“Rachel is a large woman,” Gus said. He was exponentially more jolly now that they had had a stout lunch and had booked rooms in the inn above the tavern. “I definitely condone large women.”
“I... don’t know what to do with that,” Martha said.
“It’s okay,” Ben said. “I’m pretty sure you’re not alone.”
“So, what is our business here, really?” Tess asked. She had been shyly venturing more and more words into conversations since they entered the town, and as Gus was in a much better mood, the results had overall been positive.
“I was under the impression that I was not a liar,” Guido said. “We are here to replenish our food stores, refresh our bodies, and perhaps explore life outside of Medias, give you all a better idea of what life is going to be like for you from now on.”
“Why did you choose Rachel for us to see first?” Ben asked.
“It’s the closest safe town to the forest,” Guido said. “Taksarus is south of here, almost in the forest a few miles from where we exited, but I didn’t think that your first foray into non-Median life would be best spent trying to avoid death by the grim hand of the thugs in Taksarus.”
Awkward silence hovered around the group after those words.
“Well,” Gus said, “Thanks for thinking of us.”
“So what are we going to do first?” Martha asked. “Replenish, refresh, or self-educate?”
“My vote is replenish,” Gus said seriously. “We can learn about the town as we go around buying things to fill our packs.”
“Are we planning on staying here for very long, Guido?” Ben asked. “If not, I agree with Gus. But if we’ve got some time, I would rather test out those beds upstairs, take a long nap, and maybe a bath.”
“I heartily agree,” Tess said quietly to Ben. “I feel like I have enough dirt on my legs to count for a second layer of skin.”
“We can stay as long as anyone likes,” Guido said. “But I would personally suggest we be moving on. People in the border towns, these settlements nearest the forest, are leary of visitors. The further into the country we go, the safer we’ll be and the longer we’ll be able to stay.”
“Let’s give ourselves three days, then,” Gus said. “Ben, if you want to rest, you can do that. Guido and I will go and restock while the rest of you stay here, and we’ll meet back here for dinner whenever you are ready.”
“I want to go with you,” Martha said, almost pleadingly.
“Weren’t you just complaining about your feet a while ago?” he asked.
She gave him a look that said more than Ben could read.
“It would be useless for you to go alone, Gus,” Guido said. “Among many unwritten rules of non-Median living is that doing anything alone suggests suspicious activity, especially for a man. You add a mysterious talking raven hovering around his head and there is guaranteed to be trouble. Either at least two of you go, or none of us do.”
Martha was pleading with Gus with her eyes. He was trying to say something back, but she was obviously not heeding him. He looked frustrated and conflicted.
“I’ll go,” Tess said. “Ben, you can stay, and I’ll go with Gus and Martha.”
Martha looked relieved, Ben looked confused, and Gus looked less than pleased.
“Martha, stay with me,” Ben protested.
Everyone looked around at him.
“I didn’t realize this group was so politically charged,” Guido said.
“Stay with me, Martha,” Ben repeated. This time it was a demand. Reluctantly she nodded, and they turned together to walk up the stairs.
Gus and Tess looked at each other. Tess looked down at her feet.
“Is there... something I should know?” Guido asked.
“No,” Gus shot. “Let’s get this over with.”
Showing posts with label unoriginal content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unoriginal content. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gus tilted his head back all the way, looking up to the top of the wall spreading up in front of him. Ben rubbed his palm against its smooth, flat surface, his brow furrowed. Tess leaned her back against it and closed her eyes, smiling to herself. Martha sat down and dropped her pack next to her, sighing and taking her bare feet into her hands to rub them back to life.
“You know, this reminds me of an old children’s story someone back in Medias told me about a while back,” Gus said. “It was about a world where there were four nations; Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. For a long time, the four Nations lived together in harmony. There were ‘benders’ from each nation who were capable of harnessing the elemental energy of the nation they were from and manipulating that element to their will. Each type of ‘bending’ had its own specific style, which helped organize and characterize the energy the benders used. For instance, earth benders mold the hard, unforgiving element of rocks and dirt, so their bending style was representative of the uncompromising nature of their element, and air is a peaceful, negotiating element, so its benders did not use it for offense, but for defense and evasion, as well as the furthering of joy and culture.”
“So they were basically pushovers?” Martha stated more than asked.
“Peacemakers. Please,” Gus clarified. “Anyway, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. They were a strong, ambitious nation made stronger by the presence of a comet that added to their bending abilities. By the time their war for conquest began, no one in any of the other nations was prepared to stand strong enough against them. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.”
“What do you mean, he vanished?” Martha asked.
“Well, everyone thought he had left them, gone into hiding to save his own skin, too scared to pick a fight with the most powerful nation in the history of the world. But a hundred years after his mysterious disappearance, two children from the southern water tribe, a small, broken community, mostly destroyed by raids from the Fire Nation earlier in the war, discovered the new Avatar. He had died as a Fire bender and been reincarnated into the form of a young Air bender boy named Aang."
“Reincarnated?” Martha asked. “You mean he came back to life?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “The Avatar is a soul that passes through one human body and into another after the first one dies. And there is a cycle, so the new avatar is always from a different nation than the last. Water, Earth, Fire, and then Air.”
“How does this wall remind you of that story, Gus?” Martha asked.
“Well, as it was described to me, in the Earth Kingdom, it was natural that they should build enormous walls with no gates, using only powerful Earth benders to open holes in the walls. When I saw this wall, I immediately imagined that kind of gate opening to allow us entry.”
“You’re actually not that far off,” Guido said. “That is almost how these gates work; the towns don’t want those laying them under siege to know where they are, as they are the weakest part of the city’s defenses, but they need a way to let regular traveler’s in. Once you’ve been around these parts long enough, you get to memorize where all the entrances are. I happen to know that we’re on the correct side of the wall for this particular town. What I don’t know is where exactly along the wall it is.”
Ben looked down the expanse of the wall to his right. It had to be at least one or two miles across. “How do we find out?” he asked wearily.
“How about you fly up there and check it out, Guido,” Martha said. “You know, give those old wings some exercise, after all that abysmal sitting around you had to do all day. How uncomfortable that must have been for you.”
“I’m sorry to displease you,” Guido said, obviously not sorry at all, “but I’m afraid that security is so tight in Rachel that even a lone Raven can’t fly over the wall without fearing for his life.”
“So how do we find the gate, Guido?” Gus asked, his tone more serious now. “We’ve walked all morning; I’d like to find a place to sit down, maybe eat non-dried fruit, perhaps even sleep in a bed...”
“We’ll simply have to walk this side, asking for entrance until it is given to us.”
Ben gave a short sarcastic laugh. “Who exactly is going to hear us asking from all the way down here?”
“I swear to you, the gate will open, wherever it is,” Guido said. His tone was getting increasingly annoyed as they got increasingly subversive. “So, if you would please,” he said, speaking pointedly to Martha, “we need to start moving with haste.”
Martha leaned further back into her reclined position. “Just five more minutes,” she said. “My feet are so swollen, it’s like wearing bags of rocks around my ankles.”
“The path is smooth here,” Gus said, putting his hand out for her to take. “You can probably walk barefoot so you don’t have to worry about putting your shoes back on.”
She made a face at him, but put her hand in his and allowed him to help her up. They all started walking along the wall. They had gone a whole three feet before Guido croaked, telling them all to stop.
“Ben,” he said, “if you would be so kind as to please knock against that wall.”
Ben looked confused as he turned and banged a fist against the wall. Nothing happened. They waited a few moments, and then Guido flew on, prompting them all to follow. Every five feet or so, Guido would signal to Ben to rap his knuckles against the wall, and he would hang back as the rest of the group walked on, waiting and watching for something.
After Ben had knocked for the tenth time and Guido had waited fruitlessly for some unknown event, Gus laughed. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Does anybody else wonder what kind of high-tech security system involves walking along a wall and knocking? Does anybody else feel a bit... Podunk about this whole ordeal?”
“I swear to you,” Guido said obstinately, the taste of stubbornness in his tone, “this wall will open; it takes merely patience and persistence to do so. You asked me to guide you, and I promised not to lead you astray. Stop being so frustrating.”
Gus looked a bit nonplussed by this reaction, but said nothing, and they continued on. It was silent except for the occasional raven croak and single knock on the smooth wall face. Ben felt a repeating rhythm in the slow parade they were marching, and he was beginning to lose himself in that rhythm when his knock returned a hollow sound, and Guido croaked loudly in triumph.
“Aha!” he declared. “You see? I told you there would come a response. And to think you doubted me.”
Gus raised one eyebrow. “I’m still doubting you, Excitable Evan,” he said. “So there’s a hollow behind that wall. That’s not a response; that’s a resonance.”
Before Guido could respond, there came a loud “kachunk” from inside the giant wall, followed immediately by several identical “kachunks,” each sound seeming to come from higher on the wall. Then a hole opened up at the base of the wall as large bricks appeared and curled themselves inside what appeared to be a hollow portion of the wall. The hole stayed dark, suggesting that the other side was not yet open, but the top scaled higher and higher until it reached halfway to the top.
Out of the dark, enclosed portion of missing wall came a low, booming, female voice. “What is your business in the town of Rachel?” it asked.
“Weary from travel, we seek asylum and the restoration of our rations. We will be on our way again soon, if that is what the citizens wish,” Guido said.
There came a drawn-out moment of silence before the voice spoke again. “You sound honorable. You may enter our walls; do not overstay your welcome.”
_______
I claim no ownership of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Just a whole lot of fandom. I would have taken it out here, as it was mostly for word count and only minimally to describe the appearance of the wall, but it was too tightly entwined in the actual narration to be easily extricated. Los siento. I did take out all the wikipedia articles I used to boost word count, though. You can thank me later.
“You know, this reminds me of an old children’s story someone back in Medias told me about a while back,” Gus said. “It was about a world where there were four nations; Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. For a long time, the four Nations lived together in harmony. There were ‘benders’ from each nation who were capable of harnessing the elemental energy of the nation they were from and manipulating that element to their will. Each type of ‘bending’ had its own specific style, which helped organize and characterize the energy the benders used. For instance, earth benders mold the hard, unforgiving element of rocks and dirt, so their bending style was representative of the uncompromising nature of their element, and air is a peaceful, negotiating element, so its benders did not use it for offense, but for defense and evasion, as well as the furthering of joy and culture.”
“So they were basically pushovers?” Martha stated more than asked.
“Peacemakers. Please,” Gus clarified. “Anyway, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. They were a strong, ambitious nation made stronger by the presence of a comet that added to their bending abilities. By the time their war for conquest began, no one in any of the other nations was prepared to stand strong enough against them. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.”
“What do you mean, he vanished?” Martha asked.
“Well, everyone thought he had left them, gone into hiding to save his own skin, too scared to pick a fight with the most powerful nation in the history of the world. But a hundred years after his mysterious disappearance, two children from the southern water tribe, a small, broken community, mostly destroyed by raids from the Fire Nation earlier in the war, discovered the new Avatar. He had died as a Fire bender and been reincarnated into the form of a young Air bender boy named Aang."
“Reincarnated?” Martha asked. “You mean he came back to life?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “The Avatar is a soul that passes through one human body and into another after the first one dies. And there is a cycle, so the new avatar is always from a different nation than the last. Water, Earth, Fire, and then Air.”
“How does this wall remind you of that story, Gus?” Martha asked.
“Well, as it was described to me, in the Earth Kingdom, it was natural that they should build enormous walls with no gates, using only powerful Earth benders to open holes in the walls. When I saw this wall, I immediately imagined that kind of gate opening to allow us entry.”
“You’re actually not that far off,” Guido said. “That is almost how these gates work; the towns don’t want those laying them under siege to know where they are, as they are the weakest part of the city’s defenses, but they need a way to let regular traveler’s in. Once you’ve been around these parts long enough, you get to memorize where all the entrances are. I happen to know that we’re on the correct side of the wall for this particular town. What I don’t know is where exactly along the wall it is.”
Ben looked down the expanse of the wall to his right. It had to be at least one or two miles across. “How do we find out?” he asked wearily.
“How about you fly up there and check it out, Guido,” Martha said. “You know, give those old wings some exercise, after all that abysmal sitting around you had to do all day. How uncomfortable that must have been for you.”
“I’m sorry to displease you,” Guido said, obviously not sorry at all, “but I’m afraid that security is so tight in Rachel that even a lone Raven can’t fly over the wall without fearing for his life.”
“So how do we find the gate, Guido?” Gus asked, his tone more serious now. “We’ve walked all morning; I’d like to find a place to sit down, maybe eat non-dried fruit, perhaps even sleep in a bed...”
“We’ll simply have to walk this side, asking for entrance until it is given to us.”
Ben gave a short sarcastic laugh. “Who exactly is going to hear us asking from all the way down here?”
“I swear to you, the gate will open, wherever it is,” Guido said. His tone was getting increasingly annoyed as they got increasingly subversive. “So, if you would please,” he said, speaking pointedly to Martha, “we need to start moving with haste.”
Martha leaned further back into her reclined position. “Just five more minutes,” she said. “My feet are so swollen, it’s like wearing bags of rocks around my ankles.”
“The path is smooth here,” Gus said, putting his hand out for her to take. “You can probably walk barefoot so you don’t have to worry about putting your shoes back on.”
She made a face at him, but put her hand in his and allowed him to help her up. They all started walking along the wall. They had gone a whole three feet before Guido croaked, telling them all to stop.
“Ben,” he said, “if you would be so kind as to please knock against that wall.”
Ben looked confused as he turned and banged a fist against the wall. Nothing happened. They waited a few moments, and then Guido flew on, prompting them all to follow. Every five feet or so, Guido would signal to Ben to rap his knuckles against the wall, and he would hang back as the rest of the group walked on, waiting and watching for something.
After Ben had knocked for the tenth time and Guido had waited fruitlessly for some unknown event, Gus laughed. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Does anybody else wonder what kind of high-tech security system involves walking along a wall and knocking? Does anybody else feel a bit... Podunk about this whole ordeal?”
“I swear to you,” Guido said obstinately, the taste of stubbornness in his tone, “this wall will open; it takes merely patience and persistence to do so. You asked me to guide you, and I promised not to lead you astray. Stop being so frustrating.”
Gus looked a bit nonplussed by this reaction, but said nothing, and they continued on. It was silent except for the occasional raven croak and single knock on the smooth wall face. Ben felt a repeating rhythm in the slow parade they were marching, and he was beginning to lose himself in that rhythm when his knock returned a hollow sound, and Guido croaked loudly in triumph.
“Aha!” he declared. “You see? I told you there would come a response. And to think you doubted me.”
Gus raised one eyebrow. “I’m still doubting you, Excitable Evan,” he said. “So there’s a hollow behind that wall. That’s not a response; that’s a resonance.”
Before Guido could respond, there came a loud “kachunk” from inside the giant wall, followed immediately by several identical “kachunks,” each sound seeming to come from higher on the wall. Then a hole opened up at the base of the wall as large bricks appeared and curled themselves inside what appeared to be a hollow portion of the wall. The hole stayed dark, suggesting that the other side was not yet open, but the top scaled higher and higher until it reached halfway to the top.
Out of the dark, enclosed portion of missing wall came a low, booming, female voice. “What is your business in the town of Rachel?” it asked.
“Weary from travel, we seek asylum and the restoration of our rations. We will be on our way again soon, if that is what the citizens wish,” Guido said.
There came a drawn-out moment of silence before the voice spoke again. “You sound honorable. You may enter our walls; do not overstay your welcome.”
_______
I claim no ownership of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Just a whole lot of fandom. I would have taken it out here, as it was mostly for word count and only minimally to describe the appearance of the wall, but it was too tightly entwined in the actual narration to be easily extricated. Los siento. I did take out all the wikipedia articles I used to boost word count, though. You can thank me later.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Chapter Twenty-One
Tamara massaged her temples, breathing deeply, concentrating on the rhythm of the rise and fall of her chest.
“Why are they giving me so much trouble?” she asked herself, trying not to focus on the negative energy she could feel herself exuding. “Where can I improve my own actions to make the whole situation better?”
She felt like she was in a self-help program.
The main problem had come when the boy randomly turned up in the kitchen during Mond’s mathematics lesson one room over. Tamara had been demonstrating a few simple derivative equations when she heard the pantry door open and close. She handed the chalk and slate to Mond and told her to continue working on the example problems while she went to investigate the origin of the noise.
What she found in the kitchen nearly made her vomit. The boy, wearing nothing but the drool-encrusted blanket he’d been sleeping with for the past three weeks wrapped precariously around him, was sticking his head into the pantry, covering his face with confectioner’s sugar and rubbing unpeeled banana mush all over his body. When he heard her come in, he looked up and grinned stupidly, his dark yellow and disgusting, his eyes red and swollen. He laughed a low and slow laugh, and began slapping his arms, making the pasty substance fly off him in little chunks.
Tamara had nearly kicked him right there, wishing she had the stomach to just kill the boy and be done with it. And the visual of his soiled face and revolting garb would have been enough to push her over the edge in that moment, but then Mond walked into the room.
“Boy? Is that you? I can hear you. What are you doing?” she asked. She ran to him and put out her hand, wiping the tips of her fingers against his coated chest. “What happened to you?” she gasped. “Why... what is that smell?”
Tamara had successfully kept them from seeing each other for the past two weeks, and as such, she had stopped really caring about the boy’s hygiene or appearance, as it had all been a façade for Mond’s sake anyway.
Mond turned like lightning to look up at Tamara. Her startling milky eyes didn’t meet Tamara’s but the fury and hatred clearly visible on her face frightened Tamara. She envisioned the past few months of mother-daughter bonding attempts slipping away, as if down a bottomless pipe.
“Fix it,” Mond ordered. “Make him better.”
“It looks like he hasn’t been taking his medicine correctly, Mond,” Tamara said. “I didn’t realize—”
“You’re lying,” Mond said, her voice high, with a texture like gravel tossed on cement. “You’ve kept him from me so I wouldn’t see, and those medicines are making him like this. Fix it. Now.”
Tamara, speechless, and feeling practically breathless as well, caught off her guard by the ferocity of Mond’s words and the harsh expression on her face, stood stupidly slouching and still.
“Fix it!” Mond yelled. Her voice was unnaturally loud, even for an adult male four or five times her size, and Tamara thought he saw a flash of red glint across her eyes.
Tamara grabbed the boy’s arms, coating the palms of her hands in crusty banana paste. She began pulling him towards the stairs, planning on throwing him into a hot bath and soaking his blanket in a tub for a day or so, and he fought her every step. He mumbled and growled incoherently; Tamara felt like she was pulling teeth from the mouth of a loud and confused buffalo. Mond followed them both up the stairs and tended to the boy as Tamara struggled to set up the water. Tamara tried to protest, tried to hide the boy’s nakedness from Mond, even though she had sightless eyes, but Mond gave her a look that had a hint of death and suffering, and Tamara instinctually fled from it.
The cleaning of both blanket and boy took several hours, and when he was finally back into a bed with clean linens and Tamara and Mond were ready to return to the math lesson, Mond was beyond her ability to pay attention. She spent the rest of the light of day asking Tamara questions about the medications the boy was taking and why Tamara insisted he take them.
“They help him with his headaches,” Tamara kept saying. “They were hurting him so badly, and I remember when his mother had a similar issue, so I asked a doctor and he told me that these pills would help.”
“Why was he so messy, then? What about them makes him be so... dirty?”
“That has nothing to do with his medicine, Mond,” Tamara said. Not that the girl had calmed down, she seemed more amenable to believing what Tamara had to say. “That’s just how he is. He’s not like you and me. He’s more like a... like an animal or a monster.”
Mond looked crushed when Tamara said this. Her face slowly fell until every emotion but concern and despair had left it. Her eyes, though nondescript in and of themselves, were much more expressive than any other eyes Tamara had seen. Sometimes Tamara saw feelings deep within them that she could not understand.
“A... monster?” Mond asked. “What does that mean? How can he be anything different than I am?”
“You’re a smart girl, Mond,” Tamara said. “Think about the differences between him and you. He doesn’t take these classes with you because he’s not as intelligent. He gets sick more easily than you do and is not as talented or as good looking as you are.”
“I don’t think he’s bad looking,” Mond said. “That’s not any way to judge someone objectively.”
“You can’t see him, Mond. You can’t know what he looks like. He’s hideous, like a dog or a horse, not a human like you and I.”
None of this was true, but Tamara knew she was dancing on a taught string now, and the only way she could safely herd Mond back to her side of the field was to make the boy an untouchable, therefore taking the merit out of everything he said or did.
“I haven’t seen him with my eyes,” Mond said thoughtfully, “but I think I know what he looks like. It’s like I’ve felt his presence so often that I’ve assigned a visual component...”
She continued to talk, to theorize about her relationship with the boy and what it was based on, what her blindness subtracted from or added to it and what his abstractness, as she called it, subtracted from or added to it.
But Tamara stopped paying attention. She was caught up in the fear that bubbled under the surface as Mond described the boy. They had grown closer than she had seen or guessed. How much did Mond know about him, and how much did he know about her? How much had they interacted; was it to the point where nothing she said to Mond was safe from his ears? If they were passing secrets back and forth, Tamara could never be sure of her bond with Mond, because she would never be able to know if the boy was coming between them. She would have to do a lot of deconstructive work to get Mond to pull loyalty away from him.
Tamara hadn’t imagined there would be so much politics in raising children. Mond was only six-years-old. How was it possible she was already so complex?
“It’s not enough to say I haven’t seen him, you see,” she was saying when Tamara tuned back in. “I haven’t seen him like you have, perhaps, but I know he is not a ‘monster,’ as you say he is.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he is a master of deception?” Tamara suggested, choosing her words closely. “That he can imitate a creature deserving of your sympathy so thoroughly as to fool you into caring about him in the way that you do?”
Mond seemed to chew on this for a moment before speaking again. “If that is the case, how have you managed to remain undeceived?”
The question took Tamara by surprise. It wasn’t as though she hid her dislike for the boy — to do so would have been nearly impossible, not to mention very taxing on her emotions — but she had hoped that Mond would connect it with necessity, with the monster she had been portraying him as.
“I... it’s hard sometimes,” Tamara lied. “I find myself overly empathetic, too, on some days. But then I remember that he killed his mother, my sister, and I strike those feelings from my heart.”
How many times had she driven that point home? How many times had she called him a murderer? It made her feel like some sort of activist every time she said it, and the feeling never got old.
“How did your sister die?” Mond asked for the first time.
Again, Tamara found herself having to sift through her thoughts to find the correct ones to say out loud. “It was a slow... a slow, painful process,” she said. “Over the months that she was pregnant with the boy, he sapped her first of all her energy, youth, and life, until, in the third month, she was bedridden entirely, and then he attacked her brain, draining her personality and intellect until she was an empty shell, broken, a shattered image of the woman she had once been.”
“How do you know that it was his fault?” Mond asked. “Maybe your sister was unfit to carry a baby. Do you have any conclusive proof that another baby would have behaved differently?”
Tamara felt as though she had been slapped in the face. In the long time since her sister’s death, no one had ever come close to insulting her memory, and aside from the boy’s mere existence, nothing had dredged up the pain from those nine long months. Mond, just then, had done worse damage in one short sentence than anyone else had done in four years.
“My sister was not ‘unfit’ for anything,” Tamara said, keeping her calm. “The doctors couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t understand it, and she couldn’t understand it. There was nothing wrong with my sister that would cause her body to do that to itself naturally.”
Mond looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re deceived by some force, Tamara, just as you suggest I am deceived by the boy. Maybe your sister deceived you.”
______________
Again, more stuff I'm going to have to fix later, like my changed tense in the middle there. Also, unpublished here was Tamara's recitation of a Sociology textbook.
“Why are they giving me so much trouble?” she asked herself, trying not to focus on the negative energy she could feel herself exuding. “Where can I improve my own actions to make the whole situation better?”
She felt like she was in a self-help program.
The main problem had come when the boy randomly turned up in the kitchen during Mond’s mathematics lesson one room over. Tamara had been demonstrating a few simple derivative equations when she heard the pantry door open and close. She handed the chalk and slate to Mond and told her to continue working on the example problems while she went to investigate the origin of the noise.
What she found in the kitchen nearly made her vomit. The boy, wearing nothing but the drool-encrusted blanket he’d been sleeping with for the past three weeks wrapped precariously around him, was sticking his head into the pantry, covering his face with confectioner’s sugar and rubbing unpeeled banana mush all over his body. When he heard her come in, he looked up and grinned stupidly, his dark yellow and disgusting, his eyes red and swollen. He laughed a low and slow laugh, and began slapping his arms, making the pasty substance fly off him in little chunks.
Tamara had nearly kicked him right there, wishing she had the stomach to just kill the boy and be done with it. And the visual of his soiled face and revolting garb would have been enough to push her over the edge in that moment, but then Mond walked into the room.
“Boy? Is that you? I can hear you. What are you doing?” she asked. She ran to him and put out her hand, wiping the tips of her fingers against his coated chest. “What happened to you?” she gasped. “Why... what is that smell?”
Tamara had successfully kept them from seeing each other for the past two weeks, and as such, she had stopped really caring about the boy’s hygiene or appearance, as it had all been a façade for Mond’s sake anyway.
Mond turned like lightning to look up at Tamara. Her startling milky eyes didn’t meet Tamara’s but the fury and hatred clearly visible on her face frightened Tamara. She envisioned the past few months of mother-daughter bonding attempts slipping away, as if down a bottomless pipe.
“Fix it,” Mond ordered. “Make him better.”
“It looks like he hasn’t been taking his medicine correctly, Mond,” Tamara said. “I didn’t realize—”
“You’re lying,” Mond said, her voice high, with a texture like gravel tossed on cement. “You’ve kept him from me so I wouldn’t see, and those medicines are making him like this. Fix it. Now.”
Tamara, speechless, and feeling practically breathless as well, caught off her guard by the ferocity of Mond’s words and the harsh expression on her face, stood stupidly slouching and still.
“Fix it!” Mond yelled. Her voice was unnaturally loud, even for an adult male four or five times her size, and Tamara thought he saw a flash of red glint across her eyes.
Tamara grabbed the boy’s arms, coating the palms of her hands in crusty banana paste. She began pulling him towards the stairs, planning on throwing him into a hot bath and soaking his blanket in a tub for a day or so, and he fought her every step. He mumbled and growled incoherently; Tamara felt like she was pulling teeth from the mouth of a loud and confused buffalo. Mond followed them both up the stairs and tended to the boy as Tamara struggled to set up the water. Tamara tried to protest, tried to hide the boy’s nakedness from Mond, even though she had sightless eyes, but Mond gave her a look that had a hint of death and suffering, and Tamara instinctually fled from it.
The cleaning of both blanket and boy took several hours, and when he was finally back into a bed with clean linens and Tamara and Mond were ready to return to the math lesson, Mond was beyond her ability to pay attention. She spent the rest of the light of day asking Tamara questions about the medications the boy was taking and why Tamara insisted he take them.
“They help him with his headaches,” Tamara kept saying. “They were hurting him so badly, and I remember when his mother had a similar issue, so I asked a doctor and he told me that these pills would help.”
“Why was he so messy, then? What about them makes him be so... dirty?”
“That has nothing to do with his medicine, Mond,” Tamara said. Not that the girl had calmed down, she seemed more amenable to believing what Tamara had to say. “That’s just how he is. He’s not like you and me. He’s more like a... like an animal or a monster.”
Mond looked crushed when Tamara said this. Her face slowly fell until every emotion but concern and despair had left it. Her eyes, though nondescript in and of themselves, were much more expressive than any other eyes Tamara had seen. Sometimes Tamara saw feelings deep within them that she could not understand.
“A... monster?” Mond asked. “What does that mean? How can he be anything different than I am?”
“You’re a smart girl, Mond,” Tamara said. “Think about the differences between him and you. He doesn’t take these classes with you because he’s not as intelligent. He gets sick more easily than you do and is not as talented or as good looking as you are.”
“I don’t think he’s bad looking,” Mond said. “That’s not any way to judge someone objectively.”
“You can’t see him, Mond. You can’t know what he looks like. He’s hideous, like a dog or a horse, not a human like you and I.”
None of this was true, but Tamara knew she was dancing on a taught string now, and the only way she could safely herd Mond back to her side of the field was to make the boy an untouchable, therefore taking the merit out of everything he said or did.
“I haven’t seen him with my eyes,” Mond said thoughtfully, “but I think I know what he looks like. It’s like I’ve felt his presence so often that I’ve assigned a visual component...”
She continued to talk, to theorize about her relationship with the boy and what it was based on, what her blindness subtracted from or added to it and what his abstractness, as she called it, subtracted from or added to it.
But Tamara stopped paying attention. She was caught up in the fear that bubbled under the surface as Mond described the boy. They had grown closer than she had seen or guessed. How much did Mond know about him, and how much did he know about her? How much had they interacted; was it to the point where nothing she said to Mond was safe from his ears? If they were passing secrets back and forth, Tamara could never be sure of her bond with Mond, because she would never be able to know if the boy was coming between them. She would have to do a lot of deconstructive work to get Mond to pull loyalty away from him.
Tamara hadn’t imagined there would be so much politics in raising children. Mond was only six-years-old. How was it possible she was already so complex?
“It’s not enough to say I haven’t seen him, you see,” she was saying when Tamara tuned back in. “I haven’t seen him like you have, perhaps, but I know he is not a ‘monster,’ as you say he is.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he is a master of deception?” Tamara suggested, choosing her words closely. “That he can imitate a creature deserving of your sympathy so thoroughly as to fool you into caring about him in the way that you do?”
Mond seemed to chew on this for a moment before speaking again. “If that is the case, how have you managed to remain undeceived?”
The question took Tamara by surprise. It wasn’t as though she hid her dislike for the boy — to do so would have been nearly impossible, not to mention very taxing on her emotions — but she had hoped that Mond would connect it with necessity, with the monster she had been portraying him as.
“I... it’s hard sometimes,” Tamara lied. “I find myself overly empathetic, too, on some days. But then I remember that he killed his mother, my sister, and I strike those feelings from my heart.”
How many times had she driven that point home? How many times had she called him a murderer? It made her feel like some sort of activist every time she said it, and the feeling never got old.
“How did your sister die?” Mond asked for the first time.
Again, Tamara found herself having to sift through her thoughts to find the correct ones to say out loud. “It was a slow... a slow, painful process,” she said. “Over the months that she was pregnant with the boy, he sapped her first of all her energy, youth, and life, until, in the third month, she was bedridden entirely, and then he attacked her brain, draining her personality and intellect until she was an empty shell, broken, a shattered image of the woman she had once been.”
“How do you know that it was his fault?” Mond asked. “Maybe your sister was unfit to carry a baby. Do you have any conclusive proof that another baby would have behaved differently?”
Tamara felt as though she had been slapped in the face. In the long time since her sister’s death, no one had ever come close to insulting her memory, and aside from the boy’s mere existence, nothing had dredged up the pain from those nine long months. Mond, just then, had done worse damage in one short sentence than anyone else had done in four years.
“My sister was not ‘unfit’ for anything,” Tamara said, keeping her calm. “The doctors couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t understand it, and she couldn’t understand it. There was nothing wrong with my sister that would cause her body to do that to itself naturally.”
Mond looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re deceived by some force, Tamara, just as you suggest I am deceived by the boy. Maybe your sister deceived you.”
______________
Again, more stuff I'm going to have to fix later, like my changed tense in the middle there. Also, unpublished here was Tamara's recitation of a Sociology textbook.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Chapter Nineteen
“Can we just sit down for a bit?” Martha pleaded.
“What is wrong with you?” Ben half shouted, half laughed. “We’ve only been walking for an hour. At this rate we’ll never get out of this forest.”
Gus was already bending down and dropping his pack behind him. Martha quickly followed suit and leaned up against a round boulder on the ground next to her.
“Guys, come on,” Ben said. “We can’t keep doing this.” When they both sat back and closed their eyes with a sigh, ignoring him, he rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, five minutes, and then we’re back up and moving.”
He sat down and pulled his back around in front of him, searching for more of his dried greens to eat while he waited.
“Ben,” Tess whispered, pointing into some low branches not too far from Gus’ head. Perched regally there, fluffing itself up and shaking its head proudly was a great black raven.
Ben smiled, and watched as the Raven positioned itself perfectly to leave a welcoming gift in Gus’ hair. “Watch out, Gus,” Ben said, laughing. Gus grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m serious, Gus,” he said,
though he was laughing even harder now, “a bird is about to take a few liberties with your head there.”
“Yeah,” Gus said, still refusing to care.
“Okay,” Ben said. “It’s your hair.”
Ben looked back up at the raven in time to see it... roll its eyes.
“You wanted him to get up and walk, and I was going to help you, but now it seems so unjust to follow through after you’ve baited him like that.”
Ben gave himself a kink in his neck as he whipped around to look at Tess, whose eyes were now bright with laughter. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” she said, bursting into deeper fits of laughter.
“The bird talking? You hear that?” Ben asked again.
“Yes.”
“Gus, did you hear that?” Ben asked.
“Mmm,” Gus responded with questionable amounts of lucidity.
Ben looked back up at the bird. “You spoke?”
It rolled its eyes again. “Yes, I spoke. Did you hear what I said?”
He narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “You wanted to help me get Gus and Martha to start walking again?”
“Yes,” the bird said. “I’m just trying to be nice, and you’re constantly making it harder. First by thwarting my grand scheme, now with all this fuss over my ability to speak. I don’t know why I try.”
“Got me,” Ben said. “What business do you have talking?” Ben asked.
“That’s rude,” Tess said. “He can talk if he wants to.”
The raven nodded. “I like this girl,” it said. “She’s right. Humans don’t have the monopoly on speech, you know. You’re all so pompous about it, like it’s something hard to achieve. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like you worked for your words, boy. You were born that way. Just like me.”
“Okay, fair,” Ben conceded. “Why are you talking to me now, then?”
The raven puffed itself up again. It was about twice as large as a regular raven when it did this, but it was hard for Ben to tell how much was just fluffed feathers and how much was legitimate raven. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh? What’s that?” Ben asked.
“It’s for the girl, too,” it said, nodding to Tess. “Why do you always think people are only talking to you?”
“What do you propose?” Tess asked, silencing Ben’s defenses with a smile.
“I’ve been watching you for a while now, both of you, and I want to offer you my guidance,” it said. “Because, let’s face it, you need it pretty badly.”
“What sort of guidance?” Tess asked, again keeping Ben from a retort. “I’m fairly sure we can find our way out of this forest on our own; we’ve seen its edges while standing on the hills in Medias; it’s not too much farther now.”
“Ah yes, but right now, you’re not really as far out of Medias as you think you are,” the raven said. “You’ve left the mushroom’s kingdom behind you, but how much do you know about There and all its many glories and surprises?”
“We’re made of hardy stock,” Ben said, sticking his chin up. “I’m sure we can take whatever that world throws at us.”
The raven looked around the forest casually. “I’m sure you’re right; there’s nothing There that would be able to do you any serious harm. I mean, plenty of Medians leave the forest and have lived to tell the tale, right? Certainly you will do just fine on your own.”
Tess looked at Ben hopefully. “He’s right you know.”
“You mean sarcastic,” Ben corrected.
“But right. We don't know what we’re getting into. We should really consider taking him along.”
Ben looked up at the raven, narrowing his eyes. “Hang on; you say you've been watching us?” he asked distrustfully. “Are you the same raven that’s been waking me up early in the morning and sitting in the trees just off the balcony, watching me for hours?’
“Should I be ashamed?” the raven asked. “I was curious about you, and you weren’t exactly guarding your privacy jealously or anything..”
“Well, I didn’t know at the time that you were going to be using all of your observations against me,” Ben said, putting his fists on his hips. “If you had told me then you were planning to store all of that information in your head and come after me in the forest, I probably would have closed a few more windows.”
“Just what sort of information do you think I gleaned from hours of watching you doing nothing?” the raven said indignantly. “And how am I using any of that ‘information’ against you by offering to help you survive where no one else has?”
After these words, there came a long stare down between Ben and the raven, where Ben used the silence to think back over the recent weeks when he’d often seen this raven lurking around his house. He hadn’t suspected anything — he wasn’t a paranoid person who saw conspiracies and spies around every corner and in every tree — so he hadn’t taken into account the fact that he was being watched. He tried to remember if he had ever said anything allowed that he shouldn’t have, or was ever talking with someone about something he would have rather kept out of that bird’s head.
After a moment of thinking about all this, trying to recollect his thoughts, his mind wandered. It was hard for his imagination to keep still ever, especially at times like these. He thought about Gus, and how he was now deep asleep against the boulder. What was making him and Martha so tired and ornery? Their moods could be explained perhaps by the events of the past day, and the fact that they hadn’t wanted to leave Medias after all, but had, in the end, felt forced to do so by the sudden strangeness of Tess’ behavior.
And Tess. How had she done that to him? He couldn’t think of a person less likely to be able to hurt him than Tess, but she had completely incapacitated him yesterday, and no one could explain it. Suddenly, her thoughts about anger and pain had powers. Where had they come from, and why hadn’t she noticed them before? What hadn’t he felt them before?
She had said something about leaving Medias. About not going home. But why would that suddenly give her powerful abilities she had never had before?
“Should I leave you two alone?” Tess asked, smiling again. Ben blink and shook his head clear, wondering how long he’d been staring at the bird, who now looked half asleep himself.
“What do you say?” the bird asked. “Am I in, or am I out?”
Ben sighed. “I guess it would be senseless to refuse the offer,” he said. “But we reserve the right to catch you and cook you if rations get scarce, so you’d better not outstay your welcome.”
The raven blinked, unfazed. “I have friends in high places...” he threatened.
“Do you have a name?” Tess asked. “Or should we just call you Raven?”
“My name, for all intents and purposes, is Guido. You can use it if you want, but I’m sure I’ll be able to infer from context clues whether or not you’re talking to me.”
The three looked around awkwardly at each other for a moment before Ben said, “Well, okay. That’s that. Gus and Martha, get your sorry bottoms off the forest floor. We’re leaving, and I now have no qualms about leaving you behind; we have our very own forest guide, and you don’t.”
________
I edited out the many Shakespearean sonnets I originally used to boost my word count. Thank you for your patience.
“What is wrong with you?” Ben half shouted, half laughed. “We’ve only been walking for an hour. At this rate we’ll never get out of this forest.”
Gus was already bending down and dropping his pack behind him. Martha quickly followed suit and leaned up against a round boulder on the ground next to her.
“Guys, come on,” Ben said. “We can’t keep doing this.” When they both sat back and closed their eyes with a sigh, ignoring him, he rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, five minutes, and then we’re back up and moving.”
He sat down and pulled his back around in front of him, searching for more of his dried greens to eat while he waited.
“Ben,” Tess whispered, pointing into some low branches not too far from Gus’ head. Perched regally there, fluffing itself up and shaking its head proudly was a great black raven.
Ben smiled, and watched as the Raven positioned itself perfectly to leave a welcoming gift in Gus’ hair. “Watch out, Gus,” Ben said, laughing. Gus grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m serious, Gus,” he said,
though he was laughing even harder now, “a bird is about to take a few liberties with your head there.”
“Yeah,” Gus said, still refusing to care.
“Okay,” Ben said. “It’s your hair.”
Ben looked back up at the raven in time to see it... roll its eyes.
“You wanted him to get up and walk, and I was going to help you, but now it seems so unjust to follow through after you’ve baited him like that.”
Ben gave himself a kink in his neck as he whipped around to look at Tess, whose eyes were now bright with laughter. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” she said, bursting into deeper fits of laughter.
“The bird talking? You hear that?” Ben asked again.
“Yes.”
“Gus, did you hear that?” Ben asked.
“Mmm,” Gus responded with questionable amounts of lucidity.
Ben looked back up at the bird. “You spoke?”
It rolled its eyes again. “Yes, I spoke. Did you hear what I said?”
He narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “You wanted to help me get Gus and Martha to start walking again?”
“Yes,” the bird said. “I’m just trying to be nice, and you’re constantly making it harder. First by thwarting my grand scheme, now with all this fuss over my ability to speak. I don’t know why I try.”
“Got me,” Ben said. “What business do you have talking?” Ben asked.
“That’s rude,” Tess said. “He can talk if he wants to.”
The raven nodded. “I like this girl,” it said. “She’s right. Humans don’t have the monopoly on speech, you know. You’re all so pompous about it, like it’s something hard to achieve. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like you worked for your words, boy. You were born that way. Just like me.”
“Okay, fair,” Ben conceded. “Why are you talking to me now, then?”
The raven puffed itself up again. It was about twice as large as a regular raven when it did this, but it was hard for Ben to tell how much was just fluffed feathers and how much was legitimate raven. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh? What’s that?” Ben asked.
“It’s for the girl, too,” it said, nodding to Tess. “Why do you always think people are only talking to you?”
“What do you propose?” Tess asked, silencing Ben’s defenses with a smile.
“I’ve been watching you for a while now, both of you, and I want to offer you my guidance,” it said. “Because, let’s face it, you need it pretty badly.”
“What sort of guidance?” Tess asked, again keeping Ben from a retort. “I’m fairly sure we can find our way out of this forest on our own; we’ve seen its edges while standing on the hills in Medias; it’s not too much farther now.”
“Ah yes, but right now, you’re not really as far out of Medias as you think you are,” the raven said. “You’ve left the mushroom’s kingdom behind you, but how much do you know about There and all its many glories and surprises?”
“We’re made of hardy stock,” Ben said, sticking his chin up. “I’m sure we can take whatever that world throws at us.”
The raven looked around the forest casually. “I’m sure you’re right; there’s nothing There that would be able to do you any serious harm. I mean, plenty of Medians leave the forest and have lived to tell the tale, right? Certainly you will do just fine on your own.”
Tess looked at Ben hopefully. “He’s right you know.”
“You mean sarcastic,” Ben corrected.
“But right. We don't know what we’re getting into. We should really consider taking him along.”
Ben looked up at the raven, narrowing his eyes. “Hang on; you say you've been watching us?” he asked distrustfully. “Are you the same raven that’s been waking me up early in the morning and sitting in the trees just off the balcony, watching me for hours?’
“Should I be ashamed?” the raven asked. “I was curious about you, and you weren’t exactly guarding your privacy jealously or anything..”
“Well, I didn’t know at the time that you were going to be using all of your observations against me,” Ben said, putting his fists on his hips. “If you had told me then you were planning to store all of that information in your head and come after me in the forest, I probably would have closed a few more windows.”
“Just what sort of information do you think I gleaned from hours of watching you doing nothing?” the raven said indignantly. “And how am I using any of that ‘information’ against you by offering to help you survive where no one else has?”
After these words, there came a long stare down between Ben and the raven, where Ben used the silence to think back over the recent weeks when he’d often seen this raven lurking around his house. He hadn’t suspected anything — he wasn’t a paranoid person who saw conspiracies and spies around every corner and in every tree — so he hadn’t taken into account the fact that he was being watched. He tried to remember if he had ever said anything allowed that he shouldn’t have, or was ever talking with someone about something he would have rather kept out of that bird’s head.
After a moment of thinking about all this, trying to recollect his thoughts, his mind wandered. It was hard for his imagination to keep still ever, especially at times like these. He thought about Gus, and how he was now deep asleep against the boulder. What was making him and Martha so tired and ornery? Their moods could be explained perhaps by the events of the past day, and the fact that they hadn’t wanted to leave Medias after all, but had, in the end, felt forced to do so by the sudden strangeness of Tess’ behavior.
And Tess. How had she done that to him? He couldn’t think of a person less likely to be able to hurt him than Tess, but she had completely incapacitated him yesterday, and no one could explain it. Suddenly, her thoughts about anger and pain had powers. Where had they come from, and why hadn’t she noticed them before? What hadn’t he felt them before?
She had said something about leaving Medias. About not going home. But why would that suddenly give her powerful abilities she had never had before?
“Should I leave you two alone?” Tess asked, smiling again. Ben blink and shook his head clear, wondering how long he’d been staring at the bird, who now looked half asleep himself.
“What do you say?” the bird asked. “Am I in, or am I out?”
Ben sighed. “I guess it would be senseless to refuse the offer,” he said. “But we reserve the right to catch you and cook you if rations get scarce, so you’d better not outstay your welcome.”
The raven blinked, unfazed. “I have friends in high places...” he threatened.
“Do you have a name?” Tess asked. “Or should we just call you Raven?”
“My name, for all intents and purposes, is Guido. You can use it if you want, but I’m sure I’ll be able to infer from context clues whether or not you’re talking to me.”
The three looked around awkwardly at each other for a moment before Ben said, “Well, okay. That’s that. Gus and Martha, get your sorry bottoms off the forest floor. We’re leaving, and I now have no qualms about leaving you behind; we have our very own forest guide, and you don’t.”
________
I edited out the many Shakespearean sonnets I originally used to boost my word count. Thank you for your patience.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Chapter Fourteen
The sun poured through the thick leaves of the forest of Medias, shining directly overhead. Ben, Gus, and Martha walked abreast along the paths that lead to the outskirts of the forest. With the knowledge Ben now possessed of the forces at work in the ground beneath him, he felt more acutely aware of the magic that tugged at him, urging him to return to the center of the hills. In his awareness, he felt more fiercely called to fight the feeling. He only prayed that Tess shared that feeling and was somewhere nearby in the woods, just waiting to join up with them along an adjacent path.
“I’ve definitely got a better one than that,” Martha was saying to Gus. “I heard this from one of the conference center janitorial staff guys. Evidently, Richard—I’m sure you know him from the pond guild, since his brother is in charge of it—well, evidently, Richard has a friend who says he’s been There and came back with all these amazing and pretty horrific stories. I think his name was Sallus or something.”
“Okay, intro done, I hope and pray?” Gus said mockingly.
“So Sallus was staying with a family that lived a good distance outside of Medias,” Martha said, plowing over Gus’ interjection. “There was a mother a father and two children, Sam and Sarah. Sam was older, and didn’t live at home anymore, but he visited the family often and Sallus got to know him pretty well. He was a construction worker, you know, like the guys who repair houses and things.”
“I don’t ever remember a time when any houses needed repair,” Gus said innocently.
“Oh shut up,” Ben said with a laugh.
“Anyway. One day, the mother’s uncle came to visit. He was a big shot Sir-gent Major in something called an Arm Force or a Terry Mill or something. Anyway, he was a famous guy for some reason and he had traveled all over the world with his Arm.”
“He only had one?”
“No, that was the name of his group, the ‘Arm Force’ and when you’re a leader they give you control over one or more Arms,” Martha struggled to explain. “I don’t really get where they come up with names for things in There, but it is what it is, I guess.”
“Back to the story,” Ben said.
“So the Sir-gent’s name was Morris, and he had picked up this weird talisman in some foreign country, this thing called a Monk E. Paw.”
“Are monks animals There?” Ben asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gus said. “How can animals practice religious rites and traditions?”
“I think it’s more that the original monks got their name because they wore fur off an animal named the Monk E,” Martha clarified. “I think I read that in a book somewhere.”
“Why is it called the Monk E, then?” Gus asked. “Are there different kinds of Monk animals? Like Monk A and Monk B and Monk C?”
“Sure. Let’s go with that and get on with the story,” Martha said, shooting him a look that was meant to be something of a spurn on his sudden and uncharacteristic curiosity. “So Sir-gent Major Morris brought Sallus’ foster family the Monk E paw as a gift. He told them that it was given to him by a friend in the Arm Force who had gotten it from a foreign medicine man whose name was Faker. Faker had said that the paw would grant the head of any family three wishes, but Morris suggested that they used them carefully and only one at a time, so that they wouldn’t waste them.
“Richard said then that Sallus and Morris had a private talk in the front garden while the rest of the family was inside discussing what they were going to do with the three wishes the Monk E paw would grant them. Evidently Morris told Sallus that he had actually been bequeathed the talisman in the will of his friend from the Arm Force, and that the will had expressly stated that Morris was supposed to destroy the talisman. Morris said that his friend had used his third wish to take his own life. But Morris explained to Sallus that he didn’t think it was fair that his Arm Force friend should be the last to benefit from such a rare item, and he wrote off the suicide by describing a horrible illness his friend had been suffering from for years, something that would cause Morris himself to wish for death, especially after the first two obviously life-altering wishes had already been granted.”
“Uh, Martha,” Ben said warily, “this story is getting…I don’t know…do we want to hear the end?” They were nearly to the catfish pond my this time, and both the story and the Tess’ unmistakable absence were starting to eat away at Ben’s level of comfort with his situation.
“It’s a good story,” she assured them both, because Gus was looking leery as well. “I mean, it’s different from most Median stories. That’s why I’m telling it: so we can get a better idea of what There is like in comparison to Medias.”
Gus and Ben looked at each other with uncertainty. Martha rolled her eyes and continued. “Anyway, after the meeting with Sallus in the front garden, Sir-gent Major Morris said he had to be going, that he’d just stopped by for a short visit, and that he’d be sure to come again in the coming months, whenever his worldly travels guided him back that way. So Sallus went back inside and sat down with the family, listening to them come to a final decision about how to use their first wish.
“The father, being the head of the family, decided that the best thing to do would be to ask for money to pay off some debts the family had, so that Sarah’s schooling could be paid for more easily when that time came. After some discussion, the other family members agreed and the father said he’d make the with the next morning, giving him time to go over the family books to find out exactly how much money they’d need; they didn’t want to over indulge, but they didn’t want to sell themselves too short, either.
“So the next morning, after Sam had left for his home and Sarah had left for her preparatory school, the mother and the father sat down at the table with Sallus to make the wish. The father held the shriveled little paw in his hands and said, ‘I wish our family came into possession of £359 of extra money that we could use to pay off our debts.’ The three waited for about a half hour without any sign of £359 showing up anywhere. Then the phone rang.”
“The phone?” Gus asked.
“Evidently it’s some wiring device that people There use to contact each other over long distances. It’s too hard to explain, and it doesn’t really matter in this story, except that someone from Sam’s construction company used one to call Sam’s parents and tell them that Sam had died due to someone else’s mishandling of a company machine.”
Gus and Ben’s eyes widened with fear, disgust, and sadness.
“The construction company man asked if Sam’s father could come and identify the body for insurance purposes, since the company was going to have to pay £359 as compensation for the loss of their son.”
“What?” Ben and Gus said together, mouths open and aghast.
“That’s…that’s disgusting,” Ben said.
“Sallus thought so, too,” Martha said, plowing on, though her face was considerably harder than it had been when she started. “He said that when the father came back from the sight, he went up to his study and locked himself in there for three days. The mother was absolutely disconsolate; she was catatonic the whole week, so Sallus and Sarah were left to fend for themselves, and poor Sarah was beside herself with grief and misplaced guilt, thinking that it was her need for school money that had killed her brother.”
“Martha, this is a horrible story,” Gus said. “I don’t care about ‘better understanding the differences between There and Medias; I don’t want to hear the rest of it.”
Martha’s eyes went downcast. “I know,” she said quietly. “I mean, it’s awful. But it’s the kind of things people from There are always worried about—the consequences of their actions and their need to accept things as they are. ‘The natural order of things’ is a concept Sallus mentioned in every story he told.”
“There’s no way Sallus actually went There and came back,” Ben said, more angrily than he had meant to. “I mean,” he said, bringing his tone back up, “Medias told Tess and I yesterday that no one is allowed to return to Medias after going There.”
Now Gus and Martha looked at each other uncertainly. “Why not?” they asked, almost in unison.
“It said there’s a fundamental difference between people from There and Medians, something about ‘outlying emotions.’ I didn’t really understand it, but it said that people born and raised in Medius had better control of themselves than people from There, but that leaving Medias, even for a few days, would break up too much of that control for them to be…” He looked at the fear on Gus and Martha’s faces, and realized too late that he should have told them all of this before.
“Ben?” The soft, nearly whispered word came from a clearing just beyond where the three were standing. Ben heard it and felt his stomach lurch up into his chest before he could clearly articulate why.
“…Tess?” he said, his voice turned quiet by his sudden heedless anxiety. It felt to him as though Gus and Martha had sunk into the earth around them as be began to run, dodging between thinning trees and coming into the light of the catfish pond clearing. There, standing on the other side of the water with traveling clothes he’d never seen before and a knapsack made out of many unmatched napkins and throw-pillow cases stitched together, was Tess.
____________________
P.S. Yeah, the Curse of the Monkey Paw is not my story. Los siento. Originally, it was just a word count thing, but now I'm thinking of leaving it in legit, so I didn't think it made sense to censor it here. But yeah, not my story; fan-fiction-esque disclaimer.
“I’ve definitely got a better one than that,” Martha was saying to Gus. “I heard this from one of the conference center janitorial staff guys. Evidently, Richard—I’m sure you know him from the pond guild, since his brother is in charge of it—well, evidently, Richard has a friend who says he’s been There and came back with all these amazing and pretty horrific stories. I think his name was Sallus or something.”
“Okay, intro done, I hope and pray?” Gus said mockingly.
“So Sallus was staying with a family that lived a good distance outside of Medias,” Martha said, plowing over Gus’ interjection. “There was a mother a father and two children, Sam and Sarah. Sam was older, and didn’t live at home anymore, but he visited the family often and Sallus got to know him pretty well. He was a construction worker, you know, like the guys who repair houses and things.”
“I don’t ever remember a time when any houses needed repair,” Gus said innocently.
“Oh shut up,” Ben said with a laugh.
“Anyway. One day, the mother’s uncle came to visit. He was a big shot Sir-gent Major in something called an Arm Force or a Terry Mill or something. Anyway, he was a famous guy for some reason and he had traveled all over the world with his Arm.”
“He only had one?”
“No, that was the name of his group, the ‘Arm Force’ and when you’re a leader they give you control over one or more Arms,” Martha struggled to explain. “I don’t really get where they come up with names for things in There, but it is what it is, I guess.”
“Back to the story,” Ben said.
“So the Sir-gent’s name was Morris, and he had picked up this weird talisman in some foreign country, this thing called a Monk E. Paw.”
“Are monks animals There?” Ben asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gus said. “How can animals practice religious rites and traditions?”
“I think it’s more that the original monks got their name because they wore fur off an animal named the Monk E,” Martha clarified. “I think I read that in a book somewhere.”
“Why is it called the Monk E, then?” Gus asked. “Are there different kinds of Monk animals? Like Monk A and Monk B and Monk C?”
“Sure. Let’s go with that and get on with the story,” Martha said, shooting him a look that was meant to be something of a spurn on his sudden and uncharacteristic curiosity. “So Sir-gent Major Morris brought Sallus’ foster family the Monk E paw as a gift. He told them that it was given to him by a friend in the Arm Force who had gotten it from a foreign medicine man whose name was Faker. Faker had said that the paw would grant the head of any family three wishes, but Morris suggested that they used them carefully and only one at a time, so that they wouldn’t waste them.
“Richard said then that Sallus and Morris had a private talk in the front garden while the rest of the family was inside discussing what they were going to do with the three wishes the Monk E paw would grant them. Evidently Morris told Sallus that he had actually been bequeathed the talisman in the will of his friend from the Arm Force, and that the will had expressly stated that Morris was supposed to destroy the talisman. Morris said that his friend had used his third wish to take his own life. But Morris explained to Sallus that he didn’t think it was fair that his Arm Force friend should be the last to benefit from such a rare item, and he wrote off the suicide by describing a horrible illness his friend had been suffering from for years, something that would cause Morris himself to wish for death, especially after the first two obviously life-altering wishes had already been granted.”
“Uh, Martha,” Ben said warily, “this story is getting…I don’t know…do we want to hear the end?” They were nearly to the catfish pond my this time, and both the story and the Tess’ unmistakable absence were starting to eat away at Ben’s level of comfort with his situation.
“It’s a good story,” she assured them both, because Gus was looking leery as well. “I mean, it’s different from most Median stories. That’s why I’m telling it: so we can get a better idea of what There is like in comparison to Medias.”
Gus and Ben looked at each other with uncertainty. Martha rolled her eyes and continued. “Anyway, after the meeting with Sallus in the front garden, Sir-gent Major Morris said he had to be going, that he’d just stopped by for a short visit, and that he’d be sure to come again in the coming months, whenever his worldly travels guided him back that way. So Sallus went back inside and sat down with the family, listening to them come to a final decision about how to use their first wish.
“The father, being the head of the family, decided that the best thing to do would be to ask for money to pay off some debts the family had, so that Sarah’s schooling could be paid for more easily when that time came. After some discussion, the other family members agreed and the father said he’d make the with the next morning, giving him time to go over the family books to find out exactly how much money they’d need; they didn’t want to over indulge, but they didn’t want to sell themselves too short, either.
“So the next morning, after Sam had left for his home and Sarah had left for her preparatory school, the mother and the father sat down at the table with Sallus to make the wish. The father held the shriveled little paw in his hands and said, ‘I wish our family came into possession of £359 of extra money that we could use to pay off our debts.’ The three waited for about a half hour without any sign of £359 showing up anywhere. Then the phone rang.”
“The phone?” Gus asked.
“Evidently it’s some wiring device that people There use to contact each other over long distances. It’s too hard to explain, and it doesn’t really matter in this story, except that someone from Sam’s construction company used one to call Sam’s parents and tell them that Sam had died due to someone else’s mishandling of a company machine.”
Gus and Ben’s eyes widened with fear, disgust, and sadness.
“The construction company man asked if Sam’s father could come and identify the body for insurance purposes, since the company was going to have to pay £359 as compensation for the loss of their son.”
“What?” Ben and Gus said together, mouths open and aghast.
“That’s…that’s disgusting,” Ben said.
“Sallus thought so, too,” Martha said, plowing on, though her face was considerably harder than it had been when she started. “He said that when the father came back from the sight, he went up to his study and locked himself in there for three days. The mother was absolutely disconsolate; she was catatonic the whole week, so Sallus and Sarah were left to fend for themselves, and poor Sarah was beside herself with grief and misplaced guilt, thinking that it was her need for school money that had killed her brother.”
“Martha, this is a horrible story,” Gus said. “I don’t care about ‘better understanding the differences between There and Medias; I don’t want to hear the rest of it.”
Martha’s eyes went downcast. “I know,” she said quietly. “I mean, it’s awful. But it’s the kind of things people from There are always worried about—the consequences of their actions and their need to accept things as they are. ‘The natural order of things’ is a concept Sallus mentioned in every story he told.”
“There’s no way Sallus actually went There and came back,” Ben said, more angrily than he had meant to. “I mean,” he said, bringing his tone back up, “Medias told Tess and I yesterday that no one is allowed to return to Medias after going There.”
Now Gus and Martha looked at each other uncertainly. “Why not?” they asked, almost in unison.
“It said there’s a fundamental difference between people from There and Medians, something about ‘outlying emotions.’ I didn’t really understand it, but it said that people born and raised in Medius had better control of themselves than people from There, but that leaving Medias, even for a few days, would break up too much of that control for them to be…” He looked at the fear on Gus and Martha’s faces, and realized too late that he should have told them all of this before.
“Ben?” The soft, nearly whispered word came from a clearing just beyond where the three were standing. Ben heard it and felt his stomach lurch up into his chest before he could clearly articulate why.
“…Tess?” he said, his voice turned quiet by his sudden heedless anxiety. It felt to him as though Gus and Martha had sunk into the earth around them as be began to run, dodging between thinning trees and coming into the light of the catfish pond clearing. There, standing on the other side of the water with traveling clothes he’d never seen before and a knapsack made out of many unmatched napkins and throw-pillow cases stitched together, was Tess.
____________________
P.S. Yeah, the Curse of the Monkey Paw is not my story. Los siento. Originally, it was just a word count thing, but now I'm thinking of leaving it in legit, so I didn't think it made sense to censor it here. But yeah, not my story; fan-fiction-esque disclaimer.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Chapter Eleven
“I’m leaving,” Ben whispered in Tess’ ear. He had found her sleeping next to the catfish pond.
She opened her eyes without looking at him. They were bloodshot and puffy. “I knew you would,” she said. “How did I know you would?”
“Tomorrow, probably around noon,” he said. “I figure if Medias isn’t going to try to stop me—”
“No, Ben,” Tess said loudly, angrily. “Answer my question. How did I know you were going to want to leave? How do I always know? I find you when you yourself don’t even know where you’re going, I can tell when you’re lying, or when you’re hiding your emotions.” Tears started reforming at the corners of her eyes. “I’ve known you forever and I know everything about you and I don’t remember meeting you or what life was like without you…”
She continued to talk for a long time, but her eventual sobs began to muddle her words. Ben couldn’t think of anything constructive to do, so he just stood there, watching her. Once she had given herself over to weeping and lay curled up on her side, shaking and moaning incoherently, Ben knelt down and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Tess?” he asked tentatively. “Tess, come back.”
Several minutes passed. Ben sat quietly as Tess’ sobs relented and her shaking subsided. After what could have been a quarter of an hour, she was lying there, breathing in short, deep bursts, but she was in control again.
“You’re leaving.” Her eyes were closed and her face was peaceful.
“I don’t think I belong here anymore,” he said. “Martha told me something…” He trailed off. Tess’ eyes were pressed closed and she was biting her lip. “Wait, don’t get upset. Listen to me.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her eyes looked bluer than he had ever seen them before. The contrast between them and her face and hair was more startling this way.
“I want you to come with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
She blinked and her nose wiggled a little, something Ben recognized as her response to being caught off guard. “You want me to come with?”
“Yeah.” He tried to make his voice light and excited. “Think about all the things we’d see and experiences we’d have, and no one would be able to stop us.”
“I can’t go with you,” Tess said, sounding incredulous. “I can’t leave Medias.”
“What? Why not” Ben asked.
“My family is here—the other girls in the pre-lash house. As much as you mean to me, I don’t know that I can just leave them,” she said. “And what about Gus and Martha? Are you going to tell them before you go, or were you more hoping to leave a note on the table?”
A faint, high-pitched ringing bounced around the inside of Ben’s ears. “You mean…” He was unbelievably crestfallen. “You mean, you’d stay? You wouldn’t come with?”
“How can I?” she asked, her face pleading with him. “You’re tearing me in two! I knew this was going to happen as soon as Medias told you he wasn’t going to lift the denial, or even as soon as I saw that you were denied. I saw that look in your eye, the one you get when you get tired of fighting and realize your other options are limited. You get an idea in your head and you won’t stray from it, no matter what it means to anyone, including you and anyone around you.”
“I have to leave, Tess! There is no other way. What else am I supposed to do now? Sit around, doing nothing, knowing that the creature in charge of this forest is merely forestalling its death, and that it is the reason you and I can never—”
“What is so bad about Medias?” she asked. “What about this place is so abhorrent to you that it gives you no reason to stay?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just begged her with his eyes to understand. Her face, hardened against tears, became grave. She turned slowly and began to walk away.
“Tess…” he said, but he didn’t have anything to follow it.
She stopped, gave a small shudder, and broke into a run, leaving the clearing, heading straight for the heart of Medias.
Ben fell to his knees, torn with indecision. He looked up at the darkening sky overhead, feeling his face get hot and his eyes get wet. He screamed, hoping to burn his throat with the force of it, hoping to give himself physical pain to take away the pain in his mind.
____________
*Author's note: In the Word document where all of the story is originally written, this chapter has a couple thousand words I left out of here. That's because it was while writing this chapter that I realized just how far behind I was on word count and I had Ben and Tess start reciting the script from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It was epic, but also unimportant to the plot.
Also, for anyone wondering about the conspicuous lack of certain chapters such as seven and four, I will assure you that there's most likely nothing of important information in them and I am simply uncomfortable with sharing them as they are. Thank you for your patience.
She opened her eyes without looking at him. They were bloodshot and puffy. “I knew you would,” she said. “How did I know you would?”
“Tomorrow, probably around noon,” he said. “I figure if Medias isn’t going to try to stop me—”
“No, Ben,” Tess said loudly, angrily. “Answer my question. How did I know you were going to want to leave? How do I always know? I find you when you yourself don’t even know where you’re going, I can tell when you’re lying, or when you’re hiding your emotions.” Tears started reforming at the corners of her eyes. “I’ve known you forever and I know everything about you and I don’t remember meeting you or what life was like without you…”
She continued to talk for a long time, but her eventual sobs began to muddle her words. Ben couldn’t think of anything constructive to do, so he just stood there, watching her. Once she had given herself over to weeping and lay curled up on her side, shaking and moaning incoherently, Ben knelt down and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Tess?” he asked tentatively. “Tess, come back.”
Several minutes passed. Ben sat quietly as Tess’ sobs relented and her shaking subsided. After what could have been a quarter of an hour, she was lying there, breathing in short, deep bursts, but she was in control again.
“You’re leaving.” Her eyes were closed and her face was peaceful.
“I don’t think I belong here anymore,” he said. “Martha told me something…” He trailed off. Tess’ eyes were pressed closed and she was biting her lip. “Wait, don’t get upset. Listen to me.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her eyes looked bluer than he had ever seen them before. The contrast between them and her face and hair was more startling this way.
“I want you to come with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
She blinked and her nose wiggled a little, something Ben recognized as her response to being caught off guard. “You want me to come with?”
“Yeah.” He tried to make his voice light and excited. “Think about all the things we’d see and experiences we’d have, and no one would be able to stop us.”
“I can’t go with you,” Tess said, sounding incredulous. “I can’t leave Medias.”
“What? Why not” Ben asked.
“My family is here—the other girls in the pre-lash house. As much as you mean to me, I don’t know that I can just leave them,” she said. “And what about Gus and Martha? Are you going to tell them before you go, or were you more hoping to leave a note on the table?”
A faint, high-pitched ringing bounced around the inside of Ben’s ears. “You mean…” He was unbelievably crestfallen. “You mean, you’d stay? You wouldn’t come with?”
“How can I?” she asked, her face pleading with him. “You’re tearing me in two! I knew this was going to happen as soon as Medias told you he wasn’t going to lift the denial, or even as soon as I saw that you were denied. I saw that look in your eye, the one you get when you get tired of fighting and realize your other options are limited. You get an idea in your head and you won’t stray from it, no matter what it means to anyone, including you and anyone around you.”
“I have to leave, Tess! There is no other way. What else am I supposed to do now? Sit around, doing nothing, knowing that the creature in charge of this forest is merely forestalling its death, and that it is the reason you and I can never—”
“What is so bad about Medias?” she asked. “What about this place is so abhorrent to you that it gives you no reason to stay?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just begged her with his eyes to understand. Her face, hardened against tears, became grave. She turned slowly and began to walk away.
“Tess…” he said, but he didn’t have anything to follow it.
She stopped, gave a small shudder, and broke into a run, leaving the clearing, heading straight for the heart of Medias.
Ben fell to his knees, torn with indecision. He looked up at the darkening sky overhead, feeling his face get hot and his eyes get wet. He screamed, hoping to burn his throat with the force of it, hoping to give himself physical pain to take away the pain in his mind.
____________
*Author's note: In the Word document where all of the story is originally written, this chapter has a couple thousand words I left out of here. That's because it was while writing this chapter that I realized just how far behind I was on word count and I had Ben and Tess start reciting the script from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It was epic, but also unimportant to the plot.
Also, for anyone wondering about the conspicuous lack of certain chapters such as seven and four, I will assure you that there's most likely nothing of important information in them and I am simply uncomfortable with sharing them as they are. Thank you for your patience.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Preliminaries (Installment Five)
.JPG.jpeg "Does this not remind you of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?")
A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, hence the word mushroom is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap, just as do store-bought white mushrooms.The word "mushroom" can also be used for a wide variety of gilled fungi, with or without stems, and the term is used even more generally, to describe both the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota and the woody or leathery fruiting bodies of some Basidiomycota, depending upon the context of the word.
Forms deviating from the standard morphology usually have more specific names, such as "puffball", "stinkhorn", and "morel", and gilled mushrooms themselves are often called "agarics" in reference to their similarity to Agaricus or their placement in the order Agaricales. By extension, the term "mushroom" can also designate the entire fungus when in culture or the thallus (called a mycelium) of species forming the fruiting bodies called mushrooms, or the species itself.
Though mushroom fruiting bodies are short-lived, the underlying mycelium can itself be long-lived and massive. A colony of Armillaria ostoyae in Malheur National Forest in the United States is estimated to be 2,400 years old, possibly older, and spans an estimated 2,200 acres. Most of the fungus is underground and in decaying wood or dying tree roots in the form of white mycelia combined with black shoelace-like rhizomorphs that bridge colonized separated woody substrates.
From Wikipedia’s “Mushrooms”
_________________________________________
People have known about the "honey mushroom" for some time, but were not aware of how large and invasive this species of fungus could be. The fungus was investigated more closely by researchers when they realized that it was responsible for killing large groves of evergreen trees. When foresters cut into an infected tree they would find spreading white filaments, mycelia, which draw water and carbohydrates from the tree to feed the fungus. Researchers collected samples of the fungus from a widespread area and analyzed the DNA. A large sample of the specimens they collected turned out to be from a single organism.
Humongous Fungus
Until August of 2000 it was thought that the largest living organism was a fungus of the same species (Armillaria ostoyae) that covered 1,500 acres (600 hectares) found living in the state of Washington. But then mycology experts surmised that if an Armillaria that large could be found in Washington, then perhaps one just as large could be responsible for the trees dying in the Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Researchers were astonished at the sheer magnitude of the find. This most recent find was estimated to cover over 2,200 acres (890 hectares) and be at least 2,400 years old, possibly older.
To go into the forest where this giant makes its home you would not look at it and see a huge, looming mushroom. Armillaria grows and spreads primarily underground and the sheer bulk of this organism lies in the earth, out of sight. Occasionally, during the fall season, this specimen will send up golden-colored "honey mushrooms" (see photo, above left) that are the visible evidence of its hulking mass beneath. Scientists have not yet begun to attempt to estimate the weight of this specimen of Armillaria.
How is it possible for a single fungus to get so big? Scientists who study this species of funges have postulated that the huge size may be a function of the dry climate in eastern Oregon. Spores have a hard time establishing new organisms, making room for the old-timers to spread. Without competition from other specimens this enormous Armillaria has been able to grow and spread unchecked
How is it possible for a single fungus to get so big? Scientists who study this species of funges have postulated that the huge size may be a function of the dry climate in eastern Oregon. Spores have a hard time establishing new organisms, making room for the old-timers to spread. Without competition from other specimens this enormous Armillaria has been able to grow and spread unchecked
From extremescience.com/biggestlivingthing.htm
Monday, October 19, 2009
Preliminaries (Installment Three)
This is on the NaNoWriMo homepage, and I'm supposed to be writing an Essay about dæmons in The Golden Compass, but I wanted to share this with people (not real people who would give me funny looks when I smiled uncontrollably and cried a little bit) so here you are. Enjoy.
Q: Cylithria, you managed to participate in NaNoWriMo while serving in Iraq. What is it like to write a novel while on duty? How did you get your novel validated to win?Happy writing!
A: What is writing while serving in Iraq like? The short answer is: crazy. The long answer, is as vast and various as our world's military forces. During my first NaNoWriMo Iraq Novel, I was embedded in a forward observation team of United States Marines. (OORAH!) I was an experienced NaNoWriMo participant and as is my typical style, by October 31 I had nothing but the goal itself. No plot, no characters, no world - just the goal of 50K in 30 days.We were still at a Northern Iraqi Base, preparing for forward Ops when November 1 rolled around. For the first week, after 18 hour training days, I went back to my rack and started typing what I hoped would be an ever growing story. By the time we moved out, I had written barely 3,000 words in seven days. I knew it would only get worse as we left the comforts of a base and headed into the northern-most regions of Iraq. I was right. Within 24 hours of our moving out, I realized my laptop was useless. Bright screens at night draw attention. Plus there were no currant bushes staggered in the mountains for me to plug into. Not good. Writing on paper was an option, but it held many, many drawbacks. Most of my "off hours" were at night, thus leaving me with no light. Writing by Night Vision Goggles is difficult, but somehow I wrote onward.
Two days before Thanksgiving it was the Commanding Officer who inquired as to what I was doing. He'd caught me crying. (I'd just killed off my main character; it was a heavy moment okay?) I will never forget the look on his face.
"You're doing what? National book writing month?"
"National Novel Writing Month Sir....it's NaNoWriMo, I can't miss it. I haven't missed one yet!"
I lost two hours of precious writing time that evening as I explained what in the world NaNoWriMo was and why I kept after the goal. It was another Marine who asked how I "won". When I extracted the massive sheets of paper from my pack and explained I had to transcribe all I'd written into digital txt file and upload it to the NaNoWriMo validater, they all looked ... well mad! We didn't have wi-fi access where we were and while they may not have understood the point of NaNoWriMo, they could look at a calendar and where we were and know the final validation would never be done from our local. I think that one thing, being unable to officially win because we were so far from home bothered us all. I know it hung like an albatross in the cool night air. But still, I wrote on.
Three days later I am sitting down, finishing my final page of my draft. I am at 50,279 words, most hand written. I still had more of the story to write, but once I tallied my word count, I announced it to our unit. My Commanding Officer addressed my small victory for all of them. Extending his hand towards me, he gave me my orders for the night along with a CD.
"We've transcribed everything except todays batch. It's all here. We changed nothing and you spell awful. Sit down and finish transcribing the rest. We meet a supply bird at zero three hundred hours. You get it done, we send it back to your liaison at HQ - That's the best shot we can give you Dubois."
I stared at the CD and struggled with tears. "Sir, yes Sir" was my only reply. I sat and did as ordered. In a moving vehicle, I transcribed the last of my words and then burned it all to the CD. We stuffed it, along with my user name and password, into one of the many courier bags addressed to my unit in the United States. At zero three hundred hours, at a mobile Landing Zone I watched as my Commanding Officer asked, not ordered, the pilot and crew to try and get that CD to where it needed to be, and get it there in time.
As the helicopter lifted off, my Commanding Officer placed a hand on my shoulder. "That's a win Dubois. If these Nano's don't agree, you send 'em to me. I'll set 'em straight even if that CD gets lost."
Time isn't something easily found when you are on duty in a combat zone. There was nothing more for me then those words and that Oorah, and as quickly as we could we moved on once more. While I figured I'd never be ale to legally claim that year as a victory, I knew it was in my heart. It was almost midnight of November 30th, on the east coast of the United States of America when my Commanding Officer came running to find me. In his hand he waved a small, handheld computer. "Dubois, hot damn! Ya did it!" He held the screen to my face.
There, in an email from my Liaison in the United States was a screenshot image of the validation of my novel. 32 minutes before midnight. The message from my Liaison was this: "Ma'am your novel flew on three helicopters, three transport planes, rode one ship and was driven via hummer to my office where I used your login to validate it. Be advised, you are a winner! Congrats! Now, can you please forward the reports you *should* have been writing?"
As I read those words to my fellow Marines, OORAH rang out. My Commanding Officer was as thrilled as any of us. With a great many fist pumps and hand gestures he shouted out, "That's right, That's right.... she a wrimo from the region of Iraq::Northern Province::OORAH"
Being the National Novel Writing Month enthusiast I am, I did the only thing I knew to do to celebrate my victory. Using the sound system of one of our vehicles I blasted the song "Time Warp", and danced. Writing while actively serving your country in the military is a very difficult thing. Time, climates, duties and orders often get in the way. But there are no finer win's in National Novel Writing Month then winning the challenge while serving your country. OORAH!
Cylithria Dubois has been participating in National Novel Writing Month since she first heard of it over nine years ago. This year she will attempt to complete her tenth National Novel Writing Month Novel from the Michigan :: Flint Region. Three of her nine NaNo-novels have been written from various hot spots around the world. Although not currently stationed with her Marines, they actively email her for novel updates when duty allows. She still does the Time Warp after every win - no matter where she is! She can be found telling stories of her life at www.whynotright.com, on Twitter, and via email or by NaNoMail at eensybeensyspider.
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