I was working on this a few months ago and set it aside for when I had more time, but thought people would find it amusing. My intent is to split it into a fiction and nonfiction version to point people at when applying for freelancing jobs.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
This is from a military fantasy story currently in progress. It’s set in the same world as Tabat, although it does not take place in that city, and is referenced in two other works (“Love’s Footsteps” and The Beasts of Tabat.) I hope you enjoy it:
You cannot smell the roses in the hours before dawn. It is only when sunlight touches the vast blossoms, each as large as a human head, that crowd the tallest branches of the Hedge, that the petals loosen. The perfume seeps out into the air then, first as a hint of sweetness, then stronger.
By midmorning, the smell is so intoxicating that approaching enemies lay down their arms and sit, staring into the air, nostrils flared, breathing, smelling. It grows heavier and heavier throughout all the day, and only begins to ebb when the sun completely slips below the ocean horizon to the west. The Hedge borders the Rose Kingdom on three sides, and on the west is that blue line.
This is what has protected the Rose Kingdom for three handfuls of centuries, years and years of peace and protection engendered by a great ancient enchantment whose details are still argued.
But pieces of that enchantment still linger and are renewed each year when a child is given up to the Hedge to become a Knight of the Rose.
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When Jordan’s mother gave him up to the Gardeners, he was four years old. He knew this because much of it been made of his fourth birthday. He was given cake and a folded paper boat of his very own. And most preciously a caress from his mother, which was a rare thing indeed.
He had two younger brothers, Coulin and Fedyrmor, but they were only babies. Coulin barely knew enough to talk and Fedyrmor more only cried. Anyway they were watched over by their nursemaids most of the time.
He knew that he was to be taken to the Gardeners. No one had made much secret of it, speaking freely before him though rarely to him. He found himself looking forward to it. Anything might be better then An existence spent lingering in hallways and edges of rooms, ignored and unnoticed. The Gardeners wanted him. That was important. They wanted him, not either of the other two. He was promised to the hedge, it was meant for him. He had a destiny, where most people had to bob around in the streams of their lives not knowing where they would land. At least that was how Jen the housekeeper’s son, with whom Jordan socialized with whenever (although sadly rare) the occasion presented itself, described it all.
“You will have a role,” he said, as Jordan trailed after him helping him spread bird netting over the pillline bushes and their ripening fruit, scarlet hearted berries whose flesh was a watery pink.
“A role?” Jordan tugged the netting around the branches, trying to pull it as Jen did, so it slid over the thorns rather than snagging on them. His efforts were less successful.
Jen secured the netting to the main trunk with a strip of white cotton with edges tipped in blue to show that this harvest was destined for household use rather than commercial purpose.
“An important role, I mean. I’ll be a housekeeper like my mother. but you’ll be a Rose Knight. You’ll defend the kingdom. You’ll keep everyone safe from harm.”
“I suppose.” Jordan considered. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it, the idea that he would be important.
That he would matter.
That people would look at him and see him.
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Here’s a piece from this morning’s work on a Tabat story that is somewhat connected to the events in Hoofsore and Weary, which appeared in Shattered Shields.
This is how I first saw the Red Paladin.
She must have just entered the city, because her scarlet armor was dulled with dust, and her horse’s head drooped.
Mother had elbowed and fought her way to getting us a booth near the market’s entrance that day, and she was battling to sell every brick of spice we had before going home, despite the fact she could have summoned a servant to do it. She was doing it as some small battle in the endless war between my parents and when I paused to watch the paladin pass, my mother’s hand clipped me across the ear, hard enough to rock my head and feel the snap of blood rising to meet the place she’d struck.
“Stop gawping and bring me more sacks,” she snapped, and sent me racing on her errand, running under the beat of the hot sun and knowing I’d be hard-pressed to get back in time to satisfy her, but even so my soul rocketed out as I dashed through a crowd of tea-pigeons and sent them startled upwards, feeling the press of her attention lessened for a little while.
The image of the paladin, her head upright underneath the masking helmet, the slight curves of her armor the only thing marking her female, stayed with me.
She looked so calm for a knight sworn to Anger.
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The second time I saw the paladin, I was pretending I was someone else while I walked through the gardens. I pretended I was a noble’s daughter, raised only to think of her own pleasure, not worrying about obligation or responsibility. I could do that because my little brothers were playing tag on the long grass and I could watch them from a distance but pretend that I wasn’t in any way connected with them. I sat on a bench made out of iron spirals and coils and flowers, one of the old-fashioned kind, in the shade and tried to make pieces of myself loosen out.
I tried to do this every few days because otherwise ““ and sometimes even with ““ I would wake up aching as though I’d been beaten, my jaw clenched tight, chased by nightmares through endless passageway toward waiting red rooms, doors mawed with teeth and fleshy silence eating any protest I might make.
But pushing to relax is something you cannot do and finally I just sat and appreciated the sunlight, hoping I’d feel all those pieces of me unclench. It had gotten so much worse lately, with both parents worrying about marriage-brokering (my mother’s thought) or apprenticeship (my father’s) or both, but never my thought of neither.
In other news, this weekend’s classes are the Reading Aloud Workshop, Literary Techniques for Genre Writers II, and the First Pages Workshop. If my live classes are inconvenient due to schedule or price, check out the on-demand versions.
My most recent publication is “Marvelous Contrivances of the Heart”, which appears in Recycled Pulp, edited by John Helfers. It’s a story where I tried to hearken back to an old, twilight-zoneish theme while refurbishing some bits to update it some. I’ll be curious to hear what people think.
If you’ve read Beasts of Tabat and liked it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or LibraryThing.
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