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 Festival of Fire ... thinking with my fingertips

 

Art by Jen Downes

It must begin with a magical city … because all unforgettable fantasies begin with magic, and as for the city — New York or Paris or London, places of culture and learning, where the past brushes shoulders with the dawning world of the future, in a time where all is still possible. Steam locomotives chug by on polished rails, and helium airships glide silently overhead … massive brass telescopes gaze into the cosmos, and diving bells explore the depths of the ocean. Tomorrow beckons brightly, while Yesterday looms like a shadow, dreadful with memories of the war, which almost destroyed everything.

But this isn’t any city. This is Lorentia, the very place where the armistice was negotiated in the days of your great-grandfather’s grandfather. The felix — descended from the superior race, older than humankind, older even then the dragonae, and infinitely wiser than both — negotiated the peace and still oversee it. Some places in this world belong to humans, and dragons may not fly there; other places are the realms of dragonae, and humans beware. The two races maintain a healthy distrust of each other, and a grudging respect.

And once a year the three species, humans, dragonae and the felix come together in the city of Lorentia for the Fire Festival, a remembrance of the great dead on both sides, and a celebration of the courage it took to make peace. On this one night, the dragonae come in to Lorentia. They come in peace, to fly and flame, while humans photograph, paint, record, converse … and some lucky ones fly with the massive old dragons who were there in the war years, and who survived.

The Fire Festival is the high point of the year for all, and every child longs to attend. But until they’re ten years old, children are banished. Dragons are vastly old, very large and they remain wild. Their intelligence is keen, their knowledge of the language of men is deep, but they have no interest in civilization. They treasure their wild life, beyond the mountains, and they’re not about to change.

Tomas Gaffney is eight years old, and obsessed with the dragonae. His ancestor fought in the war; the family home is decorated with relics and images … a painting of the airship from which his grandmother Alexandrina abseiled with the iron harpoons, which was the way of the hunting, in the latter days of the war. There are dragonbone antiques, dragonfang scrimshaw, crossed harpoons over the family’s crest on Alexandrina’s warshield…

All of which has filled Tomas’s young head with a desperate need to attend the Festival of Fire … not two years from now, when he’ll be positively ancient. Now, this year! The festival is just three days away, when he hatches a plot with his best friend, Margarette. She has an aunt who lives in Lorentia. Aunt Rosa will let them stay, if they can only get there. Rosa won’t send them away, because she did the same thing when she was a child, and attended the festival when she was eight!

The two hatch plots and pack bags. They’ll meet in the city, where the Ten Dragon Bridge crosses the river, and they’ll make their way to Rosa’s house. It’s all decided. Tomas makes it away from their village in the early twilight, under a full harvest moon … he doesn’t know Margaretta gets caught before she can slip out of the house. Her father grabs her by the scruff of her raincoat and hauls her back in …

Which means Tomas has no one to meet at the bridge, and no idea where Rosa lives. He arrives in the city alone — and lost. He waits for Margaretta for hours, but she doesn’t arrive, and he guesses what happened. Now it’s late, getting really dark. The lanterns are lit, people throng to the fairgrounds and the marketplaces, where the festival will be celebrated. As a child, he’s not supposed to be here, and as an outsider, he has no idea who he can ask for help.

He thinks about heading for home, but it’s too late. It’s so dark now, and the way back leads through woods and wilds that are dangerous at night. Wolves, vagabonds and highwaymen menace the open road as soon as the sun sets. Tomas has no choice but to brave the city till dawn.

He’s hungry, but he has no money, and if he asks the City Guard to help, he’ll be in all kinds of trouble. They’ll lock him up overnight, so he won’t even see the festival, and they’ll send for his father in the morning. Tomas can expect to be grounded for a hundred years, and do twice the study and three times the chores, to make up for this foolishness. Since he’s going to pay the price, he decides to at least see the festival first. But it’s dangerous in the city … and the danger is not just the dragonae.

All his life, Tomas has listened to whispers about “them city folks,” who can’t be trusted. They’ll rob you blind and leave you for dead — so the neighbours say, and Tomas’s father agreed with them. So he’s distrustful of every face that turns toward him, and when someone tries to speak to him ... “Here, you, kid, you shouldn’t be out on your own!” ... he takes to his heels and runs, losing himself in the crush of people headed to the fairgrounds.

He sees the festival from a distance, at last witnessing the terrible magnificence of the immense old dragons and the playful cuteness of the young … but long past midnight it’s cold and beginning to rain. He’s hungry and tired, and feels threatened by every glance.

Starting to panic, he runs into an alley, huddles against the wall and talks to himself, calling himself all kinds of fool for doing this. He never expected an answer, but when he looks up, it’s one of the felix, with beautiful golden eyes and midnight-black fur, soft paws and an even softer voice.

The young cat can guess Tomas’s problem … this happens every year, and sometimes foolish children do get themselves into all kinds of trouble. This cat is called Tyree, and though he doesn’t have to help Tomas, he has nothing better to do tonight, now the dragons have gone up to Mount Garam to the Council of Elders. There’ll be no more fireworks and flying till next festival, but if this human boy needs to find his friend’s aunt, well, let’s see what the felix can do about that.

He takes Tomas to his grandmother, the venerable and beautiful Zalana, who holds court where the lanterns nod in the night wind and the scent of the river rises, strong and salty, up the steep old streets. Zalana first takes Tomas to shelter — a veranda belonging to a café that’s closed now, out of the wind and rain. She petitions the little daughter of a baker across the lane, who tosses a couple of the day’s leftover chocolate muffins out to Tomas, for his supper. Then Tomas takes a nap, while the felix pass the word among their kind … where does a lady called Rosa live?

All Tomas knows is what Margaretta told him: her aunt lives beside one of the marketplaces, where she smells the eel pies baking before dawn, and haggles with the cheesemonger on her own doorstep, as he goes by to his shop, laden with great wheels of red cheese. Tomas eats his supper, and is too tired to worry much before he slips into dreams full of dragons and fabulous cats…

It’s dawn twilight when Tyree wakes him. The felix think they've discovered Rosa’s house: there’s a bakery opposite, a cheesemonger next door, right beside the marketplace where the best eels are sold, and the name painted on the letterbox is “R.M.I Visconti.” R for Rosa. Is Visconti the last name of Margaretta’s aunt? Tomas doesn’t know, but he follows Tyree across the city … over the bridge, through alleyways and tiny streets, where the two are swept up in adventures, with daring escapes

They dodge a big and bad-tempered constable from the City Guard, and Tomas is certain he’s become a desperate fugitive from the law. They flee from an innkeeper who thinks they’re up to no good, and about to steal the milk bottles off her doorstep. And, skidding around a corner to escape a laundryman carrying a huge wicker hamper — he looks exactly like a pirate, out kidnap a young boy and a young felix and hold them to ransom — they run face-first into a dragonling called Shimui.  

Shimui is still growing into her wings, and is waiting for her mother to give her a ride home beyond the mountains. While they get their breath back, Tomas and Tyree listen to the dragonling’s stories of her home. Her mother is the biggest of the dragons, Shimandara, whom Tomas saw at the fairground the night before. Shimandara thrilled the crowd with displays like fireworks, before flying off to the roost atop Mount Garam, where she and the dragonae elders sat in council with the human elders till dawn.

Both Tomas and Tyree would dearly love to cross the mountains and see the homeland of the dragonae, but it’s still forbidden. Perhaps things might change in the future, if the felix can negotiate a festival in which humans travel north to the Land of Fire, just as the dragonae come to Lorentia for this festival. They’ve been trying to strike a deal, and Tyree hopes it will happen ... but Shimandara’s people are still wary. The biggest, oldest dragons still remember the airships, the hunters, the harpoons. The peace between humans and dragonae is still fragile.

Shimui hears her people calling, and flaps off to join them. Tomas watches wistfully as the young dragon vanishes into the clouds on the shoulder of Mount Garam. Hurrying on, he and Tyree soon find themselves at Rosa’s backdoor … it creaks open … but who should be standing there but Tomas’s father.

In fact, Margaretta told him everything, and Tomas’s dad knew they’d intended to make for Rosa’s house. This would be Tomas’s plan, if only he knew where the lady lived! Tomas’s father is Sebastian Gaffney. He's just as proud of the family heritage as Tomas is, just as enchanted by dragons, and very understanding.

Which is not to say Tomas won’t have to do the study and the chores to make up for this foolishness. He knows now, the city is no place for children to be running around alone, especially at “fire time,” when all manner of rogues come in to “do business” along the river. Sebastian spent the whole night searching for Tomas, but the first hint of him came from a felix called Ninoushka, who’d heard the story of a lost boy from another felix, and another, back along all the alleyways to Grandmother Zalana’s court.

Aunt Rosa just cackles in amusement, remembering when she did this herself. A lot of children do! And after breakfast, Tomas and his father set off for the village, in the family’s pony cart. Tyree rides up on the pony’s shoulder to the edge of the city and then turns for home, while Tomas shouts an invitation to come to the village and visit.

Tired, relieved, not unhappy and resigned to the extra lessons and chores, Tomas leans over the back of the art, watching the city disappear behind, and breathing in the strange, sharp smell on the morning air that to him will always mean dragons. 

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?!

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!

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.

Poem: Magick Hour

 

At magick hour the mist comes creeping 

While the world is silent, sleeping… 

Mice and voles, and cunning rats, 

Foxes, owls and stalking cats 

Know the hour; they know it well, 

Its ancient song, its timeless spell: 

While the woods are clear and cold, 

When the night has grown so old 

That dawn is not so far away –  

No time to waste before the day! – 

Then, while starlight trumps the sun,

By moonlight are the magicks done! 

Magicks small and magicks great: 

Spells and charms to shape our fate – 

Heal the world, soothe aching souls, 

Ease the sick, achieve our goals.

 Enchantments white, enchantments wise… 

At magick hour the powers rise! 

No time to tarry ’fore the dawn: 

It is the hour when dreams are born! 

 At magick hour the mist comes creeping 

While the world is silent, sleeping, 

But those who know will seldom tell 

The secret of the night’s deep spell.