LOUISE PIEPER

The Lost Hour

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With the clocks changing for summer time, the Australian Writers’ Centre challenge for October’s Furious Fiction was to write 500 words or less in 55 hours which needed to:

be titled ‘The Lost Hour’
contain the phrase ‘It was lighter’
include a sentence naming three colours

You can read the winning and shortlisted entries here.

I was reading Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market recently, which got me writing something else, but it also made this uncanny transaction occur to me…

***

“Buy a song for sixpence and pocketsful of time,” the market woman crooned.

Luc wouldn’t call her a witch, even in his thoughts. Witches weren’t safe to deal with – everyone knew it – but he needed coins. Now. Today. Before the dance.

“What’ve you a fancy for, young sir?”

Silver needles flashed in her lapel as she stroked the cloth on the bench between them. She wasn’t old and black-clad and bent, like he’d expected, and no grey streaks marred her russet hair. Still, her tanned skin was loose on her, as if it was a size too large. As if she could cast it off, like a coat. As if–
He swallowed hard. He wouldn’t think about it.
“I need–”

“A stolen moment?” She handed him a purple pocket stitched with copper threads, plump as a ripe red pomegranate. It was lighter than it looked. “No? Wisdom, then? I can sing you a song of such good sense every choice you make for a sennight will be the right one.”

“Affie said you pay for time.”

Her brows went up but she nodded. Luc let out a breath.

“As do others.” She looked across the green. “Yon brewer needs strong lads to load his carts.”

Luc didn’t turn. He pushed back his sandy hair and said, “You just want time, though? Not work?”

“There’s always a market for time.” She rested one ringed hand on a pile of cut cloth. “People pay for a moment’s peace, or a few minutes to themselves. There’s not enough hours in the day.”

“How much? How much will they pay?”

“I’ll give you thruppence for ten minutes.”

Thruppence would buy him a cup of cider and a red ribbon to give Bessie Croyland when he asked her to dance. Thruppence was enough.

“For just ten minutes?”

“For ten minutes of hope.” She lifted a circle of primrose pale cloth.

“What would you give for an hour?”

“An hour?” Her gaze raked him. “I can take an hour, but you ken it will take an hour?”

Her gaze darted across the green and this time he looked as well. The Croyland sisters were watching Affie and Rom work and sweat, rolling barrels in the hot sun. Luc shivered.

“How much?” he demanded.

“Two shillings,” she said, “for an hour.” She laid down the primrose yellow cloth and picked up a large piece of green silk, shot through with blue flame, like the flash of feathers under a magpie’s wing. “For an hour of opportunity.”

He nodded and heard the first three notes of the witch’s song, but the hour was lost before he heard anything more. He came back to himself, clutching two shillings, with Bessie Croyland’s laughter ringing in his ears. She walked by, holding Rom’s hand, her dark hair falling loose.

The witch set the final gold stitch to close the bulging green pocket.
“It doesn’t matter what others will pay,” she said, “some hours are priceless.”

Wrap it up, I’ll take it!

banner_book launches I’ve had two weeks to recover and I’m ready for my close-up… so here’s what I got up to at Conflux 14 (theme: the unconventional hero) over the October long weekend.

Panels!

Hero cliches and how to make or break them: I had fun talking clichés with Leife Shallcross and Sam Hawke, ably chaired by Ion ‘Nuke’ Newcombe of Antipodean SF. I may have pulled on my ranty-pants, mentioning the gendered nature of the etymology of ‘hero’. Which segues nicely to…

Conflux panel Abusive alpha males and sassy Mary-Sues: when heroes go bad: I chaired the feisty panel of Keri Arthur, Annabelle McInnes and K J Taylor who discussed self-indulgent author inserts, alpha jerks, and why male Mary-Sues aren’t seen as entirely unbelievable. (Hint: it’s because of the patriarchy).

The Unconventional Romance: I enjoyed this genre-bending, boundary-pushing session with Freya Marske chairing Leife Shallcross, Keri Arthur and Jane Virgo.

Session on Pitching: There were plenty of dos, don’ts and for-the-love-of-God-nos in this session with Abigail Nathan of Bothersome Words, editor Lyss Wickramasinghe and Paula Boer.

Unconventional Hero’s Journey: The panel of Gillian Polack, Dave Versace, Simon Petrie and Abigail Nathan, chaired by Rob Porteous, took us over Campbell’s Hero Journey and discussed other ways of looking at a hero.

Workshops!

I ran a sparsely populated workshop on the hallmarks of heroism on the Monday morning after the conference dinner. Alas, many of the registrants decided another hour of sleep recuperation trumped the appeal of discovering the secrets of how to write protagonists a reader would love.

I went to a fabulous workshop on writing fight scenes with Aiki Flinthart. Not only was it full of fantastic information on the differences between men and women fighting, both psychologically and physiologically, and the differences between trained and untrained combatants – all of which was super useful – I also got stabbed. Well, I volunteered to pretend to be someone who had no combat training and no experience of body contact sports. I was very convincing in the role. My reaction was entirely typical of a clueless victim – shriek and flail uselessly!

I also enjoyed a workshop on worldbuilding with Russell Kirkpatrick looking at maps and how the inclusion of a map in a book influences the way readers see the world.

Book launches!

The Book of Lore by Rob Porteous: Rob did a great job of being the convention’s unconventional MC and also launched his book on writing speculative fiction. This is the distilled wisdom from several years of running the CSFG Novel Writing Group which can be used as a ‘how-to’ guide to writing your own novel.

80,000 Totally Secure Passwords that no hacker would ever guess by Simon Petrie: Simon is a master of puns, cool book titles and thought-provoking science fiction. He launched this best-of collection at Conflux.

Iron by Aiki Flinthart: I can’t wait to get the chance to read this first in a trilogy tale of a world without iron and fossil fuel… and what happens when someone discovers an iron ore deposit. Plus (squeee) everyone who bought a book at the launch got a lovely little sword bookmark.

A Hand of Knaves: In a fittingly dangerous crowd of ne’er-do-wells and ruffians the latest CSFG anthology was introduced by Rob Porteous, launched by editors Leife Shallcross and Chris Large, illustrated by Shauna O’Meara, read from by Dave Versace, Eugen Bacon and myself and sold to the heaving masses by Angus Yeates and Simon Petrie. As well as that hand of villains, other contributors wielding pens for the signing included Helen Stubbs, Maureen Flynn, C H Pearce and Claire McKenna. It was a lot of fun.

But perhaps the best part of any convention (and Conflux 14 was not so unconventional as to be an exception) was meeting the most fabulous writerly peeps: I spent time with my tribe and made new friends. Thanks to the Conflux team for pulling everything together. Glorious stuff!

River City, River Sea

brisbane river Another month, another dose of short fiction.

You can read the winners and shortlisted entries on the AWC Furious Fiction page or just settle in here with my 500 words. The requirements were that the story: take place in an airport, include the word ‘spring’ and include the phrase ‘it was empty’.

I went for a little bit of post-apocalypso fun…

Departures are bickering hard when I paddle over to Inashnal. It’s how they spend their time. Arguing and watching and waiting for something to happen, somewhere to go. Sitting, always sitting, in their endless rows of seats.

“We’re in the bloody bay,” Gammy Owen roars, because he thinks being loud is the same as being right.

Vespa just rolls her eyes but Hakim can’t help himself.

“River,” he mutters. He should know better. Gammy won’t let no-one else have the last word.

River? Bay? It doesn’t matter to me, nor to the water. The moody bay heaves, sighs salt and tosses her seagrass hair. The river runs, gravy thick and mud-silted, indifferent to our struggle to evade his embrace.

I bite my tongue and wait to be noticed, while Gammy shouts tides and channels and things he knows nothing about. The walkway casing is cracked, but solid enough to hold the stink of rot and mud. I shift my feet and the wet carpet sucks at my thongs like it’s hungry.

I know better than to go through the Gate without permission, though.

“It’s thirty-eight klicks–” Gammy yells.

The nearest McIntyre woman interrupts him.

“Yeah, whatever,” she says, unclipping the barrier. “Here’s Tula from Control. What’s news?”

Even Gammy shuts up then and they turn to me, eyes shining in the light from the broken windows. A few get up from their seats and shuffle closer. I stay by the Gate.

“Domestic,” I say. “The Forties Hub collapsed last night. There’s at least a hundred and twenty-five dead.”

They groan together and the building joins in. Maybe it feels the other terminal’s weakness as its own, since neither was meant to stand in ten metres of water.

Gammy Owens is the first to find his voice. He always is.

“Too many in there,” he gripes. “Too much weight with the spring rains. If it weren’t–”

“Truck got swept down the river,” I say. “Hit the satellite arm by Gate Fifty full on. Smashed the support.”

“Because we’re part of the river,” Hakim says softly.

“Salvage on the truck?” Vespa asks.

“It was empty,” I lie. No use getting them worked up. “Spread the word?”

I wait for Vespa’s nod, so I can tell Nan they’ll let the rest of Inashnal know.

There’s a grim silence, then Hakim says, “Trade?”

We haggle over the usual exchange of the fish I’ve caught and the eggs Nan wants. He passes them to me, once I’m in my kayak, then puts his hands on his hips and glares at the horizon. The water covers everything, except for a few skeleton trees and Control, which rises from it like a wizard’s tower. It’s been this way since the seas rose and the sky fell.

“Bloody river,” he mutters.

I push off from the rusted back of a sunken plane before I turn and shout, “It’s not a river, mate, it’s a bloody sea.”

Scuttlebutt and scuppers

banner_pirate ship Word for Wednesday goes piratical for ITLAPD.

Ahoy me mateys! ’tis Wednesday again ‘n time t’ look at words ‘cos how can ye not be lovin’ yer etymology? Today’s words are ripe ‘n salty, ’cause today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Ye can call me a tailed imp’s elder, though that would set me fair to guttin’ ye like a rum-boggled sea bass, but ’tis no time fer violence, ‘cause we be heedin’ th’ call o’ the sea.

More’n half th’ problem wit’ natterin’ like pirates be that while ye might “yo ho ho” and “shiver me timbers” wit’ th’ best o’ them, ‘n sling about phrases like “salty ole seadog” ‘n “arr”, most pirate natter be peppered wit’ obscure nautical terms which slip out o’ one’s head quicker’n a greasy kraken.

Wha’ th’ Davy Jones’ locker be a topsail halyard ‘n how do ye hoist it?

Wha’s a bowsprit?

How do ye splice a mainbrace?

Can ye do so, ye freebootin’ powder monkey?

Aye, ’tis a sore puzzle t’ scurvy landlubbers wit’ dreams o’ corsairs in thar black-souled hearts.

Now, ye might be ready t’ teach yer barnacle-covered Nan t’ suck cackle-fruit, in which case heave ho, ye son of a biscuit-eater, ye’ve no further business here. But if ye’re three sheets t’ th’ wind on enough rum t’ float th’ Royal Navy, an’ th’ lingo’s no easier t’ ken, read on.

Because that’s the end of the pirating for now – fun though it is – it’s time to consider words.

First up, though, some resources.
One of my favourite spots on the interwebs is The Phrontistery – a thinking place and the home of the International House of Logorrhea. I can’t recommend it highly enough. They have a delightful list of nautical terms full of delicious words like futtock, bunt, cofferdam and windbound.

See the Sea has a very clear list of nautical terms with some brief and illuminating notes on the nautical origins of terms like “a couple of shakes” meaning a short time, hazing and being “at loose ends”. Worth a look, I think.

The Pirate Glossary is full of fun facts – famous pirates, the anatomy of a ship, weapons and flags – as well as insults and phrases. It’s clear, comprehensive and kind of fabulous.

So, with all of that at our disposal, we could talk pirate all day, but instead I want to spread a little scuttlebutt and look at scuttling and scuppers.

A scuttlebutt is the shipboard equivalent of the office water cooler and of the gossip that’s exchanged around it. Butt is one of those hard-working words which mean a lot of different things because they’ve all snuck in over the centuries from different sources – Frankish, Dutch, Old French, Norse, etc, etc. The relevant source for scuttlebutt is from Late Latin “buttis” meaning cask – which became “bot” for a barrel in Old French.

So we’ve got a barrel full of drinking water on deck, yo ho me hearties.

Now a scuttle is a hole or covered hatch in a ship – possibly derived from the Old French “éscoutille” to cut something to make it fit, or directly from the Spanish word “escotilla” for hatchway – and a scuttle can be used for scuttling, deliberately sinking, the ship. Of course, the water barrel would have had a hole cut in it to allow a cup or dipper to get in and scoop out some water. I think that the theory that the dipper had holes cut in it to stop sailors from lingering and gossiping over their water break sounds a bit stupid – you don’t want to go wasting fresh water on sea voyages.

Aye, drink yer Adam’s ale through a sieve, while we stand around and laugh.

Just as you can scuttle a ship to prevent enemy capture by cutting holes or opening the seacocks in the hull, you can deliberately ruin a plan by scuttling it. So far, so clear.

But what about if you scupper it?

Scuppers, as a noun, refers to the holes cut in the bulwarks of a ship to allow water on deck to drain off. It may derive from some more Old French – “escopir”, meaning to spit out – because as long as your scuppers are spitting out the water you’re less likely to sink. It may also refer to Margaret Wise Brown’s sailor dog, Scuppers, but only if you’ve had the pleasure of his Little Golden Book company.

scuppers

Of course, if you were to die on deck you might be washed into the scuppers, which may be where it got its negative meaning of to be killed or to ruin something.

But according to modern definitions, to scupper is to sink your own ship on purpose. No, wait – that’s to scuttle it! Well, it would appear that the two have become synonymous. Ah, the English language. A rich grab bag of mutable stuff – it’s unsinkable.

All of which means that you should feel free to scupper or scuttle or shiver yer timbers for ITLAPD – just remember to abandon ship for the first two.

Crossing the Lines and breaking the rules

Crossing the Lines by Sulari Gentill has recently won the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for the Best Crime Novel. Deservedly so: it’s clever, entertaining and a great example of how metafiction can be fun. It also packs a punch for writers learning their craft.

In the stone-chiselled commandments passed on to writers – almost any version thereof – it’s said you shouldn’t change point of view (POV) mid-scene. “Head-hopping” is poor writing, confusing to your readers and a mortal sin.

It’s also said you have to know the rules to break them.

Well, Sulari definitely knows the rules – her Rowland Sinclair historical murder mysteries are nothing short of an ongoing delight and she has three YA adventures based on the Greek myths in her backlist. (I may have waxed lyrical in the past…)

Which is all to the good, because when Crossing the Lines breaks the POV rule it smashes it out of the park.

What’s going on in the novel? Well, it begins with Madeleine d’Leon, who writes crime novels. She creates Ned, a literary author to be the detective character in her latest murder mystery. Or does she?

Edward McGinnity is writing a story about a mystery-writing lawyer called Madeleine, whose seemingly comfortable marriage contains dark undercurrents. He’s a literary writer, after all. Or is he?

As the two stories enmesh it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who is writing who. The narrative slips seamlessly between them, sometimes crossing from one to the other mid-sentence. And while they’re blurring the line between what is real and what is imagined, the reader is absolutely hooked by this story. Read it, and let me know if you managed to put it down, because I couldn’t.

As a writer, I think Crossing the Lines is not just a fantastic example of smashing the POV rule and of metafiction doing some heavy lifting in a very nonchalant and polished way . It’s also a lesson in how a story can be a whole lot of fun.

sulari and christine Sulari knows how to have fun – in fiction and outside it. That’s her, on the left – with Christine Wells on a panel at GenreCon in 2015 – admitting she writes in her pyjamas while watching old Midsomer Murder shows. She’s obviously had some fun blurring the lines between herself and her character Maddie, who’s also a lawyer turned writer who writes crime in her pyjamas.

So, whether you’re looking for a clever crime novel, a masterly metafiction lesson, or some fun fiction which will definitely get you thinking, grab yourself a copy of Crossing the Lines, published by Pantera Press, and enjoy.

Heroine chic

B_gold
I’ve been polishing my gauntlets and buffing my boots in preparation for the Heroines Festival and Heroines Anthology launch.

The fearless protagonists at Neo Perennial Press have teamed up with the South Coast Writers Centre, the Wollongong Book Festival and Culture Bank Wollongong to focus on speculative and historical storytelling and showcase women writing about women – strong and brave and smart and unstoppable.

How could I not want to be part of that?

The first festival is on Saturday 8 September, 12 to 5pm at Thirroul Neighbourhood Centre – all the details about the program and guests like Kate Forsyth, Catherine McKinnon, Claire Corbett and Pamela Hart are here.

Leading up to that, though, is the launch of Heroines: an anthology of short fiction and poetry. The anthology has been edited by Sarah Nicholson and Caitlin White and I am thrilled that it includes my short story Bits and Bolts and Blood.

The launch will take place at Philanthropy Tribe Book Café in Wollongong on Wednesday 5 September, 6 – 8pm. You can find out more about the launch, and about the seven writers who will be reading from their work in the anthology on the night, here and follow the link to book tickets for the free event.

Yes! I’ll be reading from my short story at the launch.

So, what’s the story?

The anthology called for reimagined myths, fairy tales and legends. Bits and Bolts and Blood takes a few of my favourite things – the Grimm’s Little Redcap tale, Tarot cards and fairy changelings – and mixes them together to make something new.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the anthology and discovering what stories all the contributors have chosen to tell.

If you’re in or around the ‘Gong on the 5th of September, come to the launch! It should be fun and fabulous. Even if you’re not, I’ll put details of how you can get your hands on a copy of the anthology, ~~as soon as possible~~ right now (only $19.99).

What’s your poison?

Monkshood We were talking about poisons at a book launch* last week and one of my learned colleagues mentioned that the traditional witches’ brew garden plants just aren’t as deadly as you might think. Is that the fault of an exaggeration of the plants’ toxicities or, as another writerly polymath suggested, improved health levels making people more likely to survive poisoning? I don’t know the answer, but it did get me thinking about (da da daaa!) PLANTS THAT KILL!

Being Australian I’m used to the notion that, at any given time, approximately 36% of my immediate environment is actively trying to kill me, but that’s mostly creepies and crawlies and slithery things** rather than large carnivores and plants. Not that some of the plants aren’t up to the task – anyone who has tangled with a Gympie Gympie*** is familiar with its charming brand of ‘god let me die now so the pain will end’.

The Dendrocnide moroides is also known as the stinger or suicide plant and arguably has the most painful sting of anything in the world. The recommended treatment is to wash the area with diluted hydrochloric acid (1:10) because, I guess, acid is preferable to this monster. It’s related to the giant stinging tree but has a more potent neurotoxin. Apparently, the pain can last for years…

Some of our continent’s nastiest inhabitants, though, are ornamental imports brought by early colonists. Like many children around the world, I recall being warned away from Oleanders and Angels Trumpets. The latter, Brugsmansia, has pretty flowers, the perfume of which can cause respiratory irritation and nausea in some people. They are closely related to Datura – Devils Trumpets – but the Brugsmansia’s flowers are pendulous rather than erect. Both types of ‘trumpet’ belong to the nightshade family.

The alkaloids in Brugs (as fans of the plants call them) will mess you up. Some people, looking for a natural high, have contemplated their choices (lick a cane toad**** or drink some trumpet tea) and opted for the tea. I’m definitely not recommending the former, but nasty things happen when you ingest trumpets belonging to devils or angels. Bad, bad trips – the hallucinogenic effects have been described as terrifying rather than pleasurable and in one case the ‘acute psychotic condition’ led to self-amputation of the tea drinker’s penis and tongue.

So that’s a no.

Having grown up in the subtropics, it wasn’t until I went to the UK that I saw a lot of the deadly plants that my reading of fairytales, the classics, fantasy fiction and historical non-fiction like Nicholas Culpeper’s Herbal had led me to believe would just about leap out and attack me. You know, the sort of classic witches’ weeds of deadly nightshade, hemlock and henbane, mandrake and monkshood, wormwood and foxglove.

I found it a little confronting to discover that the gardens of Edinburgh were a veritable pharmacopeia of death – atropine, aconite, digoxin, taxine and cicutoxin, just to name a few. Those lovely monkshood in the banner pic? Photographed in Edinburgh, as was this snowy graveyard yew.

Yew in Edinburgh graveyard

But none of these plants, nasty as they are, can compete with (da,da,daaa!) the TREE of DEATH!

The manchineel (Hippomane mancinella) or manzanilla de la muerte, which means little apple of death, grows in and around the Caribbean. On some islands they put warning signs on the trees to let people know that the fruit, sap and leaves are highly toxic. (Check it out!) Just standing beneath one, when it rains, will cause skin blisters. I think Flaubert overstated the danger of the tree in Madame Bovary where he referred to its ‘poisonous shade’, but not by much.

Truth, as ever, is stranger than fiction. But it makes me think about how ludicrously nasty a fictional plant would have to be, just to compete with some of our world’s fabulous flora. And all of this really makes me want to get back to a short story I started writing about four months ago about malevolent apple trees. Not that I’ve gone all ‘hello, my pretty’ with poisoned fruit. Just those yellow and red stripes…that’s Nature’s warning, right? Like tigers and wasps.

Plus, I think doing some writing would be safer than a spot of gardening, all things considered.

*the book, City of Lies by Sam Hawke, features a family of poison tasters.

**and the sun, of course – mankind’s ancient enemy….

***much worse if you do this in Gympie, thereby cubing the level of your distress as well as running the additional risk of mercury poisoning.

****the Bufo marinus has hallucinogenic sweat. And is gross. You could not pay me enough to lick one.

A bonfire of my vanity

banner_sunset

Tonight, I’m off to a bonfire of my vanity, rather than a more generic bonfire of the vanities which would call for the righteous roasting of anything which might encourage sin.

Let me explain and, since it’s Wednesday and there’s always time for a little wordsmithery, before I set fire to the pyre I’m going to investigate some history and wordalicious etymology.

Back in the 1490s, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola was ruining his former patrons, the de Medicis, by preaching that luxury and ostentatious excess were sinful. (And, yeah, those Medicis knew a thing or two about ostentation.)

The good people of Florence, egged on by Savonarola, in the spirit of abstinence called for by the upcoming Lent, spent Shrove Tuesday 1497 chucking anything that might tempt them to sin – mirrors, cosmetics, musical scores and instruments, playing cards, paintings, books – onto a fire.

This wasn’t the first falò delle vanità, bonfire of the vanities, but it is the most well-remembered, at least in part because it was said that the great Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli consigned some of his own paintings to the pyre. Che cavolo!

Things didn’t end well for Savonarola – only fifteen months later, after being excommunicated and tortured, he was hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, along with two other friars. Their ashes were dumped in the Arno to prevent his followers from making relics of his bones.

And, yeah, that’s the Arno in Pisa – stop being picky. Its the same river and it brings us to the etymology of bonfire which is that it is a bone fire. That is a fire in which you’re burning bones.

Why, you might ask. Or even, what sort of monster are you?

Firstly, they don’t have to be human bones. Don’t go all wicker man on me, alright?

Secondly, burning bones is a great way to turn them into a nice, friable fertiliser. So, you bring the beasties in from their summer pastures after harvest, knowing there’s not enough feed for them all for the winter, and after the butchering and everything is done you’ve got a pile of carcasses which need burning to make fertiliser for the fields for the next year’s crop.

And, oh, is that the time? Somehow it’s the end of October and time for Samhain, so you build up bonfires – bonefires – and make a party of it. You drive the rest of the cattle between two of the bonfires and you pass through them too, as a cleansing ritual. The wall between the worlds is thin, so you make sure you appease the spirits of the fae and of the dead.

So the bonfires (with or without their bones) were being lit at that time of the year (preferably by a fire made by friction = force-fire, needs-fire or neatsfire, neat being an Old English word for cattle) long before the Catholic Church moved its celebration of All Hallows from the 13^th of May to the 1^st of November, and long before English justice saw Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators drawn, hung, mutilated and quartered for their conspiracy to blow up King James and the parliament on 5 November 1605. A ‘guy’ has been burnt in effigy on that date – Bonfire Night – ever since.

Because what’s a bonfire without at least a few (notional) bones?

And what’s it all got to do with my vanity?

Well, I’m off to have one of my manuscripts critiqued, tonight, by the CSFG novel critiquing group. If producing a book is like producing a child, which it really isn’t, this is like asking some other parents to tell you how ugly your kid is. No, honestly, tell me. I can take it.

Actually, it’s more like taking all the things you’re proud of in your work and watching while others throw them onto a bonfire.

Well, it will be cold tonight, here. About 4 decrees Celcius. Books, as Mr Bradbury told us, burn at 232 Celsius. And bones, as it happens, will become friable due to the breakdown of collagen at around that temperature too.

Still, even if all I’m left with is the charred remains, they’ll make a good fertiliser for the next version of my manuscript.

The Jam Jar

B_flower blue Another month, another piece of Furious Fiction. July’s challenge was 500 words which 1. start with a question, 2. end with a BANG (literally) and 3. contain the words jackpot, jam and jungle.

You can read the winner and shortlisted entries on the AWC Furious Fiction site.

Here’s what I wrote:

“What’s the difference,” I said, “between an eccentric relative and one who’s just garden-variety crazy?”
“Asking for a friend?” Great-aunt Hypatia’s glare scorched me, but she was bound by blood and seal and covenant to answer my questions, however frivolous, so she said, “Aesthetic classifications of the relevant aberrant behaviour are dependent upon observable misalignment within age, wealth and tannin consumption.”
She wasn’t bound to give answers I could understand.
“Huh?”
Her smile widened. She wasn’t bound to answer questions she couldn’t understand.
“Tell me what that means, auntie.”
I pushed aside the jungle-dense drapery of vines and unlocked the door into the smallest of the gardens. She followed, still smiling like an overfed sphinx.
Nor was she bound to answer polite demands.
“What defines eccentricity?”
“One isn’t eccentric–” She made the word a sabre-rattle of syllables. Hypatia was always strongest amongst the plants she’d tended. “–unless one is old and rich and drinks a lot of tea.”
I knelt in front of the monkshood and began to clear the patch of earth I’d marked last autumn with a hawthorn stake. The Morency women had tended these gardens for two hundred years; if most of us were happier making poisons than jam, what of it? There were benefits. Hypatia was no more than a glimmer of light except to one of us.
I dug my strong fingers into the soil, questing down.
“So, Cousin Ransley.” I watched Hypatia’s lip curl. “Is he eccentric or dangerous?”
Fox-fire whirled in the abyss behind my long-dead great-aunt’s cornflower blue eyes as she realised I’d not asked my questions to vex her.
“He styles himself eccentric.” She weighed her words against the truth. “His mother was a Morency who took her luck with her when she left. She won the jackpot and married a millionaire. He’s rich.”
I brushed dirt from the unearthed jam jar and waited.
“He is not old enough, though. And he drinks filter coffee.”
“Not eccentric.” I sighed. “Dangerous?”
“Yes,” Hypatia hissed.
Her gaze followed the delicate brown tracery inside the jar.
“Then I’ll deal with him.”
Cousin Ransley stood beneath the fig tree, frowning at the wall.
“All alone, Illysia?” he said.
I glanced at Hypatia’s feral smile and didn’t answer. He gestured at the vines, set swaying by our exit.
“What’s in there? I’d have a wonderful water view from here without all this.”
“It’s a witch’s garden, Ransley, and safer if it’s walled.”
He threw his head back and laughed at the sky. Hypatia sneered as if she contemplated tearing out his exposed throat with her teeth.
“Witches? Do you know any spells, cousin?”
“Oh, yes. Your mother should have warned you.” I twisted the lid of the jar. “Abracadabra.”
He laughed harder.
“Abracadab.” Another twist. “Abracad.”
He jerked his head. Frowned.
“Abra.”
His mouth opened in a silent scream as I said, “Ab.”
I lifted the lid to let my cousin into the spirit jar and slammed it shut behind him.
BANG.

Possums in the World Tree

I live in a valley named for the Norse god Odin.*

And there he is, overlooking the square at our local town centre, with his two possums Thought and Memory.** And their little possum baby, Mythappropriation…

You don’t remember the possums? Weird.

Listening to the possums last night, running up and down the branches of the world tree Yggdrasil, reminded me that last year I co-presented a session for writers talking about animal folklore and the symbolism of different beasts. Animals in a story tell you a lot about the character they’re associated with. Let’s face it, Odin squinting at you with two brooding ravens on his shoulders sends a very different message from this Odin with his fluffy possums.

A 9th Century Old Saxon adaptation of the New Testament put a dove, not above Christ in radiance, but on his shoulder, because it made him more god-like to those people (although obviously it wasn’t conjuring the idea of a warrior god).

I wouldn’t be messing with a character who had any kind of corvid or eagle on their shoulder. What about a wren on the character’s shoulder? Or a sparrow? A parrot? A duck? They all send different messages to the reader.

Philip Pullman tapped into this in the His Dark Materials trilogy with Daemons, and I think that anyone who has read all the Harry Potter books and tells you they’ve never considered what animal form their Patronus would take, is probably lying. (Mine would totally be a tapir…)

Another choice of animals is presented in fiction by the notion that every witch needs a familiar. So, what’s it to be? A traditional cat, called Pyewacket or Vinegar Tom (although they were an imp and a dog, back in the day, according to witch-finder general Matthew Hopkins). Maybe a bat, a rat or a toad? A pig? A raven or crow? A snake or a spider? Or something even more exotic?

I love the drawing, by Canadian artist Jean-Baptiste Monge, of a witch on a pig. A copy sits next to my desk, courtesy of RedBubble. When I Googled for that link, I discovered that, apparently, the map of Great Britain looks like a witch riding a pig. Who knew?

Terry Pratchett doubtlessly did and he also knew that a pig witch was going to get a different reaction than a witch with a black cat, because animals come with their own baggage of symbolism and folklore and superstitions.

So, which witch would you want to write about?***

It’s a fun writing prompt if you’re suffering the angst of an empty page. Do an online image search for “girl/boy/man/woman/child/person with a (animal of choice)” and see if you can find a picture of someone who might be a very different kind of witch.

Then write their story.

*Actually, the story of Woden is more interesting than that and totally explains the possums. The Woden Valley is named for an early property in the area, named Woden in 1837. But, did the owner, Dr James Murray, simply name the property after the god or was he influenced by the local Indigenous word for possum, wadyan?
Nothing is certain – but this story of urban etymology reported by the ABC last September makes for fascinating reading.

**This mural is the work of a Canberra-based artist, Voir, who not only painted the god and his possums, but also decorated my favourite coffee place – Coffee House in Fyshwick. Ona! Best. Coffee. Ever. Odin hit the street last December, courtesy of the Woden Youth Centre and the ACT government’s Graffiti Management program.

***All the art in this post is obviously not mine and my post isn’t meant to infringe on the copyright of anyone’s work. The blue-haired witch and cat is a painting by Russian artist Tanya Shatseva, the girl with the deer is a photograph by another Russian artist Katerina Plotnikova and the other two… sorry, I’m still trying to track down where I found them. I find all these works inspiring and I hope you do too.