Announcement: Islands of the Mind will be in THE WAY OF WORLDS

a mock-up cover lashed up by me, for my story only:
has nothing to do with the actual anthology --
used here merely to illustrate this blog post

It's official. Islands of the Mind has just gone to contract and will appear in the anthology The Way of Worlds. This one is a piece about terraforming in a distant future where habitable, Earthlike worlds are difficult to find yet critical to human survival because our population never ceased to increase. An explorer fleet has discovered a glorious ocean planet with a sweet atmosphere and friendly gravity, right in the "Goldilocks zone" -- all this world needs is landmasses. The terraformer crew arrives for business and sets about the task of creating those landmasses. And then -- and then -- ah! That would be telling. I'll blog again, with a link when The Way of Worlds comes out.

Terraforming is a subject that interests me deeply. I actually do believe that our population will continue to grow. If I'm right, and it does, humanity has only one way to go: outwards. How long is it since anyone mentioned the term "population explosion," in any but a historical context? It's been decades. Now, countries like China (population 1.412 billon as I write this) are actually passing over the top of the population growth curve. Their numbers are about to fall .. result? Not relief, that the existential dread we all felt at the population explosion if over. Oh, no. Its's all bags of panic and blue lights. Why? Because constant population growth is the only way we (yet) know to power an economy that is also maintains an endless, infinite trajectory of growth.

Far be it from me to criticize the mechanisms of capitalism: I also would like to be floating away on oceans of cash, and buy a castle in Ireland. But at the same time, in the interests of powering economic growth essentially forever, we're certainly going to vastly overload this planet. In fact, specialists say we did that long ago. It's been estimated that around two billion people is the maximum this world can sustain indefinitely. So, the predictable outcome of economic growth without surcease is a dying, or even dead, planet, with a population of ridiculous size packed into artificial environments constructed and maintained by technology in a future where "let technology do the heavy lifting" will have become both our survival mantra and our curse.  Inevitably we'll see a mass return to the colonial spirit of old...

Go west, young man. Or south, and anywhere one can find open spaces, free territory, the opportunity to succeed for ordinary folks who were born outside the .01% of the community who control 99.99% of all wealth and resources. Well, we've already entirely run out of compass points. Every square centimetre of Earth is owned, and fenced ... there is nowhere go up but up, and out.

With physics coming right around to supporting the case for faster-than-light starships, it's becoming more appropriate to look at other worlds -- and I don't mean Mars, though Mars will surely be a steppingstone along the way. I've written many stories about the Martian colonial years, and the violent "troubles" between Earth and Mars (The Way Back; Collateral Damage; Happy Hour, all published to date, with several more still waiting for homes -- Dust Gets in Your Eyes, Home Soil, and so forth). I'm working on the first draft of a new novel, as mentioned in my last post. The Gift of Prometheus....

Now, Gift is about human endeavour and ambition crashing headfirst into human ethics and dreams, in the years when the great Einsteinian starships find the way to the true FTL ships that will eventually, almost inevitably, lead us to the future you glimpse in Islands of the Mind. I'll blog about the writing process as it chugs along. Gift is the first full-on novel I've written since beginning this blog, which shows how long, rotten, and tough to beat the writer's block has been. It hit me broadside the second time we all got Covid. The third bout of Covid turned into post viral syndrome and worsened it. Now I've begun the fightback, and The Gift of Prometheus looks like a great place to begin.

The novel is very possibly set in the same universal canon as my Martian stories and Islands of the Mind. Let me think about this. But I'm liking the idea.

Fiction: An Eagle's Flight

Yeeeees, there's a story burbling around in my feverish brain. I'm giving it the working title you see right here, An Eagle's Flight, but it could wind up called An Eagle Flies, or Where Eagles Fly, something along those lines. Don't hold me to the title you see here. But --

-- view this one full sized, and you'll see that this is the same character as the warrior on the cover. Call him Orel (at this point; the name might change later, along with the story title, though I doubt it for reasons that will shortly become clear). This is where the story begins: the reluctant hero, a man trying to outrun his own reputation ... thrice decorated by the Queen of Zarabia after extraordinary feats in battle. But those feats came at a dreadful price. Orel doesn't sleep, he dreams ... he feels possessed by the spirits of the warriors he's killed in the service of the Queen. She's old, and she dotes on him; she's like his grandmother, which is saying a lot. Orel is not native to this country. He's from the east, and arrived as an orphan boy just old enough to walk. He knew only his name. In the common tongue of  Vennia, Orel means eagle. Queen Isabeau gives him his ticket of leave from the regiment and a heavy purse, so  Orel can take his cats and his horses, take to the backroads in a Vardo like those belonging to his own people ... and find himself, get his heart and mind back into synch. But --

-- yep, it was always on the cards. He hasn't been on the road more than five or six months -- just long enough to watch springtime turn to autumn, and start to feel like a human being again (not because he's sleeping better or not dreaming, but because he and his ghosts have made their peace) -- when he runs into a couple of old comrades from the regiment. Gianna and Lynos have just left the service, and have taken soldiering work in the pay of a local thane, who advertised that he wanted border scouts. This was what they signed up for, but Count Radriq double-talked them with a binding contract ... they didn't read the fine print. Now, rather than just scouting up the source of trouble on the borderlands between Zarabia and neighbouring Kedd, Orel's old army mates are expected to root out the trouble. Since it's big trouble and they're massively outnumbered, they're up against a rather nasty wall. If they renege on the contract, they'll never get this work again, and it's all they're trained for. They're stuck, like flies in amber. So, when they meet Orel by chance, obviously they're recruiting. Or at the very least begging for help. The problem is this dude:

His name is Jevenni and he's baaaad. This Keddish warlord is building himself a rogue empire, and the bricks of its foundations are piracy, highway robbery, pillage, people-trafficking, whatever it takes. He has no scruples, and in this last twelve months has become the bane of the local thane's life. Count Radriq wants the Keddish land pirates gone, and he's holding Gianna and Lynos to the letter of a contract they signed too fast, in ignorance. Enter Orel. Help! So...

...they talk him into it, naturally enough. He's not the type to abandon friends in need. There's a couple of things he suggests: they must hire a good lawyer from Queen Isabeau's own staff, get him here, and have him reduce Count Radriq and his documentation to legal confetti. A lawyer from the capital will cost a great deal of money, but Gianna and Lynos know just where to get it. Jevenni has stolen wagonloads of valuables from the nobles of Count Radriq's fiefdom, and generous rewards have been posted. If they can recover even a tenth of what the warlord has taken, a lawyer from the city of Enashla will settle Radriq. Now...

 ...we launch into several episodic misadventures which are the meat-and-potatoes of true quest-fic, and it all leads eventually, inevitably, to this place: the land pirates' stronghold, in the ancient, ruined city of Ul-kedd-innu. To the horizon, the dead city lies smashed as a result of war, earthquake and plague more than a century in the past. Now, it is bleached bones and granite slabs. Jevenni has carved out his citadel in what used to be the palace and fortress, on the highest point, overlooking the fields of rubble-strewn desolation. According to everything his men divulge -- when captured and made drunk as lords -- he's so complacent, he doesn't post guards. In fact, it's a point of honour that he refuses to post guards: sentries and troops would only acknowledge that he is vulnerable in the heart of his own domain -- Jevenni would deny this to the death. With this information, Orel, the much-decorated veteran, favourite of the Her Serene Majesty, browbeats Count Radriq into providing a detachment from his household cavalry. But the force will hold back in the forest, waiting for a signal and letting the three specialists go in by stealth ... on the understanding that one man can pass where an army couldn't, and a specialist in creating havoc might bring the whole edifice tumbling down before the enemy knew it was happening. Under cover of darkness, in we go --

...long story short: subterfuge, stealth, swordfights and a liberal dash of strange sorcery, and by morning, the land pirates have scattered like roaches. Jevenni is extremely dead, and dawn finds Orel on the crenelated roof of the old fortress, right above the warlord's lair. Under the free, open sky, he is once again making peace with his ghosts and his father's old gods. The eagle -- for this is his name -- is trying very hard indeed to fly high and free, but will his flight carry him away from trouble, or right to the next battlefield? No one knows. Both Gianna and Lynos are injured, though not badly. They sent up the signal flare; the count's cavalry came in fast to scour the ruins for prisoners, and now Gianna and Lynos are only looking for the warlord's cache. They find it -- but in any case, they have actually fulfilled the contract. They no longer need a lawyer from Enashla. They take a portion of the spoils for themselves, as is only fair, and for himself, Orel takes enough to buy him the time, peace and quiet to begin again...

...and the story ends with a full-circle moment, right back where it began. At dawn, Orel hitches up his horses, stocks the Vardo, and is on the road again, headed away from anything remotely like a battlefield. In his ears, the ghosts' thin voices continue to whisper, but he has made his peace with some of them, and believes the others can be persuaded in time. The new sun is warm on his face, the open sky and moors lie ahead in the west, with snow-crowned mountains ringing a horizon so vast, it looks like the whole world. Now, perhaps the eagle can fly free after all. 

ooOOooOOooOOoo

So ends this basic plot. In the writing, the details will change; names will change; a map will be sorted out, and the episodic parts will be tied down into a tight-knit structure. But this is more than enough to get my muse quite excited, and I think I'll enjoy writing this one. The art is not new. These are all 2019-2021 renders, featuring G8 Dae as Orel, G8 Rex as Lynos ... and I can't remember the G8 Female character who appears as Gianna, but she's in the DAZ library somewhere. That's the good old Millennium Horse, plus the DAZ Cat, many, many foliage and furniture props, and the old Gypsy Wagon from Renderosity. Everything here was rendered in Iray; a couple were painted comprehensively in Photoshop afterward. I was messing about with images and ended up, by chance, with these open in Irfanvew, in sequence ... the story just popped out at me! 

Announcement: Firegrounds will be published in ANALOG Science Fiction

The best possible news today ... Firegrounds will be appearing in ANALOG Science Fiction, probably early in 2025. This is my third outing with ANALOG, and I'm absolutely thrilled.

The story concerns a woman working for the RFS, or Regional Fire Service in South Australia's desiccated, ravaged mid-north, maybe half a century from now. Climate Change has happened. Past tense. It's not a question of stopping it ... now, survival is all about preventing fires, and this story examines ways and means of doing that, utilizing the cutting-edge Ai and robotics of the 2070s...

All of which falls apart somewhat when you've lost your husband to this job, and your teenage son is going so far wrong, you're haunted by the worst of all intuitions about him and his friends, some of whom are already incarcerated, others at liberty by a thread. 

Firegrounds is a story that's very close to my heart. Somewhere far, far down the track, I think there's a full novel to be derived from the foundations built by this little piece. In this incarnation, it's only about 4,000 words, but a lot of world building went into it, and one day ... one day ... So I took out half an hour and lashed up a cover to illustrate the story, and help to celebrate the sweet process of the contract signing. 

Watch this space, and when the issue is published, I'll blog about Firegrounds again.

An excellent story comes together through a sequence of random images -- thinking with my fingertips

A courier arrives on a fast horse -- he's ridden for days in a time of direst emergency, and arrives in the Kingdom of Altheon to seek the aid of a great warrior, the one one who could undertake a quest of incredible danger...

 

Jirrel is no longer young. He's gown old on the war trails, and had returned to his homeland with the intention of remaining there for the rest of his life in quiet -- and in peace, where he might seek the salvation of a soul that's worn and bruised after seeing and suffering far too much. But the emergency is too dire, and ...

...knowing he can't face this one alone, he first journeys into the wild highlands of Calhanna, where is recruits his old friend, old comrade, to ride the trail with him. Bremmer is younger by several summers and hasn't seen so many battles; he's actually keen to undertake the quest, which Jirrel thinks is quite mad. But...

For this one, they'll need horses which have strange and magickal powers. Ordinary horses won't get them there, so Jirrel and Bremmer first head into the forests of Alkwood to ask the assistances of great creatures who have befriended them, and fought with them before. The great stallion, North Wind, agrees to help, for the sake of a friend.

And then it's into the marshes that lie to the west of Altheon and Calhanna and Alkwood. These swamps are not long or wide, but they're infested with the waterfolk, wyrfolk, who prey on travelers and will take the unwary for their food and valuables, their horses -- and their lives...

...and it's not much better once the friends have cut a path through the swamps. From the southwest of the region known as Dirtwater, they follow Desolation Creek, which has always been the fastest way through to their goal. But Desolation is plagued by bandits and cutthroats with wyrd powers, and getting through isn't easy.

Still, perseverance pays off -- and Jirrel and Bremmer at last find themselves on the lakeshore surrounding the city of Longlear. Many people, further east, refuse to believe Longlear even exists, but Jirrel has been there before, and he knows -- or knew -- its old king, from the days of his youth. 

Times have changed, and not for the better. The Kings of Longlear have, for centuries, been great sorcerers, and old King Narhagen was once the greatest of them all. But, like all kings, he has enemies, and one of them has become strong enough to turn his own magic against him, plunge him into a wasting sickness from which he cannot recover on his own --

Yet old Narhagen knows exactly who is behind this. It's his cousin, Rhothgand, who made a bid for the crown of Longlear when they were both young and not even fully trained. Thwarted, Rhothgand vanished north, to pursue his studies elsewhere. Now he's back, infinitely more powerful than he ever was, as dark as a barrel of pitch and, some say, driven insane by his lifelong study of arts too dark for sanity to bear. Jirrel and Bremmer must challenge him, defeat him ... it is the only way back to the light for Longlear. So ... it's into the drear Forest of Marnecht, along uncharted ways fraught with evil as well as danger. But at last -- 

 

They come upon Rhothgand in a place where the forest thins, and the black magician has made his stronghold, surrounded by birds and animals he has turned into fiends. The battle is intense, shocking, vile ... Jirrel and Bremmer are armed with the best charms and magicks the sorcerers of Longlear can provide, but it's barely enough. They do defeat Rhothgand, but...

...save for the intervention of Liliath, neither would have survived. Both are badly wounded when the Lady of Windcrest comes to their aid. She is a witch ... ancient, solitary, powerful, but even she could not have defeated Rhothgand before the warriors weakened him. She finishes off the evil and insane black magician, but it's all she can do to convey the warriors back to Windcrest, to heal.

Windcrest is a place of light, a wooded mountain facing the north and east, where the dawn sun angles through the great crystal arches, and Liliath drinks in the power for her own magicks. It is the force that keeps he ageless while the centuries turn and turn. This mountain is her place; no other foot has trodden there in a generation...

She lives with the forest folk, foxes, badgers, martens, squirrels, all of whom are spirits with whom she is in accord...

...and with rare birds who have the ability to talk, and possess the passed-down memories of the eons of their ancestors, of which human beings know nothing ... 

...and of other creatures of the light and air, which come to Liliath's call to sip the power that flows off the ancient witch like the morning dew.

Windcrest is a place of healing and rest, where the warriors of eons gone by would come to be healed of the wounds of both body and soul...

But even the power of Windcrest is not limitless. It has its sunset, just as it has its dawn ... its power fades with the encroaching night ... and before the dawn, when the night is darkest, Bremmer succumbs to wounds that Liliath could not mend. 

It seems the very woodland mourns as Liliath and Jirrel set his funeral pyre. Bremmer had still been young enough to be impulsive -- quick to strike where Jirrel was older, wiser, more cautious. And now, it is the old warrior, sad and tired, who will take his friend's ashes back to the wild highlands of Calhanna, there to be scattered on the morning wind.

Duty done, Jirrel sits on a crag, remembering, and listening to Bremmer's voice in the wind which whips forever over the heaths and mountains of his homeland.

Announcement: A Glamour of Toads is out

It's been a long time indeed since I updated this blog ... life has been like that. As the saying goes, "One damn" thing after another.' 

Anyone remember the Farside-style cartoon of two monsters chasing each other down a street while a couple of middle-aged ladies look on, and one lady says to the other (!), "It's just one goddamn thing after another." Mmm. That's been life in a nutshell. Don't ask. 

But I'm back at last -- with less news that I'd hoped to be able to relay, but at least there's something. 

It begins with an update on A Glamour of Toads, which was published in Dragon Gems, Summer 2023 issue ... available as of last month, I believe. As the cover indicates, this is a kind of cute and/or "cracked" fairy-tale fantasy anthology, and I'm sure Glamour fits perfectly...

The story of a young woman who's blessed, or cursed, with enormous courage and physical ugliness (no other way to parse this, so -- grasp it, and weaponize it), and she finds herself born into the era of the witch hunts, what we call the 'burning times.' 

Worse yet, her village lies directly in the path of an oncoming Witchfinder who's notorious for his treatment of people just like her. She's not a witch, but she's going to be treated as one ... so, what's to be done about it? Sarah has recently lost her dad, who was a woodsman by trade. His work often took them into the forest, which is how Sarah knows of a certain cottage, way back in the wildwood: the house where three women live. Women who are so skilled in the Craft of the Wise, the world is oblivious to them. They have no fear of the Witchfinder and his troops, and once upon a moonless midnight, Sarah knocks at their door and begs for a boon. For magic. 

The only potential fly in the ointment is that to read Glamour, you'll need a subscription to something called SCRIBD.  Now, in and of itself, SRIBD is a marvellous idea. In a nutshell, here is their advertising line: "Enjoy millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more, with a free trial." 

You could read Dragon Gems Summer 2023 on the 30-day free trial, course ... but if I had a tablet, and I didn't mind a monthly fee of about AUD$20, I think I'd be subscribing. I'll be brutally honest at this moment: I have things to save for, so my own discretional spending is shackled and bound. But when I've bought the camera and lenses I want (price tag, around two grand -- you get the picture), SRCIBD will be on my list, along with a YouTube subscription (to get rid of those pesky commercials). 

So -- Find A Glamour of Toads right here, but be prepared to take them up on the offer of that free trial. You should be able to read on phones ... I certainly could!

I wish there were more to update, but the publishers for whom a whole raft of stories and poems were written have been delayed, and only recently opened back up for reading. Everything is late, so the news is a bit thin on the publishing front. 

However, there's more, if the hard, demanding and exacting work of the editor counts in this publishing game -- and it does. I spent some fascinating weeks working on A Tradition of Evil, a Sherlock Holmes novel by Mike Adamson. The job was actually a lot of fun, and the book (which went on sale, from Belanger Books, just a couple of months ago) is a great read that's being very well rated at Amazon. It was also my great pleasure to build Mike's new author website, not least because it gave me the opportunity to flex my illustrator's muscles, and provide all the original artwork...

And when I'd finished construction on that website, I was so envious -- I decided to build one for myself,  for my art and photography. I'm halfway through at this moment. And that is how time flew away, even before you add in some bad luck, car troubles, winter, flu, and the usual domestic drivel. Something had to go on the backburner, and the blogs were the unfortunate choice. I've barely kept touch with Facebook in the same span of time! 

Hopefully, this can turn around now.  

The Gate to Elsewhere

 

Edgar had heard many times about the gateway -- and according to the locals who lived around Eltenham Forest, several opened into the earth, or into faraway places. He'd always dreamed of finding one, and last summer holiday he spent most of the time investigating old trees and misty dells, with no luck at all. This year, when he'd given up and wasn't even looking anymore, here it was! Maybe the magic worked this way he thought as he ventured closer, and closer ... the harder you looked, the less you were likely to find yourself a gateway to adventure.

Very close now, he could smell the clean, sharp scents of mountain air and hear the calls of strange birds, unlike any that lived anywhere near Eltenham. A chill breeze wafted from the gate, and tendrils of mist crept cautiously through at his feet. Here at Cricklewood Hall, it was a hot afternoon full of droning beetles and the heavy scent of flowers. But far on the other side of the gate, dawn light cascaded down the east side of a range of dragon-fang mountains, and the smell of pine trees prickled his nose.

He was almost at the gate, dying to step through, when he saw the man on the other side -- and the man has seen him!

In the Company of Ghosts

Foolish, I suppose, to sit among my ghosts, but they’re my ghosts and I cherish them. Woodsmoke loiters on the still evening air, prickling into a hundred memories. Leaves drift softly from sycamore and chestnut, littering the path which wanders among headstones so old, many are worn smooth, relinquishing any hint of who lies beneath.

My bench sits under a skeletal oak. I’ve been still so long, the red squirrel returns, scampering over those anonymous stones and into the branches above me, in search of a last few acorns. The year is winding gently down; one can almost smell winter. The old graveyard will slumber, wrapped in a blanket of snow before long.

Like the squirrel, I came here searching, but he’s luckier. Acorns are plentiful while the stone I sought eluded me, and I must go soon.

October nights fall early and cold -- a chill discovered my toes an hour ago. My squirrel friend rushes home with his hoard and I, stiff after sitting too long with my ghosts, crunch away through drifted leaves.

He’s here somewhere, quite close, I think: the grandfather who showed me the world, taught how it wags, before he left it when I was still a child. My own days are as short as October’s. The end gnaws inside me, never far from my mind. This is my last October, so I wrap myself in it, as if it were a cloak. My squirrel busily plans ahead for spring, while I wind down with the year, settle to sleep like these trees.

The path takes me back to tall iron gates I’d forgotten; it’s been so long since I was here. Lights shine from the little church, and from houses across the way. A sweetness of stewing fruit wafts from one of them, reminding me of the season, and my ghosts creep closer, invited.

Harvest festival and jarring jam; turnip -- not pumpkin, not here, not then! -- lanterns for Halloween; the newsagents’ shop stocked with sharp-smelling fireworks for Bonfire Night; gathering twigs for the hearth on chill, bright afternoons exactly like this one, half a century ago. I recall the sound and feel of muddy boots crunching through russet, gold and amber, while keen winds stirred bare branches against windswept skies promising snow and, so soon, Christmas lights. Fun for the child, magic for me now. October magic.

My search for that one headstone was fruitless but the evening was far from wasted. Odd, how congenial the company of ghosts can be.

The sun is long gone as I walk away. The old town lies placid with evening, the sky clear, dark velvet. A few people, dressed for the cold, too busy to notice me, rush home like the squirrel -- and so must I, though I’m half a world away from home and won’t, can’t, return here.

So I pause, steal a few more moments to inscribe new-old memories into the crannies of my mind: the deepening calm of the fast-expiring year, the softness of trees settling to drowse until spring; a quiet and welcome I hadn’t looked for in this of all places, under the diamond sparkle of October stars.

Poem: A Yuletide Blessing

 

Long is the night
        and the stars are bright;
Cold is the wind,
        and sighing.
Bare are the trees --
        there's snow in the breeze;
Silent, the land...
        but not dying:
Sleep is the cure
        when one must endure --
Lord, knight, lady and fool:
    here is the night
When back comes the light:
    blessed be all, upon Yule.

Poem: Cat Magicks

There's magic in the moonlight,

Enchantment in a song.

If you haven't danced in starlight

And heard the night wind's song --

If you never bathed in moonbeams

There's no remedy for that;

So, you can't imagine how it feels

To be the average cat!

The Lore of Wood and Wild -- Fox

Every creature in the woodland knows that Fox is the forest’s warrior. Often alone, he walks the moonlight patrol, through summer nights, snow and fallen leaves alike. His eyes are the keenest; his ears too … ane he has a nose for blood. He tastes it on the air and water. He owns the hunter’s fangs, and in the season when his precious lady and kits are hidden deep in moonshadows and mystery, his warrior senses prickle alive. He hunts, guards — find him on the warrior path as the nights grow shorter toward summer, when once again he’ll be alone.

Poem: The Cat and The Christmas Tree

The tree was tall and prideful of its lights.
The cat was small and mindful of her rights...
A cat is she: to rip and shred and claw
Is what cats do, and should do. Wait, there’s more!
When claws and lights and trees and cats combine
A cat (whose lifetimes previously numbered nine)
Becomes the Mighty Hunter. And the tree
Would shed those lights and garlands all, and flee,
Save for the fact it’s plugged in. Curse those lights!
What of the cat? She stands upon her rights:
Up, up the tree, defeat the tinsel snake --
For such delicious mayhem, felines make.

Welcome to Mars

Sometimes I wonder why I ever came to Mars, much less to the ‘Redsands’. It’s not quite the armpit of the universe -- a place called Rochester, out in the Belt, takes that cake; but it’s close. After two weeks of thousand-kay-per-hour winds blasting megatons of red sand into what passes for air here, you ask yourself the inevitable question. Why did I ever come to Mars?

Then, of course, I remember.

I was nine years old and didn’t have much choice. Any choice. The parents made the decision to apply for ‘the program’ and, being brilliant engineers, both under 35 with a kid who’d be into double figures before long, they were approved. Young Patsy turned six in the months while they toiled through the application process, and had turned eight when they received the official approval notice. My ninth birthday had just slipped into memory when we found ourselves assigned to Marsport.

That’s what we called it, way back when. You didn’t migrate, you weren’t relocated; you were assigned. As if taking a one-way ticket to Mars was just a job. I guess, to some people it might actually be a job. Certainly, some manage to rake together the cash for tickets back ‘home.’ Though why you’d actually want to return to Earth beats hell out of me.

Mars might be cold and sandy, but with our tiny population there’s space to move and almost unlimited resources. Just as importantly, we live in a place and time when enterprise is applauded. Earth is ... Earth.

If Mars is so damned cold and dry, you need an environment suit to step outside, Earth is so damned hot, humid, toxic, you need a cool suit and breather mask before you open a door. If Mars is sandy, windy and irradiated, Earth is wet, stormy and polluted. They only perks they can boast about that we can’t are air pressure, full gravity and natural immunity to solar radiation. But they pay a high: twelve billion people fighting for the high ground, while Mars is...

We’re big and wide open. You can still take a rover into the wilds of the southern hemisphere, find a parcel of land, stake your claim, set up a homestead. The northern hemisphere is fifty years settled, but half the south remains up for grabs, the way our ancestors headed for Australia and New Zealand.

My multiple-times-great-grandpa went to Australia, with no more choice than me coming to Mars. Patsy: Shanghaied at age nine. Paddy Joe Doyle: transported at 19 for the crime of stealing a whopping two (count ’em, two) loaves of bread. The fact he was starving, with three kid sisters and a sick ma at home in Ballymena counted for nada. Paddy Joe could’ve been lynched ... the English detested the Irish in those days.

Fast forward three short centuries and here I am. The family black sheep, Dublin Irish Doyle on one side, Gdansk Polish Pulaski on the other, transported -- ’scuse me, assigned -- to the region we call the Redsands (because on a very red world they’re exceptionally red), proud owner and proprietor of the only Irish pub on the whole planet, as far as we know.

When we bought it as a going concern, I wanted to call it ‘Paddy Joe’s’, but my partner (in business as in life) argued against changing the existing name. Sam’s usually right. Commuters from Marsport to Olympia already knew the dump as The Arcadians Hotel. “If it ain’t broke, Patsy,” he said, “don’t be fixing it.” I usually respect the Chicago-Italian wisdom of Sam Giannini, so --

The Arcadians Hotel it remains, but it wasn't a dump for long. Gone is the chrome and cyber-trash, unspeakable lite beer and even worse flash-food. We replaced the lot with fake wood and knock-off antiques, every widget realistic enough to fool the eye if not the fingertips. Genuine Guinness brewed in Marsport, and the best Italian food Sam’s mama knew how to make while the family bunked in the construction crew dorms in Olympia.

People get nostalgic for olden days they’re generations too young to remember. Chances are, if you really remember the past, you wouldn’t be sentimental. Mars’s first decades were crud, but memory wears rose-tinted glasses, thick as beer bottles. Luckily, my family’s assignment came years after the civilization of the northern hemisphere. Happily, we missed the tough times of living in bunkers, working in armor, wearing rad counters like jewelry. Adolescence was a tough enough ride without the fun and games of the ‘pioneer years.’

I think of The Arcadians as Paddy Joe’s, but I’m sure it ought to be called The Belter’s Return. So many of our locals and regulars have dribbled back from the mines, veterans of the asteroid belt, richer or poorer, like veterans of the Klondike and Yukon.

If you were assigned to Mars as a kid (maybe kicking and screaming, part of a privileged family, leaving behind everything) and Earthy offers zilch to go back to ... where can you turn your eyes but up, out? Few folks who head for the minefields in the belt to ‘make their fortune’ succeed. Some survive by sheer luck; a few pay handsomely for ambition, and land in places like the charming community of Arcadia, in the Redsands, freight-drop code M47 A09.

There’s worse places to live. I’ve seen a few. Arcadia’s all right. Marsport is an hour flight north, the capital, Olympia, ninety minutes in a more easterly direction. We’re right under the air traffic lanes, so we get plenty of passing trade. Arcadia’s a thriving little community with more than a hundred homesteads, according to the last census. The steaders are good people. I’d say salt of the Earth, if this were Earth --

But it’s Mars. It’s different. And we like it the way it is. We’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it free, open ... ours. If the crap on NewsNet is anything to go by, we might have to do just that. Politics never changes, no matter where you find yourself. If there’s any such thing as a universal constant, it’s this: politicians are at least two rungs lower on the evolutionary ladder than the amoeba.

And on that note, I must go start the clam chowder and make a vat of mango punch. A private party is coming in for an anniversary bash tonight. The house'll be hopping by seven, enough noise out of the sound system to shake the green plastic shamrock right off the plastic walnut ceiling beams.

Yet sometimes it all comes together, and the reasons for being in the Redsands are the best. Nothing beats being in the right place at the right time, when you can change the life of another human soul ― and in this part of Mars, the small pleasure of being the guardian angel comes around all too frequently. Anyone who lives here has some stories to tell!

Father O'Neill's Confession

 

First published in Terra! Tara! Terror!

“Bless me, Father, for … I might’ve sinned.” Hugh O’Neill spoke hesitantly into the confessional’s claustrophobic dimness. “Though -- to be honest, in the eyes of God, I’ve half an idea I might not’ve.”

Beyond the grille, the indistinct form of old Father Brian Flynn set chin to palm and huffed a sigh. The ritual of the confessional was all but pointless, a small rite they acted out. Flynn had known Hugh as the curate of St. Joseph’s, in Stradarvan, for all fifteen years of his service. Hugh was due to replace the venerable Matthew Walsh as parish priest, just as Flynn’s own curate would assume his shoes, when retirement beckoned.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Flynn said acerbically. “You’d best regale me. What did you do -- or not do?”

For painful moments Hugh waffled. “It’s a long story.”

“We’ve plenty of time. How far back d’you want to begin?”

“Twenty years,” Hugh admitted gloomily.

“You’ve left a sin unconfessed for twenty years?” Flynn was appalled.

Hugh bridled. “It wasn’t a sin, twenty years back!”

“What wasn’t?” Flynn asked, shrewd now.

“The whiskey.” It was Hugh’s turn to sigh. “Truth is, I got a taste for it.”

“Well, a drop of malt never hurt,” Flynn began.

“I did me liver in, Brian,” Hugh corrected. Flynn fell silent. “Saw a doctor here, and he sent me to hospital in Waterford -- they said I’d six months left. Liver like a lace curtain, apparently.”

Flynn tutted. “And you, just forty years old!”

“Aye, Brian. I know,” Hugh said dolefully.

“And it’s drinking yourself into an early grave you want absolution for, I suppose!”

Hugh gave a start of surprise. “Uh, not quite. I’m cured.”

Flynn drew a deep, calming breath. “You just said you’d six months to live.”

“Aye, but that was before.”

“Before what?”

Now the curate of St. Joseph’s chose his words with care. Only the right ones would do, to describe a scene he fancied lay well beyond his old friend’s imagination.

It began with an empty, hollow feeling as he rode the train home from Waterford, a death sentence hanging around his neck as surely as a noose. As a priest, he might have anticipated with pleasure, if not joy, the end of this life, his passage into Eternity --

But as Flynn said, he was just forty. Half his life should still be ahead of him, years in which he’d imagined himself priest of his own parish, watching children grow up, whom he’d christened; watching their children grow. Time to enjoy simple things: pipe smoke in the evening, thoroughbreds training in the morning mist -- perhaps a winning sweepstakes’ ticket that built his orphanage, repaired the convent roof. These were life’s good things, which made any man, and a priest more than most, feel comfortable with his soul.

The diagnosis burned everything to ash, blew it away on the breeze. Hugh felt only emptiness as he walked the narrow, twilight streets back to St. Joseph’s. Lamplighters were abroad; children shrieked with fun on their way home; a dozen fiddlers competed in as many pubs as the sea wind brought in a dank fog.

He prayed as only a priest knew how. Prayed night and day for a month -- felt the rot growing inside until his next hospital appointment. Hope bloomed in the face of common sense and was dashed again, replaced by the familiar void as he boarded the westbound train.

Emptiness had a way of gnawing at a man’s mind and spirit, just as rats gnaw on bones. The mile walk from station to church was a marathon for a sick man. Before he covered half of it, Hugh’s decision became easy.

He left the main road, took a path winding back into the woods. A few carts rattled toward town, horseshoes rang on cobbles, but dense trees soon blanketed any sound of civilization. Early May had grown mild. A few tatters of late blossom persisted, but most trees wore full leaf. A carriage-lamp moon hung in the east, riding the low hills.

He knew where she lived.

At least once a week, parishioners crept to confession with whispers about coming here, needing -- a cure for me rheumatics. A daughter for a change, after four sons. Bring me husband home safe, he’s a week overdue at sea. Get me da off the drink before --

Hugh shut out the raucous cacophony of his thoughts. Before courage failed him, he rapped on the door.

She went by the name of Mother Lil, and he’d always wondered if this were short for Lily -- a symbol of purity -- or Lilith, which he recalled from his studies was Hebrew for serpent. Either way, his options had expired.

The door cracked and a middle-aged face peered out suspiciously. Just a woman: middle-height, middle-weight, middling attractive, in a dark blue dress and pale blue shawl, thick silver hair brushed extravagantly over both shoulders. Not quite what one expected of a lady in this one’s line of work.

Mother Lil rolled her green eyes to the heavens. “You’re here to exorcise me, are you? Where’s your bell, book and candle?”

He plucked off his cap, fingered it awkwardly. “Actually, I came to beg a favor.”

She studied him rudely before letting him in. He pulled a chair to the table, took a cup of tea, and the story spilled out. Whiskey, diagnosis, imminent departure --

“I’ve no wish to depart just yet,” he finished lamely.

“Even if God’s laid judgment on you?” she demanded.

“I laid judgment on meself,” he said wretchedly. “He didn’t make me drink a bottle a day for twenty years!”

“No, but his lordship let you. And now you want a cure.” She shook her head over him. “Shame on you -- and you, a priest!”

“It doesn’t work for priests?” Hugh gulped.

But Lil only shrugged. “’Tis not for me to say … Father.”

Heat colored his cheeks. “Call me Hugh. Best forget the priest part, at least while I’m here.” He wound his scarf tighter, to hide the dog collar. “Look, can you help or not? People confess how they come here for cures. Rheumatics, a bad tooth, whooping cough --”

“And livers rotted with drink,” Lil added disapprovingly.

She opened a cupboard, fetched a lamp. Kerosene prickled his nostrils as the wick caught alight with a taper from the hearth. She chose a stout walking stick and cape from the rack by the door, and waved him out.

“You’ve come at a good time, at least. A day short of the full moon -- of May, though February would’ve been best, especially if the moon were waxing on the first of the month. Not that you’d care to know any of this.”

The door slammed but she didn’t bother to lock up. She made a left-hand gesture; a black cat sidled from the shadows, flopped across the step between potted rosemary and sage. Hugh wisely kept his lips sealed as she led him into the woods.

She didn’t need a lamp -- he saw at once, the path was so well trodden, he could have found his own way, if he’d known where to begin. It wound between brambles, hazel and wild cherry, seeming to run in spirals, long enough for him to grow winded, cut by the familiar pain that brought him here in the first place.

At last Lil stopped by a tumble of masonry. Her lamp clattered down on a weather-worn brick. Hugh made out a rough circle, deeply pitted in the center, everything overgrown by moss. A well? Heart quickening, he took a step back. Lil angled an odd glance at him, face a mass of weird shadows.

“You bade me bring you. What, second thoughts?”

“Yes -- no. I …” He swallowed. “What is this place?”

“A holy well, belonging to -- shall we call her Saint Bridget?” She snaked two fingers into her handbag, plucked out a coin, a polished stone, a feather, the stub of a candle, a little silver cup with a broken handle.

She filled the cup from the well, lit the candle from her lamp. The feather fluttered in the night air and the moonstone glimmered with a light of its own. Water, fire, air, earth. A smell of moss and mushrooms, fallen leaves and fog, rose from the well. Lil tossed in the coin, waited a moment, then clapped her hands, three times three: a summoning sound, sharp on the clammy air.

She knew the old old language, beyond anything Hugh knew of Gaelic or Erse. She spoke it fluently, and though he listened hard he picked out only a few words.

Leigheas. Impigh. Duraman. Fuisce. Sagart. Slanu. And Brigid -- cure, beg, idiot, whiskey, priest, healing … Brigid.

He shivered. Shall we call her Saint --

Brigid, the exalted one, Dagda’s daughter, wife of Bres, mother of Ruadan.

Falling silent, the woman turned back. Moonlight whitened her features. “Will you greet the spirit who heals? Or will you be faithful, return to hospital, lie in their bed and let God -- and the whiskey -- take you? D’you want forty more years to do good work, make amends before your proper time comes?”

His chest squeezed. “Must I make a deal with the devil?”

She assumed a pained look. “Who would that be, Mister O’Neill? Don’t you know, there’s no such thing in the Craft? If there were, we’d have no truck with it! Here’s a spirit who heals. But you must believe, and you don’t, do you? Because you can’t see it.” She sneered. “You can’t see angels, cherubs, demons -- or God! -- either, but you believe in ’em!”

“Well, yes, but …” He stopped, aware of the rents in his argument. Just then, plausible patches eluded him.

Lil came closer, peering in the moonlight. “I like you, Mister O’Neill, so I’ll do you a favor. Only cuz I like you, mind.” She snapped her fingers before his eyes, muttered something guttural. The sound seemed to reach inside his skull, spin his brain between his ears.

He blinked and looked again. The moonlight was easily thrice as bright, the woodland less tangled, shadows not at all sinister. And creatures blinked back at him, some tiny enough to be voles, others the size of shire horses. Sprites cavorted, three sylphs sprawled along a bough with a blazing salamander. Two undines lazed around the well. A dozen pixies paused in a game of tag with a pair of hobs -- more entities than Hugh recognized, and all astonished to realize he saw them.

Snap. Lil’s fingers darted before his eyes once more, and they vanished. “The world invisible. Isn’t it grand? Now, Mister O’Neill, I’ll ask once more. Will you greet a healing spirit? ’Tis your book, not mine, that says God created everything in heaven and earth -- and the important word there is everything. All the things you can see … and all the things you can’t.”

He gulped air into parched lungs. “Tell me what to do.”

Memory shattered to glass-shard fragments as Father Flynn’s voice intruded on the vast silence which had settled over his confessional. “Did you go back to that hospital?”

“Aye, Brian.” Hugh studied his friend through the mesh, thinking again how odd it was, to feign being strangers in the booth, when every priest knew every parishioner by their voices.

“You’re cured,” Flynn observed.

“They call it a miracle, on account of me being a priest -- the power of prayer.”

“Who’s to say it isn’t?” Flynn hazarded shrewdly.

“You didn’t see the things I saw.” Hugh had only to close his eyes now, and he saw them all again. “The world invisible is bigger than you think.”

“Is it, now?” Flynn mused, deliberately inscrutable. “Well, the woman told you some truths. If God created everything, it stands to reason, doesn’t it, he created the faer folk too. Shocked, Hugh? Tush … you’ll be telling me next you’ve never heard the banshee.”

Hugh didn’t know what he’d expected, but this was not it. “And you’ll be telling me next, God created the Sidhe, and women like Lil are …”

“Are what?” Flynn snorted. “What is it you want absolution for? You defied your own good sense and rotted your liver, then thumbed your nose at God and asked a witch for a cure, when medicine knows no such thing. Did you sin? A matter of perspective, isn’t it?” He rose to his feet. “Are you cured?”

“Clean bill of health,” Hugh affirmed.

“Then …” Brian Flynn paused. “Go’n pray awhile, you’ll feel the better for it. Send the woman a big bunch of flowers -- on the quiet, mind. Spend your future doing good work, it’s the best absolution I know.” He swung open the door. “Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes, Father?”

“Stay the hell away from the whiskey!” Flynn banged the door and marched away in search of tea, which as always served at four o’clock.

Poem: A Trick of the Light

 

One dawn I went a-walking
Through springtime woods, so fair;
My tired eyes roved, a-seeking
For rest and peace -- and there,
Upon a stone 'twixt flowers
There sat a figure, small...
I can't have seen what I just saw!
Didn't glimpse her there at all!

My weary soul was needing
A charge of hope, or zest;
What magicks had been leading
Me to that glade? The best
Was yet to come -- she saw me,
And for one second smiled
'Fore fading into sunbeams
And leaving me beguiled...

I didn't see what I just saw --
A trick of dancing light,
And tired eyes, and weary soul...
I was mistaken. Right?!

The Lore of Wood and Wild: Rabbit

Now, Rabbit is always the first awake in the forest -- about the time Fox and Owl are going to bed. Never forget that Fox and Owl are the woodland's warriors, while Rabbit ... ah, Rabbit is the forest's sentinel. Although she's usually too timid to fight off your enemies, she's worth ten of the rest because, with her big, keen eyes she sees danger coming from afar, and her white-tailed warning summons the warriors. This is the lore of Wood and Wilds.

Poem: La Vie en Rose (A Rose's Life)

Each summer has a rose that’s last to bud,
When all the rest have long since bloomed and died;
And, quite alone, it turns toward the sun
While snow is drifting down the bleak hillside.
All its kin were sooner in their falling,
But this, the last, blooms on for long and long,
Till every bird has passed into the south
And, soft, one hears the threads of winter’s song --

The sad lament of those who do recall
That once their kind danced, vibrant in the sun;
And now the last, with courage, braves the wind
That strips each petal till the dance is done.
Every season brings this final flower,
The last of all its kind, it blooms too long –
Yet, while winter’s cloak will hush the valley,
Its petals falling, still it hears its song:

Harmonies recall each bloom which flourished.
Each note becomes a memory to keep
Until the music fades to perfect silence…
The last rose lapses gently into sleep.
Does it dream? Springtime is no more distant
Than dawn is far from midnight’s dreary worst.
If it dreams, it dreams of life’s beginning.
Where one was last, another will be first.

First Flight

“Come down from there at once, young man!” Abelard van Heugen bellowed at the dragonling, but as usual, Trouble paid no attention. “Worse than the cats,” the mage grumbled -- though in fact nothing could be worse than Shadow and Ginger.

Trouble had been growing into his wings for some months now, and it could only ever be a matter of time before he discovered his ability to fly. Abelard always believed he would, while Tomas and Morgan never wasted an opportunity to remind him, and warn. Most dragons grew into their wings, though not all; a few grew into dragonets, flightless and smokeless, and these could be spoiled like big cats, for their exotic beauty. For a long time, Abelard had hoped Trouble would grow into a dragonet, but there had always been something about him -- perhaps his eyes? -- that warned he'd grow big, find his wings, and a lot more.

He sighed. As Tomas said too often, once Trouble found his flying skills, his days of living in this house would be short. Soon after he was off and flying, they could expect to see the first puffs of smoke from his nostrils. Soon, Abelard thought, he must go home to a place he’d never been -- the inevitable journey into the distant, dangerous west, across the mountains, where the big dragons lived, and where magic still worked the way it should.

Abelard muttered several very ancient curses, watching Trouble fly laps of the laboratory and miss the chandelier by a hand's breadth. The journey couldn’t be far in the future, though Trouble didn’t know it; or they’d be standing by with a fire extinguisher, to save the curtains and sofa.

“Young man,” he called a second time, louder, “come down from there this minute!”

Poem: Ginger in the Moonlight

When all the house is quiet

And everyone's abed,
With all the dishes put away
And all the goodnights said --
When all the doors are locked up
And moonlight shines so bright,
That's the time when cats make magic...
But it only works at night!

The Lore of Wood and Wild: Squirrel

On silent, catlike paws autumn comes stealing through the forest, bringing gold and copper to the deep glens and silver mist to the valley, crackling frost to the dawn and a hush of profound peace to the evening. Squirrel smells the coming of autumn long before it arrives; she is the forest's timekeeper, pointing the way to winter even on warm afternoons, where mossy shadows drowse and midges dance. Watch out for Squirrel and be vigilant, for winter cannot be long away, and time is always, always far shorter than we think! This is the Lore of Wood and Wild.

Poem: Simple Magicks

Look again -- and look quite hard,

Where sunbeams glow and raindrops dance:

There's magic in the simplest things,

Wonders we only glimpse by chance.

Not all faeries have gold wings, and

Not all dragons span the sky;

But drowsy daydreams encompass

The simplest magicks, by and by.