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Excerpts 8, 9, 10

Jul4

From my secret project:

“Be a good girl and I’ll get to keep being a good girl?”
“If you’re a bad girl, you won’t get a chance to do so much as pee without permission; if you’re a zombie, you’ll get someone who wants zombies.” She released Elisabeth’s chin and patted her shoulder. “How are your ankles?”

From my Tir na Cali novel:

What did I care what happened to Keva? She was just another Californian.

The Californian who had been, so far, willing to put up with me being a really bad slave, a voice that was pretending to be my conscience reminded me.

Yeah, but… it wasn’t like she treated me like an equal or anything. She still bossed me around like it was her right.

From the continuation to “Fairies in the Church:”
You know the ones that work, truly work.”

Nehemiah had nodded, although he hadn’t wanted to. He’d listed those off like a catechism. “Holy ground and the faith to hold it. A salt circle drawn by an unwavering hand. A nail of cold iron through their hand.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/366418.html. You can comment here or there.

Faries in the Church

Jun9

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of

⛪
“There are fairies in your church.”

Bishop Macnamilla was of an older school of thought, practically antediluvian. Most of the time, Father Nehemiah avoided conflict by avoiding the Ninth Street house where the Bishop kept his residence. The Father’s church was new, and not entirely conventional, and not near Ninth Street, and the Bishop’s body as well as his mind were old, and did not move easily.

But someone had said something, the Father was certain. The jowls on the Bishop were shaking in the way the once-fat man only did when he had been being yelled at by a parishioner who Didn’t Like Something. Probably not one of Nehemiah’s regulars. But sometimes the gossips from the other churches liked to stop in and visit.

“There are fairies.” Sometimes he could get away with just agreeing with the Bishop until he went away. “Margaret and LaKeisha are in there now. They’ve been helping Mrs. Bao with the cleaning, as it’s almost Easter time.”

“You have fairies in your church services, Father Nehemiah.”

He wasn’t going to be able to dance around this. “Better than having them standing outside the gates, glaring.”

“Do you know what happens when you allow – INVITE the fair folk into consecrated ground?” He was bellowing, or trying to. He must have been an impressive man before the long waste of age started eating him away.

“I’ve heard the stories. Mrs. Bao told me some of them. The kirkevaren told me others – and the fairies told me another set.”

“Ruin and ruination is what you get. Sin and sinners. Filth and the filthy.” The Bishop shook his head. “It leads to nothing but badness.”

“And blood?” Nehemiah drew himself up. He was tall, taller than the Bishop’s shrunken form by nearly a foot. “I know why there were no fairies in the church before, sir.”

“There are no FAIRIES in the church,” the Bishop shouted the word as if it were an obscenity, “because to allow them into out sanctified ground taints not only the ground but the entire city.”

Father Nehemiah was boggled enough by this to lose the edge of his anger, although he did remain standing straight, staring down at the top of the Bishop’s head. “You are aware, sir, that you live in the densest population of fae in the country, correct? The city is teeming with fairies.”

“The city is rotten with them. The elders did not listen to me. They were squeamish.” The older man’s voice finally dropped. “No. It was me. I was squeamish. I knew what needed to be done, and I could not do it. I failed my superiors. I killed them, Nehemiah, I killed those fairies you have heard of. I spilled their blood in the name of the city and its sanctity. I scrubbed the floors with the blood. I blessed the altars with it. But, in the end, I could not do what needed to be done.”

He didn’t have to ask, although he wished that he did. He’d already heard enough to put the rest together.

“You killed them before you buried them, you mean.” It hadn’t been meant to be another lamb under the church at all. “You blessed their deaths, instead of leaving them to roam.”

“I could have saved us all. I could have protected us all from what’s in the wind. But they look human, Nehemiah. They look human. And that was my undoing.”

Eggshells and Lineman’s Hopes

May15

For flofx‘s second prompt.

Long before Guarding the Church and referencing Strange Neighbors.

Tia Lian was born, as her kind were, in an eggshell watered with the tears of an unmarried woman and fertilized with the hopes of an unemployed man.

Or so she liked to tell people… and in her childhood, she was so small, so clearly fay, so touched by the other, that people tended to believe her.

The truth might have been more prosaic, but it was no less magical. Born to a fairy mother in the doorway of the Stanton Arms, gotten on that mother by a goblin line worker who couldn’t find work (the unions were going through an era, back then, where they didn’t like the fay), left on the doorstep of a church and from there taken to an orphanage, Tia was a midsummer baby, touched in magic and born in the mundane.

Although her mailing address was the Antwerp Orphanage, the place was only two blocks from the Stanton Arms in one direction and three from the church where she’d been left in the other, and a young Tia Lian ruled all and the places in between, running the small gangs of children and fay by the time she was old enough to spin a lie.

“Born in an eggshell,” she fibbed proudly, “blessed by my father’s hopes and my mother’s tears. As fay as they come and as wild as they can’t cage.” Her elders, fay, priest, and state, despaired of teaching her discipline. Her peers despaired of ever being as cool as she was. Soon, boys despaired of the chance of a kiss. She was as she’d made herself, fay and wild.

And then she met Bao Bao.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/340941.html. You can comment here or there.

To the Gate, a story of Fairy Town for the April Giraffe Call

May11

For flofx‘s Commissioned Prompt. Fairy Town does not yet have a landing page.

After “Spring”

Anton Barren moved slowly in front of his students. “Fade, look around. Do you see a doorway?”

“None.” He was back to sounding bored. That was good. Anton didn’t want the girls to freak out. He didn’t want Fade to freak out, either… or himself.

“How about an arch or a gate?”

“Over there.” That was Lilah, bouncing a bit. “Mr. Barren, what’s going on? Why are the animals looking at us?”

“I chose an imperfect time to bring us here.” He had chosen an imperfect locale, more accurately, hoping for a small amount of danger to shake them out of their complacency. This was not going to be a small amount of danger, not if the Animals were looking at them the way it seemed they were.

He focused his sight. He could see their shadows, if he looked hard enough. There would be a cost. But he would pay it. He always did.

“The bobcats…” Anya whispered. “Mr. Barren, the bobcats…. they look hungry. And it was a long and cold winter, wasn’t it?”

“Coldest in decades,” Lilah answered. “I was shoveling snow every day and… oh. The deer looks hungry, too. I thought deer were herbivores.”

“Deer are. These are not, exactly, deer.” He reached for their hands, school regulations be damned. “Fade, take Anya’s other hand. You can worry about cooties later.”

“I’m not five.” He could sense the boy moving to obey him, complaints aside. “How bad is it?”

“If we are lucky, even a little lucky, it won’t be too bad. Lilah, where did you say you saw this gateway?”

“It’s an arch. About … mm… thirty feet? To my right.”

“All right.” The deer seemed to be milling closer in their interrupted dance. The bobcats? Probably pacing back and forth in front of them. “When I give the word, children… run.”

“But I don’t understand. I thought they were celebrating.” Lilah did far too well as complainer.

“They are. But every celebration needs food. Now run!”

They ran, Anton herding them in the direction Lilah had pointed, while the bobcats gave chase, lazily, not wanting to catch them yet, and the deer shifted their dance, running ahead, cutting in front of them, only to double back. The Animals were playing with them. Anton could only hope that they would get distracted in the game and forget the gate.

“So, let me get this straight,” Fade panted. “You brought us into another world. To be dinner for a bunch of animals. What kind of Biology teacher are you?”

“The kind that believes in realism?” Lilah joked. She was closer to the mark than Anton wanted to admit.

“The kind that believes in field experience,” he countered. He couldn’t see the gate, but, then again, he never had. If he didn’t know where they were, he had to rely on younger eyes than his to see. “Lilah, that arch…?”

“Just ahead, Mr. Barren. Just ahead. Hee, I always thought that was funny.” Her breathless giggle sounded a bit hysterical. “Barren, the guy teaching about life.”

“Ironic.” Fade’s mumble sounded like he was losing energy quickly.

Anya hadn’t paused, but she was watching Anton’s face far too clearly. “No.” She shook her head, and a bit of panic began to cross her face. “No… it’s not irony. It’s just honesty. The Fae call themselves what they are, don’t they, Mr. Barren?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/336818.html. You can comment here or there.

Spring, a story of Fairy Town for the Giraffe Call

Apr20

For flofx‘s Prompt. Fairy Town does not yet have a landing page.

“Right down this alleyway, kids.” Anton Barren led his students between the looming buildings, past the garbage cans, around the sleeping bum. They followed, heedless of the danger, curious as to the adventure. “Here. Lilah, you go first.” He opened an old, rusty, creaking gate and, starting to worry, the youngest of his students stepped through.

There were times that the walls between worlds were thinner, the doorways easier to find. The iron gate normally led to a strip club; you had to twist the handle just right to step between lands instead. Anton ushered his kids through, then closed the door behind them.

“Mr. Barren?” Fade asked first, breaking his untouchable facade. Anton didn’t blame him. They were standing in knee-deep lush, green grass. With pink flowers.

“Is this the otherworld?” Anya asked, before Anton could answer.

“That’s a grandma-story.” Lilah was his complainer. She was very good at her role.

“This is an other world, yes. This way, I wanted to show you something.”

“How do we get home?”

“In due time, Lilah, in due time. First: observe.”

“Totally a bio field trip.” Despite that, Fade was staring. Again, Anton didn’t blame him. “Are those…”

“Deer. Or at least, the spirit, the idea of deer. And rabbits.”

“And kittens?” Anya hurried forward. “Mr. Barren, there’s kittens.”

“Stay back here, please.” He couldn’t catch them, if they got too far.

“What are they doing? Dancing?” Fade couldn’t remain apathetic; he was leaning forward like the others.

“This is how they celebrate. The turning of the season, the coming of the spring. They celebrate surviving the long cold winter. They dance.” Anton couldn’t see them. He had sacrificed that long, long ago. But in the eyes of his students, he could see the memory of the sight, the deer frolicking in complex patterns, the rabbits weaving in and out of the pattern, the bobcats tracing them, waiting.

“They’re glad it’s spring.” Anya flopped into the grass, her chin on her hands. “That’s so sweet.”

“They’re glad they didn’t die.” Lilah fell silent. “And they’re looking at us.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/325707.html. You can comment here or there.

Reaching out for the Congregation

Mar12

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of

⛪
The kirkevaren was watching Mirandabelle.

It made her uncomfortable. It made her skin crawl. It made her fingers itch and her shoulders twitch. It made her want to cry.

But she went by the church every day. Every single day, after school, before work, after partying, before she went to bed. Twice some days, three times some days.

She went by because her mother had told her what had happened; because her grandmother had told her mother what had happened. She went because she’d heard the stories and, while this kirkevaren and this priest were innocent – she could see their innocence hanging over them like a halo, like an aura, like a crown – but the church itself, new and hallowed and blessed, the church was not.

She walked the edge of the fence, because the kirkevaren could not stop her from doing that, and she kissed the iron spikes, brushing her snakebite piercings against the metal and accepting the brief burn as her penance.

“Florence Carter,” she whispered to the first pike, “Benjamin Tomes,” to the third. She looked up at the kirkevaren as she said the third name, “Juliander Tempest.” Juliander had been her mother’s mother’s mother. She had died here, died when the church still hunted the fae.

The corpse-lamb stared at her at that one. Every time. Every time, with its dead blue eyes. With its protective gaze.

“My kin died here,” she told it. “My kin and my kind.”

Every day. Every night. School uniform. Club clothes. Work uniform. She looked like a normal kid. She looked like a human kid. But the kirkevaren knew. The corpse-lamb had been guarding the church from fae for centuries, and it came to the work easily again this time.

“My kin died here. My grandmother’s mother. My best friend’s great-uncle. The one they called the Grey Cat. The one they called The Nose. They died ere. They weren’t buried here, no. They weren’t put under your guidance. I won’t be buried under your guidance.”

She told the lamb that every night. Every day. It was three months before she got an answer.

“I can not stop what has already been done.” It wasn’t the lamb, and she nearly bolted when she saw the new priest, Father Nehemiah, standing in the shadows. “I cannot heal the old wounds… it’s Mirandabelle, right?”

“Some people call me that,” she allowed.

“Then I will call you that. Mirandabelle, I cannot help your grandmother’s mother, save to pray for her. I can’t help those this church once failed. But miss, I am not the priest who once stood here, and this church is not the church that once stood here.”

“The hallowed ground is hallowed ground,” she spat. “The land and the blessing was there, and it’s here now.”

He shook his head. “Yes. Yes. But the land has been re-blessed, Mirandabelle, and I would like to re-consecrate our relationship with the fae again as well.”

She ran a finger over the iron posts and listened to the faint sizzle. “With iron and blood?”

“No.” He swung the gate open. “With open doors and a handshake.”
⛪
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/299183.html. You can comment here or there.

What You Need

Mar6

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

Part 7-7.5 of 7.5

Mr. Ting was beginning to creep me out and, what was more, I was worried Mt. Jordan was going to blow any minute now. “We really need an AC unit,” I put in, trying not to stare at the silver whatsits. Or the tin with the tentacle thing on it. “An air conditioner. We have a kid at home, and cats and rats…”

“Already taken care of.” He smiled benevolently at us. “A new unit has been delivered to your doorstep. What is more, in your absence, Ashton and Taylor are installing it – and cleaning the window.”

Jordan stared at him. “You can’t know that.”

“Aaah. That may be. But what also is, is that I do know it. And when you return home, you will see that these things have happened.” He patted Jordan’s shoulder, and somehow came back with all his fingers. “And that is all right. But that is only what your household needed, no? That is not what the two of you, what J.J .and Jordan, and J.J.-and-Jordan, need, is it?”

“There is no J.J.-and-Jordan,” we both said hurriedly. The tiny man only smiled.

“There may not be a romantic relationship. You do not look at each other as if you are having a romance. But you are here together because there is a together, no? You are living in your house of complications because there is a friendship, a something-more?”

We shared a look, and it was Jordan who looked away, but me who spoke.

“There’s an us, like that,” I agreed. “Friends. Just… just friends.”

“Indeed,” he smirked. “‘Just’ friends. It is a good thing to have, ‘just’ friends, like Mrs. Gent and I. And do you believe me, J.J.?”

Did I believe him? That was a very good question. “It seemed ridiculous. It seems unbelievable. Far-fetched, at the very least – Ashton setting up anything?” I smirked at him. “Compared to that, you psychically delivering an AC to our house seems entirely reasonable.”

He bowed, like the stereotype that had been in my mind when I first walked in here. “Then allow Mr. Ting to continue to provide what you need.”

“What will it cost us?” Jordan asked again, a little less sharply.

He shook his head, and patted her shoulder again. “Mr. Ting sometimes needs things too. Actual things, mind you. Radios. Cathelyubra. Paperwork. You will come across something that it will look like the store could use. That’s the cost.”

“That’s it?” That was me, this time. “For the AC?”

“The Air Conditioner – that, your roommates paid for in cash and a third of a chocolate cake. It was a very good cake. No, you will bring things back to the store in payment for what I will give you now.”

That sounded ominous. More ominous was the sound of the building shaking and thudding again. A shelf twisted and turned, and we were on the section labeled “P.”

“You will need these.” He passed us each a rucksack that seemed loaded to the top. “And here is your exit.”

“Thank you?” I had turned to put on my backpack, and when I turned back, the little man was gone and in his place was the exit. “Well.”

“Well.” Jordan looked at me, looked at the door, and walked through. “Let’s go… oh.”

“Oh?” I’d followed her through, on her heels like always; now she stepped aside so I could see.

See the island we were suddenly standing on, see the stream meandering through, the grass purple, the water green. See the string of islands off the shore to the left, at least thirteen of them. See the creature fishing the stream, holding the pole in two of its fourteen feet.

See the door behind us close, just in time to hear it click and watch it vanish.

“…Oh.” I tried to pretend I wasn’t excited, and hoped Jordan would forgive me for this new quest.

~fin~

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/294259.html. You can comment here or there.

Guarding the Church

Mar2

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of Re-blessing the Church

⛪
Father Nehemiah wasn’t entirely comfortable in the new church.

He had been told, by the kindly woman that cleaned the building, Mrs. Bao, that most priests didn’t last long in her city (and that was how she put it: “You priests, you usually can’t make it too long in my city. Don’t worry your head about it when you find yourself having to leave.”) As such, he was determined to, as the vernacular went, hack it.

The corpse-lamb was his first challenge, although not the strongest or worst he would face. The spirit of what he was told was a kirkevaren was quite visible to the naked eye, hovering around the freshly-blessed churchyard, apparently waiting for someone to die so it had something to protect once again.

While it waited, the kirkevaren had decided to guard everything else. The pews. The baptismal. The children in the nursery on Sunday. Sometimes it inserted itself into the stained glass window patterns for a while, another lamb in the wide field of them. It was, Father Nehemiah thought, bored.

It was tied to the land, Mrs. Bao and her husband, Bao-Bao, told him; it could not go very far from it. So Father Nehemiah pondered things that the spirit could do to keep it out of trouble.

Much, he pondered, the way he did with troubled teens in other cities. Much as he was soon to find he would need to with the fairies here.

The fairies. He’d thought the kirkevaren was strange – no other church he’d ever served in had had anything similar – but the fairies, they were downright malicious.

He found the first one pretending to be a corpse, hanging itself from the iron fence posts at the front gate, eyes bugging, tongue sticking out. “This place kills us,” the thing told him.

“Now don’t you be silly,” Mrs. Bao told the thing over Nehemiah’s shoulder. “It’s a place of love and faith, and if it harms you, that’s your own silly fault.”

That one had moved on, shamed into stopping its protest, but they kept coming. They would catcall the congregation as they came for Sunday services, shout obscenities at funeral-goers and wedding guests alike. If Mrs. Bao was around, she would shoo them off with her broom, but she was not always around, and they would not listen to Father Nehemiah.

“I don’t understand,” he asked the cheerful cleaning woman. “What is it they have against our Church?”

“They have a very long memory, these creatures,” she told him, “a reborn memory, in some cases. And some just take any chance they get to complain.”

“Much like every other person I know,” he sighed. “What can I do?”

“What can you do?” she echoed back at him, with a shrug. “They are faeries. They do not follow human rules.”

“Hrrm.” Father Nehemiah had the glimmerings of an idea. He lit some incense, murmured a few prayers, and went to speak to the kirkevaren.

The next time the faries came to protest the church, the kirkevaren was there, fending them off, defending the church from their complaints. Mrs. Bao smiled at Nehemiah.

“You’ll do okay. You’ll do just fine.”

⛪

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/289421.html. You can comment here or there.

About the Want

Feb28

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of


Part 6 of 7.5
“You have quite a bit of interesting stuff here,” I countered. “I mean… stuff I’ve never seen before. Languages I’ve never seen before.”

“That is because, my dear, you have never traveled, have you?”

“I went to Michigan on vacation once,” I offered defensively, “and I’ve seen Niagara Falls from the Canadian side.”

“That doesn’t count,” Jordan poo-pooed. “That’s a day trip.”

“You have, I think, seen a great deal where you are. But you long to see wilder things, things that are not so… what is the word?”

“Mundane,” I answered, suddenly tired of it all. “Dirty. Routine.”

Jordan was looking at me strangely. “We have a house. We live with four other adults, two cats, three rats, and a toddler. Three of the adults are in a love triangle, one of them is a performance artist, one is insane, and three of them change gender presentation depending on the day. You work in a museum. Last weekend, we went urban spelunking in the old mental ward. What is routine about your life?”

“We never go anywhere!” I was aware, on some level, that I was having this argument, this argument I’d carefully been not having for years, in front of a complete stranger. But it had been a damn long day, and the argument had been a damn long time in coming.

“We have responsibilities!” Jordan shouted back at me. “We have things we have to do, JJ, and we can’t just be like Ashton and hare off whenever we want to!”

“Why not? Ashton does fine!”

“Because Ashton doesn’t get anything done that needs to get done! Ash isn’t here looking for an AC, Ash wasn’t getting the groceries last week, Ash wasn’t fixing the porch. Face it, JJ, it’s you and me when it comes to being grown-ups, and if you bail on me I’m never going to forgive you!”

“Toni buys groceries,” I offered weakly.

“Toni has a child to feed. You know, it’s not that I don’t want to travel, J.J. I’d love to see Paris. I’ve been saving up for years. But someone has to clean the shit stains out of the toilet. Someone has to be an adult. And I wish for once it was someone other than me…. ma and you.” The last bit was gentle, and a little bit guilty-sounding. I didn’t complain. I tried to be a grown-up, but Jordan seemed to have been born knowing how to do it.

“Mr. Ting knows what you need,” the small man said quietly. “Now, the question becomes… will you take what you need from Mr. Ting’s store? And can I provide it?”

“And can we afford it?” Jordan added bitterly. “Do you like us enough to give us a reasonable price?”

“Aaah.” He took in air in a long sigh. “That is not how my pricing works, dears. Mr. Ting is not about like and dislike. Mr. Ting is not about profit.” He picked up one of the #^^#(275)^, the shiny silver pointed tubes. “Mr. Ting is simply about need.”


🛸
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/286307.html. You can comment here or there.

Meeting Mr. Ting

Feb25

For @inventrix’s commissioned continuation of

🐙
We were still staring at the tentacled thing – it was just a prop, right? Just something from some sort of Lovecraftian movie or game or… something, right? – when the building shook again. I caught one of the adzes as it swung uncomfortably close to Jordan, and thus was turned in the right direction to see one of the shelves… swing. Rotate, really, like a Scooby-Doo secret door.

Nobody came out or anything, though; we just got another shelf. This one looked like it was in the end of the alphabet, or, at least, the end of our alphabet.

Xylophones, first. A whole shelf of the things, big ones with wooden bars, tiny ones, a few glockenspiels thrown in, the bright kids’ ones. Then a few model yachts, some small enough to fit in my hand, one fitting half a shelf on its own.

I don’t know what the #^^#(275)^ were, but they seemed to be shiny silver pointed tubes with a lot of fancy scrollwork.

I was staring at them and trying to ignore the fact that half the yardsticks were neither a yard long nor marked in anything I recognized as numbers when a Jordan hissed. “JJ….”

I turned around, half expecting to see something with tentacles. Instead, I saw…

“Ah, hello. My apologies, I came in through the back door. You must be the guests Mrs. Gent was telling me about.”

“I think they’re in the front, actually?” I said uncertainly. He looked entirely like my seventh-grade shop teacher, if Mr. Daniels had been sporting seven-inch ears and ten-inch eyebrows on a five-foot-nothing frame.

“Mrs. Gent can handle the Delorians just fine. But she said you two were an interesting pair.”

Jordan coughed. “We are?” We were used to hearing that, fair enough, but not in a place like that. “In this place, in this time,” the quote was rather inappropriate, but sometimes Jordan is like that, “we’re interesting? Mister, we just want…”

“I am not about what you want,” he interrupted. “I am about what you need, and that, dears, I already know. Didn’t you read the sign? Did I get the language wrong again?”

I winced, worried that we’d managed to tick him off already too. Not what we needed. Definitely not what we needed. “I’m sorry, sir…”

“Why are you sorry for your friend’s words? There is nothing to be sorry for, and you are not responsible for other people.”

“Jordan is my friend,” I flared, suddenly irritated myself. “We came here together, so I can be sorry if I want to.”

I immediately regretted it – we really needed that AC – but the little man was smiling. “Indeed. Jordan is your friend. It is such a lovely, concept, isn’t it?”

“Why did you say we were interesting?” Jordan cut in. “I mean.. this store, this is interesting. All this stuff you have…”

“Stuff, as you put it, is here because someone will need it some day,” he answered calmly. “You two are interesting because of yourselves”

🐙



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