Tag…One More Time – Part I Verduan of Nant – Chapter 1

Okay.

I shared a couple of chapters of Tag, a work-in-progress, last month and you can read the backstory there.

Well…I got about 80 pages written and realized I was rushing the story, not letting it develop the way it needed to, so I started over.

And here’s the rewrite of the first chapter.

Do let me know what you think.

Before I rewrite it again.


Tag – Part I Verdant of Nant – Chapter 1

Father Patreo looked up from his workbench. Well-soled boots crunched dry earth as someone made their way to his small cottage. A book lay opened to Patreo’s side, the pages illuminated with strange beasts. He used a leather strip to mark his place and closed it. Gray, yellow, and ochre powders lay in separate, small piles on his workbench and he covered them with a white, muslin cloth.

He closed his eyes and focused on the footsteps.

Male. Heavy. Healthy heavy, not sickly heavy.

Patreo frowned. Most visitors to his cottage came sickly.

A horse clomped and cart wheels squeaked from the opposite direction. The footsteps, horse clomps, and squeaking cart wheels combined into a strange rhythm, music from an unknown land; step step clomp clomp squeak, step step clomp clomp squeak, step step clomp clomp squeak. It made an interesting contrasts to the birds singing in his gardens.

Patreo glanced at the sunlight coming in his far window. Baron Konstigian’s mistress would be by soon. She carried the Baron’s child and Konstigian wanted no bastards in his court. If she did not rid herself of the child, the Baron would slaughter her before the child quickened.

He shuffled his stool to a clear space on his workbench and winced at the screeching sound it made on the hard wood floor, pulled over his mortar and pestle, and reached for pennyroyal and fenugreek. He crushed the leaves and stems by hand into the bowl then ground them into a fine powder, the cupping of the mortar and the turning of the pestle familiar, comforting motions, like the stars and planets, the sun and moon in their orbits.


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Tag…Again… (chapter 2)

Remember The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]] and Tag?

Remember my mentioning it was working itself into a novella or novel?

Remember my asking for title suggestions?

I’m working on turning it into a novella. Perhaps even a novellette. Maybe a novelina. It could still end up a novel and I doubt it at present. So far it’s a mystery of some kind (not the length, the story).

The anticeding event (discussed in The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]]) is now told in backstory. I’m much happier with the story’s doing this time around and also recognize it’s not finished yet. One thing throwing me is how short each chapter is (at least in this writing), basically a single scene and nothing more. This chapter is an example.

Read Tag Chapter 1

And, as always, happy to have your input.


Tag – Chapter 2

The witch’s hand climbed the lone black oak’s trunk like a strangely shaped, five-legged insect. Cartilage, sinews, and ligaments trailed from the wrist where Eric’s axe severed it from the witch’s arm. A moment earlier it held Julia tight as the witch pulled Julia into the oak’s dark bole, her den, but the sudden rain weakened her and Eric struck. The hand fell against the tree and it climbed towards the bole.


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Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!

Tag…Again… (chapter 1)

Remember The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]] and Tag?

Remember my mentioning it was working itself into a novella or novel?

Remember my asking for title suggestions?

I’m working on turning it into a novella. Perhaps even a novellette. Maybe a novelina. It could still end up a novel and I doubt it at present. So far it’s a mystery of some kind (not the length, the story).

The anticeding event (discussed in The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]]) is now told in backstory. I’m much happier with the story’s doing this time around and also recognize it’s not finished yet. One thing throwing me is how short each chapter is (at least in this writing), basically a single scene and nothing more.

We’ll see…

And, as always, happy to have your input.


Tag – Chapter 1

Father Patreo looked up from his small cottage’s workbench. Well-soled boots crunched dry earth as someone came up the lane to his cottage. Male. Heavy. Healthy heavy, not sickly heavy. Most visitors to his cottage came sickly. A horse clomped coming from the opposite direction closely followed by squeaking cart wheels.


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The Witch [[Tag/The Apple/The Seed??]]

Blood Magic Always Grants Your Wish

Okay, another version of a story started in 1994. I posted the start of a major revision in Tag (now available free to everyone).

That major revision is going to turn into either a novella or novel set in the same geographic location as this story, although a bit in the future. This version here is preamble, probably something mentioned in that longer story as a predicating event.

This version also came about using different/new writing methods for me and is somewhat experimental. Do let me know what you think.

And definitely let me know what the title is. I’m open to suggestion.


Julia danced among oaks and ash, two short steps towards Eric, two long steps away, always drawing him into the hollow, always a hand or two beyond his reach. Once one of her long, blonde braids brushed the back of his hand and he almost had her, but he wasn’t quick enough, never quick enough.

“You’re such an old woman, Eric.”

Eric stopped as Julia entered a copse of ancient, dark boled trees. His hands staid his knife and axe, good forester’s tools his father gave him, swinging from his belt. “We are too far from the village.”

“Says your grandmother who brings apples to any who will listen.”

“The Old Ones remember — ”

“The old ones are old.” She disappeared among the trees.

Eric paced outside the copse. “The skies darken. A storm approaches. We must get back before we have to take shelter.”

She singsonged from deep in the hollow, “Oh, Eric. Oh, help me, Eric.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Her voice changed. “Eric, help!”

Eric lifted his axe and entered the copse. A hand spun him as he passed a thick bodied willow. His axe flashed up.

Julia leaned against a deeply boled ash, her hands over her stomach, laughing. “Oh, Eric. You’re such a child.”

He lowered his axe, his nostrils flared, his face red. “First and old woman and now a child. And in both I’m alive. You play a dangerous game, Julia.”

“Oh, poo poo poo, Master Eric.” She held her arms out to him. “Would you like a reward for your gallantry?”

Eric brushed her hands away as he turned back towards their village, his axe still in his hand. “Sometimes the reward isn’t worth the risk.”

Something snagged his axe hand. He spun back at her. “I have had enough — ”

A hand formed of twigs reached around Julia’s face, filling her mouth with leaves, choking her. A branch gripped his axe hand, holding it to his side, pulling him into the bole.

Julia took the axe from his hand as the tree pulled him beside her. She swung at the branch holding him. A voice shrieked from inside the bole. Red, blood-like sap covered Eric’s face as the branch snapped back. He screamed and covered his eyes.

Branches gathered around them and became flesh covered arms. Lightning broke through the trees overhead. Thunder shook the hollow.

A single rain drop fell onto the hand covering Julia’s mouth. It steamed like fields on a hot summer morning.

Rain drops blew through the leaves. The arms blistered into branches where the rain struck them. Pink flesh boiled into black bark. The thing in the bole screamed like a pig under the butcher’s hand.

Julia swung Eric’s axe again. The hand covering her mouth snapped back, clasping the side of the ash. A woman, half crone, half maiden, appeared in the bole.

Eric reached out, his hands searching.

The crone spoke in Julia’s voice. “This way, Eric. This way.”

Julia grabbed Eric’s hand and pulled him back.

Winds gathered rain. The smells of a sweet spring storm swept through the hollow.

The witch screamed and withdrew into the bole.

“Hurry, Eric. Run.” She pulled him, half dragged him, to the top of the crest of the rise encircling the hollow and stopped. Rain rolled down their faces, parted their hair, stuck their clothes to their cold, sweating skin.

Julia’s hand went to her breast as she gasped for breath. Eric held tight.

“We’re safe, Eric. Witches fear the rain. That’s what the Old Ones say. Grandmother tells us about them often. They can’t be out in the rain. She can’t hurt us as long as it rains.”

He didn’t let go, wouldn’t drop her hand. “I am blind, Julia.”

His beautiful eyes, eyes that once glowed like candles when they looked upon her, were covered with white, weeping flesh, no pupils visible at all.

The witch, inside her dark bole, laughed.

***

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Tag

A short story turns into a medieval mystery

The following started as a short story in 1994. It went through four major revisions as a short story and none of them satisfied me.

A few weeks back I decided to redo the story based on everything I’m learning. Behold, a similar while completely different story emerged.

Far from complete, it seems to be taking on novella if not novel proportions. This rewrite is pretty much a rough outline, a scene by scene rendition waiting for more scenes to take place. I’ll create the connecting sections, et cetera, as I progress. I would like to know what you think, though, so please do comment.


The witch’s hand climbed the black oak’s trunk like a strangely shaped, five-legged insect, the fingers finding purchase in the bark’s crevasses. Cartilage, sinews, and ligaments trailed from the wrist where Eric’s axe severed it from the witch herself, her hold on Julia weakened by the sudden rain.

Now the hand turned to stone where raindrops struck it, freezing it forever to the oak’s trunk, forever separate from the witch hiding in the oak’s bole.

Julia stood at the top of the rise slapping at her sleeves as if walking into a spider’s web, as if beating out still burning embers, her face white and her breathe panting, staring into the hollow, to the witch imprisoned in the oak, imprisoned by gently falling rain.

Eric spun her to face him, the witch’s blood already blackening on his axe, on his sleeves, his hands. “Julia! We have to go. Now! Julia!”

She spit at the witch. “What can she do now?” She outstretched her hands and glared at him. “The rain!”

“I have cursed us both, you fool. She’ll not rest until that hand has killed us both and it will take more than my axe to finish her. Get back to the village with me before the sun clears the skies. This is for Father Baillott and the men to deal with, not us.”

He grabbed her rain soaked arm and pulled her after him.

***

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