Whose story?

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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SEPTEMBER QUESTION: What genre would be the worst one for you to tackle and why?

MY ANSWER: That is simple. Horror. I don’t read it. I don’t watch it. I don’t like it. Of course, I’d suck at writing it.

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I wanted to talk about my latest writing project, about story structure, to be precise. As some of you might already know, I’m a long-time participant in the WEP blog hop. Every two months, we write flash fiction on the theme provided by the WEP admin team. I usually write series – six flash stories a year, all about the same protagonist, but each story using a different WEP theme as an inspiration.

This year, all my stories are set in a fantasy world. My protagonist Altenay is a Finder. She finds things or people with her magic. Her clients hire her to find something or someone for them. And here lies my conundrum.

Usually, most story patterns – from ancient myths to modern science fiction – adhere to the same simplified blueprint. The protagonist’s world is in turmoil, for one reason or another. She needs to bring order back into her world, and for that, she must reach a goal: find a sword, kill a dictator, tame a dragon, etc. But of course, there are obstacles and problems in her way. As she solves her problems and overcomes the obstacles, her actions and her emotional upheavals become the meat of the story. The moment she achieves her goal, the story ends.     

In the case of my Finder flash fiction, no problem is her own. Her world is not in turmoil. The problems all belong to her clients. When someone hires her to Find a stolen goat or a lost child or a misplaced book, the gist of the story is focused on the client: why they need that object or person Found? What is at stake for them? Altenay only does it for the money. It is her job. So, each story, each journey of hers in pursuit of what was lost, is actually not about her at all but about her clients. Altenay, the Finder, is tangential to their stories, a tool, so to speak. Her travails and emotions are unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

I find this revelation disturbing. I didn’t plan it. I wanted my Altenay to be a real protagonist. I wanted the stories to rotate around her, but the entire series came out differently. Maybe if the stories were longer, I could’ve come up with some problems Altenay had to solve for herself, found some connections between her and the objects she seeks, some stakes of her own. But the very brevity of the stories forced me to concentrate on their most important aspects: why those objects must be Found. And those are all her clients’ stories. 

After giving it some thought, I decided that I’m not alone in using this particular format. It is often used in mystery novels: a sleuth is a tool too – a tool of justice. Agatha Christie’s Poirot rarely knows the murder victims, when he investigates the murders, so the stories that unfold are more about the murderer and his victim than about Poirot himself.

I suppose my Finder is a sleuth too, of a sort, even though I didn’t set out to write her that way. What about you? Has anything like that ever happened to you: the story formula you had conceived disintegrated during the writing process, and another one emerged unexpectedly?     

 

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WEP Aug 2022 – Moonlight Sonata

In my take on the WEP August 2022 challenge, Moonlight Sonata, my heroine Altenay, the Finder in a fantasy land, is searching for a musical instrument – a lira.   

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The music sang over the hills, the notes rising and falling, sparkling like tears. The moon, huge and low, shimmered over the horizon, as if commiserating with the mournful melody.

Altenay sat quietly. She wanted to weep from the beauty and sorrow of the chords. “That must be what I’m seeking,” she whispered after a while. She didn’t want the music to stop, but she had a job to do. This morning, the dean of the city music academy had asked her to locate a stolen lira.

“It is the Lira of Pangian,” the dean had said reverently. “The legends say gods created it. It sounds sublime. The old minstrel who owned it died, but before his death, a year ago, he donated the lira to us, to pass on to the next outstanding performer. It’s priceless. It can’t be sold, only bestowed: an award for excellence. We promised it as a prize in our music competition. The competition starts tomorrow, but someone stole the lira. Could you Find it?”

“Yes,” Altenay said. “I’m a Finder. That’s what I do, but I need something connected to the thing I seek, something that’s been in contact with it for a long time. Something that belongs to it.”  

“How about its bow?” the dean asked. “The old busker had used it for years. It is still in the case.” He nodded at the open leather lira case on his desk.

As soon as Altenay touched the bow, she knew she would find its lira. Her Finder magic unfurled eagerly. It felt faint but steady, slightly gray at the edges—the lira was some distance away.  

“It isn’t in the city,” Altenay said. “It’ll take me a while to bring it back. Maybe a full day.”

“As long as it’s here by the end of the competition,” the dean said.

“Why didn’t you try to find it before?”

“We didn’t know it was missing.” The dean’s face pinkened. “It was in its case, in the instrument storage. We didn’t have a reason to open the case.”

“So it could’ve been stolen months ago? Or last week?”

“Yes.” He winced.

Altenay stashed the bow in her satchel and fingered it occasionally to give her directions, as she drove her hired donkey cart. It was an uneventful journey through a peaceful countryside, but now, she finally arrived. Her Finder magic zoomed right on the dilapidated farmhouse in front of her.  

The moonlight camouflaged its general air of neglect, but nothing could conceal the broken roof over one wing or the weeds crowding the driveway. She snapped the reins to get the donkey moving again towards the house, while the music swirled around her, glittering and mysterious.  

Time to kill the music, Altenay thought regretfully. The lira was in this house. She stopped the cart, jumped off, and mounted the creaking stairs.

For luck, she touched her tubeteika and flicked the little beads decorating the fringe as she knocked on the warped door. Midnight wasn’t the best time for a visit, but someone was playing inside, obviously not asleep.

Altenay felt sorry when the music petered off. Her entire body clenched in regret. A moment later, the door jerked open. A tall young woman in the doorway had long dark hair. Moonlight framed her with a silvery aura. One of her hands still clutched a bow, similar to the one Altenay had used to guide her here.

The girl eyed Altenay belligerently. “What do you want?”      

“I’m a Finder,” Altenay said. “I was contracted by the dean of the music academy to find the Lira of Pangian. I’m guessing you’ve stolen it. You must give it back.”

The girl glared at her.

“Look,” Altenay said. “I don’t wish you any trouble. If you give it back, I won’t tell anyone about you. There won’t be any consequences.”

“I’m not giving it back,” the girl spat. “It’s mine. It belongs to me.”

“No, it belongs to the academy. The old minstrel—”

“He was my grandfather. He didn’t have the rights to give it away,” the girl said fiercely. “The Lira of Pangian has belonged to my grandmother’s family for generations. She couldn’t play as well as grandpa. She gave it to him to play, not to own. It was supposed to revert back to me after his death, but the old goat didn’t believe in women making music. Instead, he gave it to the academy. Do you know that only men could participate in their competition? A woman can’t even enter. My grandfather was a chauvinist. All those academy musicians are. The lira is mine. I can play it better than any of them.”

Altenay inhaled deeply. “I believe you,” she said. The music had been amazing, after all. “But I have a job to do. If I don’t bring back the lira, I’ll have to tell the dean where I found it. He would send the city guards.”   

“Tell them you couldn’t find it,” the girl said. “I can pay you.”

Altenay shook her head. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “They’ll ask another Finder. I’m not the only Finder in the city. Someone else would also come straight here.”

The girl’s mouth pressed together in a tight, angry line. “This lira is mine,” she repeated.

Altenay thought furiously. She couldn’t deprive this girl of her music. But she should do her job too. “Maybe there is a solution,” she said. “You’re a musician. Do you have another lira?”

“Yes.” The girl’s brow furrowed. “I have another instrument. A good one. I’ve played it since I was a child.”

“Could I see them both?”

“Come in.” Sullenly, the girl stood aside. She led Altenay to a large and mostly empty room. Near a window stood a low rattan table with a lira on it and a chair beside it. The light of a single candle reflected off the worn, scratched lacquer of the wood and the faded, almost invisible design painted long ago on the lira’s body.

In another corner, on a stand, was another lira. It was in a much better condition and lavishly decorated.

Altenay’s magic splashed one last time and dissipated, as it always did when she reached her goal. “That is the Lira of Pangian?” Altenay pointed at the table.

The girl nodded.

“Give me another one.” Altenay pulled the bow out of her satchel. “And give me your bow. You played with it on this other lira, right?”

“Yes. For years.” The girl looked bewildered but willingly accepted the exchange of bows. “The bows are interchangeable. The music is in the body of the instrument. But they will know it is the wrong lira.”

“Who will know?” Altenay countered. “How many people will know?”

The girl shrugged. “My old lira is good too,” she said. “I planned to keep it, but…”

“It should work,” Altenay said. “But you’d better leave the city, at least for a while.”

“I plan to,” the girl said.

To Altenay’s delight, the switcheroo worked. Neither the bow nor the lira inspired her Finder magic to go anywhere. They obviously belonged to each other, so her magic stayed quiescent.  

The dean was upset though. “This is wrong,” he mumbled.

“If you’re dissatisfied with my work,” Altenay said haughtily, “don’t pay me. Hire another Finder.”

The dean subsided. He did pay her. It made her ashamed of herself, just a little, to accept his payment, but overall, she didn’t regret her decision. Most of all, she wished to hear that girl play the Lira of Pangian again. At least once more in her life. The desire was sharpest on the nights of the full moon. Maybe one day, her wish would come true.  

Tagline: Moonlight and music combine in mysterious ways.

Expected milieu, original solutions

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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AUGUST QUESTION: When you set out to write a story, do you try to be more original or do you try to give readers what they want?

MY ANSWER: In a contest between familiarity and originality I, as a writer, would always opt for originality. But of course, this statement is not absolute. If I’m working on a science fiction story, for example, I know I have to comply with the genre expectations: space travel, wormholes, aliens, or at least some super technology that doesn’t exist here and now. Not yet anyway. Even of the technology is very low key, like a hairdressing robot, it has to be there.

If I don’t do that, my readers wouldn’t recognize the genre and would drift away. Even more: if the story is included in a sci-fi magazine or anthology, the sci-fi element should appear on the first page, or better still, in the first paragraph. That’s what the readers want, and that’s what I strive to give them.

But in all my stories, the sci-fi ambience is only skin-deep – a framework, no more. All my sci-fi stories are personal stories set in a sci-fi world. My characters usually face problems that are not genre specific. Sometimes they solve those problems using the above-mentioned futuristic technology, and sometimes not. That is where I try to be original and inventive: in my characters’ problem-solving approach. Not just rushing in with laser guns, but employing a unique solution, something smart, unexpected, and with a minimum of violence.  

What about you? Where does your originality appear in your stories?

 

My favorite book world

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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JULY QUESTION: If you could live in any book world, which one would you choose?

MY ANSWER: Most books I know – I read primarily speculative fiction – outline a world that throbs with a strife of some kind. Political intrigues. Wars. Rebellions. Oppressors. I wouldn’t want to live in any of those stories. Frankly, I want to live in a utopia, but alas, almost no speculative fiction novel follows its heroes into a world with no problems.

The most idyllic would be the small country of Welce from Sharon Shinn’s ELEMENTAL BLESSINGS fantasy series. It starts with Troubled Waters and includes 3 other books: Royal Airs, Jeweled Fire, and Unquiet Land. I wouldn’t mind living in Welce. Its ruler is a decent guy. It doesn’t have corporations. It doesn’t involve itself in an armed conflict of any kind. It doesn’t have slavery. It seems relatively peaceful and sort-of democratic – a good place to settle if you’re not ambitious. Which I’m not. So, Welce it is.

Here are the books:

WEP June 2022 – Please Read the Letter

Another story about Altenay, the magical Finder, as my answer to the June 2022 WEP challenge, Please Read the Letter. I seem unable to restrict myself to 1000 words. All my stories so far tend to extend to about 1300 words. ☹

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Chaos ruled the house in the middle of the University district. Half-filled boxes, chests, and cloth sacks littered the floor.  

“Hello, Mistress Syrenia,” Altenay greeted the young woman at the door. “Your message asked me to come here.”

“Yes, thank you for coming promptly, Finder,” the woman said. “Call me Melana.” She led the way into a former study or a library. The empty bookcases lining the walls reached up to the ceiling, but most books had already been packed into crates.  

“This was my father’s house,” Melana said. “He died and left me everything. But one book, the jewel of his collection, is missing. I want you to Find it. They say you can Find anything.”

“Mostly,” Altenay agreed.

The unoccupied shelves around her loomed dolefully. Bookshelves were supposed to have books or at least knick-knacks. Having lost their content, the shelves felt incomplete, almost grieving.

“What book,” she asked aloud.

“A bestiary,” said Melana. “The Amazing Beasts of Revocnava Island. It was my favorite. It had incredible pictures. I wanted to have it, the only one of my father’s library, but it is not here. I’m selling the rest.” Melana’s resentment shimmered in the air, augmenting the disconsolate atmosphere of the house.

“You father didn’t tell you what happened to the book? Before he died?”

“We were estranged. We didn’t talk,” Melana said stiffly. “But he knew I loved that book. Maybe he had sold it to spite me. I would buy it back, whatever the price. Just Find it.”

“Could you tell me more about the book,” Altenay prompted.

“I heard you need something, some connection to the book,” Melana said. “Another book from this library. Anything of my father’s.”

“No, anything of your father’s wouldn’t work. It is too generic. There were thousands of items here, all connected. I need something more specific. Something unique to the book.”

Melana’s lips twisted in self-mockery. “When I was a kid, before my father abandoned my mom and me, I tore a page from the book. I loved the illustration. Would it do?”

“Do you still have it? Yes, that would be best.”

“Wait.” Melana disappeared into the bowels of the house. She returned a few minutes later with a large leather portfolio. The bright red-and-teal dragon glared at them from the page, its every scale outlined in gold.

“A really astounding picture,” Altenay said reverently. “That must be a huge book.”

“Yes,” Melana acknowledged. “Do you have to take the picture?” She seemed reluctant to part with it.

Gingerly, Altenay put a finger on the page with its glowing paint. Instantly, her Finder magic sprang to life. It pulled at her, sharp as an arrow. It knew where the rest of the book was.

“I’ll bring your portfolio back when I find the book,” she promised.u

“When will you know?” Melana demanded.

“Give me a day or two,” Altenay said. She could probably find the book within an hour. It was close by, she was sure, for her Finder magic to be so crystal clear, but she always hedged her bets when dealing with clients.

She left Melana’s house with the portfolio strap across her shoulder. With one finger inside the portfolio, on the image, she marched where her magic pointed. The day was sunny, the hour still early, and her magic’s direction unambiguous. She was prepared to walk a while, but it only took a few minutes. Holding her ornate tubeteika, so it wouldn’t slip off her head, she lifted her eyes at the imposing colonnaded edifice. The University Library.

She hurried inside and followed the summons of her magic past the fiction section, past the alchemists’ room, past the memoir chamber, into a spacious hall called History and Geography. The bookcases inside stretched in rows to the far wall. Her magic blinked and dissipated. Argh! Somewhere in this huge room full of books was one book she was seeking. Irresolute, Altenay stood inside the entrance arch. How could she find Melana’s book here?

“Are you a new student?” someone asked behind her back.

Altenay whirled.

An older man with a bald head regarded her with friendly interest. “Are you looking for something specific? I’m the librarian here.”

“Hello,” she said. “I’m a Finder. I was contracted to locate a book.” She told him what she was looking for.

“Hm. A bestiary. We have some books donated to us from private collections. If you tell me the name of the previous owner, I might know where his book is.”

Altenay winced. “I promise confidentiality to all my clients.” But maybe she should disclose the name in this case. “Syrenia,” she said at last. “I don’t know his first name.”

“Professor Syrenia? He died recently.”

“Yes, him.”

“It’s a sad loss,” the librarian said. “He was a noted scholar, traveled a lot in his youth.” He shook his head. “But he didn’t donate anything to us.”

“My magic insists the book is in this room,” Altenay said. “Maybe he hid his personal book here.”               

“Why hiding it?” asked the librarian, his brow crinkled in puzzlement. “He should’ve told me.”

“I don’t know. Something to do with his daughter. She said they were estranged. I can show you a page from this book. Maybe it will stir your memory.” She opened the portfolio.

“Torn from the book,” he muttered with disapproval.

Altenay smiled apologetically. “She was young.”

“Still, should’ve more respect for a book. Let me think.”

He started walking. Altenay followed.

“I know the book. Saw it once when I visited his house,” the librarian murmured to himself. “I was a student then, took a class from Syrenia. That man’s knowledge was encyclopedic.”

He stopped in front of a case containing huge, illustrated volumes. His finger traced along the front of the case without touching the spines, traveling through the air like a magic pointer. The lower shelf. The middle shelves. The top one. The finger stopped.

“This book definitely doesn’t belong to us.” He pulled a ladder to the case, climbed, and took out a large tome with the embossed gold lettering on the cover. The Amazing Beasts of Revocnava Island. “Gotcha!” The librarian opened the book.

Attached to the front page, was a letter. “To my beloved daughter Melana Syrenia. Please, read my letter. It will explain why I had to leave you and your mom, even though I loved you both all my life.”

Hurriedly, Altenay lifted her eyes, embarrassed to catch even a glimpse of the letter addressed to another.

“Well,” the librarian drawled and resolutely closed the book. “It’s certainly not ours, but I can’t just let you walk away with this book. Professor Syrenia put the book here for a reason. I’m responsible for every book in this building. Tell Mistress Melana to come here.”

“Thank you,” Altenay said.   

A few days later, when Melana Syrenia came to pay for Altenay’s services, Altenay couldn’t restrain her curiosity.

“Yes, I read the letter,” Melana said. “He was cursed. He stole a priceless statue from a temple on Revocnava Island when he was young, and the priestess cursed him. The curse extended to his family, and when he realized that, he abandoned us. To remove the curse from us. He did it because he loved us, and I never knew. I was mad at him my whole life. I wouldn’t have read his letter if he just sent it to me. If it wasn’t connected to the book. If the book wasn’t hidden.” She sounded sorrowful. “Now, I suppose I’ll have to return the statue.” She sighed. “That darn letter!”  

Tagline: A letter could change a life … when delivered at the right time.  

Making book covers

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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This month’s question is long-winded, but it could be condensed into a short query: what do you do if you can’t write? If I can’t write, which happens quite often, alas, I either read or make book covers. That’s what I wanted to talk about today.

My approach to creating book covers might be peculiar because I can’t draw. I have to use existing images from free image sites, like Pixabay, and enhance them until they show what I want.

Let’s take a look at one example. Here is the original image by https://pixabay.com/users/vic_b-6314823/

The image is large enough to manipulate safely. First, I cropped it to make the figure more prominent.

Then I removed the white window casements over the woman’s head. The universally dark bricks might be duller from the architectural viewpoint, but they would display the title and other texts better.

I changed the face to one of the portraits by https://pixabay.com/users/kaazoom-448850/ He is a wonderful portrait artist, and I like using his faces for my covers. I changed the hair – it is a blend of several different images. I changed the sword, made it more elaborate. It is also a composite of two different swords. To jazz up the whole a little more, I added the blooming shrubbery around the heroine. And finally, I introduced the title and author name. Here is the first version of my pre-made cover.

Still I wasn’t happy with it. It looks sort-of bland. I could’ve made it more playful by adding flying fairies instead of shrubbery. Or I could’ve cropped it in a different way and shown a woman and a dragon. Or a wolf shapeshifter. Or I could’ve added some magic sparkles. There are many ways the same original image could be transformed into different book covers, depending on the book’s genre and content. I decided to use a different background altogether.

Here is the cover I would use if I needed one – with the same woman:

I find it deeply satisfying that I can create art without being an artist myself. Artistic software is a wonderful tool, and I use the free graphic program Paint.net for all my artistic needs.

What about you? Some of you make book covers too. How do you approach the process? What tools do you use?     

 

Magic vocabulary

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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I’m not going to answer this month’s optional question. Instead, I’m going to write about my preferred genre. I’m a speculative fiction writer, so all my stories are either science fiction or fantasy. In most fantasy stories – mine or written by other writers – magic is always close to the surface. Something is always happening because of magic.  

Admittedly, magic isn’t necessary confined to fantasy fiction. It exists in our everyday lives as well, and in our mundane vocabulary, magic is always a good word. Consider these well-known idioms: magic moment, magic touch, magic show, work your magic, and the most popular – magic word.

But in a fantasy land, magic has a different connotation. In fantasy stories, magic is a force only magicians can wield. Have you ever wondered what those idioms might mean to a magician from a fantasy novel? I have and I asked a magician, Eriale, the heroine of my novel Almost Adept (now out of print). Below are her definitions of the idioms that include the word magic.  

Magic word – that is a metaphor. There are no magical words except ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and there is no real magic involved, just politeness.

Magic touch – this is usually reserved for small magic. When I need to heat the water for my bath, I touch the water and infuse it with energy through the touch. The water warms up. When I need to coat a wood splinter with an illusion, to make it look like something else, I touch it, apply my magic through the touch, and voila, it looks like a feather or a knife or a spoon. But such a spoon couldn’t be used for eating, of course, or the knife for cutting. Only the appearance changes.

Magic show – a show created by using magic. For example, fireworks displays in the sky during Midwinter celebrations or visual storytelling on birthdays. My father is excellent with visual storytelling. He uses distinct illusion spells for every character involved in a story. Children love his shows. When I was a child, my favorite illusionary character was a cricket spy, a very tricky little lad. I haven’t mastered this kind of magic yet. I can do fireworks displays, of course, but visual storytelling is a very delicate and precise application of magic. It requires lots of patience and practice.   

Work your magic – means exactly that. When a client needs something done with magic, he would hire a magician and say: “Work your magic.” It could be applied to sending messages, or checking food for poison, or screening patrons in a gaming house, or changing the weather.  

Magic price – is what a magician pays for working magic. Magic is energy generated by a magician’s body. Anything that can be done without magic can be done with magic, and the magician applying it pays the price. For example, if you want to carry a cargo to the other side of the country, you can do it using a horse and a wagon. And lots of time. Or you can employ a mage to transport your cargo. The horse would spend energy pulling the wagon. It would need to eat and sleep to replenish its strength. So would a drover. A mage is no different. He compacts the time and space needed for transportation, and he uses the same amount of energy for the same job, but he pulls this energy out of himself. Of course, mages are always hungry and tired after working magic. If they are not careful and overextend their magic, they could faint or even die. Sometimes, when there is no choice and many lives are at stake, a magician might work too much magic and burn his own magic; cripple himself to save others. It doesn’t happen often, but I read about a few such cases. Those magicians were heroes. They sacrificed themselves for the good of all.

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Below is a snippet of a dialog on the subject Eriale has with another character from the novel, Kealan.

“What if a mage wants to use more magic than his body generates?” Kealan asked.

“He can’t.” Eriale’s expression clouded. “Unless he resorts to blood magic. Then he can, if he extracts the energy from the pain and death of others. It’s easy magic, but…it’s dirty. Blood magic corrupts a mage’s soul.” She shivered. “It makes me want to puke, like poison.” She hugged her knees and stared into the distance.     

“Sorry I asked.” Kealan didn’t like her looking so forlorn. He thought of a distraction. “What if something can’t be done without magic? Like turning a man into an animal? Is it possible with magic?”

“Why?” Eriale snickered. “Do you want to turn someone into a frog?”

“No. I heard a rumor that some crazy mage at the royal court turned a duke into a goat. I thought it was a hoax. They were just pulling my leg, right?”

“Ah.” She kept silent for so long, he wasn’t sure she would answer at all. At last, she stirred. “You can transform one living being into another, but it’s a very complicated spell and a brutal one,” she said quietly. “It takes lots of power and lots of knowledge. You have to learn every detail of the anatomy of your original creature and the target creature. Otherwise, you’ll create a monster. And the overall masses of both creatures should be the same. You can’t turn a man into a tiny frog. Where would the extra mass go? Unless you want a frog the size of a man.”

Kealan grunted. His imagination leaped into overdrive, visualizing a possible result of such a transformation. “A frog the size of a man. Should be charming.”

She giggled. “There’s another solution. I could use a transportation spell. You know, find a frog in a nearby pond, transport the man there and the frog here. It’s a kind of a switcheroo. Done properly, it only takes a moment. For a bystander, it would look like a transformation, but it’s a trick, really.”

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What about other genres? Do you know other genre-specific words that have different meaning in the genre books than on our mundane lives?

 

 

WEP Apr 2022 – A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

Here is my entry for the WEP Apr 2022 challenge – A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. It is another story about Altenay, the Finder, the heroine of my 2022 WEP flash fiction. Altenay is a magician: her magic allows her to Find what is lost. The story is a bit longer than 1000 words. Sorry.

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“A hard rain is gonna fall,” the elderly zookeeper mumbled. “Me bones ache.”

Altenay glanced at the heavy gray sky. It had been drizzling for the past three days, on and off. Not a good time to search for anything out in the open, but she didn’t have a choice. She was a Finder. She found things. And this time, it was a Council-paid job.

She eyed the empty cage in front of her with disfavor. No point in asking how the m’riffin had escaped: the cage door gaped open, its lock broken.   

“Dogs wouldn’t pick up his scent in all this rain,” the grumpy zookeeper informed her. “You need to find him quickly, or he would get a cough. Poor little Mory.”

“I don’t hunt by scent like dogs,” Altenay said sharply. She huddled in her cloak, but the cold moisture seeped inside, making her shiver.

“They said you need something of his.” The zookeeper shuffled back to his office. “Here are a couple of wing feathers from his last molt. Would they do? Poor Mory.”

Altenay took the feathers. Brownish with golden highlights, they were longer than her palm.

Poor little Mory indeed, she thought morosely. An m’riffin was almost as tall as she was, with two powerful chicken-like legs, a body and tail of a cat, vestigial wings, and a head of a monkey on a long sinuous neck. It was a magically created monstrosity with long rabbit ears, an amalgam of several species that should never coexist in one body. It couldn’t fly, but it could run like the wind.

Of course, m’riffins were rare and expensive, and someone had stolen this one last night. Why? Who would want such a pet? What if the thief was dangerous? Would he fight her? What if the m’riffin bit her?

“How do I trap it?” Altenay asked. “Does it bite? What does it eat?”

“Meat,” the zookeeper said. “Fish. Ham. He likes smoked octopus. Poor Mory.”

Altenay really didn’t want this large carnivore wandering the streets. Smoked octopus, right!

“These guys will go with you.” The zookeeper nodded at the two guards with a small donkey wagon waiting outside his office.

“Thank you.” Altenay climbed into the wagon.

“Where to?” one of the guards asked.

She fingered the feathers and unfurled her Finder magic. It pointed straight south. Hm. South of the city lay the sprawling river delta. Then the swamps and the mountains. And behind the mountains, the Sultanate.

“Let’s go to the river port,” she told the guards. “Maybe someone wants to smuggle the creature up the river.”

The guard flipped the reins, and they started rolling.

“Do you know why there is such a rush with this job?” Altenay asked.

The younger guard looked at her over his shoulder. “The Council wants to send it to the Sultan as a gift,” he said with a smirk. “For his zoo, I suppose.”

“Oh, right,” she remembered. Everyone at the market had been talking about it. The ship with the delegation to the Sultanate was scheduled to depart in two days.

Altenay rubbed her arms and watched in dismay as the sky opened up. The rain pounded the wagon’s canvas roof and danced in the puddles between the cobblestones. At least she was under a roof. The guards on their bench were drenched already.

At the port, she could do nothing but swear. Repeatedly. Her magic kept pulling south, across the river, into the swamps. She hoisted a bag of ham bits over her shoulder and jumped down from the wagon.

“Guys. My magic still points south. I guess I’ll have to go alone from here. A boat across the river and then on foot. Oh, I hate this job.”

By now, the rain fell in sheets. She tried to wipe the water from her face with her wet sleeve and giggled at the futility of the gesture.

“Sorry, Finder. There are no roads for the wagon down south.” The older guard shrugged apologetically.

“I know. Bye.” She turned away.

“Wait.” The younger guard offered her his pike. “You might need it … as a staff, maybe, if not a weapon. It’s sturdy. You’re all alone.” His wet cheeks pinked.

“Thank you.” Smiling, Altenay accepted his offering.

The older guard snorted and shook his head but didn’t say anything.

Altenay headed to the port. Finding a boat to ferry her across the river wasn’t hard, but after that she was on her own. Nobody lived in the swamps but loonies and criminals. And all sorts of predatory animals. Fortunately, most of them were nocturnal, and it was still early in the day, not even noon yet, but the sky was so dark and leaden, it could be evening. She couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe the swamp denizens couldn’t either? Not a comforting thought.

Resolutely, she started walking. The swamps were not all mire. Trees and shrubbery and tall reeds grew in profusion, and walking paths zigzagged among the waterways. It was tricky to follow her magic here, but overall, she made progress in the right direction. The muddy path squelched and slurped under her boots.

She didn’t realize at once when she arrived. Nothing looked different, but her magic stopped pulling and just hazed disconsolately under the weeping sky. Then a thicket of reeds in front of her resolved into a crude hut. Beside it, the m’riffin was feeding from a big bucket suspended off a tree branch. The beast’s motley brownish coloration – wings, pelt, and all – made it almost invisible in the swamp.

A boy of around seven or eight darted out of the hut and glared at her. Altenay glared back. How had these people transported the creature here?

“You can’t take Mory,” the boy said fiercely. He was clutching a wooden club almost as big as he was.

“Your grandpa is the zookeeper, isn’t he?” Altenay guessed. She should’ve known. Who else would’ve fed an animal smoked octopus? Most people couldn’t afford the delicacy. Only someone who loved the m’riffin would give it such a treat.

“He raised Mory from a chick. And they are going to send him away.”

“Look. If I go back and tell the Council who stole Mory, the guards are gong to arrest your grandpa and put him in prison. What’ll happen to you then?”

The boy’s eyes grew round, and his lips started trembling.

“How did you bring it here?”

“In a boat,” he said in a small shaky voice.

“Then we are going to take Mory back the same way. And we are not going to tell anyone that it was your grandpa who stole it. If nobody knows, nobody will arrest him.”

The boy stared at her for a while and then nodded mutely.

“Get the boat,” Altenay said. “I’ll do all the talking. You keep mum.”    

When they got back to the port, the rain lightened up. Altenay talked to the city guards. She said she found the creature roaming the swamps. The boy who lived there offered to help with his boat, but she had to pay him.

The guards accepted her explanation, and so did the Council. The ship with the delegation to the Sultan, including the m’riffin, departed on schedule. Nobody arrested the old zookeeper. She saw him later, ambling around the zoo, as grumpy as ever.      

Tagline: Rain or shine, the Finder always finds her m’riffin.           

A Girl from Ukraine

I saw a beautiful image on Pixabay by a talented artist Natalia Lavrinenko from Kiev, Ukraine.

It was a simple sketch of a portrait. I decided to play with it to express my feelings. Here is what I came up with:

Do you speak French?

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.

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I will forgo this month’s question as I have never dealt with audio books. I want to talk about a different issue that has me puzzled, more as a reader than as a writer. Some old-time authors I admire, among them Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Sayers, and several others, sometimes include French sentences in their books, usually in dialogs, without a translation in the footnotes. Why is there no translation? Are all their readers supposed to know French?

Maybe in the past, everyone with education could speak French. I’m not sure, but I doubt it was true even then. I do know for sure it isn’t true now. I don’t speak French. Neither do many of my friends and neighbors.

When I encounter such foreign-language phrases in books, I generally guess what was being said, but it irritates me. Why did the writers do it at all? Didn’t they want their readers to know exactly what they write? Did they want to baffle their readers? And why, for Pete’s sake, don’t the modern editors supply the translation, when a story is reprinted a hundred years later? I’m certain that every modern editor in every publishing house knows that not everybody speaks French. So where are my translations?   

Do you have anything to say on this issue? Do you have answers to any of my questions? Are you ever tempted to include French in your own books? Or any other language without translation? Tell me in the comments.