According To Hoyt

Today I hiked the half hour to the library and back to return some very late books.  These were books on evolution and dinosaurs which the younger sprout had got and then proceded to drag into his cave-like den and not give back in time for me to return.  An oversight compounded by the fact that in my infinite wisdom I forgot how to log onto the online site to renew the books.

Anyway, the bite wasn’t bad.  About $8 total.  And walking to the library was good for me.  We’ve been much too sedentary of late.  However, because I bore easily, I dragged one of the boys out of bed to walk to the library with.  Robert was the lucky winner — being much easier to wake up than Eric.

On the way up from the library, we were discussing the short story he’s working on — zombie dinosaur.  Seriously — and he said writers emblemized something or other.

I was sure he’d made up the word on the spot.  He came home and proved to me — with dictionary — that he wasn’t.

This is all fine and dandy, but it still HAS to be one of the ugliest words I’ve ever heard.  I suspect it’s a result of the tendency to unduly verbify nouns, exemplified by such words as “impacting.”  They might be perfectly serviceable, but they grate at some basic word-lover level.

I’d say emblemize emblemizes the impacting of the verbification of nouns.  We should index it and de-contentise it.

Seriously — is this another of those instances of “it only bothers you, Sarah”?  Or are there words so ugly they make your ears hurt to hear them?

I’m not going to make this into a political blog, but I found this article ties so much into my previous post it’s hard to avoid.

I have to confess THIS had never occurred to me under “first do no harm.”

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

I should be working on my overdue novel or writing my overdue short story. I’m not. The reason I’m not is because I’ve been turning an ethical problem in my mind.

And this is going to lead me to break one of my longstanding rules, which is not discussing religion or politics in public.

Not that what I’m about to discuss is religion – exactly – or politics – exactly. But it touches on both.

The fact is, I’m aware that some of you are going to be very angry at me. I’m aware some of you will be angry enough never to read me again. I’m also aware that I’ll be violating one of Heinlein’s rules – to wit – “Only a fool or a sadist tells the unvarnished truth in social situations.”

Perhaps I’m going menopausal. Or perhaps I simply don’t care anymore. Or perhaps sometimes – SOMETIMES – the truth needs to be told.

I know I will get a very strong reaction to this because I’ve discussed this topic before, years ago, in a women’s writing group. The group consensus was that I was “mean” or perhaps “evil” and there was nothing I could do to change it.

And yet – and yet – I see evil in what is going on. And I think it should be stopped.

So I’ll begin at the beginning. Let’s talk about charity.

I grew up, like any normal kid in a fairly “nice” family learning to share and to give to those who had less than I. This was so emphasized that until I was twenty eight I thought I had killed my cousin Dulce by refusing to share my bread and butter with her. (She died in the last small pox epidemic to sweep through Europe. As I had it too, I’m sure some reference was made to the fact we were playing together a week or so before. That my mind attributed this to my refusing to share just goes to show how I was brought up.)

Beyond that, I always had a sense of empathy. Like most of your nerdy writers, as a child I was excluded from enough games and clubs to give me a sympathy for the underdog. So far so good.

And then when I was eleven, I joined a youth group. This was the seventies. We were for social action and justice. Which was our parents’ charity and poor relief dressed up and nice and with a new hairdo.

We spent six months – SIX months holding fund raisers and collecting money. One of the girls in the group had come up with this idea that we should help this family that lived next to her. Six kids in a shotgun apartment, no decent clothes, no toys and most of the time no food on the table.

We worked our behinds off. We were that kind of earnest young people. And I was so proud, so incredibly proud, when we collected the equivalent of about six months’ salary and delivered it to these people. I could imagine what a difference it would make in their lives. I could JUST see it.

I felt very virtuous. This lasted until I told my mom what we’d done. Mom was horrified. Turns out the parents were both alcoholics. Not only wouldn’t the kids get any of the money, but the parents would use it to get stinking drunk, which in turn would result in more aggression towards the kids… you get the point.

Turned out mom was right – bummer – and I’ve never felt that virtuous since.

This is apropos what?

Well, bear with me.

Thirteen years ago when we moved to town – an apartment near downtown – I loved this city. One of the things I loved was how SAFE it was. There were exactly four “homeless” people identifiable as living downtown. I’m sure there were more served by the various shelters, which demanded sobriety or a modicum thereof before you used their services. But downtown, we saw four. And, really, downtown was a safe, friendly place, with a lot of small businesses in place. I could, without driving, buy most things I needed, from groceries to office supplies. The kids could sit out on the front porch, when they were toddlers. It was just nice.

And then it changed.

Because I don’t follow such things it took me time to figure out why – all of a sudden – every corner had people pushing shopping carts. Aggressive people; people mumbling to themselves. It took me time to figure out why the little park in the middle of town was now infested by people sleeping on the grass, threatening (and mugging passerbies.) Why the little businesses were fleeing downtown. Why my friend who worked downtown had issues with people coming into the bookstore and urinating on the carpet.

The city hadn’t grown that much. It might have doubled in size, but I don’t think so.

And the local economy was not worse. On the contrary. We’ve been ranked as one of the more affluent towns in the US. So… how come this problem suddenly.

And then the city forbid panhandling – this is not related, except where it got me to understand the situation a little better – and all of a sudden the newspapers were full of interviews with the people affected…

Do you know, with a few exceptions – families fallen on hard times and the like, though they’re not the kind that haunts parks – the “homeless” population could be divided in two: Young kids – teens to twenties – who’d run away from home. And people who had been living a rootless, boundary-less life since the sixties or seventies.

The funny thing, you know, is that I’d always thought kids who ran away from home did so because they were being abused or there was another huge problem. And some of them did mention that. However, the vast majority of the young indigent said a paraphrase of “I left home because my parents had all these rules. And now, man, if I can’t panhandle, I’ll have to go back.”

The adults, otoh had various expressions of confusion as to why we were doing this to them and how – with no provocation – we were taking away their means of livelihood.

Since that time I’ve been a little skeptical about the type of charity that just gives “services” to the homeless.

My skepticism increased when I realized a) the reason downtown was now full of homeless was a “no questions asked” soup kitchen run by Catholic Charities right smack downtown. b) Homeless were taking the bus from the largest city nearby. (This is not a conjecture. I overheard them talking and on one signal occasion was approached by one demanding to know where the soup kitchen was because he’d just taken the bus to our town. They’d told him there was this great place…)

Okay – hear me out – I’m neither mean nor stupid, nor have I arrived at this opinion without a lot of thought.

Look, I’m not saying we shouldn’t feed the hungry. Yeah, we should if we can. I assure you that for a long part of my teen years I needed – and received – both food and clothing from the charity of strangers. One of the reasons the Red Cross will always get a check from me was the clothes I wouldn’t otherwise have had after that growth spurt at fourteen.

That’s not the point. The point is that the first rule of charity should always be: First Do No Harm.

I still live downtown. I walk by the park a lot. And you know what? I’m sorry for these people. Really and truly sorry. Most of them not only lack the skills to integrate in society – they lack an understanding of WHY they should.

They get food. They get clothes. They get a place to sleep. WHY should they change anything about how they live? Why shouldn’t they do drugs and have promiscuous sex? Those of them who are mentally unstable not only have no reason to seek treatment or to take their medications – they don’t KNOW they SHOULD.

Oh, I’m sure people who volunteer at the soup kitchen – and other places – tell them they should. But… the thing is, they are human right? Humans work mostly on inertia. If you don’t make it difficult to just drift on, why should they try?

Now and then you hear of people who clean up, who move on and up. But these are the exceptions. Like people who lose 100 lbs, they are the exception and display immense willpower.

Our society is so affluent we can afford to give these people a life that’s downright luxurious compared to the peasants of most societies in history. Food everyday. Enough clothes to cover themselves. Clean places to sleep at night.

And we demand nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I realize part of this is a reaction to Victorian times, when it was assumed that people were poor because they’d done something wrong. I know many people are poor through no fault of their own – or at least no fault of their own that they can easily remedy. Lack of skills, lack of will power, just a lack of ambition, are enough to keep someone born outside the right conditions “down.”

But most of the time, none of those are enough to make the person outright “homeless.” That requires worse. A stroke of bad luck might do it, if bad enough. A mental condition. Or… a drug addiction. Alcohol abuse.

The stroke of bad luck usually leads to people living in their cars or crashing with friends. It leads to people who are TECHNICALLY homeless, but not the visibly so. Not the ones who haunt the park and mug passerbye. These people – the homeless with cause or, to use an old-fashioned term, the deserving poor – are undoubtedly there through no fault of their own. And there are already several organizations that assist them. If they need anything, they need an explanation of how to get there from here – how to apply for help; whom to ask.

And then there are the others – the VAST majority of others – which are the ones who patronize this “no questions” soup kitchen. The ones who don’t know why they should change. The ones we are ENABLING in their dysfunction.

Yes, yes, I can hear the shouts now. I’m mean. I don’t care about poor people. I am made uncomfortable by the presence of the needy.

Except… That these “needy” are shutting down businesses and driving other people into poverty. Except that I do donate money/time/service to various causes helping those less fortunate than I. Except that I think what these “needy” need is help of a different sort. Help seeing the way out. Support on their way up. NOT “no guilt” help that keeps them trapped.

HOW can it possibly be that allowing them to self destruct helps them? Or society? Or the communities blighted by their presence?

Look – we’re back to that family and how GOOD I felt “helping” them. Except that I didn’t.

There was a way to help them – oh, sure there was – or at least a way that would have done no harm. We could have bought groceries for them for six months. This might still have led to more drinking as the parents might have sold the groceries – but it would have been more difficult.

Or – and far preferable – we could have given OF OURSELVES. We could have befriended those kids. Eventually taken them home to our comfortable houses for meals/playtime/interaction. This would have helped far more.

BUT that wasn’t easy. And besides, it wasn’t what it was all about. It was about social action. And justice. It was about collecting money and handing over a check. It was about the charity of strangers. And it was about a bunch of pre-teens feeling good and virtuous.

I think this soup kitchen – which is now undergoing a massive fundraising to expand – is about exactly those things. I’m sorry, but I believe it is about people who volunteer there and people who donate to it feeling good about themselves. D*mn good.

And who am I to grudge people a bit of self-satisfaction?

Well… perhaps I’m an evil bitch, because I feel that self-satisfaction arrived at the expense of other people’s lives is bad. Perhaps I’m an evil bitch because I care not only about the small businesses being driven from downtown and the families that can no longer work in the park but these people who are being “helped” to remain lost in a moral no-man’s land. With no way out.

I’m not against charity. I’m against charity to faceless strangers. I think most of the time it ends up doing evil.

There are ways to help – but those demand that you actually get close and personal. That you find out what’s holding these people down. That you CARE. For more than feeling virtuous. And that, let’s face it, it’s more than most people have the time or patience for.

Recently, reading St. Dale by Sharyn McCrumb (excellent book, btw) I came across a joke she quotes. A man is struggling in the water. “Help, help, I can’t swim.” Another man is standing by and says, “I can’t swim either. Will $20 help?”

This is what this “no strings” soup kitchen reminds me of. This is what catering to people’s physical needs and not their mental/spiritual ones reminds me of.

The charity of strangers. Well intentioned, perhaps. But mostly about the giver.

And in the end, I think in more than fifty percent of the cases it violates the dictate to “First, do no harm.”

 

Every writer — heck, every reader — knows the forces of evil.  Those are those unaccountable, idiotic everyday events that cause you to get to the end of the day going “wha…?  What on Earth did I do today.”

Those forces of evil have been unusually active in my life recently, so I decided to start posting status reports and reports from the front of Sarah’s battle against the forces of evil.

So… we begin.

The week begun on Monday the 9th — something incidentally that someone should do something about, I mean, this starting on Monday, thing — with me still under the weather.  Under the weather is a polite way of putting it.  Whatever Slammed down on me on the second was more like 18 inches of snow and hurricane-force winds.  So on Monday the nineth I lay low.  Or mostly lay down and wished very hard to be able to breathe, while detecting seemingly undetectable improvements in my condition.

Tuesday 10 — the forces of evil continued to be unduly strong.  So, mostly I slept.  Oh, and felt guilty over not posting the next episode of the serial novel in the diner.

Wednesday 11 — I woke up feeling much better.  This improvement lasted, exactly, until my younger child made me aware of his extreme lack of clean pants.  I did fifteen loads of laundry — surely forces of evil — and in the process found out my freezer wasn’t working.  Since our freezer is loaded with enough meat to allow an eskimo village to survive winter, this was an emergency.  I ran to the garage to get the coolers to salvage the salvageable.  And then I tested the plug and the extension and… well… the dang thing is working again.  Hopefully it will refrain from breaking down anytime soon.  Total written — one page on outline.

Thursday 12 — apparently fixing freezers is a bad idea when one is just recovering from respiratory thing from beyond.  At least I assume so, because I promptly crashed most of the day.  No work done.

Friday 13 — Did you know it’s possible to sleep too much?  Truth that.  I woke up feeling cranky and hungover.  Slept too much.  It’s taken till now to feel human, and most of the day is gone.  I intend to finish outline while kids watch a movie tonight.  Oh, yeah, today was a snow day and kids home from school.  Another clear instance of the forces of evil.

So the summary for the week is the forces of evil win.  They have Sarah pinned down.  And yet, she’s not defeated.  Outlines shall be outlined.  Novels shall be finished.

Tune in next week for another installment of Sarah and the Forces of Evil.

For those of you who remember that sometime ago I put up here the first few pages of a book, Heart Of Light, which I was just finishing.

The book has been finished and delivered — to Bantam — and now has a publishing date, in March 08.

In commemoration of this, here’s some more of it: 

The Wedding Night

 

“What is wrong?” Emily asked.

She sat naked on her bridal bed, the waves of her dark hair falling like a dusky veil over her golden shoulders and small breasts. Over it, wrapped around her, she clutched a multi-colored flowered shawl, a legacy from her Indian grandmother.

Nigel, her husband of ten hours, stood at the foot of the bed, trying to arrange his blue dressing gown with shaking hands and managing only to twist it, so it hung askew and displayed a portion of his pale, muscular chest.

He had turned away from her, but she could see his face reflected in the full length mirror. It showed a complexion splotched by sudden high red color, pale blond hair on end, where sweaty fingers had run through it again and again, and grey-blue eyes animated with an odd passion and rimmed by red as if Nigel – Nigel! – were near tears.

Emily pulled her long legs up, till her knees came right up to her pointed chin, and clutched her arms around her legs as she took a deep breath. It wasn’t possible that Nigel would cry. Proper gentlemen didn’t cry, and Nigel was as cool and collected as a gentleman could be.

“Have I done something?” Emily asked. Her voice wavered and trembled, brittle and little-girl like in this sumptuous suite, all red velvet and heavy mahogany furniture. “Failed to do something?”

Nigel’s back remained turned. He didn’t seem to hear her. He was tying and untying his dressing gown, as if it were the most important task in the world.

Emily wished to shout, to scream, to ask him what had happened and why. But proper young ladies didn’t scream at their husbands. Insecurity trembled in her voice as she said, “How did I fail you?”

“Failed?” Nigel’s head jerked back at the word. He looked at her, startled, but back at the mirror much too fast.

“Mr. Oldhall,” Emily said, making her voice as formal as she dared. “I asked if I’d done anything to disappoint you.”

“Mr. Oldhall?” The formal family name, which she hadn’t used since they’d become engaged made him give her a look of undisguised horror. “Mr. Oldhall?” He turned around, his hands feeling the pockets of his dressing gown for something.

Emily felt blood rush to her cheeks and took her hands to them, though she knew the blush would show only the color of sunset against her golden skin. “Nigel…”

Nigel pulled a packet of tobacco from a dressing gown pocket and a pipe from the other. He stared at her. “Yes?”

Her face burned and her voice caught. “No one ever told me what should happen on our marriage night.” She paused. “My step-mother did tell me it was all worth it for the children, but…” Her voice floundered and she shook her head. “But I have seen…” A deep breath to gather courage. “I was raised in my father’s country house, Nigel. We had dogs and horses and…” desperately, trying to avoid being explicit, she said, “Geese. And it seems to me the interaction between men and women cannot be all that different from what happens between… animals. Even horses and cats… and…” Deep breath. “Geese.”

She glanced up to see Nigel staring at her, his mouth half open, his face an odd mix of shock and amusement. But he said nothing, and since he said nothing, she was forced to continue. “I’m aware that humans, unlike animals, are leavened by divine grace and superior intelligence, but it can’t be all that different. And I expected…” She stopped. She could go no further.

Nigel said nothing. He drew a long breath that echoed noisy in the room. Turning his back on her, he fumbled. She smelled tobacco and saw him, in the mirror, pushing shreds of it into the bowl of his pipe. He struck the flint to light the wick of his lighter, then lit his pipe and inhaled deeply, a breath like a tremulous sigh. The lighter clicked closed and Nigel exhaled, forming a grey, aromatic cloud in the air in front of him. He put the lighter back in his pocket.

“I… I understand your disappointment,” he said, and cleared his throat. He pulled a heavy draft from his pipe and expelled it in increasingly neater rings. “Emily, I do understand,” he said, his voice now steadier. “How in your innocence, you might believe something untoward has happened or…” He cleared his throat again, and a slight flush tinged his pale cheeks. “Or failed to happen, but… Emily, now that you are a wife, you should understand that marriage… marriage isn’t always perfect.” He cleared his throat again. “There are moments when the body will not… obey the mind.”

He smiled suddenly, but his smile vanished just as quickly and it was only after another puff on the pipe that he managed to shape his mouth to his normal, aloof smile. Glancing away, he said, “Don’t let it disturb you, my dear. We’re just both tired. The day started devilishly early with the wedding breakfast and… with the parties… you’ve been trotting too hard, my dear, and no mistake. Let’s have a good night and then we’ll… we’ll both feel better in the morning.”

With those words, he reached over to pat her arm, then strode towards the closed door between their two rooms. He’d no more than set his hand on the polished brass doorknob than the whole room shook. Nigel stopped.

Emily stopped too, holding her breath. It had felt as thought, three floors beneath them, the magic carpet that supported the luxury carpetship, cruising above the clouds towards Cairo, had fluttered unsteadily on some air current and shuddered.

“It’s just the magic field we’re crossing,” he said. “Or… or the weather. I’m sure the flight magicians…”

But the curtains danced again. A rattle echoed through the ship – composed of stem of wear and crystal mage-light chandeliers colliding in liquid notes, crockery clashing down in the kitchen and the groaning of wood in framing and floors and furniture – firmly bolted down, but straining against itself.

Emily clutched at the bed covers. She remembered this noise. It bought back memories of her first trip to England. Every little current, every jolt had terrified Emily then. The ship had been all strange and scary. And her mama had been in the room, very ill, leaving no one but a cool English nurse to tell Emily not to be a goose.

That trip had ended well. The carpet ship had not fallen then. Oh, Emily’s mother had died six months after arriving in England, leaving Emily stranded, as a stranger, in the midst of her father’s family. But the carpetship had landed safely. Carpetships rarely fell. She closed her eyes and willed the ship to keep flying.

The carpetship trembled again, harder. Every window frame rattled. Every bed bucked. The support beams mounted on the carpet and supporting kitchens, ballrooms, parlors and passenger rooms, twisted and groaned like a dying beast.

Emily opened her eyes and caught a moment of panic on Nigel’s expression. He grabbed for the bed to steady himself. The ship rattled again, and started a ponderous half roll, like an animal trying to lay on its side.

Nigel was thrown, careening against a green-velvet sofa. Emily barely managed to hold on to the bed, whispering prayers to a divinity in which she very much wished to believe.

With a groan of stressed lumber, the carpetship started rolling the other way. Nigel held onto the sofa, his eyes wide in surprise, his panic no longer hidden. His lips were moving, and she supposed he must be saying words, but no sound reached her over the creaks and groans and the sharp breaking sounds of glass and pottery.

And now horns sounded, magically amplified, carrying the ship’s distress calls to the surrounding air and land and ocean, and alerting everyone in the ship to the danger. This meant they should seek the lifeboats outside, on the deck. It meant the carpetship was falling. Falling through the dark night sky to the cold ocean far, far below them.

Nigel’s hand on her arm and Emily opened her eyes, without realizing she had ever closed them. Nigel was very pale, holding onto the headboard of the bed with one hand, and onto her with the other. His lips moved, but only a word here and there emerged above the shrilling distress of the alarms. “Madam,” and “Sensible,” and, she would swear to it, “decent.”

Emily was sensible of her need to be decent; sensible of the fact that she was naked, and clutching only a flowered shawl. Her panicked mind told her she would die naked. Her shamelessly nude body would wash ashore, on some foreign land.

And then she realized Nigel was dressing her. He had somehow got hold of her white dressing gown embroidered with green sprigs, and was attempting to pull her hand up from the bed, to dress her.

Clinging, frightened, one hand clawing at his shoulder, Emily forced her other hand to let go of the bedcovers and to allow Nigel to put it into a sleeve. He was murmuring at her, but she could get no more than a general feel of comfort and an attempt to calm her. She clutched at him, and allowed him to slide her other arm into a sleeve. And then he was tying her belt, firmly, and pulling her up, still talking.

“Must,” she heard him say before the words submerged in other sounds. And then “Safety.”

She rolled from the bed, Nigel gripping her. Safety meant the lifeboats – mounted on smaller flying rugs tethered to the side of the ship. Each of them would take ten travelers apiece and lead them, unerringly, to the nearest patch of terra firma.

Fumbling, she and Nigel moved, holding each other, towards the French doors that opened from Emily’s room onto the deck. They held onto furniture in passing and Emily had a moment of gratitude that every piece was firmly bolted to the floor.

Nigel struggled to open the door, kicked it open and yelled, “Go, go, go,” propelling her through the open door to the deck outside.

 

The Royal Were Hunters

 

Emily stepped out the door and onto the glass-smooth polished mahogany of the deck.

“The boats,” Nigel yelled above the din, returning to hold Emily’s arm. “No one has pulled in the lifeboats.”

Emily looked across the deck where bedlam had been unleashed in the form of half dressed – or hardly dressed at all – men and women of all ages. Emily’s dressing gown was positively proper compared to so many of the people who were rushing about in their underthings, or one young, disheveled woman, clutching a sheet to her otherwise naked body and shrieking in fear. Not that the men were any better. One of the gentlemen nearby was wearing his hat, his gloves and his underwear and seemed perfectly composed with it, until one realized he was strolling about pointing with his cane and giving orders to no one.

On the other side of the deck, past the frightened throng, a tall glass partition, six feet tall and composed of small glass panes, protected passengers and crew from otherwise deadly flight-breezes and the air that at this altitude would be full cold.

And against that partition, on the other side, lifeboats knocked, tethered to the outside of the carpetship, knocking against the frame with a noise like the damned attempting to storm the halls of heaven.

To allow people to board the boats, they would need to be tethered right up close to the frame, not allowed to blow away from it on the air currents. And doors in the glass partition would need to be opened by the crew.

None of this had been done.

Still holding onto Emily’s arm, Nigel stopped a passing man – an amazingly groomed and properly attired employee in the blue serge uniform and cap of the carpetship line. “Good man.” Nigel yelled to be heard above the confused din of voices around them. “Good man, why haven’t the lifeboats been pulled in and made accessible. My wife must be taken to Terra Firma at once.”

The man tried to pull away from Nigel but Nigel held his arm and wouldn’t let go. “The Magicians are trying to save the carpetship milord,” the man said, also yelling above the babble of voices, but with every appearance of eager obsequiousness. “They think they can save it, milord. That it will pass.”

“Pass how?” Nigel yelled back. “When a carpetship’s magic fails– ” He stopped as the ship trembled, more violently than before. “What?”

The ship shuddered again, in great spasms like a dying beast. It should have caused a redoubling of the screaming and a blind panic on deck, but instead everyone fell silent. Nigel looked as startled as Emily felt. And then Emily saw something in the unrelieved black, outside the glass partition.

Something moved there, something shone. Not quite as bright as stars. It was more, like a bit of shining dust in the wind, like glimmers of flame, catching suddenly.

Without knowing quite why, but wanting to know, wanting to see what might be out there, Emily pushed through the crowd, towards the glass barrier. Nigel tried to protest, but was pulled along with her, his hand on her arm.

Pressing against the glass, Emily heard something – a sound like another wind beating within the wind, like the murmur of a heart composed of the hissing flames, like…

 

She looked toward the sound – perceived more with her mage sense and her mind than with her ear.

And there, by the side of the carpetship, she saw something deep blue green seemed to glitter and churn the air beside the ship. Slowly, it sailed closer; becoming clearer; revealing itself for a large reptilian-looking creature.

Moonlight flickered on a long sinuous neck, on bright, sparkling eyes, on an elongated body, on a curling tail.

Moonlight struck upon wings that looked as unreal as an artist’s dream, as if their armature had been carved in the finest ivory, then covered over with transparent fabric, upon which myriad fireflies had been caught which coruscated, brief and bright, captive of the beast’s movement, the beast’s churning of the air.

The carpetship trembled like a frightened beast, but it groaned to altitude again.

As though in a dream, Emily more felt words go through her mind than thought. So it was a dragon’s magical field that disrupted the flying spells. A dragon! Her breath caught at the word. Her mind tangled in wonder. A dragon.

She’d read about dragons in history books and stories, but Emily had never seen one. They were were-creatures, whose other form looked wholly human but who – in the period of their change – craved the hunt, the chase, and tore their prey alive, beneath their impatient fangs.

Watching the dragon, Emily breathed in little puffs that fogged the window. She wiped impatiently at the glass with cold, sweaty hands, and peered through the stripes left by her fingers, not wanting to miss a single second of the wondrous sight.

If she’d ever imagined dragons, she’d thought them sinister and frightening. And yet this creature was gossamer and moonlight, living flame and whispering wind – wild nature given a body and on the wing.

She wished she could engrave this scene upon the memory of her eyes, and relive it later, whenever she needed to refresh her vision from mundane sights.

None of the histories that spoke of the evils of dragons said that the pinpoints upon their wings shone like multicolored fairy lights rivaling the stars. None had mentioned that they transmitted an impression of power and joy. Nor had they admitted that dragons flew so effortlessly – gracefully – like dancing on air.

Books spoke of danger, cruelty, ruthlessness – never of magnificent wonder.

From behind Emily came the sound of running feet, and two employees of the company came rushing to turn cranks on the side of the glass partition that separated the passengers from the dragon.

“Letting us at the lifeboats, then?” Nigel said, in a confused tone.

“No, sir,” One of the men said. “Just opening the partition so the Royal Were Hunters can have at the beast.”

Emily, looking on the dragon, had only half-understood the words, before she heard a shout from behind. “Miss. You’ll have to get out of the way.”

She turned around and saw a whole regiment of royal were-hunters – Gold Coats – wearing gold uniforms with golden braid, about fifteen of them, in a line, each pointing a powerstick at the dragon. The powerstick, Emily knew, would be full of were-killing magic.

Like other such creatures who might feast on humans as well as animals — European werewolves and the were-tigers that sailors had brought with them, unawares, from the first voyages to India — dragons were outlawed within the reach and influence of the British sovereign. Any discovered would be immediately magically burned. The Royal Were Hunters were a regiment specially empowered by the Queen to hunt down and exterminate these terrifying beasts.

Emily knew they did good work. Without them, weres would overrun normal mankind and destroy civilization. A look over her shoulder at the flying dragon and she stood, rooted where she was. They couldn’t shoot – she thought. Not while she was here. And yet, they had a duty. And perhaps they would shoot and burn her along with the dragon.

And yet, neither could she just move aside and allow them to shoot at the dragon. She couldn’t.

“Madame,” Nigel was yelling at the Royal Were-Hunters. “She’s my wife. Mrs. Nigel Oldhall.”

The Were-Hunters in turn were yelling at Nigel, but their screams had nothing to do with Emily’s marital status. Instead, they were screaming at them to move, to get out of the way, so they could shoot. Nigel pulled at Emily frantically too, fingers scrabbling at dressing gown sleeve.

She heard him as if from a great distance “Emily. Emily,” his voice frantic and low.

But she could not move, even had she wished it, and the men in the green jackets with the powersticks were increasingly frantic, now aiming at her, now away, and begging her to move.

“Please Miss– Madam.” “We must do our duty.” “It is a dangerous beast.”

And the dragon, at that, probably was a dangerous beast and more. What she’d heard of dragons said they couldn’t control themselves. They ate people. They–

Behind her there was a sound and she turned, just in time to see a jet of flame singe along the edge of the carpetship. People screamed and ran, and Nigel grabbed at her arm and pulled her, hard and sudden against the polished deck.

When she managed to look up, there was no fire at all and the dragon had gone. The Royal Were-Hunter captain was standing nearby. “You should have let us shoot it, ma’am. You never know what those creatures are about. We have all sorts, in the isles,” he said, offering Nigel his hand to help him rise. “From wolves to foxes. And some of them are harmless enough, and we sort of wink at it. But them dragons, they’re desperate creatures that can neither be controlled nor brought down easily.” He pulled Nigel up and Nigel pulled Emily up along with himself. “We had a perfect shot.”

“She was too scared to move,” Nigel said.

And Emily supposed that could be true, but deep inside she didn’t think it was. Not scared, she thought. More… fascinated, intrigued. She couldn’t help turning her head a little towards where the dragon had been, nor feeling a lurch of dismay at the realization that the sparkling, magical being was gone.

She couldn’t quite understand why that would leave her feeling empty – as though a yawning abyss of dark, grey nothingness had opened where the wondrous should reside. But she felt low in spirits and out of sorts.

Nigel didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he attributed it to her presumed fright.

He said nothing until she was back in her cabin, sitting on her bed, in her dressing gown, wrapped in her mother’s shawl. And then what he said was neither reproof nor a demand she tell him why she had done it. Instead, it was a slow musing, as though talking to himself. “Dragons are natural only to China. It is said their noblemen suffer this hereditary curse and are venerated and given virgins for fodder in the days of their madness. There are many weres in England, but surely no true Englishman can be a were dragon?”

He didn’t seem to either expect an answer from Emily nor to want it. He shook his head as if at his own thoughts and went through the connecting door into his room.

Emily sat on the bed, hugging her knees. Before her eyes was the image of the powerful, elemental beast. Where had it come from? Where was it going? And why had she saved its life?

 

Perhaps because recently we have had the younger terror tested for intelligence and mode of learning — no results yet, but soon — I’ve been thinking about my mode of learning.

Other things have fed into this meditative mood, including a blog post by Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert about what your permanent age, on the assumption that each of us has a very defined age, that sticks with us through life. (It is perhaps interesting that I have no idea what my permanent age might be, but I know what my older son’s is. Robert is fifty three. He was fifty three at birth, looking out witheringly at his father and I as we scrambled through the trials of early parenthood. You COULD hear that child think “Ah! Whipper Snappers.”)

You see, I’ve always felt younger than I should be an curiously incomplete or unprepared for adult life — and part of this is due to the way my mind works. I don’t think — though I couldn’t tell you for sure — it is a NORMAL thing for a mind to work this way. At least, looking around, it seems to me that other people’s minds, in general, are the opposite of mine.

And I guess I shouldn’t say I always felt this way. The truth is, when I was little I felt vastly superior to my class mates and the few people stupid enough to talk to me. You see, I started reading early and glued on just enough understanding of the world to sound interesting and curiously adult to adults and scary and vaguely deranged to people my age.

But then came adollescence…

All of a sudden, my friends knew the names of singers and bands, and what albums they’d published. I knew what songs I liked and constructed wild, poetic interpretations of often misunderstood lyrics.

They watched the news and came away with names places and “Don’t you remember on the twenty seventh of november the Economics Minister said…” And no, in fact, I didn’t remember. I just had a broad idea of where people stood, and I could argue philosophically on their principles and tell you what they were doing and why — but not the specific dates and times of the incidents.

The same with books. I read about six books a day throughout most of my young years — well, till Robert was born. I’m wondering if I’ll return to that after the kids leave — still my normal mode of operating while doing anything, including scrubbing the floor, is with a book on one hand and whatever I’m doing in the other. This accounts for my owning several types of book stands to keep the book out of harm’s way.

But I only remembered the writers that resonated with me, and even with those I was likely to retain a vividly accurate idea of what the book was about for years and years while forgetting specific incidents in the book — the sort of thing all my friends seemed to remember vividly.

Now I’m facing this with the younger squirt. He’s reading Heinlein — to be specific, he’s reading Have Spacesuit Will Travel — and he has odd demands that I remember specific characters and incidents. Now, mind you, I re-read Heinlein every so often, but again, the specific incidents in the book evade me.

So when Eric comes into the room and says “Tell me Ace dies a horrible death,” I can say calmly, and with absolute certainty. “Oh, sure, he and his buddy get eaten by worm face.”

Total confusion from the short one (I have to stop calling him this, as he’s in fact my height) “He does? How does he get to space?”

“What? Isn’t Ace one of the two space pirates?”

“Mooooooooooooooooooooooom! Ace, you know? Burning soap wrapper?”

“What? Oh, you’re talking about throwing the can in the disposer?”

“No, MOM. Burning. Soap wrapper.”

Yes, we eventually solved the confusion, but now Eric is convinced I’m irretrievably stupid. And this is, of course, one of the big issues of not remembering details. You get elbows-deep in an argument and you know — just know — you’re right. But you’ll be cursed — and possibly d*mned — if you remember the specific dates, times and places that support your view.

Now, part of being middle aged is, I suppose, coming to terms with who we are and how our minds work. And how my mind works is to give me a very accurate picture of forces at work, of what each person — and each organization — wants. Very useful for writing historical fiction and not really a problem when I’m surrounded by my books or google. I can always check details and glue them on temporarily. I can actually remember dates and names for about a year, when needed. Then they sink into the generalities that fill my mind.

So, while I can write historical novels set in Louis XIII France or Elizabethan England, or even WWI (eventually, eventually) — I sound like a total ignorant idiot when discussing specific incidents that took place at this time. And while I can tell you the vast sweeping movements and my favorite incidents in my favorite authors’ series, I’ll sound like a lunatic when you asked if I liked Lieutenant such and such in book two.

I’m not sure what this makes me. I’d like to think it makes me a generalist because I know a lot about a lot of things and see the big picture, even if the details evade me. On the other hand, it’s quite possible it makes me an idiot.

At any rate, it seems to be who I am and at this point in my life I have no time to fight my own brain as well as deadlines and characters.

Mind like a stainless steel grease trap and all, I’ll try to make the best of what I have. er… whatever that is.

Todays crop o’ unsolicited solicitations for colleges for ye older critter arrived in the mail.

I was sitting here, minding my own business — well my characters’ business, like a voyaristic old woman perched atop the chair peering down at people who actually have a life — and I heard the boy mutter “Alternately, I could give its bottle and take it walkies.”

Looking up, I said “WHAT?”

He wordlessly handed me an envelope from Clark University. On the right side, some bright bulb imprinted “Challenge convention; change our world.”

Was there ever a time where this sort of disjointed halmark sentiment appealed to anyone? Did it ever appeal to college-bound people? If it does I’m scared, really.

Let’s take the thing at face value, okay? Come on, indulge me.

When I was growing up — no, wait — when I became conscious that I was growing up in the early seventies, this sentence was everywhere “You’re going to change the world”; “We’re changing the world”;”Changing the world a person at a time.”

To a certain extent this could then be uttered without irony. To a certain extent. Remember, these were the days when our own state department thought the command economy of the old USSR was viable. So, it was all a matter of a bright lad in the department for changing the world hitting on the right idea and saying “Here, here is where the change starts. We’ll have our five year plan for world changing widgets.”

And yet, even then, the young Sarah — a little girl who used to sit in a corner, sullenly glaring at the adults who said this sort of thing — used to wonder “okay. Change the world into WHAT? why doesn’t anyone say THAT? Why is changing the world a value? There are lots of worse ways it could be. Imagine no atmosphere…”

But now, in the early twenty first, when we know a little more about chaotic systems and that whatever else the world is, it is that, why are they printing this slogan on college envelopes. “Change our world” — okay, but how? Into what? And what does it mean?

Now granted they have found the magical “change your world for the better” wand. WHAT the heck does this have to do with “Challenge convention”? What convention? Scientific? Mathematical?

No, of course, what they mean by “convention” is that we should challenge social norms.

Now, bear in mind this is on a college letterhead. Doubtless the bright bulb who came up with this felt very brazen and very with it, and altogether po-mo in identifying their college with challenging social norms, but I ask you… when you want to challenge convention, where do you look? Do you look to a socially stratified institution, rigidly held together by shared opinions and beliefs? If you want to come up with the sort of (Do they still call it “out of the box”) unconventional thinking that would change any significant aspect of “the world” for better or for worse, would you go to college to learn to do it? Or do you go to college so you have proper papers certifying your world-changing abilities?

Gah. The more I think about it the more confused I get. It’s like all those teenagers dressing and behaving in an unconventional manner, just like every other unconventional teenager!

Perhaps I’m just too old. But at any rate, I’m gratified by the boy’s cynical offer to change the world, give it a bottle and take it walkies.

As for me, I’d like to teach the world to burp, in perfect harmony.

Okay, so what strange things do YOU read? When the stress is high and you just want to scream, what books do you reach for? When you need comfort reads, what do you gloam onto? And what strange things did you come across in your printed journey that enthralled you, even though it shouldn’t have?

Most of my strange tastes come from when I was very young. You see, in that galaxy far far away where I grew up, somewhere between Elizabethan England and Victorian England, but speaking Portuguese, books weren’t published in as massive numbers as here. There was one science fiction imprint. One. Good old Argonauta. And back list was an unheard of word. You got it when it came out or you were out of luck.

And then the seventies came (Aaaaack and run in dread, as the rest of you know who had the misfortune of coming of age in the time of bell bottoms and men whom surgery rendered incapable of singing anything but disco.) In that etrange little pays q’etait le mien (with apologies to the divinity of French spelling) this meant really high book prices. Well, mostly really high inflation for anything legal. But books also got interesting taxes if I remember, because, eh… culture. Who needs that?

So… as I hit nine or ten, a book needed to be frightfully, scarily bad for me not to read it more than six times. I mean, this was BC — before children — when I read up to six books a day. HAD to read six books a day. Totally addicted.

I burned through all of my poor brother’s sf/f. Bribed male friends out of their boy-club adventures. Read all of my cousin Natalia’s “blue collection” romances. Read the accumulated family library, including most of Shakespeare, Austen and Dumas (including the really bad Dumas, yes.) In despair, I even bribed friends to get their father’s old SF collections — how I came by City and They Walked Like Men. Of course, my dad’s mystery collection was completely fair game, as was anything else that came under the devouring reading apetite, including but not limited to “literature” “encyclopedias” and want adds.

As you can imagine, a childhood like that scars you deeply and irretrievably. One of the (sniffle) horrible scars I bear is the ability to enjoy less than divine prose. Heck, to enjoy the living daylights out of formulaic stuff that is nonetheless entertaining.

Some of the stuff aged badly, at least for me. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of Thomas Mann in either German, Portuguese or English. And WHAT was with Thus Spake Zarathrusta? Don Quixote, too, I’d agree with Borges, was the most unnecessary of all books ever written.

But other stuff… Ah, other stuff I return to in time of distress, like a child seeking his mother’s embrace after hurting himself.

One of these is Leslie Charteris’ Saint books. If you’ve only watched the movie, find these books and read them. MUCH better than the — largely insufferable — movie. Poorly edited and, more importantly, often bizarrely copyeditted, they nonetheless have fast paced stories and suddenly delightful turns of phrase. I would love to see a take on this updated and done in space opera. Heck, I might even do it, someday.

Another one is Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo stories. Yes, I know they’re dated, branded really, by their post WWII cold war world. And yet… And yet, I would bet you — bet you real money — that if you go into them with a seeing eye, you will find some of the best crafted short stories this side of heaven. JUST perfect little gems. The ones with Don Camillo are good enough, but then there are the ones set in that universe that are just perfect ghost stories or supernatural gems.

If you venture into that realm, I recommend Shotgun Wedding; Bianco; Blue Sunday (a story that for obvious reasons has been haunting my thoughts,) The excommunicated Madonna.

Where else do stories end so bitterly sweetly as in The Little World. Take the end of The Man Without A Head “Anyhow, the headless man acquired a head. Was it rightly his or not? The main thing is that it pacified him and he no longer inflamed the popular imagination. And the great rolling river quietly carried one more story, like a dead leaf, down to the sea.”

And where else can a story of political strife end this way (Peppone is the communist mayor and Don Camillo’s natural enemy.) “At this point Smilzo rode up like a deomon on his motorcycle, having been worried over his chief’s delay. When he saw the little procession, he turned around and rode ahead of it, in order to clear the way. When they were within two miles of their destination he responded to a nod from Peppone by stepping on the gas and leaving the others behind him.

So it was that at the entrance to the village Don Camillo found the local band ready to greet him. And the Crucified Christ came home to the strains of the “International.”
“Under the rope and to victory!” rejoiced Peppone bringing the jeep to an abrupt stop in front of the church door.”

When the world is too scary outside, I pull Guareschi over me like a blanket and pray that it might always be so in the real world — horrible tension, but real humans underneath, and redemption not far behind.

I’ve come to conclusion kid will probably be better off homeschooled, so I’m feeling better.

And I’ve decided to do a totally gratuitous snippet of Heart Of Light, the novel JUST delivered to Bantam a couple of weeks ago.

Right now I’m revising proposals for Baen AND working on the next one of this series, Soul of Fire.

Without further ado, the opening of Heart Of Light:

The twenty Eighth of August Eighteen-Eighty-Nine. The countryside outside Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Midnight.

The town was closed for the night, and the shops selling the famous pork pies and Stilton cheese were firmly shut and dark, as were the homes of the good burghers. All the estates on the outskirts were quiet and dark.
Here and there, only, the occasional candle shone or mage lantern flared in an otherwise silent night, heralding a sick room being checked, or a nurse looking in on a child, or perhaps a reveler returning late from some private party and tracing his way back to his room.
These lights appeared like trailing comets in the greater darkness and vanished, leaving only stillness behind and the great silent, sleeping night.
No light shone at the foursquare, many-chimney crowned home of Lord Widefield, friend of the Queen and – it was rumored – the head of her magical secret service. The house stood dark and closed against the pernicious night air, respectable and silent from the servant quarters to the upper stories. There, startlingly, one window was flung open to the night, the white curtains fluttering in the warm nocturnal breeze like a flag of surrender.
But for Lord Widefield, plucked from his bed in the middle of the night, grasped by a many-teethed mouth and flown to a nearby field, it was too late for surrender.
He lay in a meadow, not far from his house, a meadow across which he’d walked just that morning. It seemed so far away – that man who could stride across the meadow, that man in control of his own destiny, that man who had for fifty years stood astride the politics of magic in Great Britain.
Right then, Lord Widefield, in a pool of his own blood, on the soft grass, could only think of breathing, and breathing again and desperately holding onto the life that was ebbing away from him. He could only feel his heart beat, rasp one more breath in, one more out, and try – try – not to scream out the pain that wracked his shattered, torn body.
Through a haze of sweat and blood, he saw the dragon’s snout hovering, bloodied, over him. Those teeth, those claws, had taken his pride and his self-sufficiency and his life. Bite by bite and tear by tear.
Till nothing remained.
Now the reptilian mouth opened, showing the sharp teeth, and the forked tongue flickered at the blood-spattered muzzle.
“Have you told me all?” it asked, its voice more hiss than speech.
Desperately, fearing only an increase to the pain, all thought of honor and integrity forgotten with the dreams of power and empire, Lord Widefield nodded.
“Good,” the dragon said.
As the bright flashing teeth descended for the coup de gras, Lord Widefield spared a last thought for Nigel Oldhall. And hoped against hope the young man wouldn’t suffer too much.

So, this morning we woke up with the need to take some homework to my kid’s teacher because she said it was fine on monday — i e after quarter closes — but this is same wonderful woman who has — cheerfully — misentered or forgot to enter 4 out of six assignments of his this quarter. Until we get on her. So I trust her about as much as I trust … well… no, wait, I trust politicians more.

While kid — who has day off from school — was getting dressed I said “I’ll start laundry.” Trotted downstairs, to fine 1/2 inch of water in the laundry-choked basement. Cheerful. Call to to rotto rooter (It’s a cyclical thing, but it’s early this year.) Dash madly to the school to deliver homework. Come home to rotto rooter man.

Call from my agent’s office. The novel I just mailed her is missing pages 58 through 173. Okay.

Go off to buy cleaners.

Come home, have cheerful — oh, trust me — email from OTHER teacher informing us Eric is getting a D in his class (this is because of a speciously graded project AND a test Eric didn’t understand was one, however the point is:) THE QUARTER HAS ENDED. TODAY. THERE’s NOTHING WE CAN DO. So this bright bulb is informing us of the D why? BECAUSE IT’S HIS VICTORY DANCE, THAT’S WHY.

So, what do I intend to do? I don’t know. WHere does it become parent-harrassment disguised as concern?

And we are definitely edging towards he’s out of there. The only question is how fast.

Anyway — I am all in curiosity of what else the day will drop on me. Maybe I should go to bed now?

Sarah