NaNoWriMo 2015: Day 3

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.

Most of the time he was an extremely solitary child. Because everyone knew he was would be given to the Hedge, there was no point in teaching him anything. There was no point in wasting any of the household’s resources on him, other than what was necessary to keep him alive and healthy until it was time to give him up.

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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I’ve read some great stuff in the last month or so, and wanted to point to some books that I thought people would particularly enjoy. Most of these were read on the Kindle, and I will usually link to that version if it’s available.

I loved Amanda Downum’s The Drowning City and The Bone Palace. Her work reminded me a lot of Martha Wells’ richly textured fantasy, and I thought Savedra was the best of any trans character I’ve encountered so far in fantasy. In grabbing links for this blog post, I realized there’s a third, Kingdoms of Dust, so that’s getting snagged right now.

Gemma Files’ fantasy western, A Book Of Tongues, was awesome and features a great character in the form of Chess, a saucy red-headed ex-whore and hexslinger who’s following his lover Rook and the rest of his outlaw band. I’m looking forward to the sequel, A Rope of Thorns, to the point where I am saving it for sometime when I can sit down and happily devour the book in a single setting.

I finally finished up the Hunger Games trilogy with Mockingjay. It’s a good, solid trilogy, but the first remains my favorite.

Joselle Vanderhoof was kind enough to give me a copy of Sleeping Beauty Indeed & Other Lesbian Fairytales while I was at ArmadilloCon. I got very tired of retold fairy tales while working with Fantasy Magazine, but there’s plenty in here doing something interesting rather than just regurgitating the tale.

I went back and reread Barry Hughart’s The Story of the Stone since I discovered it on Kindle, and knew I wanted something good for a plane trip. I first ran across the series in ancient days and still think it’s a lovely piece of fantasy and I wish there were more than just a few books about Master Li and Number Ten Ox.

The same trip was good for reading Masked, edited by Lou Anders, an anthology of superhero stories which is a nice addition to that field and has some stories

Rereads included E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia series, which I re-read every few years as comfort food, and just love. They take place in early 20th century small English towns and feature village life at its most intensely gossipy and social. I must admit, I read a lot of books with the thought “boy, a fantasy version of this would be great” lurking in the back of my head, and this is one I’d love to see translated, although I think it’d take some major talent to pull it off.