*I’m frankly between flabbergasted at this type of fan letter and somewhat tired of having people tell me they would pay for my grocery list.  I think they’re insane and quite mistake the matter.  My grocery list is like every one else’s grocery list, but as an experiment, here it is.”

1 tube Crest cinnamon

1 bottle shampoo

Burt’s bees soap, one bar

Scale polish, one can

Furniture polish, lemon one bottle

One bottle bleach

A corn bristle broom with aerodynamic properties

One container laundry pellets

Ironing starch

2 cans leather polish

40 cans iams cat food – no poultry flavors

50 lb container dragon chow

Two heads of lettuce

One chicken

2 lbs stew beef

3 lbs of onions

5 lbs carrots

2 lbs zucchini

3 lbs frozen spinach

3 pounds cheddar cheese

2 dozen eggs

1 pint sour cream

1 container of quick lime

Outdoor windex 2 bottles

Weather stripping for back door

20 cans Nine lives cat food (for Greebo)

Now, tell me – what is so fascinating about that?

The truth is, some days you can do non fiction but fiction just won’t come, some days it feels like you’re pushing every single word uphill to do non fiction, while fiction flows fine.  I don’t know why that is.  Today’s post is the result of my going “What on Earth can I write about?”  And my husband saying “They said they would pay you for your grocery list.  Try them.”

I don’t of course expect any of you to pay for it, but I expect the analysis of the grocery list will make for very fun comments.  (Not that I know why.  It’s a perfectly normal list.)  In any case, in the immortal words of a former president, “Have at it.”

I’ll be in the corner, working on Through Fire.

*This is the new free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  This is pre-first-draft, as it comes out.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon be taken down (once edited) and put for sale on Amazon (It’s now done and with editor and we’re getting the cover done.  My wretched health this year delayed everything.  (Meanwhile, if you donate $6 or more, I’ll get you a copy of Rogue Magic, once finished and edited, in your favored ebook format when it’s done.  Of course, if you’re already subscribing to the blog at a level at which you get whichever books come out that year, you don’t need to worry. )*

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Belle Dame Sans Merci

The Right Honorable Jonathan Blythe, the Earl of Savage

 

The lovely Ginevra, sitting incongruously amidst a welter of pillows, in a consciously prim little-girl position, widened her quite distractingly silvery gray eyes at me, and said in that pat tone that she had set a blight on my world to save fairyland.

It wouldn’t fadge.  I let the rasper fly over my head, and smiled at her, my best unnerving smile, the one I used to grace dad with when I was trying to hide something from him, and he had no idea what – besides knowing it was, as he would put it “monstrous.”

“How fascinating,” I told her, my voice even.

The lovely grey eyes widened again, this time with surprise.  “What?” she said.  “What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing.  Only I didn’t know someone so magical and so lovely could be so foolish.”

There was a beat of confusion, and I’d swear it was genuine.  “I’m not—“ she said, then sighed.  “But it’s true.”

“You had to set a blight on the Earth of men to save… fairyland?  And what was fairyland in danger of?”

She squinted her eyes at me.  “You stupid man,” she said, with a force that showed that she meant this at least.  “Don’t you understand anything?  All of those lies that floated for years, about fairyland being a parasite upon the worlds are true of the myth world.  My guess is they got confused because some types of creatures – centaurs and mermaids, for instance – live in both.  But in the end, milord, myth is a parasite.  It needs human belief and human emotions to keep going.  And it is a wholly separated world supported only by the world of humans.  Except what your father did—” She paused.  “Your father and the dragon thought they were so clever, setting spells to confuse the succession here, the oldest of all worlds, and then getting this world and fairyland enmeshed.  They thought of course that your Earth would acquire much magic from fairyland, an alliance of sorts.  They didn’t realize that magical worlds are not like the nations of this world and able to ally or break alliance.  It’s not a political thing.  It’s a magical thing.

“When their spell broke, the worlds became entangled, and fairyland bled onto your world.  And then my world saw it, and spilled demons onto fairyland.  The king was mad and unable to defend it.  I had to… I had to call their attention elsewhere, so that they would feed on another world, not fairyland.  You don’t understand, nor does the All-Father either, that if they suck fairyland dry they’ll kill all the other worlds.  My–  The All Father said that he would keep it to a minimum.

“But just the initial infusion of magic from fairyland woke the old ones.  The old, old ones.  The unreasoning ones.  They will feed without limit.  There is nothing we can do to that.  So I had to attach the magic elsewhere.  And I’d grown up here.”

I rubbed my hand from top to bottom across my face and caught myself up half way through the gesture.  I was trying to remove a magical veil, but damnme I had no idea that the veil was there.  All I knew is that none of this could be true, even if it had the ring of truth.

Careful now, Jonahtan, I told myself.  Whatever she is, you know she is a siren, and her type of magic is likely to be one that you can neither detect nor fight.

But she had said that I had fought it without trying before.  Yes, and likely that’s a lie too. I felt very impatient, suddenly, and it occurred to me that it was likely this was how normal people felt about me, never sure if they had me by the head or by the heels.  My.  I must be a thoroughly ramshackle fellow.  No wonder so many people hated me so heartily.

She was looking at me as though trying to get a reaction, and it occurred to me the last words she said, and I said before I thought, “Well, that I understand.  Having grown up here, also, I have often wished to destroy it.  But none of this makes any sense, milady.  If you think I’m going to believe that somehow what you describe caused Gabriel Penn to wish to blow his brother and his brother’s office up to kingdom come, you’re fair and far out.  And I’d wager good money what received me on that side was Gabriel.”  I warmed to my theme as I spoke.  “You see, I have known Gabriel since we were boys, and I know his expressions, his gestures, the tone of his voice.  There is nothing, nothing that could imitate him that perfectly.”

She made a sound deep in her throat.  It might have been laughter or a sob.  “Of course it was Gabriel,” She said.  “But it wasn’t Night Arrow the king of fairyland.  You don’t understand.”

“Clearly,” I said.  “I must be very dumb. How disheartening this all is.  I must be as hen-brained as mama.  And I always used to think myself needle witted.”

She shook her head.  The sound came again, half sob and half laugh.  “I wish you were.  It would be easier to explain this to you.  Instead you keep thinking you know the rules.  Son of Adam, you don’t.”

“I’ll have you know my Papa’s name wasn’t Adam.”  It was a weak gest and it got not even a courtesy laugh.  She glared.

“You don’t understand anything.  Our people don’t play by the rules of fairyland.  In a way we could call us the anti-fairyland, only that our world isn’t too organized and strict.  It’s more chaotic than fairyland, more dependent on belief and ideas.”  She frowned at me.  “Part of the reason fairyland is at danger, oh foolish one, is that the king isn’t whole.”

“I’ve seen him.  He looks whole to me.”

She shook her head.  “Inside.  It is a horrible thing for a land to be ruled by someone who hates it.  It is far worse for a magical kingdom to fall to that.  Only fairyland can’t, because the king is the land.  Except this king hates fairyland and that portion of himself that rules it.  And he’s split himself neatly in two.”

“You’re telling me Gabriel Penn has become two people?”

“If it were that easy,” she said.  “Then we could send the mortal Gabriel back to Earth, and Night Arrow could rule fairyland.  He’s supposed to, you know.  It is his destiny.  In Fairyland, you can’t fight destiny.”

“None of this,” I told her.  “Makes any sense.”

“It wouldn’t,” she said.  “We are older and deeper than sense and so is fairyland.  Look, Night Arrow wants to save fairyland.  And Gabriel Penn wants to destroy it.  Even if it would take himself with it.  Perhaps particularly if it would take himself with it.  His mind does not do well – it is to human for the magical confines the … the inhuman aspects of fairyland.”

“Again, I say, if you think that Gabriel in any circumstance would be willing to kill his brother to destroy fairyland–  And why should he, since his brother is on Earth?”

“Because he knows Seraphim would find that I’d got the Mythworld to attach here, instead of to Fairyland.  And he knows – or suspects – that Seraphim could fix it.  And he can’t allow that.  I don’t know if he realized it would kill his brother – a magical bomb is different, and I don’t think he thought through the logistics of exploding buildings and masonry.  I think he’s desperate enough he just thought of the ah—non physical effects of a magic bomb, which don’t kill anyone.”

“What do they do then?”

“They render you deaf and mute to magic for a year or so. Time enough for Penn to consign Fairyland to the maw of Mythworld and kill it and himself.”

“But … but Seraphim would be trying to solve the blight on this world,” I said.  “Once he figured out that it was set here.”

“Oh no,” she said, and her voice sounded horrified at my stupidity.  “Oh, no.  You don’t rightly perceive it at all.  Once the Witchfinder figured out that Fairyland would be eaten if the mythworld were detached from this world, then he would try to find a way to save that too.  He knows whence magic comes.”

My head was reeling.  “But then,” I said.  “Why didn’t you find it?”

“Because I don’t think there is a way.  The king of fairy might think there is, but there isn’t.  Better to let the mythworld devour your world, and then for both to wither out of contact with the other worlds, than for it to devour fairyland, and unspool the other worlds with it.”

Her face grew all hard lines, her eyes stern.  “We must sacrifice your world and do it quickly.  We must let mythworld devour all that—Well, fortunately neither you nor I love anything in this world, do we? – because we must let mythworld eat this world.  To save fairyland.  Only we have the king of fairy and… and the All Father working against us.”  Her face broke down and she was suddenly all little girl again.  She sniffled, and tears shone in her eyes.  “And I don’t know how to do it.”

 

 

There is a scene in one of Giovanni Guareschi’s books (I think The Little World Of Don Camillo) in which the communists set up a rally in front of the church complete with amplifiers.  Then there is a big wig from the city who comes to give the big rally speech and it’s all about the evils of capitalism, the imperialism of America and clerical reactionaries who exploit the people and other such chestnuts.

In the book, Don Camillo paces up and down, each sentence making him feel like he has a live cat in his stomach (I understand Don Camillo at a gut level, you could say.)  And then he loses it and remembers that the bell tower is constructed in three (four?) levels and that at each level the bell puller can pull the ladder up into the next level.  Which means, when he’s at the top there’s no way to get at him.

So Don Camillo goes to the top of the tower, and starts ringing the bell at/over the most offensive passages.  (I can imagine that as Americans you’re all recoiling instinctively at this, because the idea of freedom of speech is so strong, but let it rest that in the context of the book this is a battle in a war between communists and “righties” – which in the post war era meant “sides with America” – for the hearts and minds of the people, and that the communists had violated the rules of the game by putting the amplifiers in front of the church.)

The communists rapidly come to the conclusion there’s no way to get at him, but since the bells only peal on the most outrageous pieces of cant, about American imperialism, retrograde clericalism and the like, the speaker quickly learns he has to moderate what he says – and, to paraphrase the story “ends the speech on a pathetic and patriotic note that the bells wouldn’t deign contest.”

(I later repeated this incident – sort of – by getting caught in the middle of a communist rally and singing patriotic songs at the top of my lungs whenever they went over the acceptable partisan bullsh*t.  This while I was on the phone with Dan, who still married me, despite it.  [I was in a phone booth the rally formed around.]  Only I didn’t have a bell tower, but that was all right, because I had the weighted weaponized umbrella.  [ You only think I was joking.  Mom had it built for me.])

Most of us don’t have a bell tower – or an umbrella – not even metaphorically.  I keep coming up again and again to the thought that we should have started talking back in the eighties, instead of letting friends, colleagues and people in public life construct this myth that if only Carter had had a second term, we would be living in paradise.  We should not have gone along with their myth that Reagan’s cutting (a bare pruning) of government was iniquitous.

And we should never, ever, have let them get off easy over communism and the horror that communism really was.  We should have pointed again and again, when they tried to weasel that “but it’s not real communism” that “real communism can’t exist with real humans.”

We should have pealed our bells so loudly that they couldn’t tell themselves their comforting fairytales and pull their collectivist dreams over their wooly little heads.

We didn’t, partly because we had no blogs, and partly because we had no metaphorical bell tower.  For those of us in creative professions – but even for the ones in tech ones – there was no alternate route, no ladder we could pull up.  They could get us where we lived.  And they would.  Since they confuse morals with politics, they have no qualms about punishing political opinion with professional disgrace and ostracism.

So we couldn’t talk.  And because the media, entertainment and the news, or what the fabulous Ms. Chase calls the media/entertainment/industrial complex all reinforced their delusions and assured them there was real gold and promise in trying again all these old, bankrupt, vile ideas of forcing everyone to live the way the “enlightened” ones at the top decided, we’re now in the position we’re in.

I mean, you hear about echo chambers but for the last fifty years we’ve had an enormous echo-chamber of what is now called “progressive” (progressing rapidly back to the thirties.  The NINETEEN thirties) ideas.

Even for me, talking before I had an alternate route to feed my family fell under unacceptable risk.

And then of course, the question is if by then it was already too late.  As I said this madness, worldwide, started before any of us (or most of us) were born, certainly before any of us were old enough to do anything about it.  It was all “scientific governance” and therefore a small cadre of “geniuses” were supposed to steer us past the rough spots that the common man couldn’t navigate.  It was the spirit of the age, and as inevitable then as it is out of step with reality now.

Mind you, it didn’t work well, even then, but the illusion it could work could be maintained in the era when everything was “mass” – mass transportation (though that never took well in America) and mass manufacturing, and mass marketing, and mass entertainment, and mass—

The likely future of that world was 1984, where things were run tightly from above, not well but inevitably.  Heinlein predicted something like that, too.  See the beginning of the Door Into Summer and how forlorn it was for the character’s father to hold on to individualism.

We didn’t go there.  We went the other way, towards a million different alternatives, towards niche marketing, An Army of Davids, the ability for someone with a bell tower and a ladder to make a lot of noise indeed.

Because the last time I posted about something touching on this, one of you got the idea I was saying mass manufacturing of heavy industry stuff shall go away soon, I would clarify that’s not what I meant.  (I’m not saying that it will be with us forever, either.  I never cut short human invention.  But I think that for the remainder of the lives of everyone who is alive today there will remain some mass manufacturing and some heavy manufacturing.)  What I mean is that each age has a “prototypical” way of doing things.  In Elizabethan England, for instance, the nascent industry was cottage industry, labor intensive, and most people still worked mostly at growing food, because their methods of cultivation required THAT much work.

In say the forties and fifties, our factories required – still – a lot of human labor and human supervision.  To create the goods needed for civilized life, you need to make them all in one pattern, and as many as possible for economies of cost, and the making of them involved a lot of people in work that was done for a few, massive employers.

Now we’re at the beginning of that trend going the other way: towards distributed employers, and small-scale and customized goods for the people, all of it taking less human labor to produce.  The trend is maybe forty years young, so very young indeed in sociological terms, where things change very slowly, if they ever change at all.

So maybe my dream that we should have started talking back back in the eighties is just that.  Maybe it was impossible.

But the panic and lashing out we see on the other side now, comes from just a few towers, spread throughout the landscape and ringing in tiny voices over their speakers and amplifiers.

So, two things:

First, never think that we are defeated.  Yeah, they finally captured all the high ground, and they have all the amplifiers, and sometimes it seems our little bells mean nothing, even when we’re ringing the pure truth.  But just by ringing, by being the dissenting voice, we’re causing a reaction and we might in time even – who knows—cause moderation and common sense in those amplified speakers.  Don’t lose heart.  Don’t let that ladder you pulled up behind you make you believe you’re in a world of your own, and that nothing you do affects anything out there.  It’s very early, and they’re still angry and trying to find a way to silence the bells.  Once they realize that’s impossible, that’s when sanity can be expected. Will it be in our time?  I don’t know.  Shut up and keep ringing.

Two: My friend Bill Reader reminded me that October is coming out month, though as he put it “I don’t think they meant it for conservatives.”

I’m not in your position.  I don’t know how secure your tower is, or if you can pull the ladder up after yourself.  I’m not advising anyone to do anything that will cost them family support or employment, or the material things they need to survive.  But I’m asking you to take a step back and access where you are, because things are changing very fast.  And if you come to the conclusion that you can come out, do so.  As someone who did – it makes you far less conflicted.  There’s something soul-corroding about pretending – even through silence – to be something you’re not.  My grandmother used to say “Quem cala consente” which for those less fluent in Portuguese means “Those who remain silent are taken to give permission.”

If you can, consider taking up that rope and ringing that bell.  It might seem to you – it often seems to me – the sound gets lost as soon as it echoes, but little by little you start realizing people are listening.  And those in the crowd who do not dare come out yet, are taking comfort from it.  And the other side starts to realize that no, this is not what all thinking people agree on.

And we take a step back from the cliff we’ve been careening towards.

It’s entirely possible that the future really is a boot stepping on a human face forever – but that future is only possible if we let it happen.  You’re not responsible for the past and you can’t change it.  And the present is the direct result of that past.  But the future is what we let it be.

Shut up and ring your bell.

Yesterday while reading Instapundit, I came across a mention that beyond all the rest, it was almost impossible for Obamacare to be useful to the people it claimed to most want to be useful to: the uninsured who live at the margins of society, unable to take advantage of any other mechanism for getting medical treatment.

In fact, a doctor who is an Instapundit reader, wrote in to point out that his uninsured patients lived unorganized, confused lives and were definitely not self motivated.  They were certainly not driven enough to stick with it through a highly complex process involving complicated information.

Look, it’s not just that there are people who… well… look, guys, we’ve been very wealthy (as a country and by historical norms) for very long.  We’ve allowed people to survive and thrive who could not have made it at any other time in history.

And no, I’m not talking stupid people.  Heaven help us.  A lot of them are very smart people.  In fact, a lot of them are “our” people – odds all.

It’s just that they’re not really interested in the stuff of everyday life.  I bet you anything if Leonardo DaVinci were alive today he would be one of those people who aren’t very organized, certainly not organized enough to fill in all the papers in the way the bureaucracy thinks he should.

Look, guys, I’ll be blunt – between the writing, the job, and the other stuff we did, sometimes we had trouble enough doing things like fill in the paperwork for the kids’ field trips.  In fact we had so much trouble with that – those of you who have small kids know what it’s like for the family to go three separate directions at once, and a fourth direction to keep up with school, and then…– that as soon as the kids could be trusted, I taught them to forge my signature, so that when they found themselves stranded and I’d forgotten to sign the form, or they’d forgotten to give it to me, they wouldn’t be the only kids left out of the field trip or the movie, or whatever.  (Yes, I trusted them.  When they were eight or so.)

Our taxes get done every year, but every year it’s a major effort, what with three businesses (soon to be four) flying under the family flagship and income from odd sources (well, comics, you know, and books, and bookkeeping, and…)

And we’re relatively well organized for Odds, and we discipline ourselves to do things.

Most of our kind, let’s face it, is just not very good at this organization thing.  And then there are people who are genuinely not good at paperwork, and people who aren’t that literate, and people who just… well… aren’t all there.  This is before you get to the not-very-smart.

This is not about Obamacare, specifically, though it is part of the problem – the problem is this – we seem to be living in a society where those who would control our movements and our activities expect all of us to be as fond of filling up paperwork as they are of coming up with paperwork to be filled.

We are living in a society where you can get fined – and worse – because you failed to dot every I and cross every T.

Perhaps the greatest failure of imagination on the part of those who would be our betters is their failure to imagine that the rest of us don’t live for rules, regulations or the filing of the appropriate paperwork.

Schools are guilty of this, and I remember when they started penalizing the boys – in elementary – for not remembering to turn in something.  The teacher didn’t remind them, because the six and seven year old boys were supposed to remember.  It was part of their training, the teachers said.

And it’s true.  It was training in fulfilling irrational orders.

The problem – the bureaurcats’ and ours – is that I think they’re headed for massive non-compliance.

We weren’t the only parents who had trouble getting the kids’ paperwork filled for school.  And we aren’t the only small business owners struggling to find time to do our taxes properly.  And we’re not – not even close to – the busiest or most unorganized of our acquaintance.

I know, I know, the multiplication of bureaucracy and penalties for non-compliance is a way to have something on EVERYONE and to enforce the law arbitrarily.  I know this.

The thing is, each level of bureaucracy added – and taking over health care is a massive level – adds more complexity and more difficulty in complying.

I think if we’re not there, we’re nearing the point at which NO ONE can even pretend to comply – certainly not with everything and probably not with most of it.

This is the point at which compliance goes nominal, or not even that.

A lot of the people these laws supposedly would help, simply cannot fulfill the paperwork requirements.  They can’t.  That’s all.

I have an image in mind of a massive bureaucratic machine demanding to be fed more and more information, even as it gets caught in the gears and tears them apart.

I understand the DDR towards the end was collecting more information than anyone could process, and I suspect the same was true for the other Eastern block countries.

It’s a fact little appreciated that to achieve the sort of control in 1984, you’d need one on one bureaucrats to citizens.  And even then, the citizen might not be able to comply.  Not if he has another job beyond bureaucracy.

In the future we’re free because demands of the statists outstrip their ability to enforce them.

Talk about a system collapsing under its own weight.

Maybe, like those detailed cities in the jungle that one day were left behind and abandoned for no reason we can understand, one day the edifice of bureaucracy, having outstripped its ability to function due to ravenous overreach into our lives, will be left standing and empty, while we, free men, simply walk away.

UPDATE: Different post over at Mad Genius Club.  Writing with Found Objects, first installment

So it occurs to me I should give some sort of explanation — you see, I was so happy I could breathe that younger son brought home a different kind of bug, so by last night I was feeling okay but what’s technically known as dead.  Too dead even for book covers.

And lo and behold there was an Asterix near me.

A few notable Huns:

(And I didn’t do a lot of you because I either had no time/energy or because there was no suitable image for you.  You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find free clip art of female fighters.  As for Wayne Blackburn being nice — he is.  Why last month he only ate HALF of a troll’s liver.  AND he used a fork and knife.)

When I was little, I was routinely threatened with being sold to the gypsies.  By my loving parents, of course.  (Trust me, if you had raised me you too would think long and hard about selling me to… well, no.  GIVING me to the first willing taker.  The fact my parents resisted it goes to show you they were loving.)

This was all the more disconcerting since at the time, given the tight borders all over Europe, the only gypsies I knew of were in Enid Blyton’s books (yes, there were Portuguese gypsies, but not in that section of the country so much.) The threat went along with coming home and finding my suitcases packed and being told I was being sent to some boarding school with a name like “Ladies of punishment.”  (Shuddup you.) And no, I don’t know if it worked.  I know it worked on my kids. (World’s worst mother.  Trust me.)

But here’s the thing, for the longest time, it was said that gypsies kidnapped children.  (Though why they would, I have no clue.)

Of course, in the late twentieth century this was derided as racist.  And surely none of us can understand why they WOULD kidnap children.  All we know is that there are stories of children sold for adoption and children trained to rob, and that too is part of the gypsy legend.

Honestly, if 10 years days ago you’d told me that gypsies kidnapped children, I’d say you were nuts.  They are strangers in the lands they live in which makes them suspected and unlike the other minority culture known to stick out, they aren’t usually industrious or productive of much of anything.

So, they are resented.  (And sometimes with reason.  For one, they don’t recognize land property as such and will squat in formerly productive lands, which – NOW – the EU won’t let you evict them from.)

But the last week has rocked my certainty.  A blond little girl not of their stock has been found living in a Roma camp in Greece, and now another one in Ireland.

Does this prove that all Roma kidnap children – or traffic in drugs, or steal –?  No, of course not.  Again, remember we are the ones who do not engage in group guilt or group punishment.

This is not even race — even though “racism” has been invoked against anyone suspecting gypsies of anything – note they are DNA testing the second little girl, because she COULD have been born to those parents (even if not in the hospital they said.)

This is because though (at least this set) originating in Romania (and even there, perhaps being a culture that refused to assimilate into the settling cultures when we became agriculturalists) they have of course mixed with every population in Europe.  They’ve also absorbed wholesale some groups during upheavals.  In Elizabethan England, dispossessed farmers often became “counterfeit gypsies” and then joined real bands, over time.

I confess I’m not an expert on Roma, and I’m not even very well informed.  Part of this is because the information available on Gypsies is wildly contradictory. (And yes, I know they object to the word gypsies.  But if I don’t use it, half of you won’t know what I’m talking about.  At any rate, I’m tired of the war on words.)

One of the best books I’ve read on Roma (Bury Me Standing) traces their origins to a sect from India in pre-historic times.  But the article above seems fairly authoritative (as do other books) that they’re from Romania.

I’ve read books about the Roma that illustrate many of the admirable things about the culture.  Yes, there are some, among them the looking after your own part.  And honor and honoring tradition — both of which can be rendered bad or good in practice.

BUT I’ve also read an awful lot of books idealizing the Roma, too.  Until travel became more common, they were often all that the Europeans had to do the turn of the “Noble Savage” and they did.  They still do in one notable series of regency romances.

And as you can see in that article, the authorities refused to even CONSIDER that the Roma might have taken children.  I can see it.  These policemen went to the same European schools I did.  There is the “this can’t be true, because people are prejudiced in this exact way.”  There’s the “They’re reverting to their grandparents’ type.”

But look, just because people for years suspected the gypsies of stealing children, it doesn’t mean they don’t.

Yes, most of the time, historically, it was probably, again, just “the strangers in our midst.”  And perhaps parents really gave difficult (or simply children they couldn’t support) to the gypsies.  My parents had to have got the joke somewhere.

However, these days, any culture that’s international and peripatetic and extremely internally loyal is at risk for becoming involved in illegal stuff.  When you add in their rejection of such things as the right of property of other populations (not unusual in hunting-gathering cultures.  Or even early herding cultures.  Ancient Celts — and modern Maasai — believe all cattle belongs to their people and therefore no other populations can legally hold it.)… you have to wonder if your blinkered grandparents were right SOMETIMES.

No, this isn’t a call for widespread racism, or even culturalism.  One of the better politicians Portugal has seen had a body guard of gypsies.  (It didn’t save him from his plane being sabotaged, but there it is.)  They owed his family some favor way back.  I very much doubt they were stealing children and dealing drugs and robbing stuff in his entourage.  There have been notable athletes of Roma ancestry who are gallant and honest and whose idiosyncrasies amuse the public (the Portuguese star soccer player whose entire family camped on his lawn for his wedding – in a neighborhood filled with the equivalent of McMansions.) I don’t see any of them turning to drug dealing or child-stealing.

What I’m trying to grope for here is gypsies – and every other cultural and racial minority – are HUMANS.  That means you find every type good and bad among them.  Yes, culture can make them prone to some sins, but I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts some Arab fathers would rather cut off their own hands than honor-kill their teen daughters, and others use the culture/religion as an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.

There is this sickening tendency in political correctness to dehumanize the victims of past prejudice and make them into painted saints.

No?

You try telling anyone in the US that some black person is lazy.  (This btw is a highly localized stereotype.  In Portugal black people are held to be MORE industrious.  Hence, in Portuguese you get “To work like a black” as an expression.  Yes, you do get “to work like a Jew” too.)  You’ll be lucky if you’re only accused of racism and aren’t forced to do the public apology dance.

Yet, undoubtedly some individuals who identify as black or have African features/coloration are lazy.  Black people are made of the same stuff we are.  (In fact, in the US most of them are what is technically known as “Caucasians” genetically speaking.  We’re a very mixed people.)  Some of them will be lazy, just as some of them will be industrious.

And yes – gives her Huns the beady eye – some Latinos and – particularly — Latinas are excitable.  (Get over it, okay?  I have a rolling pin.)

And, apparently, some bands of Roma go seriously to the bad and steal children.  WHY shouldn’t you be able to say that? And why shouldn’t the police investigate those suspicions to begin with?  (Saying they can’t hide a blond child is nonsense.  There is hair dye.)

Isn’t it turning your ancestors prejudices on their head to hold that now, of all people in the world, these people will be exempt of what they were so long accused of?  Isn’t it a form of prejudice, particularly when you attribute to some group the inability to sin?  (Or to be racist, or to be annoying, or to be…)

I mean, I hate to tell you this, but any group over say ten people you care to define contains examples of just about every virtue and every vice humanity has come up with.  Take science fiction writers for instance (no, really, take them.  I don’t want them.  For one they would eat me out of house and home, and that’s not an unmerited stereotype.)  You’ll find people who are decent, kind and well behaved.  And you’ll find the scum of the Earth.  And sometimes, depending on the day, they’re the same people.

Political correctness is in fact a form of prejudice.  It makes a group of humans into “other”.  Just because you’re putting your virtue rather than your sin into the other doesn’t mean you make them any more human or care any more for them.  You’re still treating a whole group of people as a) homogeneous and b) not human.  You’re treating humans as things.

Worse, when you come across the bad apples – and you will.  EVERY group has bad apples – you then either hysterically deny it, or, after a number of them, you turn and decide your ancestors were right after all.

Look, it won’t even take much.  Take the situation above with the children and the Roma camps.  Say that the second little girl also isn’t Roma.  Then have a few more show up.  It won’t take much.  Five or six along the length and breadth of Europe will do it.

The rest of the Roma camps could be as innocent as lambs.  Authorities might even continue to repeat “there is no such thing as gypsies who snatch children.”  In fact, it’s worse if the authorities continue repeating that.

Five or six cases in all of Europe is all it will take for the next time a child disappears somewhere, the rest of the population to go nuts and tear up a gypsy camp and destroy everything and kill the inhabitants.

And then the authorities will talk about prejudice and clamp down harder, which will make things even more explosive.

The mechanism is akin to when you’re a kid and you fall in love with someone for the first time.  If you’re like me, you don’t even know the guy.  He’s just someone you see in the train, or the coffee shop, but you invent a whole set of qualities for him.  In your eyes he can do no wrong, because he’s not a person but a sort of painted saint.

Then you see him do something bad.  It doesn’t take much.  Teasing someone.  Or perhaps acting like an ass, as teen boys do, with his friends.

Because your painted saint image didn’t have any give, didn’t allow for him to be human, it shatters.  You experience this as a personal betrayal, and now you attribute all bad things to him.

Integration from above, combined with a good dose of “noble savagism” to which European/Western culture has been prone since the Romantics (does any other culture in the world do this?) has left our society with entire groups of people treated like painted saints.  Which is as bad as treating them as painted devils.  And makes us vulnerable to the worst kind of racist/culturist outbreak.

Because one image shatters, you won’t go “Oh, they’re human after all.”  No, you’ll flip to the opposite.

And which group – which individual – can live up to complete sainthood?  The image will shatter.  Sooner or later.

Start now to amend your thoughts, because I bet some political correctness has penetrated them.  Impossible not to.  Start thinking and talking of people, even cultural and racial minorities as HUMANS.

No group is composed exclusively of saints.  We shouldn’t allow that dellusion to continue.  Nor should we allow demonization to occur.  We should think of and treat humans as humans, each different and each good or evil or yes.

Will that help?

I don’t know.  Political correctness is a blight brought on by perversion of language and corruption of ideas.  Language and ideas ought to correct it and hopefully save us from flipping into the opposite stereotype and into injustice and insanity.

If it’s not already too late.

 

 

 

Clifford Simak has at least one novel in which his character, being teleported, finds himself in a parallel world, which he, at first, doesn’t realize isn’t his.  This morning I woke up feeling rather the same.

I think I’ve confessed already that I created a future history mostly because I was terrified of not doing this science fiction thing right.  I mean, Heinlein had a future history and I was fairly sure that Heinlein had done Science Fiction as it was meant to be done.  All those other people since… well, some of them were all right, but..

But I really wasn’t sure they were as right as Heinlein, which meant, of course, I was going to follow his route.

This was shoved along by the fact that my writers’ group decided – around the time I really started trying to do short stories (this is probably one of those things I wouldn’t do if I knew what was coming down the pike.  I’d just have gone with novels, full strength ahead and d*mn the rejections) – that we were now going to do a short story a week, come rain, high water, colicky babies, or annoying four year olds who were reading their (his) way through my research library and asking the oddest questions.

While my invention is not … cramped (I was very shocked last month when Amanda Green told me that most people are afraid of writing because they’re afraid they can’t make up anything original.  Honestly, my science fiction isn’t (probably) as original as it could be, because I feel myself to be but an egg and am still leaning on the example of Heinlein, but my issue, at least in school was not usually being “original enough” but not being so original that my teachers and class stared at me open eyed and went “uh, what?”) it is also not infinite and it particularly wasn’t so fifteen years ago, when I was even more busy than I am today (assure you.  I was still refinishing/fixing most of our furniture, doing a lot of our sewing, cooking everything from scratch – how from scratch?  I never bought pasta.  Waste of money.  I bought flour – and juggling two active young kids – hard too, since Robert was as wide as he was tall.)

So I’d routinely come up on Saturday and find myself staring in mute horror at a blank screen, with not a thought in my head.  (This must serve by way of explanation for the bee story which I will never let see the light of day, for things like Tum at Eventide, and even for things such as Sugarbush Soul.)

Having a future history at least gave me a setting to throw my bad ideas at.  I need to copy this thing fair, but it started in 2030 – when I figured I’d either be too old to care, or too obscure to matter – with our discovery that Russia, upset at its impending demographic catastrophe, has been creating laborers in labs (mostly from ova and sperm donated for research or leftover from infertility) and gestated in large animals.  (I want you to keep in mind here, that the “demographic” thing was 15 years ago and a bit of a brainstorm, since no one was admitting Russia had/would have a problem with that back then.  At least no one I’d read.)

By then the rest of the European nations would be in demographic free-fall, and no bad idea goes uncopied.

Because most (but apparently not all, according to Angel in Flight.  Who knew) of the people gestated in that way will be subnormal (my science advisor tells me it has to do with enzymes and wrong timing of hormones) these people were not full citizens, but wards of the state, and truly slaves in all but name.  Also, because a lot of people recoil at the idea of people made in that way joining, as it were, the human genetic stream, these “made people” are all male, and at least theoretically sterile.  Hence the title of “Mules”.

At the same time, of course, parents would be bio-improving their kids, and well, there’s a lot of genetic keeping up with the Jones.

This is around the time that the seacities are being built.

It is also when they get the brilliant – nay, stunning – idea of creating “ideal” men to govern us.  Although the funny thing is that initially they don’t think of them as rulers, but people who will keep things running.  You know, the natural humans will have their brilliant ideas, etc, and the made humans will keep them from crashing (because, yep, that’s what’s wrong with top down control.)

These are made in two tiers, the very best ones as sort of super administrators and the others for various less “daylight” tasks, which is where we get people like Simon’s unlamented father who was trained as a spy/assassin.

These were still special works, and the reason most of them have a string of names, is that people got to name ‘the project.’

Of course, the superadministrators – who were never called mules THEN because they were gestated in surrogate mothers and clearly more than human – take over government during the war between the landstates and the Seacities.  (Neptune’s Orphans is the aftermath of that.)  This inaugurates the era of the bio-Lords as they call themselves, or the government by Mules as people start to call them, because frankly they’re not well liked.  (They weren’t raised as humans, and even though I have a soft spot for Jarl, this left them rather maimed when it comes to BEING human.)

This future history goes all the way to 3500 when Earth has become just one of the many human worlds.

I called this future history Forever Fighting – because it is – but my husband plain hates that name, so how about the Usaian future history.  In the far future there is a Usaian planet, though the human race is so hyper extended that in most places it is a legend about a world with a statue of a woman with a torch beside their spaceport.  Anyway…

I know The Brave And The Free fits in there about five hundred years after the DST World Revolution series  (Might be more than that.  I only see “dates” when I am working fully on the book, and even then I find it good to leave it as fuzzy as possible.  (I was told there would be NO math.)

BUT here’s the thing – I just realized alongside this one and without my noticing, another time line spontaneously generated.  I don’t see MUCH of it yet.  It’s foreshadowed by a rather horror/like story in Crawling, where humans are the diplomats of the stars and so far-flung that sometimes a world has only one.  It’s a future history filled with aliens, which I so far haven’t written except in that short and maybe a couple others.

The YA that will be written – yes, to those who said it, I’m starting to wake up with more energy, etc.  Good heavens.  Have the issues of the last ten years been “bad air”?  How Elizabethan – is also in that universe, though the ratio of human per world is usually higher… and the novel that insists on going by the working name Winter Prince (it can’t keep it.  It’s a fantasy title, and the novel definitely isn’t) seems to be in the far future of THAT time line.

I have this vague idea that that time line diverges sometime this century with first contact (which mean I should write it, right?)

Anyway, I thought I had a future history but I have two.  Did I take the wrong turn at time central?

How does stuff like this happen to a nice writer like me?  Whom did I offend in a past – or perhaps simultaneous life?  What have I done to deserve this?

I now have two unnamed history lines, and good heavens, do you know how hard it will be to keep them separated?  Like a cat with crochet yarn!

So “Woman, why are you complaining?  Now you have more stories to write!”

Those  of you who are writers know why I’m complaining.  Time, my dears, time!

On the other hand, I am feeling a ton more energetic.  So, wish me luck.  Right now I’m going to plunge back into Through Fire… and the rest will be taken one at a time. Imagine if you will, all these novels standing in line, holding tickets in their papery little hands :-P  “Come up and you’ll be served in the order you’re called.”

I think the line extends out the door.

And because I’m very weird even for me, today, if you want to read something saner, sashay on over to mad Genius Club and read Dave Freer’s post.

Or at least growing a second (maybe evil) head.

This is the day of the week in which I’m too lazy to do a proper blog, so I give you an updated report on where I am, what is happening, etc.

So, here’s where things stand: this is the week HVAC ate, so I haven’t finished Through Fire yet.  This must be done this week, come h*ll or high water.

On the HVAC – I got it fixed Thursday, after calls and stuff that consumed a good portion of the week.  To be specific the electrostactic cleaner and – more importantly – the filtration system are now working and the intake vent in the basement is closed.  (It’s NOT a finished basement, and it’s open to a Victorian crawlspace with who knows what in it.)  There remains to be done cutting a new vent to the living space (we are running the furnace at half power which is fine now, but will freeze us in winter) and getting the ducts cleaned.

At first I thought the “I wake up able to think” effect was psychosomatic, but since I get cough attacks when I go to the basement – like the ones I’ve been getting regularly in the main part of the house for ten years, since they cut that stupid intake – it’s probably not.  And I’m getting a little better on the congestion every day.  I expect better when the ducts are cleaned, which I’ll arrange for tomorrow.

I’ve published (re-published) via Goldport Press Death of a Musketeer and The Musketeer’s Seamstress.  Then I went and re-listened/watched to the cover workshop (WGM – aka Dean Smith’s outfit) and the lettering is all wrong.  It will be changed sometime today.  Then I need to change some Naked Reader stuff.  This learning while doing creates a lot of wear and tear on the pixels.

When the books are out in hard cover those of you subscribing … I think (I’ll check) above 100 will of course get signed physical copies, unless you tell me you don’t want it.  On that, I will be putting stuff up in the subscriber space today and HOPEFULLY make that more regular.  (At least once a month, but I’m shooting for twice.  Sorry.  Life has been VERY itself.)

Anyway – other than the fact that I really need to be twins…  No, forget that, let’s get back to the fact I need to be twins:

When I get done here, I’m going to go – nay, shashay–  on over to Mad Genius Club for the next chapter of Elf Blood.  Then I’m going to drink two litters of tea, give or take a teapot.  Then I’m going to work on Through Fire until head stops working, when I’ll do covers.  (No, I don’t want to be stupid for covers, but it’s a different type of “head working.”)

Somewhere there I must fit the – trying to be daily – 3 mile walk which seems to mitigate, if not stop, the bad signs of peri menopause.  I also need to remind younger boy to set up his counseling meeting (he wants to make sure he’s scheduling everything right so he can finish his double engineering [electrical and mechanical] major in two and a half years (meaning a total of four years) always supposing he hasn’t a sudden attack of the stupid in finals [He’s a genius, so sudden attacks of the stupid happen.  They haven’t happened in three or four years, knock on wood, but that’s no proof he won’t suddenly decide “this test is too easy.  The question must mean something completely different.” He’s done it before.  He has the capability… as did I in his day, and without the excuse of being a genius.])

Witchfinder has come back edited, and is approaching completion cover-wise.  I’ve – after reluctant, long thought, decided that Goldport is bringing it out as a “major release.”  I.e. there will be “page proof” paper covers, which will then be sent out as arcs to review mags, etc.  No, I don’t expect wonderful reviews, but just being listed in “books received” will help some.

So… When it’s done with changes entered and a cover, it shall go to the subscribers in whatever e format they wish. And it will be removed from the site.  The week before removal, I’ll do a final call.  Right now it’s looking like two weeks or so.

Also, when I have it in arc and know how much it will cost, I’ll offer people the chance to buy the ARC at a discount over what it will be sold for in the retail outlets.  But I can’t give you an estimate now, since I haven’t even looked at its size vs. Create Space prices.

Playing with Create Space with my non fic how to is on the slate for this week – in an attempt to understand Create Space.  May You Write Interesting Books is a short book, and should be easier.

Oh, yeah, also, I am doing a series of marketing posts over at PJM Lifestyle.  start here and then there’s this one, and this one.  I think in the last one I forgot to note that Baen is an exception to “traditional is scaring the bs out of me” but I think everyone here knows it.  I also am a little afraid of flooding Baen with newbies writing romance and true crime and too mother-dumb to know that Baen doesn’t publish those.

Sometime today I must do a few short articles for PJM because the Week That Hvac ate didn’t give me time to.

Also I owe a novella to a publisher, and one to submit to Liberty Island, because I promised.

And in my copious spare time, I must get Musketeer’s Apprentice ready to release next weekend.

I think that’s all I need to do next week.  It’s looking decidedly light, but I’m sure some crisis will happen to make it all “exciting.”

That’s about it for now.  Elf’s Blood in an hour or so, barring interesting distractions.  I’ll post update here when it’s ready.

And now I must go make more tea.

So, we had someone come in here the last few days and maintain – with a straight face yet – that civilization equals collectivism.  Listen all, the collective farms were the most advanced thing ever on this Earth.  No?  Not buying it?  Sigh.  You and your disbelieving ways.  What am I doing to do with you? Don’t you know our species has been evolving towards this sort of Earthly paradise, where everyone has everything in common, and nothing is ever made, stolen or even broken in an envious rage?

Well, if you don’t either your school was different from mine in the seventies, or, like me, you sat there and thought cooey.  And who is going to replace all humans with ants?

However, at least in my high school it was openly taught.  In the past, before agriculture, all societies were communitarian.  (Also, matriarchal, but that was the icing on the cake, though the feminists said that’s why they were communitarian because women are all shary and stuff.) Agriculture brought in the idea of private property, and then capitalism – which according to these people started with agriculture back in pre-history, because they define capitalism down to “you have stuff you sell”, brought with it pillage, war, and rape, because capitalism meant women were property and there was sexual jealousy.

Then as civilization came in, piece by piece it started to rebuild that lost, ancient communitarian past, only with more stuff.  And eventually in the future, we shall all be like angels, with tons of cool stuff.

I wish I were joking.  I also wish you regulars on this blog would stop laughing like hyenas.  If you must laugh at other people’s religion, do it politely.

Or not. After all they’re not aware it’s a religion.  They think it’s a fact and treat it as such, and teach it as such.

And if you’re sitting there going “It’s a fact” oh, my aching behind, where do I start?

Do I start with the fact that we do know of tribes that were never in fact settled or agricultural, or in any way touched unless we swooped down to do studies, and they’re not living in some sort of earthly paradise with no fighting or jealousy or private property.  They are in fact fully human and have all the characteristics of humans – and other apes – who have fighting and jealousy.  A lot of them have some private property as well. Oh, yes, sure, some things might be in common, like, since these are usually family groups, the one who hunts distributes his kill to everyone (though even there there are ranks who get the meat first, or the best part, or whatever.)  But if you have a particular stone knife you made, it’s yours.

We see this in grave goods, including the women who were buried with special pots that they were good at making.  And the men buried with war maces (and sometimes skulls.  Yes, some women too, but less frequently.)

Do I start with the oldest epics of mankind?  Gilgamesh has violence aplenty and contains nothing that could be described as a functioning communitarian society.  The corpses and possessions of  ancient hunter-gatherers we’ve found do not in fact seem to imply anything of the sort.  The Bible which in some of its stories preserves the oldest stories of mankind does make reference to a garden of Eden, but it only contained two people, and even there things went astray

As for the lost paradise of woman rule, where everything was perfect until men rebelled because, you know, they’re men, and perfect wasn’t good for them (so, it wasn’t perfect?) let’s just say that the fact that Gimbutas confused bull’s heads with uteri cannot be pointed at and mocked enough.

Of course, my distinguished visitor was caught between this belief, and the belief that all ancient humans were “individualistic” and that the progress of civilization can be judged by how communitarian we’ve become.  (Rolls eyes so hard they fall off.)

This is why at least twice he seemed to be arguing against himself.  These schisms in messianic religions always leave me baffled.  Maybe they’re in the middle of a reformation and he’s not thought it through yet?

Anyway, that theory is even more farcical.  A single man, with no claws, no fangs, no fur, stands as much chance individually against the elements as a… as a single man standing against the elements.  This is why Man Versus Wild is a thing.

Ahah, the distinguished visitor (supposing his reading comprehension will hold up this far) will say.  “Then you admit civilization is communism!”

I admit nothing of the sort.  I admit that civilization applies only to groups – duh – as does culture, btw, so stop telling me I need to respect the “culture” of someone adopted into another culture at birth.  Culture is transmitted by learning not by genes.  To maintain otherwise is stupid and racist.

However, how the communities are organized – whether with common property or not (actually was any ancient society – any lasting society—ever organized with communal property?  Other than monastic orders, that is?  Because to my knowledge in most of these societies, what belonged to “all” actually belonged to the ruler, who was the only one who got to use it.) Whether with private property or not, whether with rape or marriage or sexual jealousy or not, in fact makes no difference to the fact that they’re communities.

So, let me lay it out right here – risky, I know – that according to what we know of today’s hunting gathering societies; the traces of the past; the workings of the human mind; the lives of our closest ape-relatives, there was never a perfect communitarian society of more than three non-related people, unless they were bound by strong religious conviction. (And even those had a designated leader who laid down the law and weren’t PERFECTLY equalitarian.)

In fact, everything we know from the past is that it was red in tooth and flint knife.  Yes, family groups (which most human bands were, far back enough in history) could also startlingly show the quality of mercy and look after the crippled and the old and throw massive funerals for deformed babies.

That means only that they were human.  Neither the innocents in the garden, nor the horrors of Desmond Morris The Naked Ape. He was wrong at any rate.  Other apes kill too. We just figured out how not to kill others every time we want something they have: territory, women or cool possessions.

Maybe that is at the root of what makes us different from out ape brothers.  There’s no way to know, of course, because this would be so far back in time that we weren’t even fully human.  However, it makes more sense than their story of mythical communism past and senseless fall.  And it could have happened this way.  It certainly is a story our species has repeated throughout the millennia, and it could be called the very engine of civilization.

We know that chimps and others use tools, but they never seem to progress up the scale of civilization.

Perhaps the difference is that in the dim distant past one of our not quite human ancestors had found a really sharp piece of flint, but hadn’t managed to hunt for it.  On the way home, he comes across a member of the same species, not of the same band, who is carrying two rabbits, but who doesn’t seem to have any implement to skin them with.

Instead of using the knife to kill the man and make off with both rabbits, he shows the man the knife, shows him how to use it to skin the rabbits and then, by gestures or sounds (depending on how human they were) he trades the flint shard for a rabbit.

There, my friends, civilization began, allowing men to accumulate wealth without having it stolen until it was destroyed, giving men incentive to work for something (“I must look for more pieces of flint,” proto Og would think “in case I don’t catch anything tomorrow.”) It even in a way started division of labor.

It allowed men to band in communities larger than the band, and not kill everyone not of their blood, and work together and accumulate generational wealth.

Oh, sure, not all was peaceful trade.  In those towns there was plenty of the old way of “knock on head, take what you want.”

But by and large – with some truly disgusting back sliding intervals – the movement has been from theft to trade.

There is always the tension between the savage envy (even if cloaked in “that’s not fair” and the brutal force of the state) and the civilized trading between humans.

To the extent trading prevails, there is civilization.

Okay, a slight update.  First, sorry this is so late.  While we did get the HVAC fixed, last night was the first full night of heating, and we hadn’t turned on the humidifier.  In CO that means it was very dry and I didn’t sleep particularly well.  But this is done now, and I can go clean litter boxes.  (Oh, frabujous day, calloo callay.)

Second, an update on Witchfinder — it’s getting nigh to the time when I take it down.  As soon as I ship out Through Fire (I guess this week, with luck and no major issues) I’ll go back through the copyedited/edited manuscript I got back last week.  The cover is also near delivery.

But since it’s been decided Goldport will do a conventional “release” this book won’t come out till sometime probably February.  Goldport is having arcs printed and sending them out to the trade places for review.  Now, before the advance purchasers scream — you’ll get your e-copy at the same time the arcs are printed.  So, not only do you get it cheaper, you get it about five months early or so.  No worries.

Okay.  Now I go clean litter boxes and vaccuum.  YAY.

*This is the new free novel I’m posting here a chapter at a time.  This is pre-first-draft, as it comes out.  It is a sequel to Witchfinder which will soon be taken down (once edited) and put for sale on Amazon (It’s now done and with editor and we’re getting the cover done.  My wretched health this year delayed everything.  (Meanwhile, if you donate $6 or more, I’ll get you a copy of Rogue Magic, once finished and edited, in your favored ebook format when it’s done.  Of course, if you’re already subscribing to the blog at a level at which you get whichever books come out that year, you don’t need to worry. )*

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Into Peril and Darkness

Lady Caroline Ainsling, sister of the Duke of Darkwater

It would have to be Maryanne who opened the window of course.  Nine times out of ten, if someone had thrown pebbles at our window – a distinct possibility since Maryanne had the morals of a cat.  A bad behaving cat – I’d be the one to answer, as I was usually up later and actually studied and prepared for my lessons, long after she was sleeping the sleep of the pampered, the pretty and the rich.

Not that we were exactly poor.  Well, not since my half-brother Gabriel, the king of fairyland, had handed my brother Seraphim a chest of ancient gold.  And that was before Seraphim had married the princess Royale.  I had to assume the king wouldn’t allow his son in law to be rolled up into debtor’s prison.  He certainly wouldn’t if Nell had any say in it.

But Seraphim believed that we shouldn’t spend the ready just to make ourselves comfortable and happy.  He believed in noblesse oblige and also that the patrimony of the Darwaters was a sacred trust to be passed on to his children and their children, world without end.  While he didn’t evade his duties to his non-inheriting siblings, he treated us with the same parsimony he treated himself.

Why, except for the year when he was pretending to be a dandy, mostly to hide the fact that he and Gabriel were up to something very illegal indeed, he didn’t even much care how he dressed.  These days you were likely to see the prince consort and king’s witchfinder, rolled into one unassuming person wearing dark suits more likely to be worn by servants, and forgetting to eat most of his meals, unless Nell made sure he had food taken to him.  And he preferred walking form our house in town to his office, rather than sending for the carriage.

Generally, Seraphim was a very un-duke like duke, which meant I was a very unladylike lady, I suppose.  I’d been sent to the boarding school – St. Ursula of the Fields – with the minimum troseau and equipment.  So many underclothes, so many walking dresses, so many uniforms.  Seraphim had told me, from his own experience at Eton, that if I’d brought more than that I’d be ridiculed and called a pampered princess.  He was wrong.

What he’d missed is that, unlike Eton, this was a school for well born girls.  And that all sorts of exceptions were made.

Cher Maryanne, for instance, whose parents were newly ascended to the nobility, but quite rich, had brought her weight in jewelry.  She was fond of acting all sorry for me, and telling me what a pity it was I hadn’t brought so much as a pearl necklace.

I had to keep telling myself that no, I couldn’t strangle her with her diamond rope.

And then this being a school for young ladies, the academic subjects were treated oddly.  Take history for instance.  It had been my favorite subject, both under my governess and on my own.  But I’d liked to know why things happened and how.  In this school it was all memorization of names, dates, and things that were irrelevant, like funny stories about a queen’s hair style.  Things that I suppose were good to teach you to make small talk, but not good for anything else.

The only good parts were the money management courses, and the management of estates, and even those were taught stilted, as though girls would never need to do the full job.  If I asked a probing question, I got told my husband would guide me in the difficult places.  My husband.  Poor Akakios who was to feel the role was a stranger in this world, far more than I was.

Not to say I was discontented with my fate.  Akakios —  I think I fell in love with him when first I saw him, and rescued him from an iron cage in fairyland.  I didn’t know it, because I hadn’t known what love was.  It’s not the slightest thing like in books, where it’s all heart flutterings and things.  It was more a feeling of belonging.  We were meant to be together, and were happy when we were together.

I was sure when Akakios and I were married and in our own house we’d be fine, but it was so long till then. My weekly or so meetings with Akakios when the two schools met to go on walks or for teas or such were the only fun part of this waiting time.  I could always tell him anything.

So I wasn’t in the least angry when he came to me.  I was only upset Maryanne – who’d been brushing some strange potion into her hair, and therefore awake – was the one to open the window.

“Ainsling,” She said.  “There’s a centaur asking for you.”

I got up from my desk, turning on the magelight and thinking, of course, that it was just Akakios and that he would be, of course, in human form, but that news of what he was must have spread.  I sighed.  We’d kept it silent long enough.  Most girls believed he was half-Greek.  But it was inevibitable it would come out.

Imagine my surprise when I looked out the window to see him standing there, just like he had in fairyland.  Well, not just like.  He was wearing a jacket.  And a shirt.  And a cravat.  For some reason, the fact he’d gone through the trouble of tying a high, snowy linen cravat around his neck made my eyes tear up.

And then I realized that for him to be in centaur form…

“Caroline,” he said, urgently.  “Caroline.  I need your help.”

“What do you need?” I said.

“Please?  I must talk to you.”

“Sure.  Hold on.”

I wasn’t sure what I was about to do, as I turned around to face Maryanne’s grin.  “A centaur, isn’t he?  Your fiancé?  I know that you—”

I shook my head at her.  “You don’t even know what’s wrong, do you?”

“What?”  She had beautiful blue eyes, large and round, and all the young men from the boy’s school swooned over them.  Well, all besides Akakios.

“He shouldn’t have shifted into a centaur in our world.  There isn’t enough magic.”

“But… but… but…” she said.  “We have shifters!”

My mind must have made some sort of decision, because I was opening the little cupboard where I kept my clothes, and taking out my riding clothes, putting them on, binding my hair.  “Yes,” I said.  “But centaurs aren’t normal shifters.  Like … naiads or dryads they don’t exist in our world.  Their … internals don’t work without enough magic.  A centaur, no matter how carnivorous, can’t eat enough to keep both bodies alive.  And the lungs aren’t enough for both bodies, either.  Think, woman!  That’s why when magical creatures are brought to our world they have to be kept under magical conditions, and they usually die anyway, after a short time.  He shouldn’t have been able to even shift, much less stay conscious while shifted.”

And now Maryanne was quiet and I’d worried myself into a fret.  What if Akakios suddenly lost whatever magic was keeping this going and—

No, he’d just shift.  It was a built in safety mechanism.

Maryanne seemed to realize I was fully dressed, and gasped.  “You can’t mean to go out now.  You know the porter will stop you!”

True.  Which was why I pulled the sheets from my bed, tied one to the other and to the leg of my bed, before throwing it out the window.

Maryanne’s “I should give the alarm,” was met by me with a stern face.  “I’ll tell them about the gardener boy if you do.”

“But I’ll be punished if you don’t come back before morning call.”

I didn’t tell her I’d be back before morning call.  It was rather like lying.  I had a feeling that this trouble was much too big for that.  Instead I said, “No.  Tell them you were asleep and saw nothing.  Then cry.  They let you get away with anything when you cry.”

Which was true, and puzzled me, since I could never cry on command.

She dithered at the window as I climbed down the rope ladder, but didn’t untie it, as I half feared she would.

At the bottom, Akakios put out his arms to receive me.  He smelled of sweat and fear, and he looked pale, but he hugged me close, for just a moment.  We’d never really had much physical contact, of course, because of chaperonage.

“Thank you for coming down,” he said.  “I had a dream-message from my father.”

He told me about Gabriel being maybe kidnapped, maybe killed.  I refused to admit he could be killed.  “I’d know if one of my brother’s was dead!”

“Caroline, Night Arrow is—”

“No, I’d know.” I said.  He calls Gabriel Night Arrow, which is the closest translation of his elf name.  I didn’t know, of course, Gabriel was alive.  I couldn’t know.  But I was trying to keep my fear at bay with words.

Akakios must have sensed that and didn’t argue.  He pulled back my hair gently and said, “I’m glad you put on your riding habit, because we must go to the duke your brother and see what he can do.”

“And if he can’t—”

“Then we will somehow cross over to fairyland and go to my people.”