. She moved him a foot or two before he crashed to the floor under her. Little Flannery plopped down and scooted away. Disa lay reeling from the slap, trying to make her limbs obey her commands. The Aurelian cried out and dropped his stiletto when Gudrun broke his wrist. “Old women and little girls!” she said. “Try me, you filthy—” And she spat out an obscenity that would have scalded the ears of that foul-mouthed Vandis Vail. It was the least shocking thing Disa had heard this afternoon.

Gudrun planted her knee in the Aurelian’s chest, picked up the stiletto, and drove its full length into his neck. When she drew it out, his blood gushed over the carpet. Disa tried again to rise, but as soon as she did, a wave of dizziness crashed over her head, and she sank back down. Flannery knelt nearby, trying to beat out the spreading fire with her hands.

“Come on!” Gudrun said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Flannery, let’s go!” She lifted Disa again, but this time Disa could hardly bring her arms up to grasp Gudrun’s neck.

“It’s the Lady’s carpet,” Flannery said, grimly slapping at the flames.

“Akeere loves you more,” Gudrun said, and shifted Disa to one arm so she could stride over and seize the back of the little girl’s dress.

“We can’t—”

“Hush, Flannery,” Disa croaked. Gudrun bore them both out of the sanctuary, down the nave and into the narthex, where she shouldered open a smaller door to the side of the great double portal. As she ran down the marble steps, Disa reeled so badly she nearly lost consciousness. The edges of her vision grayed, but the cool slapping of wind on her bare legs kept her aware, if not alert. She shivered; even this close to Longday, Dreamport could run toward chill.

As soon as they reached the street, Gudrun set Flannery down. The little girl ran to the edge of Temple Row, shouting for help from the crowds rushing past, carrying buckets. “There’s a fire in Akeere’s house!” she cried. “Hurry!” They paid her no heed.

“Too late, little one. Look at the sky.” Gudrun raised her square chin westward, toward the pall of smoke staining the blue afternoon. “Come back now,” she said, and Flannery obeyed.

“House of the Sun,” Disa managed. “Foul winds blowing, Gudrun.”

“The foulest,” she agreed, as the portal swung wide, exuding the stink of smoke.

“Fire’s out,” said Norbert, one of the young priests who lived in the east transept. He had ash in his hair and soot on his face. “All right, Your Holiness?”

“What took you so long?” Gudrun snapped, before Disa could answer.

“Sorry, Lady Gudrun, but there were assassins in the—”

“Never mind it,” Disa said. “Is anyone injured?”

“Sturgis is dead,” said Norbert, flatly. “Lira’s got a bad stab wound, and Karys is on it. That’s it.”

“Go help the House of the Sun,” Disa ordered, feeling slightly better now that she had something to do rather than dangle from Gudrun’s arms and feel useless. “But first, get me a blanket. Send Thalia next door.”

“Right away, Your Holiness.” Norbert disappeared back inside and the portal swung slowly shut behind him.

“The fire’s out. We’ll go back in,” Gudrun said.

“This is where I need to be. Once Norbert comes back, put me down and go with him to the House of the Sun. Flannery! Where’s Flannery?”

“Right here, Aunt Disa,” said the little girl from Gudrun’s elbow. Disa pressed a hand to one temple. She wasn’t remembering things properly; the blow to the head must have addled her.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said a young man. He was shorter than Gudrun, with almond-shaped eyes and a flattish nose—he must have been from Kuo. “I’m from the Knights.” He pointed a gloved thumb over his shoulder as he spoke, eastward, at the headquarters of the Knights of the Air. “They came here, too, didn’t they? Is everything all right?”

“We lost one,” Disa said shortly. “Did they get Sir Vandis?”

“No, ma’am, they did not.” The young man grinned. “This close to Longday, Vandis is already in Knightsvalley.”

“Good,” she said, and just then Norbert returned. “Put me down, Gudrun, and go with Norbert.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Gudrun said quellingly, but Disa grasped the blanket Norbert offered.

“Horsefeathers! You’ll go. Flannery will stay here with me, and this young fellow here, Sir Whatsisname. Won’t you?” She looked sharply at the Knight.

“Hui,” he said. “Hjaldi told me to make sure you’re all right, and that’s what I’ll do, ma’am.” He patted his sword and turned his cheerful face to Gudrun, who huffed disgustedly. “Gudrun, ma’am, do you know Pearl?”

Gudrun grunted an affirmative, though Disa didn’t know who that might be. “Fine swordswoman.”

“She was my Master,” said Sir Hui, his smile widening.

 Gudrun nodded, placed Disa carefully on the top step, and followed young Norbert down to the street. Disa struggled to wrap herself in the blanket, until Sir Hui took it and draped it around her. “There you go, Disa, ma’am.”

“You Knights never address me properly,” she snapped, but when he sat down next to her and looped a wiry arm around her shoulders, she didn’t protest. He supported and warmed her.

“Well, I suppose it’s how we’re taught, ma’am,” he said in a tone so serious it had to be meant cheekily. “Respect, always. Reverence is earned.”

“Hmph.”

“You know,” he went on, “we don’t even call Vandis ‘Sir Vandis’. He’s just Vandis.”

“You don’t think I’m holy?” she snapped, knowing exactly what sort of question she was asking.

“I’m sure you are, ma’am, but calling you ‘Your Holiness,’ I can’t do that. It’d be like saying you are the embodiment of holy, and I just don’t think anyone but our Lady can be that.”

“Hmph.”

They sat, quiet for a while, watching the people form into lines to bring water from pumps and fountains to the House of the Sun. “Just how old are you, anyway? You can’t be more than a Junior, young man.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Sir Hui replied. “I’m serving my Seniorship. Maybe I’ll pass the Mastery exams this year. I don’t know, do you think I should try it?”

“I think you lose nothing in a valiant attempt.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

They were quiet again, for a longer while, the man with the almond-shaped eyes warming the tiny old woman, listening to the shouts from down the Row. Little Flannery sat for a short time, and then got up and started playing some sort of hopping game on the marble steps.

“Have a care, Flannery,” Disa said when night began to fall. She felt desperately weary. Smoke marred the sky, a huge, ugly smear against the sunset, looking progressively paler as the light faded. Flannery uttered a frustrated sigh and came to sit next to them.

After a moment she asked, “Can you tell me a story, Sir Hui?”

“Maybe. What kind of a story?”

“Any story. I’m bored.”

“All right, I’ll tell you a story from Kuo,” Sir Hui said. “Do you know something about Kuo? We had different dragons from you guys here in Rothganar. We call them ‘liung,’ and they weren’t wicked and greedy. They were very wise. Well, once upon a time there was a prince of the blood. He wanted more than anything to be a good king and rule his people well, so he went down to the great river in the royal city and called out for the liung who ruled its waters, but the liung didn’t come. The prince went back to the palace and went about his business. He went to the river the next day and the next. The liung didn’t come, but he kept going down there, every day for years. Even after his father died and he was king, he kept on going. At last, one morning when he called to the liung, a fish came up to the surface and spoke to him. ‘Why do you keep coming here to disturb my master, the liung?’

“The king said, ‘I don’t mean to disturb him. I only want to ask him one question: what does it mean to be a good ruler?’

“The fish said, ‘Come back tomorrow morning.’

“So the king went away to rule his kingdom and came back again as always. The fish returned and asked him, ‘Are your people hungry? Do they suffer from ill use by your soldiers?’

“‘Of course not!’ the king cried.

“‘I will tell my master, the liung. Come back tomorrow morning.’

“The next morning it was the same thing. The fish said, ‘The mighty liung desires to know whether you have made an heir.’

“‘You may tell the mighty liung that I have three strong sons,’ said the king.

“‘Very well. Come back tomorrow morning.’

“So the king did as the fish told him to do, and the fish asked him another question the next morning. ‘O king, you are a good king, making certain that your people are cared for, even after your death, but the great liung would ask you one more question. Why, when you are so wise, do you do something so foolish as to eat with your brother, since it was his hand that struck your father down? You are a good king, but serve him justice and you will be great.’

“When the king heard this, he rushed away angrily, and went to his brother in the gardens. He couldn’t raise his sword against his own brother without confronting him. It wasn’t in him, so he shouted a demand to his brother, because he wanted to know why their father was dead.

“The king’s brother replied, ‘Yes, I struck him down, but have you noticed I didn’t strike you, even though you’re the elder? Our father was not what you think. He was cruel, and starved the people. He didn’t deserve his royal seal, and I saw that you did, because you wanted so much to be a good king.’

“‘Ah!’ the king cried in anguish. He couldn’t kill his brother now, not when he spoke wisdom. He ran back down to the river and was just about to shout out to the liung when he saw that the fish was waiting for him.

“Before he could speak, the fish said, ‘Have you killed your brother yet?’

“‘No, and I won’t. How could I, when he wanted only what was good for the people?’

“‘My master the liung wants you to know that you have already learned the highest virtue of a king: compassion. Go and rule your kingdom, and remember that the true meaning of justice is understanding.’

“The king—” But there, Sir Hui stopped speaking. Gudrun and Norbert were coming up the steps, sooty, sweaty, and reeking of smoke.

“What news?” Disa asked, jerking herself straighter on the step. Her head spun.

Gudrun shook her head. “The outside’s still standing. Otherwise? Total loss.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. And Solveig.”

Disa felt suddenly ancient, and even more tired. Solveig was a friend, and a good one; for years, they’d had dinner once a week. “She’s dead?”

“They got her.”

She sagged against Sir Hui again. “Let’s go back in,” she said. To her credit, Gudrun refrained from an I told you so. She only lifted Disa in sooty arms.

“Thank you, Sir Hui,” Disa said graciously.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said, and bounded down the steps.

“Wait!” Flannery shouted after him. “Sir Hui, did the king remember?”

“Of course he did, sweetie!” Sir Hui called back, grinning over his shoulder. “His name was Chuang, and he was the greatest king ever to rule Kuo.” He gave her a jaunty wave as he leapt down the last two steps to the street and set off toward Knights’ Headquarters.

“Come, Flannery,” Gudrun said, and they went into the Cathedral. Inside, beneath the rich scents of the incense the under-priests already burned, it stank of charred, wet wool.

“Take me up there a moment,” Disa said, though all she’d wanted to do for hours was sleep. When Gudrun sighed and obeyed, she said to the under-priests, “Burn some myrrh for Solveig tonight, when you’re doing the commendations.” When the affirmative came, Gudrun was already making her way out of the sanctuary to Disa’s apartments, so that the distance blurred the words. “Take me to my study, Gudrun, and fetch me a dressing gown,” she ordered.

“Bed would be better.”

“The study,” Disa said, as firmly as she could. She wanted to get a start on the paperwork for replacing the carpet. “But—perhaps you ought to remain nearby.”

“I’d do that even if you told me not to,” Gudrun said, with the faintest trace of a smile.

Disa huffed. “You’re as bad as a Knight.”

 

 

Too Bad

Fort Rule, Muscoda

Krakus sat at his end of the desk in the sunny office, booted heels propped up and ankles crossed, playing with a metal ring puzzle that had sat for so long he didn’t remember the aim of the thing. Lech sat over on his end, scribbling something. The scratch-scratch-scratch-pause, scratch-scratch-scratch-pause of his quill as he wrote and dipped usually faded into the background, but today it annoyed Krakus near to screaming. He could go over to Section One and work with the Special Units a while—something he’d been doing more and more often—but didn’t see why he should always be the one to leave.

Krakus had lost some pudge. Once, his gut had kept slipping out from under his breastplate. Now he was wearing one of the old ones, three sizes smaller. Soon he’d need to switch to a smaller one yet. He wasn’t thin, but he looked pretty good, if he did say so himself. Even Tatiana had commented on it, just last night when she had come on her weekly visit, and for the first time in years, he could see his own feet.

Lech hadn’t said anything, but Krakus hadn’t expected him to. They weren’t speaking much these days, at least Krakus wasn’t. Lech went on and on like he always had. Used to be Krakus would offer something to shut him up, but no more. No matter how much Lech ranted and raved, no matter how closely in front of his nose a simple solution might hover, Krakus didn’t say a word. He liked being able to sleep at night.

“Go outside, Krakus,” Lech said. “I can’t concentrate with all your noise.”

“I’m comfortable where I am.” Krakus contrived to make his puzzle ring a little louder, watching Lech from under half-lowered eyelids.

Lech’s jaw clenched, but he kept on with his work. Every time Krakus made a sound with his toy, Lech’s mouth pinched tighter. Finally he threw down his quill. “Krakus—” He stopped and breathed, steepling his fingers over the desk. “I’m about to take a meeting.”

Usually that was enough to chase Krakus out, but today he felt mulish. “Meet away,” he said, shrugging.

“It isn’t your kind of meeting.”

“None of them are, Lechie.”

“Mm.” Lech’s lips pursed more tightly than ever. His ears started going red—he hated being called Lechie, like Krakus used to call him. “Be that as it may, this meeting in particular holds nothing of interest to you, since you persist in your refusal to promote the interests of Father Muscoda and the Church.”

“Everyone knows you’re the brains of this outfit,” Krakus said sweetly.

“Go play with your freaks.”

He smiled. “Fuck you.”

“Ah, yes, profanity. The last resort of a tiny mind.”

Krakus snorted. He was on the point of saying something about tiny genitals and Lech’s obvious need to compensate, but a soft knock sounded from the door. Feodor opened it a crack and said, “Estevan Barshefsky to see you, Father Lech.”

“Excellent. Send him in.” Lech looked down his nose. “Last chance, Krakus.”

Krakus didn’t budge as Feodor opened the door for a man so average the eye slipped off him even when bookcases and the jamb framed him in. Brown hair, brown eyes, medium height—not even a scar or tattoo marked him.

“Good afternoon,” the man said, in a voice as mild as fresh curds.

Lech nodded sharply. “I suppose you know why I called you here. Shut the door behind you.”

The ghost of a smile crossed the man’s face. He shut the door. “And I suppose you know I don’t generally respond to being summoned, or ordered around. I thought you might make it worth my while, Father Lech, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“Yes, well. There are times, for every man in my position, when … impediments must be removed for the greater good. The impediment in question is a thorn in the side of Church and State, Mr. Barshefsky, and—”

“Stop.” The man crossed to the desk, Krakus’s side, and held out his hand. “May I, Father Krakus?”

Wordlessly, Krakus handed over the puzzle. In five heartbeats, no more, the man handed it back with the largest of the rings separated from the rest. Krakus tossed the puzzle into his desk drawer and rummaged for a horehound stick.

“As you can see, Father Lech, I specialize in solving problems. Your reasons are your own. Give me a name.”

“Vandis Vail,” Lech said, and Krakus rolled his eyes. Two horehound sticks, he decided, and slammed the drawer shut. “I want it done within a fortnight, at their Longday Moot.”

“Ah.” Barshefsky frowned slightly. “I’m afraid that will not be possible. Even if I could reach Knightsvalley in time, which I could not, the thing you ask cannot be done. Even if I could pass all the Knights around Sir Vail and reach him, which I could not, it is out of the question.”

Lech opened a drawer on his side and pulled out a canvas sack. He dropped it on the desk, and it crashed and rang with the coins inside it. “Five hundred sovereigns.” Krakus crunched into one of his candy sticks and chewed noisily.

“Oh, it’s a kingly price you offer me, Father Lech, but no. Some fool might bring himself to attempt it, but it will not be this fool.”

“And if I doubled your compensation?”

Krakus crunched again.

“I believe you’re missing my point, Father.” Barshefsky backed toward the door. “To attempt Vandis Vail north of the Back would be madness. To attempt it so near Dreamport would be to beg for painful death. Even ten thousand sovereigns couldn’t induce me to try.”

“In some other place, then,” Lech said, with a desperate edge on his voice.

“It’s best not to consider it. To murder Sir Vail for money—that’s more than my life is worth. No, I’m afraid I can’t help you, Father.”

Krakus fought the urge to laugh as Lech gnashed his teeth. “I am not accustomed to being answered ‘no.’ Why,” he bit out, “not?”

Krakus bit so hard into his candy he cracked a tooth.

“There is a world you don’t know,” Barshefsky said, “and most people never touch, even as much as you just have, but it is all around you. On your streets, in your temples, even in your precious Fort here, it exists just beneath your notice, and in that world, Vandis Vail is screened by an aegis none would seek to break, lest they find themselves in—if I may be permitted—deep shit.” He bowed slightly. “Good day.”

Barshefsky let himself out. Lech should have been boiling, but instead he wore a triumphant smirk.

“I knew it,” he breathed. “I knew it. Demons…”

“He meant criminals, you idiot,” Krakus said, unable to pass up the chance to correct Lech.

“Hush.” Lech pulled his writing things closer and began to scratch away at top speed.

Krakus took his legs from the desk. As he rose, he gave the side of it a good, solid kick, so ink would slosh out of Lech’s well. It splattered on his snow-white sleeve and he shot Krakus a burning glare.

“Oops.” Krakus spread his hands and smiled again. “See you later, Lechie.”

Lech didn’t quite growl out loud, but it was a close thing. Krakus strutted outside, heading for Section One. Thanks, he thought. I think I will go play with my freaks. He whistled the whole walk there.

***

Check out The Service, coming soon from M.A. Ray — and if you haven’t read Hard Luck, you’re behind! Check the “My Books” tab and go get your copy.

Invisibly Yours

Here’s a little thing I wrote for the people who have enjoyed Hard Luck. Special thanks to those who have purchased the book and left reviews, or given me feedback. I deeply appreciate it. This one’s for you. If you’re new to Saga of Menyoral, I hope you find something to love here.

 

 

Invisibly Yours

by

M.A. Ray

 

Now hear this.

Long and long she had lived here at the top of this forsaken hill, if living it could be called. Nearly forty long sleeps, in the cold time, nearly forty longer days, when the sap stirred and she quickened and leafed. Nearly forty almost-deaths, when the darknesses yawned wider and all her green diadem turned to gold and then withered into dead-wood brown; while it all blew away she would fall into a deep, static slumber and hope never to wake.

She was alone here, and could not depart to dance as she had once, from sycamore to ash to yew. All of her winged people, who had attended her in multi-colored, glittering clouds, were fallen into dust. She missed their hymns, which had floated upon the night air with the songs of the crickets, but more clear and more sweet by far.

A forever, it seemed, though compared to the rest of her life it was hardly the blink of an eye. Once a Lady had come to her, how long ago she could not have told: an ancient Power in a Lady’s form, with hair like flames and white dove’s wings on Her ankles, and carrying a Staff. “Please do be watching over My lad, Moira, if ye can,” She had said.

She failed to see how she might watch over any Lady’s lad, being a tree, if you please, a damned tree, though a damned fine oak she was; and she forgot the request and sank bitter roots deep into the hill. Only the squirrels visited her nowadays. A few built drays in her branches, but for company, they were worse than worthless, always chittering and fighting and mating. She shook her branches sometimes, to see them scatter. Even the sheep stayed away.

What was today but one more bead on a ceaseless string of todays? Except that she felt in her roots a faint vibration, like she had not known in who could say how many trapped years, of feet on the grassy hill; but she ignored it, for surely the owner of the steps had not come to see her.

It had not. For it came close, under her branches, and quite suddenly threw itself upon the ground and rolled at tearing speed down the hill—laughing, in the sweet free manner of her lost people. When it crashed to a stop at the bottom, it ran back to the top and repeated the process, over and over. It was a child, clad in a brown smock and little short pants. Its bare knees and feet bore the greeny-yellow stains of crushed grass; and it had bright red hair that stuck to its neck in fat, sweaty curls; and at the heart of it she saw the whisper of that Lady Who had known her name.

Was this it, then? The lad? For there was a whisper of Power in its heart. Perhaps it lived in the village beneath the hill. After a while it came and laid itself flat in her shade, panting, and she looked on it there. It was passing beautiful to her, with its face smiling so, flushed and delighted. When it caught its breath it came to her trunk on the side that did not face the village, lifted its smock, and drew a child’s penis out of its short pants. Why, it meant to—

She pushed herself out of the trunk, head, shoulders, and folded arms. “Put that away!”

He drew in breath so quickly it peeped and yanked up his little pants. “Sorry!” he said, hazel eyes round as the full moon, retreating. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” His bare feet pattered away down the hill. She melted back into the heartwood with a regretful sigh like a breeze through the leaves. She would not see him again.

The sun beat down the next day from a bright blue sky scattered with clouds like the sheep that scattered every hill but hers. She was scattering squirrels with lazy flicks of her limbs when the boy returned. She stilled at his coming, the feet treading up her hill. Perhaps he would roll again, and laugh; but no, he stopped at the trunk where he had just yesterday. “Sorry I went to pee on you,” he whispered to her. “Didn’t know you’re a person. Brought you this, so’s you’d know I didn’t mean it. It’s my best one.”

He squatted to place something at her roots, and she could not resist. She pressed out of the trunk again. “What is it?” she asked, and he gasped, sitting down hard; but for all his startlement, he gazed on her with wonder.

“You’re real…”

“Quite so.”

The boy’s breath trembled. “Brought you this,” he whispered, holding out something clutched in a grubby hand.

She stretched out her palm and he placed his offering in it: a small, dark rock streaked with sparkling white.

“It’s my best one,” he repeated. “On account of it’s real shiny, and I found it when my grandpa took me out fishing, way on the bottom of the crick.”

Turning it over and over in her fingers, she felt the Power in it, not in the rock itself, but in the gift. “Thank you,” she said, very softly, and looked up at him.

“I’m real sorry.” Tears hung in his voice. “I’d never go pee on a person, honest I wouldn’t.”

“All is forgiven.” She glanced down at the rock again, thinking that he did not know what he had done for her. “What are you called?”

“Dingus. What’s—what’s your name?”

She told him.

“Moira,” he repeated, and the very sound of it from mortal lips shivered Power into her roots. She stretched out her hand, farther, her hips slid from the trunk, and her fingers touched his cheek. He was warm, so very warm, and he stilled like a frightened deer. She drew back.

“It is,” she said slowly, “a precious rock. I shall treasure it.”

He blushed and twisted his smock in his two hands. “Glad you like it. Maybe I could—”

“Dingus!” came distantly up the hill, and he glanced toward the sound.

“That’s my ma. I gotta go.”

“Come back to me, Dingus.”

“I will,” he promised. “Bye now!” And he was gone in a scuffle of bare feet, leaving a smile behind. That night there was a thunderstorm. She stretched up her limbs and reveled in the wind and rain, exalted by a little rock from a little boy’s hand, and the lightning fell around her, but it never touched a leaf.

And he did come back to her. Again and again he came, bringing her offerings. Most often, it was flowers.

One overcast day he came to her bleeding. His mouth—bright red blood oozed from a swollen lip, and she could not come out quickly enough. She burst from the bark, demanding he tell her what had happened.

“I have never heard of this thing,” she said, when he poured out some story, accompanied by many tears, about being dilihi, and how the villagers reviled him.

“It’s ’cause of my father. He don’t live here, on account of he’s human and he don’t fit.” Dingus dragged the sleeve of his brown smock across his eyes. “I don’t fit neither, but I can’t leave…”

“Dingus,” she murmured, as the leaves shifting, and realized she did not know what to say to him. She cupped his face in her two hands and swiped at the blood dribbling down his chin with her thumb. When she touched it, a shock of the Power stilled all her sap; she might have torn him apart for more of it, but that she had come to love him. He was more beautiful by far to her than any gifts he carried or any Power in his blood. When he climbed her, his small weight on her up-slanting limbs sent a vibrant quiver of magic through her heartwood.

The days were long and hot. The flowers he laid among her exposed roots dried, crisp at the edges, with a memory of scent, and blew away on the breeze. He came to her, he said, as much as he could, but it never seemed enough compared to the time he was not there to cover her in worship; for when he brought her his cares, tiny though they seemed to her, and wept bitterly with his forehead pressed to her bark and his little hands clutching, he cast his soul before her and bid her take.

Her diadem began to turn gold, and he came and played in the leaves that fell, and took them home, crumbled, in his hair and clothes. Also, he thought of her often, and that brought her a tickle of Power, until more and more she could press from her trunk. At last, though her sap had begun to slow and her diadem had fallen nearly to the last leaf, she could slide free and take some few steps away, to the very tips of her limbs. If she tried to go farther she would be pulled back into her prison of wood.

She stood before him to say good-bye. His eyes traveled slowly up her form; he was still small, but he did not seem so very small when she wore a two-legged shape. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and gave her his child’s smile. Perhaps she retained something of what had made her people trace glimmering patterns in worship.

“I am going to sleep for the cold night,” she said to him, and a thin line of worry appeared between his red, red eyebrows.

“So I won’t be able to come visit?”

“You may come, if you like, but I will be sleeping, and I will not speak to you.”

The gaze he turned up to her brimmed with hurt. A tear slid down his cheek—a tear for her. Swiftly, she bent her knees and caught it on her fingertips. It rolled like a droplet of water down a leaf to the bottom of the groove between her fingers, there to disappear into the wood of her hand. He loved her.

“I will want to speak to you,” she said, “but I will not know you are here.”

He did not weep more, but he bit his lower lip and looked away from her face.

“Dingus.” Her voice drew his eyes once more. She felt his misery as she had felt the miseries of those who called upon her, long and long ago: a yawning gulf at the edge of her vision, which she could no more comprehend now than then, but she knew that it pained him. “When the greenwood grows, I will speak to you again.”

“It’s an awful long time.”

“Will you forget me?”

“No…”

“When the greenwood grows, then.”

He lurched forward and embraced her with his soft little arms, only briefly, before he ran away down the hill. She watched the bright blue dot of his jumper as it shrank away into the bare wood between his village and her hill, waiting for it to disappear before she slid back inside, deep into the rings of old growth at the tree’s center. She slept, borne away by his thought of lacking her.

In time, she woke again. The greenwood had just begun to grow. The snow still lay thick on the ground, but she saw the evidence that her sole acolyte had performed his sacerdotal duties far beyond what she would have expected—for in truth, she had expected nothing. A beaten path stretched from out of the wood up the hill. He had made a lopsided snowman for her, and left offerings in a row on a flat stone: a few sparkling rocks, a squirrel’s tiny skull, a cat carved inexpertly from wood. Later that day, he came bearing a fistful of snowdrops and crocus. He had grown.

He grew, her Dingus, and he came less often, but still he came. Less and less, he brought her tears. Through greenings and Longest Days, through the times when her diadem turned and fell, and even as she slept, he grew taller and thinner, as if stretched by some invisible hands, and spots appeared with his bruises. One spring he planted a violet under her branches; and she wanted to love him. He didn’t come back for weeks afterward. Nearly until Longest Day, she waited for him, watching the violet’s slow spread over the ground beneath her. When he came, bringing her a rabbit’s tanned pelt, he leaned his warmth against her trunk and talked of hunting with his grandfather.

She put her arms around him then, as she so often did, and which he liked if she were gentle with his hurts. His neck tasted salt. As it always had, his heat called to her. He trembled, wordless, and relaxed against her, offering her his trust; the knot in his throat bobbed. His flesh stirred to her caress. He made low sounds while she pressed him to a peak, and that too was worship, as sweet as the hymns that used to ring from thousands of tiny throats.

All that he was, he offered to her. She could not quite grasp his pain, but he cast it before her, always. She could not quite grasp his pleasure, either, the so-mortal, so-sensitive thrills that skittered up and down his meridians and stoked the divine fire at his heart; but that was hers, and to watch his physiology while he leapt from the mountaintop gave her more than Power. All the brief nights of that summer, he came to her, and when again the nights stretched, he kissed her good-bye for the winter.

When she woke again, he’d grown taller yet. Under his tunic the bruises clustered on his ribs. Every time he came, there were more, before the old ones healed, so that when the Longest Day came he cried out in pain at the twiggy touch of her hands. She was gentler with him then, though the reminder that he was mortal enraged her. Afterward he lay quiet, cradled at the crook of trunk and limb, in the same manner he had as a child, but nude. All his soft hot skin touched her bark. “If I stay here much longer,” he said, with his sad eyes reflecting the moonlight, “they’ll kill me.”

“For being this thing that you say you are.”

“Dilihi. Yes.”

He reminded her often, but she tended to allow the word to slip from her mind. As well call the wind a fart. It was not what he was. At length she said, “I do not understand them.”

“You and me both,” he said, with one of his strange and mirthless laughs, and then he covered his face with his hands and wept. She slipped her legs from the trunk and sat astride, removing his hands with the inexorable strength of a tree. When she kissed him, she tasted the salt that ran with his blood, rather than the sweetness that ran through her; she kissed him until he quickened, and he was with her again.

It was the last time.

He had not, lately, come as often, and he was gone a long time, or it seemed so. She felt his thought of her; his desire to see her sang from the tiny houses below, and she fancied that she saw his red head moving place to place while the sun shone. She longed to dance again, dance away from her oaken prison and go to him, but though the gifts he had given her drew her forth, she could not leave the hilltop. She had gone to her people, once, their calls to wine and song, but there was only Dingus now, and there was only so much he had to give.

When the Power touched him, its presence swept from the heavens like a mighty wind. She felt it descend and toss what-was-Dingus before it, a leaf borne on a bloody gust. “He is mine!” she cried in despair. “You have many, but I only the one! Leave him to me!”

“No,” the Power said, whispering, pitying. “He is Mine. But I am sorry to take him from you.”

A tree’s silent scream could not express her pain, for as much as she tried. But later, when it had grown dark and she felt his long strides run up the hill, she slid a woman’s shape from the tree to greet and farewell him. He carried a satchel on a strap across his chest, and the Power’s presence clung thickly around him, though Moira could not hear Her name as yet, only her own.

“I have to go,” he said to her.

Between her hands, she took the face that had made these years seem so short. Still a young face, so painfully young, and however it would look in the years to come, she would not see it. She drew him to her and kissed him. A long time, she kissed him.

“I wish you could come with me.”

She took a step back and extended her arm toward the tree. “I cannot.”

“I love you, Moira.” Many a time before, he had said so to her, but he would not say so again.

“And I you,” she said, as she never had.

His shoulders, thin, with the bones that jutted as if he too were a tree, rose and fell with a breath. “I know.”

She would have kissed him again had she not felt the alien tread in her roots, that of many feet, like the earwigs that roamed inside her bark or the centipedes that wandered just under the earth. “What is this?” she asked, alarmed at the flames she saw over his shoulder. As long as she lived, she would never understand these people. Her little ones had been so much simpler.

He answered her with a groan, so like the sounds he made when she touched him that it confused her yet more when he pushed her before him until the tree swallowed her. She wondered at the trembling she felt in his frame; and it was only when the ones with the flames began to shout, when one of them lunged forward and broke the strap of the satchel, that she did begin to understand. He clung to her rough bark with his soft mortal hands, soundless now but for his jagged breathing. Rocks struck her trunk, and one struck his head, too, with a frighteningly similar thud.

Blood ran from the hurt, and when he opened his mouth, it was to plead with them. What he had done, she never did understand, but he said he hadn’t meant to. It ought to have been enough.

“Climb up, Dingus,” she told him, but he would not. His despair fouled the wind when he said that they would burn her. They would kill him. She saw that now, in their eyes all maddened the same way, and long ago she had seen enough of the world to remember what the rope meant, and how they meant to use her limbs.

She would not allow it. “No, Moira,” he said. His voice shook. How could he know what she meant to do? She clutched around his waist and called to the Power he had given all-unknowing through the years. The shouting grew louder. She heard him begging, and she scraped at the bottom of what had once been a great river. If only she could open the Doors that once flew wide at her lightest touch, she could take him anywhere he wanted to go in a twinkling—but, though he had given her all that he was, it was not enough.

The deep bite of steel in her arms shocked her back to awareness, in time to see Dingus kick out. For her, he would do this, but not for himself? “Let go—let go!” he told her, and she could not do less than he asked, nor could she forgo the kiss she brushed along his cheek before she released him. He lurched away from her then, and they dragged him down in the violets he had planted for her and kicked him until his blood seeped into the ground, and she felt his thoughts of her. She did not understand. She did not understand any of this, the stool, their voices, so loud and confused; but the hands on her, she would not have, no. They were not his hands.

She stretched, and danced her anger at the intrusion. She could not bend as she would have liked; but she thrashed, and thrashed, and at last she threw the climber off a thick limb, hard enough to break him. Dingus laughed, so brightly it might have been any other summer’s night, at least until he fell.

When another kick landed, his blood spattered the violets. “You never wanted me here,” he said, in a thick voice, “but see, I never wanted to be here neither. I never asked to be born!”

It was important, she felt sure, that he had said so. He must have more to say, but there was one with blood on him, and he kicked Dingus hard. Oh, could she touch a fraction of her former strength, she would smite them. Vines would strangle. Violets would grow from their soft mortal flesh and they would scream, they would twist, as they made him cry out. Still he thought of her, when the hemp loop slipped over his head, and still he thought of her when he began to die.

Some little apprehension of his pain came to her then—some little feeling of it—and that he had felt safe with her. Retreating into her growth rings, she wept. In the end, all his love of her had profited him nothing. He would die.

“He will live,” said the Lady, a whisper, and she felt the mighty wind of that Power Who had touched him, the wind that did not stir so much as a leaf. In a moment she felt a breath, trembling in the ground, and it was Dingus’s.

All the dark time, she felt him lying on the hill, and through the sun’s return; she felt him stir and rise, and the steps of another, too. His touch came to her again, once, but she did not speak to him, though she wished she had when he was gone. He belonged to that Power Who wore the Lady’s shape. But every so often, in the depths of her heartwood, she felt his distant thought of her, and stretched inside at the warmth of his worship. It was very nearly enough.

***

Thanks for reading!

If you haven’t met Dingus before, you can read the beginning of his story here. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H5IPASW

Art and Craft

There’s a certain degree of mystery that accompanies the creative process. For any creative work, by which I mean work that makes something, creates something, there’s a process. Smithing. Painting. Music. I’ll mostly speak to writing here, because that’s what I know how to do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this applies to anyone who does creative work. (If it doesn’t, by the way, feel free to tell me I’m wrong!)

To make art, one must first learn craft.

The nuts and bolts of things. The processes. The components of the work, and how to put them together. All the little bits and pieces that make up the whole. I think that’s where the mystery comes in, because if you put me in front of an anvil and demanded a sword, I definitely wouldn’t be able to make one. If you put me on a piano bench — all right, I know how to play a little, but I’m not an artist there, because I don’t know all the things a pianist must know. If you handed me tubes of paint and put me in front of a canvas, and demanded a masterpiece, you’d be out of luck. Do I know what the finished product is like? Yes, I do, but I don’t have a clue as to how painters really do what they do.

You’d never expect to be able to walk into a forge with a lump of iron in your hand, with no prior knowledge of technique or equipment, and walk out with a blade that’s even serviceable, let alone fine. The same for playing music or painting. Why, then, would you expect to be able to write perfectly the first time you try? It’s not possible. Words as raw material are far more available than iron, or pianos — or even paint. They cost nothing. Everyone uses them, and one needs no specialized equipment to do so. But to use them well, you must understand the craft.

“How do I do this?” I hear people ask. “How do I do that?”

I can’t tell you. Nobody can. Nobody can tell you how to forge weapons; you must forge them, and make mistakes, and learn how it feels when you swing the hammer just right. Writing is not as physically or financially demanding as blacksmithing, but hear me when I say the learning of it is much the same. You must learn and practice your craft if you hope to master it. The only writing advice I really have is this:

Sit down and do it. If it doesn’t work, do it again.

Lone Crow

Lone Crow

This is a story that originally appeared in Whispers from the Shadows, an independent Halloween anthology. The book is free to read or download! This one was mine, but several other authors contributed — there’s even a spooky poem!

Lone Crow

Okay, then – listen! I’ll tell you the story of a guy who got what he bargained for, and didn’t want it after. Once upon a time, a thousand years ago at least, when there was still such a thing as magic, Vaelan – Lone Crow in the Traders’ tongue – went out in the woods looking for Silath the Witch. He wasn’t too smart, Lone Crow, but he knew what he wanted, and that was Felada – Sweet Woodbine – the chief’s beautiful daughter. He’d gone to her longhouse a hundred times before to ask her to walk out with him, but she never would, and he knew unless he got a little help, she wouldn’t; so he went out into the woods on a sunny afternoon, and ‘round about twilight he found Silath in her rocky hollow. A tiny crick dribbled through the stones, so the sound of water came constantly to his ears, and the trees bent close around. Every limb dripped skeins of moss.

She’d already lit her fire to cook supper, but there wasn’t any food, only a pot of water on the boil. She sat with her eyes shut and one hand held out, cupped in front of her like she wanted to catch something in her palm. The flames cast flickering reddish light in the hollow, and the shadows danced with the breeze that tickled the moss. Lone Crow said, cheerful-like, “Hello, Witch.” I told you he wasn’t too smart!

“You hush, Lone Crow!” she said to him, and he shut up. He didn’t even think to be afraid, not until a crow landed in her palm. In a flash she grabbed it, and with a little snap she broke its neck. Then he swallowed a little sourness, believe me. “Now you tell me,” she said, dipping the crow in the boiling water while it twitched, “what it is you want. What’s so important you’d come to Silath in the dusk?”

“Felada,” said Lone Crow. “I love Sweet Woodbine, like crazy I love her, but she won’t pay me no mind.”

“Mm-hmm,” hummed the Witch. Her eyes were still closed, but she worked away on plucking that crow the whole while. “And I guess you want a love potion.”

“If that’s what’ll make her take notice, I guess I do.”

“Won’t take that much, Lone Crow,” she said, and she turned her face partway toward him, so he could see her looking at him out of an eye white as milk. She kept turning until she showed her other eye, black as pitch. Except for that, she looked young and beautiful as any maiden in the village, but those eyes – well, she had ‘em, and they were spooky to put it mild, so spooky not even Lone Crow could fail to notice. And she smiled. “All I need is one thing from you, and I’ll take it right now if you’re willing.”

Lone Crow spread his hands. “What do I got to lose? If Sweet Woodbine won’t love me, I don’t got a thing.”

“Come by here then,” said the Witch, and Lone Crow picked his way over to her and squatted next to her leaping fire. She raised up one hand all covered with bits of black feather and almost, not quite, touched him on the shoulder. No, she didn’t quite touch him, but Lone Crow felt it all the same, and when she tugged her hand away it was like she got something stuck to it. It sure did pull at Lone Crow’s skin, and when he felt it peel off he shivered. He couldn’t see it, but she shoved it in a little crock by her side and put the cork in fast. “Go on home now, Lone Crow, and the next time you see Sweet Woodbine, you’ll have more than you want.”

Well, he went on home through the darkness, and the next day he asked Sweet Woodbine to walk out with him, except that this time instead of no she told him yes, with her beautiful green eyes shining like she’d waited her whole long life for Lone Crow to come. Seeing love-light on her face didn’t feel as good as he thought it would. They went out walking, and he laid her down on a sunny hillside; but she didn’t satisfy him, no, it wasn’t as good as he thought. They got married a couple months after. He’d get used to her, he told himself, and anyways it was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

At their wedding he didn’t smile, and the feast didn’t please him either. Seemed like everything was gray and lifeless, where before the world was bright and sweet, and all the things he loved before didn’t even lift his heart for a moment. Music, love, food, family, or friend, it didn’t make one lick of difference: he couldn’t care about nothing and he couldn’t love nobody. Lone Crow couldn’t feel a thing, and most especially he felt no joy. Even when Sweet Woodbine came to him and said soon they’d have a baby of their very own, he just felt flat – and so he went back to Silath’s hollow, and found her there laughing at the squirrels that tussled through the red-and-yellow leaves. Lone Crow didn’t find it funny.

He said to her, “I don’t know what you took out of me, but I want it back.”

“Did you get Sweet Woodbine?” she asked.

“Yes I did,” he said, “but I can’t feel. I can’t love her like I did, and I can’t love nothing else either – my life’s a misery since I come to you.”

Oh, she laughed at him then, as happy as he used to be! “How’s that my fault, Lone Crow? You got yours and I got mine, and the deal’s done.” And no matter how much he begged, she wouldn’t give it back.

Lone Crow went on back home again, but he couldn’t go in the longhouse. Half the night he stood there thinking of what he’d given away. When Sweet Woodbine came outside in the morning, she found her husband lying cold, with a sword sticking out his back and his blood in a pool on the ground, ‘cause he couldn’t stand living no more without even one taste of what makes it all worthwhile – and you can take my word on that.

Excerpt from Hard Luck

Saga of Menyoral #1: Hard Luck

by

M.A. Ray

For Chris. It’s always for Chris.

Rock of Ages

It was a fair night, the last, perfect night of summer, and the stars shone cleanly down from a sky of blue velvet; but Oda the moon hid His shifting face from the world. Six men stood in a fallow field. Four, swathed in black, had placed themselves within a great diagram scythed into the grass, one at each compass point around a great gray stone. Two wore tonsured heads and clean-shaven faces, carrying brass medallions around their necks; and two wore long beards and runes picked out on their heavy robes in thread of gold.

By their tonsures, the last two were monks also, but instead of habits, they wore black armor with their brass medallions. They stood away in the taller grass, watching, faces drawn and fearful in the hard radiance that came from the glassy, polished top of the stone. The tracery etched in the surface burned more brightly than a sunbeam glancing off the whitest snow. It looked almost as if it might be letters or runes, but from what language? What language, when written, would writhe so that when a man looked away, and then looked back upon it, it had changed?

A host of sourceless voices joined the chant as it built in volume. The shaggy grass all around the diagram began to ripple inward, as if touched by a strong wind, though the wind went unfelt; and when the final syllable resounded in those many voices, a silence fell, a silence so heavy it weighed on the shoulders, so utter that all the men heard the workings of their own bodies, the sounds of blood and bowel. Only a twinkling it lasted, but it was a silence to unsettle the soul, and for a moment the stone’s radiance dimmed.

Then the wind rushed in again. This time it raised goose pimples on exposed flesh and caught at hair and robes. It bore fell whispers just within hearing, just outside grasping, and the foul old stench of rotten blood. A bright crack, the width of a hair, no more, wormed its slow way out from the center of the stone, and one of the magi began to weep crimson tears into his beard. One of the monks in the circle fell to his knees, tearing at his face and uttering mad screams the like of which no man ought ever to hear, to say nothing of making.

In the bowing grass beyond, his armored fellow reached after his sword, meaning to run in and strike off his head to halt his agony, but it was pointless; instead of a hand, his arm ended in a tangle of spiders’ legs. “Brother!” he cried, and when he saw the other beside him, mouth wide with soundless keening, sprout tentacles beneath his chin, he groaned aloud to the Bright Lady. “Oh, Queen of Heaven! Oh, my Brother, what have you done?” All their flesh warped and warped again as the crack grew long and wide. Their shrieks tore across the field, until at last, their bodies slumped into impossible heaps, and the crack burst with a white dazzlement that blotted out the stars.

At dawn the next morning, the sun brushed over a fallow field with grass swirled in toward the huge, broken stone. Six nacreous lumps lay nearby, melting into the earth, and a thick, pearly tear gathered in the crack, oozing slowly toward the ground. And without sign or portent, all Rothganar was changed.

There were fairies, before that night.

They zipped over every pond in the summertime, like sparkling, rainbow stars, and left glittery dust on everything they touched. Unicorns stood sentinel in the glens, waiting unwearied for their true, untouched loves. The land’s brass-bold knights went questing, and found lovely maidens to rescue and monsters aplenty for the slaying: trolls and giants, manticores and griffins, cockatrices, and the sly, whispering ghosts of drowned girls. A dryad tended every oak, and dragons guarded the secret places in the earth. Of adventure there was no lack, if one only looked for it.

In the great cities – Dreamport, Brightwater, Oasis, Long Knife, Muscoda – there was work to spare for anyone with even a breath of magical talent: in the sewage treatment plants, the manufactories, and the research laboratories. In the wild places, magi closeted themselves in their towers and devoted themselves wholly to arts black and white. Priests contemplated the heavens and drew power from the divine. Closer to the ground, shamans shook their bone rattles and sang to the spirits of the world; deep beneath the surface, short, stocky Bearded Ones pounded spells into beautiful works of weapon smith’s craft. Over in Windish, the Ish sang fat salmon into their nets, and down in the scorched land of Oasis, the Trallins freshened and cooled even their humblest homes with magical breezes. All over their beautiful Homeland, the People who call themselves hitul lived their long lives and resented the humans who called them elf.

And oh! it was wonderful, back then, filled with things lovely enough to steal breath from anyone’s lungs, and the living was easy and clean. Expert healers visited even the tiniest village to give the touch that kept away disease from the smallest child, and with the aid of a draught from a wise-woman, a dream could show the loneliest where to find love.

That was Rothganar, but no more. The night of the Stone’s breaking, the People tossed and turned, insomniac in their tents and longhouses. Bearach High King at Shirith, mighty of sword and wizardly art, died headless, defending his People in vain. In the forges under the mountains, the hammers of the Bearded Ones fell utterly silent. The magi dreamed of twisted things from beyond the edge of reason; the priests writhed in the freezing grasp of Hell. Two miles from the place the Stone had been laid, a child kicked his way through the wall of his mother’s womb with the power of his unborn stretching. His mother had just enough breath left to name him before she died, and his father enough time to hear her whisper, “Vasily,” before his son blew out his eardrums uttering a first wail.

Every last fairy blew away in a wisp of glitter. Then the plagues came. Diseases that before the healers had been able to prevent with a single enchanted touch now felled people by the hundreds, by the thousands. In the cities, the manufactories ground to a halt as their devices all malfunctioned, every one. The sewage treatment plants in Brightwater and Muscoda, in Dreamport, in Oasis and Windish, failed spectacularly. There was panic in the streets, rioting, quests undertaken, and none of it was any good, because the magic that for so long everyone had used and taken for granted, the magic that fueled everyday life and gave Rothganar its glory, did not come at the casting. In a very little while, it began: the petty squabbling, and the pointing of fingers, and the hate.

And Rothganar fell into a darkness with no dawn.

Half Bad

forty-seven years later

Thundering Hills, Wealaia

Flickering torch-glow lit the forest just outside the village tonight. At the top of the tallest hill a stately, ancient oak stood alone, and the inhabitants of Thundering Hills clustered around it with their torches and their incomprehensible shouts. From the brush ringing the base of the hill, it looked and sounded like a festival, or maybe a party, but up close, it was anything but. Dingus Xavier, with his back to the tree, was closer than most.

Almost everybody he knew was here, but nobody from the village who’d help him. He’d thought Adair might’ve, but even the smith stood with the mob, thick arms folded over his chest. Grandpa definitely would’ve, or Grandma, but neither of them had come, and about Ma, the less said the better. She couldn’t get him out of this one with a few fake tears. He doubted even Grandma’s flashing rapier could get him out of it. Everywhere he looked, he saw someone carrying a torch, except for Curran the butcher with a stool, and Rogen the bailiff with a noose.

Putting it mildly, Dingus was screwed. One tiny, rational corner of his mind railed at him about how stupid it all was, but the rest of him clung to Moira’s bark, shaking as bad as any of her leaves and trying not to throw up or cry – or both. He didn’t want to do either, and he definitely did not want to die, but it looked like he was fixing to do all three. This can’t be happening, he thought. He’d had dreams like this. A rock hit him in the side of the head, making a familiar black bounce inside his skull, and when he touched the spot, his fingers came away bloody. Oh, it’s happening, all right.

“Please,” he said, and it came out small. He forced it out a little louder. “Please, don’t! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to!” He never did mean to, either. He meant not to, at least ’til it came on him. It was just he wanted Aust to leave him alone for one single day, one single hour. Every time Aust laid eyes on Dingus, every day, seemed like from the time Dingus could walk, it was “half-breed” and turning his name (which was an awful name anyway, he knew that) into an insult. Crybaby, overgrown, big, dumb Dingus, and while Aust sang that unbearable song, “Dingus, Dingus, half-breed thingus,” he’d got to thinking about all the times Aust took from him, shoved him down in the mud, or beat the crap out of him. Then the red came, so fast he didn’t have time to even think about controlling himself; he’d just pushed Aust right over, sat on his chest, and punched – and punched – and punched his stupid, grinning face into mutton.

“I didn’t mean to!” he repeated, but nobody was paying attention to anything he had to say. He hoped it wasn’t because he’d killed Aust – he hoped he hadn’t killed Aust – but the sheer injustice of it made him mad all over again. Aust had beat him up a thousand times, and nobody ever told him to quit. Sure as hell they didn’t string him up. Dingus stood up for himself one time in his whole life and he was gonna die for it. The only reason he even stopped here was to get a good-bye kiss from Moira before he ran off. Here they came, though, closing in on him: people he’d known all his sixteen years and who knew him just as long, and he didn’t count one bit to them even so.

“We should’ve drowned you when you were whelped, you menace,” said Aust’s pa – Rogen – with his noose all ready for Dingus’s neck. Aust’s friend Edwin kicked Dingus’s satchel, scattering all the food Grandma packed him for his trip, and the others were glad enough to grind it all into the dirt as they came forward.

“I’m not one,” Dingus protested. He wasn’t a menace. He wasn’t even a pest. He barely even opened his mouth while he was in the village, or really ever, ’cause he was always trying to stay out of trouble – but it didn’t help. Being the only half-human within a hundred miles made Dingus stick out like a sore thumb, and that was before he counted the red hair and extra head of height. “I never even hit nobody before, sir – you know I didn’t! Please, I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry…”

“You went mad! I saw it!” Edwin screamed, face sweaty, voice cracking. “You had murder in your eye!”

He opened his mouth to deny it, but he couldn’t. He hung his head. He did go mad and no wonder there’d been murder in his eye, ’cause his mind had been all filled up with it. Moira’s leaves whispered, “Climb up, Dingus.”

“Just let ’em have what they want,” he said quietly back, trying not to move his mouth so they wouldn’t notice, but he wasn’t sure how well it worked. “Don’t come out. They’ll burn you if they see you.”

“So I ought to let them use me to kill you? I think not!” He felt the bark shift behind him and jerked straight in horror. They’d be close enough to start hurting him in a couple of heartbeats, and he didn’t want them to see her. He didn’t want them to hurt her, too: his only-ever friend.

“No, Moira,” he said, but her powerful arms locked around his waist, and they started yelling about him being a half-breed berserker and a warlock besides, look how the tree’s growing round him, look at that. In their crazy eyes, he saw how they didn’t understand about Moira or about him either. He saw how they were scared of him, when he never meant for anything like today to happen, when all he ever wanted to do was leave. “Please don’t,” he begged one more time, holding out his rough hands for peace. “Please! I’m just trying to – ” And then Curran came toward him with the big cleaver he used on mutton bones. The torchlight glanced off the shiny blade, making it seem to burn like another brand, and Dingus screamed, short and wild: “Please!” Curran kept coming. Dingus squeezed his lids shut, and the tears stinging in his eyes stung his pride just as fierce. He’d never be a man to them but he wished he could’ve got the courage to die like one.

Curran grabbed under his jaw and forced his head up. “Boy,” he said, “whatever you’re doing, it won’t help you now.”

“I’m not,” he said, crying helplessly. “I’m not.” The butcher raised the cleaver. Dingus heard it bite into something hard, but he couldn’t feel it, and Moira hissed in his ear. “Stop!” he shouted, kicking out with one of his bare feet – his giant, dirty feet – and tagging Curran right in the eggs. Curran wheezed, squeaked, and fell over, covering his crotch. Dingus tugged at Moira’s arms. “Let go – let go!” They weren’t gonna hurt her on account of him, never.

She brushed a whispery, leaf-soft kiss on his cheek and let him go.  He stumbled forward a couple steps; he thought he heard “I love you” in the branches, but it could’ve been the breeze. He could’ve been hearing things; the shouts exploded again, so many he couldn’t understand what anybody was saying. They closed tight around him. He couldn’t even count all the hands grasping at him. For a guy who didn’t hardly get touched, it was scary like nothing else: the grabbing, groping, clutching hands that dragged him down.

Just let ’em, he kept telling himself, just let ’em get it over with, but his body wouldn’t listen. His skin jumped and twitched, and he felt hot from head to toe. His breath burned in and out of his chest. The back of his neck was pins and needles just like this afternoon. He reeled from grip to grip in the tightening ring of hands. Tears still ran down his face and he started to panic, trying to shove through before the red came and he did something real stupid. He was strong from busting his butt, but not stronger than about thirty men.

He tried to run too late. One minute he was fighting like crazy to get through, and the one after that, he slammed flat on his face in the dirt. Dingus knew what came next and he sure as hell knew how to take a beating. He got it in the head a couple times, the gut too, before he curled himself into the smallest ball he could, covering his neck with his hands and his head with his arms. “Dingus, Dingus, half-breed thingus” – it was so loud, the song and the time-keeping, painful thuds. He let the beat rock him back and forth; he knew not to stiffen up too much ’cause it would just hurt worse. All he could think about was Moira: how she used to talk to him when nobody else would, and hug him and play games with him. Starting a year back, they’d play other games – the kind that likely Ma would scream to find out about. She’d let him love her with everything he had, and never once called him any kind of thingus.

He must’ve blacked out for a while, thinking of Moira, because all of a sudden his hands were tied, real tight, behind him. The rope gnawed on his wrists. One eye had swelled up, he was pretty sure, when they pulled him up to his knees. His head hurt so bad he could barely see out of the other eye, and he was still crying besides, even though he wished he wasn’t. He blinked hard. There was a big old smear of snot and blood on the ground where he’d been lying. His face felt sticky with it: snot and blood and tears.

They dragged him over by the stool. Rogen had climbed Moira, and now he tried to fix the noose onto a branch. Dingus heard her rustling her limbs so that all the knots Rogen tied fell apart when Edwin tugged on the rope to test them. They cussed, and others yelled advice while they forced Dingus up on the stool. He didn’t want to be on it, but he didn’t want to fall off either. All that kicking made him so dizzy he couldn’t stay up. He fell off twice, and both times they let him hit the ground before they held his legs and waist to keep him up there. They couldn’t really reach any higher on his stretched-out, skinny body.

He’d always hated it, being so tall, and his hair so red, nobody could miss him when he walked by. He sniffled, or tried to, through his throbbing nose; he had a funny kind of peace on him now, and he wasn’t crying nearly so hard. “My face,” he pleaded, even though nobody could understand him through a nose full of stuff. “Please wipe my face.” It didn’t really matter, he guessed, since pretty soon it’d be purple and blue and twisted.  He just didn’t want to die with his face coated in slime.

“Any last requests, Thingus?” sneered Gareth, another one of Aust’s friends.

Dingus spat all the junk from his mouth, almost overbalancing as he aimed it at Gareth. He just couldn’t take it, here at the end of his rope, so to speak. He’d always hated Gareth most, sneaky, sniveling, carry-tale Gareth, who toadied around Aust and lied so that half the stuff they did got blamed on Dingus. “Pussy!” he said, making the most of his last chance. “Fucking pussy! I’d haunt you forever if it was worth sticking around here!” If his legs were free he’d have kicked Gareth in the head right now, just one parting shot. Gareth got the parting shot instead. He gave Dingus a solid uppercut, probably the only good punch he’d ever thrown, and it was just Dingus’s luck it landed in his ’nads. He gasped, lurching forward, and the mob propped him up again.

“Get a move on with that noose!” somebody yelled, and Rogen cussed long and loud.

“It’s not working! It’s his warlock enchantment on the tree!”

They don’t understand, he thought. They never would’ve. He started sort of laughing, sort of crying again – overall, kind of blubbering. It was just so ridiculous. There wasn’t any such thing as a warlock anymore, and he wouldn’t have known how to be one if there was. He wasn’t any berserker, either. Berserkers leapt around in Grandpa’s stories, reaving and fighting with foaming mouths gnawing on the edges of their shields, oblivious to friend, foe, or death. Dingus wasn’t none of that. Mostly he was miserable, so miserable that the inside of his head sounded like one endless, angry howl. When the red came on him everything slipped out of his control into the world. Like coming – but better, so good it scared him. He could’ve done it again right now and never mind how little it’d help him.

People shouted knot-tying advice to Rogen while Dingus watched like he was a hundred miles away instead of just underneath in a swarming mass of people he’d grown up knowing. Maybe he was a hundred miles away, or farther; he saw Rogen, clinging to one of Moira’s branches, and the mob, but he was also seeing his life go by. He saw himself growing from a chubby, solid kid into a too-tall, too-skinny, too-spotty guy with huge hands and feet. If the People had an awkward stage, Dingus never had seen it. Instead, all the awkward fell on his shoulders, and the injustice of it burned, that Aust’s face should stay perfect and smooth, without one blemish, all the days of Dingus’s life. From the first time Aust stuck out a foot so that Dingus landed face-first in a disgusting puddle and told him, “You’re where you belong, with the other shit,” Aust’s limbs stayed lean and strong, caught between child and adult. Dingus had been six then, and the taller he got, the worse it got, until he couldn’t escape the village without some kind of awfulness – literal shit, sometimes, like the day when he was ten they’d all caught him fishing. He’d tried to fight back at first, but they wrestled him down and the others held him while Aust pinched one off on his chest. He remembered lying there afterward, crying and hating perfect Aust, with the poison sneer no adult ever seemed to see. Dingus hadn’t told a soul what happened; next time would’ve been even more horrible if he had. He thought of Sassy, Ma’s prize black rooster, which he privately called Ass. Of hunting with Grandpa, hearing story after story over the campfire. Of kissing Moira in the cool leaf-shadow under her limbs, and of the slow realization that he never would be a man, that he’d always be an overgrown baby: no-good, no-account, dumb Dingus Xavier, the human bandit’s son. “Dingus, Dingus, half-breed thingus,” always and forever a Thing.

Moira’s tree creaked and lurched, like in a big gust of wind, except the night was calm. Rogen squawked like Ass and tumbled to the ground with a broken-bone crack. It made Dingus laugh long and hard, even though it hurt to laugh. One single, one solitary, one final victory in a whole sixteen years of nothing but losing; it wasn’t much, but it was sweet. They’d have to get their hands dirty. If they could’ve had Dingus deal with it, they would’ve. Kill yourself, boy, he could just hear them saying, and then put your dead self on a midden heap someplace out of the way, ‘cause we don’t want to be bothered.

Rogen lay groaning in a heap. Somebody, Dingus didn’t know who, said “What now?” in an exasperated voice.

“Get him off that stool!” Curran barked, or tried to – his voice still sounded kind of squeaky from Dingus tagging him in the eggs. Everybody holding him up let go, and Dingus fell forward into the dirt. Curran kicked him over onto his back and looked down at him like he wasn’t worth scraping off a boot. The torchlight caught on the cleaver’s blade. He swallowed hard.

“You never wanted me here,” he said, slurring it through his bloody, snotty, probably-broken nose, past his fat lip. Just once he wanted to say it, even though they probably wouldn’t understand the words, let alone what they meant. “But see, I never wanted to be here neither. I never asked to be born!”

“Shut up!” Curran snapped, and kicked him in his already-pounding head. Dingus moaned, but he let himself go slack. He’d said what he wanted to say. Whether or not they listened, he’d said it to them. He was done, and when they put the noose around his neck to strangle him he was way past fear. He was crying from relief.

There was a low, low sobbing in the oak tree, like a throbbing beat on a hollow log. He took in one last, full breath, thinking, Moira, Moira, and wishing she didn’t have to watch. The rough hemp scraped painfully on the sunburned back of Dingus’s neck, and pulled tight around his throat.

Want more? Saga of Menyoral begins December 13, 2013. Watch this space…

Love and Fear

So I’ve been trying to work on revisions of Hard Luck.

I’m trying to sing my song, because it’s a song nobody else can sing. It’s difficult to know if I’m singing a song others will understand. It’s difficult to know if I’m conveying what I want to convey, and if I’ve got the chops to do it,

It’s a song I need to sing, and whether they like it or not, I’ve worked on it for so long that I need people to hear it. I love the world inside my head, and the people who live there. Breathing life into them for others is my intent. I have a vision.

I’m afraid for my prose: that it won’t sing. My reputation. I’m afraid that the people I love will look at it and then at me, and be disgusted — but this is me, really me. This is what goes on inside me, and I keep reminding myself that the people who really love me will take it for what it is, the song that I have to sing to them, and to the world, whether or not it is to their particular taste.

I’m afraid that strangers will look upon it with their critical eyes, and loathe it.

I’m afraid, but as a good friend of mine said to me, “Without fear, there is no courage.” So I’m rolling on, John, and I’m going to sing it from the rooftops: that song in my secret heart.

Hard Luck Releasing Soon

I’m pleased to say that (I think) I’m on schedule to release the first novella in “Saga of Menyoral” on December 13, 2013.  My cover artist, Kirk Crawford, has finished the cover image, and I thought I would share it with you here. I’ve also finished a blurb for this first installment, so without further ado:

Dingus Xavier has the worst luck ever. As if just being named “Dingus” weren’t enough, he’s the red-headed, oversized son of an elven mother and an absent, human father given to banditry. He might also be a berserker — and that’s just the stuff he knows about.

After Dingus’s personal idol happens along in time to rescue him from an angry mob, Sir Vandis Vail expresses an interest in training him. Being part of the Knights of the Air, as Vandis’s Squire, no less, is something he’s always dreamed of, but never thought he could have. He thinks his luck might actually be starting to turn around.

He couldn’t be more wrong. Nobody bargained on the Glorious Kingdom of Muscoda and its state religion, or on how far they’d be willing to go to suppress the Knights of the Air.

Dingus thought he had it bad before, but his rotten luck is only beginning.