Inheritors Chapter 13 – Seth Van Gelder, 211 Cavalos Era

Read Inheritors Chapter 12 – Resa ValJean, XXX Cavalos Era

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Inheritors Chapter 13 – Seth Van Gelder, 211 Cavalos Era

 
The Raemond woman removed her hood, cape, and started on her gloves. Seth opened his mouth to speak and she held a finger to her lips.

He stood there, fists clenched at his sides, nostrils flaring, his breaths shallow, his body quivering. His eyelids narrowed to focus on her.

Remember father’s lessons. What had my bubbing, ginicomtwigging fou of a father said? Oh, yes: They’re out there to get you.

Well, whoever they are, wherever I am, they are not going to get me!

Seth kept his eyes on the Raemond woman and peripherally scanned his surroundings. Nothing made sense.

All those years studying the Sacred Geometries — the pyramids, the temples, the mausoleums of ancient churches and mosques — remember their lessons, Seth Van Gelder.

Remember: Always design in a way out.

And those geometries are everywhere. He only had to find them.

Determine what is different to isolate what is similar.

Different: This is not Father’s house, nor my room.

Different: Great pah-ing sounds overhead, They pulse through the air like heartbeats of the land. Felt more than heard.

Different: Orange clouds fill the sky. And a sickening smell of pumpkin-sweet. The smell strengthens with each pah.

And warm. Much warmer than Londontown, although not unpleasantly so.

No sounds of father’s house.

Seth took his eyes from the Raemond woman for a moment and turned his head, glancing around him.

Addie’s once loved and now cruel face nowhere to be found.

Everything I knew, gone.

No! There will always be similarities. Men will always need something to walk on, even if it’s the back of others. Men will always need air to breath even if it made rancid with the smell of pumpkin-sweet. Think bigger, think smaller, until you find what’s the same in the midst of what’s different.

He stood on an elevated platform of some kind. Would there be a noose about his neck in a moment? The light which transported him faded as another light swelled around him.

The light. What brings it? There are no lamps, no torches. But men must still need light. If not a light I know then something like it.

But here there is light. And warmth. Whatever men are here are more like me than not.

His nostrils flared again. The pumpkin-sweet air sickened him. He would not breathe it in. He held his breath.

His eyes came back to the Raemond woman.

Is this Raemond a messenger finally dispatched by Sharon’s prayers, and I’m taken home?

She turned away. Behind her a waist high stand with pelts of blue light rose from the platform on which they stood. She reached out and held onto it while his eyes adjusted to the growing light, then motioned for him to turn around.

A similar stand rose up behind him. He reached for it.

The Raemond woman stood beside him. Her hand grabbed his and he gasped, constricted by a blanket of pain, a thousand nails penetrating his skin, unable to move. The breath he held he couldn’t release. It soured in his lungs. She let go and pulled her gloves off.

He used the pain to focus his thoughts. If this be a gallows then where are the hangmen and noose?

Men and women in billowing white robes stood around the platform. One of them waved. The light began to fade. The pain lessened. He could move again.

Raemond smiled and stood before him, speaking in a totally foreign tongue.

He pushed past her.

She grabbed him by the arms, one in each of her hands, and kept her own arms by her side to hold her gloves, cape, and hood close beside her.

He had to get away, away from that damned pumpkin-sweet, away to air he could breath.

She smiled and again said something he couldn’t understand.

He shook his head, pulling his arms free of her.

She drove her knee into his kingmaker and kit.

He fell to his knees, arms locked over his belly, gasping for air, bowing before her.

He stopped gasping, stopped moving, and raised his head slowly to memorize her face. Never did she bow or crip or crim to him, yet so quickly did she take him away from one hell to this other and make him bow to her.


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The Little Flower’s in Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 1!

I am so honored.

I jokingly tweeted my short story, Morningsong, was in Harvey Duckman Presents #3 and someday I hope to make it to #1

Team Harvey Duckman DMed me they were reissuing Volume I and I had a place in it if I wanted.

Are you kidding?

An editor wants my work?

Well just give me a second now…have to think this over…YES YES YES!

 
And then it got better.

They told me they wanted more of my stuff for future issues.

Whoa!

And lots of other fine authors are in HDP1 as well.

(subscribers may remember an earlier version of A Tale of the Woods: The Little Flower

Inheritors Chapter 12 – Resa ValJean, XXX Cavalos Era

Read The Inheritors Chapter 11 – Lucifer

Creator and above level members can download a PDF of this chapter to read offline

Note: the reason for “XXX” is I’m not sure exactly where this goes in the timeline. Some chapters may get shifted. I’ve learned to live with such things.


Inheritors Chapter 12 – Resa ValJean, XXX Cavalos Era

 
Resa heard a tapping. She looked around. Sand. Trees up on a rise. Moon.

Something else. There had been something else. She was sure of it.

The tapping came again. From the hatch. In the ground. She’d come here through that hatch. A Librarian waited for her there.

She lifted the hatch. Bertrand’s eyes flashed at her in the cold moonlight. “I must return soon.”

“Bertrand, did you hear anything up here before you opened the hatch?”

“No. I can hear line-of-sight only or when something is hot enough to be seen.”

“Of course, sorry. The other Thinker who caused the disturbance in the Labyrinth, was his name Thomas Ayers?”

“No, it was ‘Tommy Ayers’. If he had other names I do not know.”

“Show me what he looked like, please.”

An image formed on each of the Librarian’s eyes. The air quavered a foot in front of him as he built on the optic thermals until his eyes cooled and the images spun like a slow hologram in the vibrating air.

“Yes, that’s him. That’s Thomas Ayers. Tommy. Thank you, Bertrand.”

“I must return, Resa.”

“You go back, Bertrand. I’ll find my way back. Right now I want to think. I’ll be back before I’m needed in the Neuroscaphe tomorrow. I promise.”

The Librarian closed the hatch. She reached over and opened it again. “Bertrand?”

The Librarian’s pale, hairless, babe-like head and pulsing eyes poked up through again. “Yes, Resa?”

“You can see after images, can’t you, when something’s hot enough?”

“Yes, Resa.”

“Can you see anything here?”

“No, Resa.”

“Are you sure? I think…I thought…someone was here, something which produced enough heat to keep me warm in the night.”

“No, Resa. Who do you think it was?”

She hesitated. “I thought it was the Christian Devil.”

“I would not be able to see it, real or not, Resa.”

Resa focused on Bertrand’s eyes, looking to see if the Librarian joked or not. “What do you mean, you wouldn’t be able to see him, real or not?”


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Sabine Rossbach Reading Excerpts from Cymodoce

I am blessed to have friends who perform kindnesses for me.

Case in point, Sabine Rossbach.

Sabine is a gifted and well-known stage, movie, and television actress in the EU (she’s quite tolerant of me butchering French, German, Italian, and even English in our exchanges). She’s also a reader of my writings.

The first work she read was Cymodoce and she wrote “Storytelling at its best: A feast for someone who loves the written word…” Next she read Empty Sky and wrote “Dreams make the world go round: If you like inspiring, fantastic, elaborate stories, this is your novel…

Obviously, Sabine is an intelligent, articulate person.

So when she offered to do a dramatic reading of Cymodoce (and after I got back up off the floor) I of course said “YES YES YES!”

So watch, enjoy, and let us know what you think.

And also know Sabine is interested in doing similar dramatic readings for other authors. You can contact her via her website (and please do. She knows what she’s doing).

 

The Inheritors Chapter 11 – Lucifer

Read The Inheritors Chapter 10 – Resa ValJean, 211 Cavalos Era

Creator and above level members can download a PDF of this chapter to read offline


The Inheritors Chapter 11 – Lucifer

 
Thomas woke under a rising full moon. Resa made a fire on the sand from branches up on the hill. He gazed at her naked body, how the flickering flames made small shadows of her nose, lips, and breasts. Gulls caught the offshore breezes and coasted, their silhouettes playing hide and seek on the craters and crevices of the moon’s bright surface.

He pointed to the gulls. “Are those real?”

“I think so. They seem a lot like the ones I remember from home. But they started wildlife roundups and euthanizing domestic animals in my time because they were disease vectors, so maybe yes, maybe no? The gulls seem natural. Most everything the Cavalos make isn’t quite the same and it’s obvious how it isn’t so. ” She reached for her blouse. “We should be getting back, Tom.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea for me.”

“Suit yourself. There’s somebody I want to meet. I’m going to ask one of the Librarians to introduce me.”

He reached for her. “You’re going to leave? Just like that?”

She stroked his face. He held her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. She smiled and pulled her hand back. “Tommy. My world’s not like that. We did what we did. That’s all there is to it.”

“You don’t love me?”

“Love you? Of course I do, Tommy. But there are different kinds of love. I’m not committed to you or anything like that.”

“I can’t…I won’t believe you.”

“Tom, I care about you. But I don’t love you. Not that way. You’ve got to get out more, Tom. All the cultures here are different. Haven’t you met any of the other Thinkers?”

“A few.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, Tom. You think you’ve been here six years and never talked with anyone other than some Cavalos, some Librarians, a few Thinkers and the Travelers who brought you here?”

“I hear some Thinkers once in a while while when I’m in the Neuroscaphe. I hear them crying. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to cry. And here, in this time and place, this is the first time anybody has ever let me just think.”

She nodded. “You too?”

“Huh?”

“You said this was the first time anybody ever let you think. Your family thought you were a freak, too? Is that what happened? Did your family sell you to anybody who could score something they could use?”

“No, never. My family loved me. They still do, somewhere in time. My family did everything they could to help me. It was everybody else. The teachers, the schools, other kids. My brother, Roland, he’s my twin, he use to come home with black eyes and bloody noses and split lips because he’d go fight for me and tell everybody he was me when people picked on me. He thought I didn’t know.

“But I did. He never told me. Mom and Pop would always watch out for me. Ro and Ceilly, my sister, they were always protecting me so I’d have the time to think.

“No, my family loved me. It was everyone else who hated and feared me.”

The fire popped into human form. “That, dear Thomas, is the one thing all you Thinkers have in common.”

Resa pulled back. “Who’re you?”

“Lucifer, dear lady.”


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