Chapter 1 of The Adventures of Earl the Misplaced

Chapter 1        The Quartz Chamber

When the mine closed last year, Earl could have probably given up on life just like those other cowards who hung up their picks for jobs at the local super-store — not Earl!  He wasn’t about to throw in the towel and let a bunch of bean counters wreck his life.  No, Earl had a plan!  Anyone who looked at the sawed off little man hardly gave him a glance and went on to more interesting people.  Bosses, coworkers, and especially the ladies didn’t pay any attention to Earl these days, but he figured that was their problem, not his.  He’d worked the Beckman mine for every single year of its existence — the first to clock in and the last to clock out — but while his bosses got rich, and his coworkers died or moved on, he remained, just Earl.  He’d been a part of the mine as much as the two giant ore crushers that stood before him like sentinels at the mouth of the man-made cavern.

The guards were down in the communication shack drinking beer and playing cards.  Nobody messed around in the mine, especially the local kids, who drank horror stories from their mother’s breast about the bad things that happened to unwelcome visitors.  There were better places to take a girl for a romantic tryst – a two-mile trip up the steep rocky slope was bad enough on the narrow gage traction train, and terrible on foot.  No, the guards were there for show so the insurance company didn’t raise a fuss, and they never ventured any further than the front gate.  He knew them all; two were the last foreman’s boys and were just as bad tempered as their dead dad, while the other was a chain conveyer operator who’d spent half of his life behind bars, and the other half in them.  Earl brought the beer, which they grabbed without inviting him to the game.  After all, he was just Earl.

With a flashlight in hand, he stumped up the last few steps to the control room and fished an old key out of his pocket.  When it still worked, Earl grunted with satisfaction and entered the cramped box, which stood high on a shelf above the entrance to the mine.  From here, he could turn on lights, start generators, and get the ventilator fans working.  Earl opened up a large breaker box and disabled the outside lights and crusher motors before closing the power main.  The crushers made quite a racket, which would draw attention to his activities, and the lights – well that was just a no-brainer.

Locking the door behind him, Earl stood there for a moment, washed in the gentle breeze drawn in by the large ducted fans scattered around the property at the top of mile long ventilation shafts.  Cooper Mountain still had plenty of precious metal locked away in stone, diluted in tons of worthless granite.  Extending five miles into the mountain with nearly a hundred miles of tunnels, shafts, and rooms, the mine spread out like a great tree’s roots.  A hundred feet below him on the floor of the entrance a massive generator droned, a mere shadow of the assault on the ears Earl recalled.

The old man walked along the catwalk into the mine until he arrived at the plastic curtains, which directed air throughout the ventilation system.  He climbed into a stripped down four wheel drive Toyota pickup with a roll cage he’s welded himself twenty years ago.  The fire bosses used the truck to move personnel to and from a blasting face, and it had seen heavy abuse at their hands.  Fourth gear didn’t work, but only a fool would go that fast in a mine anyway.  Earl remembered the moment when a fellow worker busted out the left headlight on the day the bean counters shut down the mine, as the truck sped one-eyed down the gradually descending tunnel.  At regular intervals, the pickup passed cutouts fanning outward from the main tunnel, which Earl counted until he arrived at cutout fifty-seven.  Two huge granite pillars, left behind to hold up the overburden of the mountain, flanked the entrance.  Earl turned to the right and headed into Fifty-seven East, which descended even deeper into the mountain at the same gradual pitch as the main line.  Fifteen years ago, Earl had worked this branch of the mine with a small team of miners known affectionately as the Dukes of Earl.  He sure missed those guys!

Those were the days when Earl was a fire boss responsible for setting charges to turn the face into rubble one blast at a time.  As the truck passed through another ventilation curtain, Earl stopped and pulled it aside to bring fresh air into his destination.  Nobody came back here since the accident.  Fifty-seven East never yielded as much as its neighboring shafts and the death of two miners made the company shut down further excavation.  Inspectors from the state never bothered to come out — taking the word of the company bosses over the claims of the survivors.  Two men died instantly, crushed beneath thousands of tons of falling rock.  Earl’s quick wits and experience saved the rest, when he forced them all to dive into a nearby spur.  Jake and Clay were running the conveyor up at the face, when Earl heard the groaning of rock subsiding under the tremendous weight of the overburden.  Earl wasn’t here to reminisce though.

Fifteen years ago, the five survivors huddled together in a natural spur created by a subterranean river long dried up.  Nearly invisible from the wide tunnel floor, Earl only knew of its existence the moment he shoved his team into its dark, uncertain depths.  When the rocks stopped falling and silence returned, water dripped in time with their synchronized breathing.  Earl snapped a light stick and waved it around to get a view of their prison.  The faces of countless quartz crystals twinkled in the green light of the glow stick.  Quartz, the nemesis of all hard rock miners, shattered easily under the impact of blasting.  The company geologist swore up, down, and sideways on how the conditions were safe, yet the evidence surrounded the team.  By the time rescuers arrived, and the company safety boss had a good look, the entire team agreed to stand in solidarity for their fallen comrades.  Nevertheless, there wouldn’t be any inspectors going down into that cavern as long as the company had enough money to buy them all Florida condominiums.  Instead, the company bosses blamed Earl despite all evidence to the contrary.  They demoted and assigned him to the dirty task of loading conveyers, and getting coffee for any snot-nosed kid who demanded it.  On that day, he was just Earl.

When he arrived at his destination, Earl removed the lamp cable from the back of the truck.  After tying the strand off on the roll cage, he plugged it into the generator in the back of the vehicle and started it up.  It took a couple of pulls but the engine roared to life illuminating the fat coil at his feet.  A hundred feet would serve his needs but he’d brought along five hundred feet of it just in case he needed to go deeper into the quartz cavern.  In the last fifteen years since his demotion, Earl thought about something he’d seen while waiting for his rescuers.  He was beyond the point of seeking revenge for the heartless way the company kicked him to the curb to save their own hides.  He didn’t want to set the bean counters straight either.  At the age of sixty-five, retirement became mandatory and in mining, there were no old men.  No, this was about something he’d seen down in the bowels of the earth on that terrible day when his godson Clay lost his life to a lazy geologist.

For the last two weeks, Earl had slipped into the mine to prepare for his descent into the quartz cavern.  Today he could finally enter unobstructed after he dealt with the bodies of the two dead men.  Earl solemnly walked over to the ore loader containing the remains of the boys the company had decided weren’t worth the cost of returning to their families.  The humid environment had long ago stripped them of their flesh leaving only two broken puzzles of bone.  Climbing into the seat of the loader, Earl started the diesel engine and waited for its rumble to become steady and strong.  Steering it away from the rubble, he drove it several hundred yards toward the main tunnel and walked back to his work area, his heart heavy with sadness.

“I’m sorry boys, you’ll have to wait just a little longer,” said Earl.  His voice sounded loud but empty in the lonely hall of Fifty-seven East.  Father Mulholland would be expecting the boys today, but had sworn not to tell their families until Earl showed up with them.  Stacy didn’t know either, and Earl felt awful about keeping things from his favorite niece.  Tonight, Clay would return to his widow and Jake to a mother who still mourned down at the chapel every day.

He stood before the shallow mouth of the spur with the bright loop of light cable over his shoulder, looked down, and saw a stone stairway descending into the cavern.  Turning around he looked up to the ceiling and saw the place where Fifty-seven East had sheared it off as it continued to somewhere above.  Somebody, had carved a stairway into the mountain, and it definitely wasn’t the company.  The edges of each step were sharp and regular, more precise than the work of a jackhammer, and beyond the capabilities of the local tribes.  Every step bore the same strange symbol on its face, — of a great bird carrying a child, as though carved with loving devotion and eternal patience.  Rubble from the collapse littered the stairs nearest Earl, but beyond and below they were passable.  Earl climbed over a boulder carefully and returned to the place of refuge of fifteen years past.  Undisturbed by wind or rain, their boot and handprints still lay in the rock dust.  The boulder beside their refuge could have crushed them but providence had deigned to give them one last smile.  Nobody but Earl remained alive of the small party of men who’d seen this marvelous stairway.  Nobody believed the men when they spoke about it.  Sam found himself talking to a shrink down in Denver at his own expense after a little corporate coercion.  Earl kept his mouth shut but the taint of the accident and crazy Sam painted the other survivors with ridicule and scorn.

Earl played out the light cable behind himself as he descended the staircase.  As he rounded the corner and entered the crystal cavern with his coil of bright cable, Earl saw the dancing lights in their entire splendor.  Great smooth faceted gems the size of trucks rose out of the floor and speared down from the ceiling of a cavern large enough to hold an entire cathedral.  Countless smaller crystals adorned every surface, a crust of natural richness and beauty.  Twinkling rainbows hung suspended in a mist, which billowed, at the lowest point on the floor.  He could hear the sound of water somewhere below dripping into a pool at a slow steady pace.

Tink, Tink, Tink…

The stairs continued around the wall of the cavern, descending in a great spiral to the floor and out of sight.  The drop was precipitous, but Earl wanted this more than anything, and so he adjusted his pack and continued on, playing out the light cable as he followed the wide steps.  As his spool of fire wound further into the vault, the white light revealed carvings in relief along the smooth wall beside the stair.  The things depicted were impossible to decipher but occasionally showed the same bird with the child.  Sometimes they were flying over farmland, other times strange spires, and often there were other people in the sculpture, faces uplifted in adoration or hatred.

On the fourth pass around the cavern, the light cable was getting near the end so Earl began coiling the slack onto his arm, pulling it off the stairway in a long swaying strand.  Earl stopped for a moment and took out the test kit from his pack.  If the oxygen levels became too low he would have to turn back.  Leaving the sensor on, he hooked it onto his belt so it would sound the alarm.  As he approached the floor of the cavern, Earl used his hands to part the fog at his feet so he could walk safely.  The stairs ended at the base of a ring of tall crystals which surrounded a smooth spot in the otherwise encrusted floor.  Earl could hear a gentle humming coming from the nearest gem, which grew louder as he approached the ring of stone.

Something moved in the clouds at the center of the ring, but whenever the mist cleared, all he saw was smooth bare stone.  As he watched, a loop of light cable slid off the stairs above him and swung across the center of the ring.  Earl watched mesmerized as the cable vanished as though the stone it landed upon didn’t exist.  Loop after loop of the illuminating wire fell into the stone as if into water and Earl just watched.  He snapped out of his fascination when he felt a violent tug on his shoulder as something yanked the loops of wire he’d coiled into the stone.  Silence except for the humming of the crystals and the scratch of cable on rock were all he heard as he continue to watch the last of the cable descend into the impossible pit.

Bam!

The cable yanked Earl off his feet by a powerful tug on the strap of his backpack where he’d tied the light cable prior to his descent.  All of a sudden, he found himself holding on for dear life, as the cable pulled him inextricably toward the invisible well in the center of the ring.  He tried vainly to disengage the straps holding his pack on, but only managed to release one buckle.  The buckle at his waist would not disengage.  For a second he thought he saw the thing, which moved in the mist.  However, the image was too fleeting and as his old hands slipped off the gem-encrusted rock, he regretted how he hadn’t fulfilled his obligation to the dead young men and their families.  His last grip broken, he slid unimpeded into the misty gap with a cry of fear and despair.

***

Everything hurt.

His back ached worse than the time he wrenched it hauling braces in the mine.  His legs were sore and his arms felt limp and weak.  He was floating in icy water in pitch-black darkness on his back.  He looked up and could see what looked like stars high above, but recalled how he should be deep underground.  To add to Earl’s confusion he distinctly heard crickets chirping nearby.  He knew crickets often lived in caves, but usually near the entrances where they could feed from vegetable matter, which entered via weather or bats.  A mile in the heart of the mountain, crickets did not make sense.  An underground river must have belched him out onto the surface at some spring.

As he swam toward the sound of the crickets, he wondered how far he’d travelled under ground.  His backpack and the light cable were gone, but his waterlogged clothing bogged him down and he came very close to drowning in the frigid spring water.  When he finally felt something solid under his boots he reached foreword toward what he imagined would be the bank to grasp muddy reeds and haul himself bodily through the muck onto a grassy bank.  He panted – exhausted — and felt every one of his sixty-five years.  As he lay on the bank catching his breath he heard a very loud splash in the pool he’d just left and wondered what could have made the sound.  However, when the crickets resumed their serenade uninterrupted, the warm night air and fatigue forced him to sleep.

He awoke to the sounds of birds courting amidst the branches of a very large willow tree.  He lay there for a moment and idly watched them flit here and there about their business, making nests and tending babies.  Earl finally sat up and looked around.  He was lying on the grassy bank of what looked like a large spring.  In the center of the spring, the old Toyota pickup bobbed out of place.  Earl could see the light cable still attacked to the crash cage and plugged into the generator, which was no longer running.  His backpack lay floating in the stream, which drained the pond.  The tips of large crystals showed just above the surface of the water like ten shining icebergs in a ring.  The sun was just coming over a range of tall mountains to the east and shone through snowy crags casting long shadows on a pristine meadow.  It looked like pictures out of a fairy tale.  Everything was fresh and green and looked new as though only made yesterday.  The air was clear and bright without contrails or smog to corrupt its purity.  Deer grazed unaffected by his presence mere feet away, and he could hear the sound of a cow’s lowing in the distance.  Something told Earl he wasn’t in Colorado anymore!

He fetched the backpack from out of the stream and began carefully hauling on the wire until a pile of it lay at his feet.  When he felt resistance, he pulled a little harder and was satisfied to see the truck drift in his direction toward the gravel bed of the creek. When the truck came within reach, he hit the release on the winch, dragged its cable to the willow, and looped it around so he could maneuver the pickup out of the pond.  Crossing his fingers, Earl hit the lever and felt the truck lurch as the heavy-duty winch hauled the vehicle unceremoniously over the muddy bank and into the grassy meadow.  Water poured from every seam and Earl kicked a couple small fish back into the pond before he felt his stomach grumble.  A fishing pole wasn’t one of the items he’d thought to take along on his explorations of the quartz cavern.  His pack contained equipment used in prospecting and enough supplies to last a week.  He also carried an old revolver just in case the Harris boys gave him trouble for trespassing.

As he inventoried the contents of his backpack, and then the glove box of the pickup, he noticed something about his hands.  They no longer hurt.  It wasn’t just the hurt from his trip through the underground river, but also the nagging daily pain of old age, which was missing.  The liver spots and knobby fingers, which were becoming arthritic at sixty-five years, now looked as young and strong as that of a twenty year old.  When he went to the pool to look at his reflection, he was shocked – his face was young as well — the wrinkles all gone and lines of worry and toil erased!  Where his shirt had hung loosely upon his beat up old body, it was now tight and he could feel strong new muscle beneath his clothing.  Was he dead?  No, the truck wouldn’t be in heaven.  Earl remembered reading about Ponce de León and his search for the Fountain of Youth in High School.  How had such a miraculous place remained concealed from people for so long?  Earl sadly recalled the ravages of age, which took his mother just a few years ago.  If only he had known such a place actually existed he would brought her to the place and tossed her in himself.

He only thought about the Fountain of Youth for a moment, because while he sat there waiting for the truck to dry, a second, smaller sun began to rise beside her brilliant sister.

Chapter 1 of Haley Cork and the Blue Door

Chapter 1    Haley Opens a Door

“I choose the girl,” said the first Keeper’s shadow.
“But the man is strong and wise,” said a second.
“The woman is brave and full of faith,” answered a third
“The girl is the one, for she is all of these things.”
“But she is just a little girl and will bend before the task,” said the third
”She will not break like the woman.”
“But she is just a child and not strong enough for the task,” said the second.
”She will not rely solely on strength like the man.”
“I cannot allow you to do this!  I reject your company,” said a fourth.
The voices in the stone grumbled as one of their number departed.
“Do as you must, but do not interfere!”
Minutes became hours as the voices argued.  Finally, they reached a consensus.
“Is it agreed then?”
Amid murmurs of agreement, the first Keeper’s shadow raised her voice and pronounced judgment.
“We will call the girl.  She might break us Keepers, but she will be greatest of all!”

The summer was hot and dry as a tall, thin girl made her way down to the creek to cool off a bit.  While she walked, she kicked pebbles into the rows of corn growing on either side of the rust red road leading out of town.  Her calico tomcat chased after the stones as they skipped through the dirt, and engaged them in mock battle.  Humming a tune to herself as she walked, she thought about all of the interesting things she was going to do with her summer vacation — and a few of the things she was going to get out of doing.  Haley wasn’t going to help down at the store, since Momma had old Ben for that, and the shop always smelled of medicines and the farmers who came to buy them.  She was going to play with her dolls, hopscotch on the station walkway, and see the fair when it came to town.  She would do her best to get her friend Bonnie to come along, but Bonnie spent most of her idle time helping her own mother down at the flower shop.  When they could get away, the girls walked in the nearby woods, or played down at the creek, which skirted the town of Jander’s Mill and joined with the Blue Sprankje River nearby in the fertile fields of Oldenzaal.

That sound of cicadas, high pitched and omnipresent, could be heard across the way in an apple orchard owned by the Duke of Oldenzaal.  As she walked past his place, she made sure she was on the far side of the narrow dirt road, because Momma said there was something not right about the man, and frankly, he just spooked her anyway.

“Hi,” said a voice from behind a blueberry bush, causing Haley to jump in alarm.  Crunk hid behind Haley because, in truth, he wasn’t all that brave.

“Hi to you,” said Haley.  She was startled, but more than a little curious, her heart pounding in her chest.

A boy about Haley’s age stepped from behind the bush, rubbing his eyes with dirty, blueberry stained hands, leaving them red, blue, and a little muddy.

“Have you been crying?” asked Haley, who immediately regretted asking the question, because that was exactly what the boy had been doing.  He abruptly turned on his heel and darted back behind the blueberry bush.  The tomcat rubbed his body on Haley’s bare legs, pleased that he didn’t have to defend her.

“Hey, I’m sorry!  Come out from behind there,” she pleaded, and after a few seconds, the boy cautiously returned from behind the bush.

“You won’t make fun of me or anything?” he asked, eyes staring intently at his dirty feet in the red dust of the road.

“No.  I get enough of that in school, and I don’t reckon it would be very nice of me to do the same sort of thing to anyone else,” she replied with a grin.

“Thanks,” he responded.  He was wearing a pair of stiff overalls that smelled strongly of mothballs, and he had more freckles than Haley had ever seen on anyone before.  His hair was strawberry blond and sticking straight up as though it grew mainly to defy the laws of gravity.

“I’m Haley Cork,” she said, “What’s your name?”

“Johnny Flattery,” he replied, still looking at his feet.

“Do you live around here?  I haven’t seen you at school” Haley noticed that Johnny was shaking a little, as though he were still frightened.

“I just moved here.  I live with my Uncle,” he said, indicating the Duke’s house with a slight turn of his head.

“You live with the Duke?” she exclaimed, “You must be really brave!  My Momma said he was real strange, and isn’t very nice either.”

“I don’t know anything about all that.  I just got here on Saturday, straight from the funeral…”  He sat down in the red dust and started crying.  Haley sat down beside him and put her skinny arm over his shoulders, hoping to console him.  Crunk, who was always happy to take advantage of an opportunity, jumped into Haley’s lap and flopped down, lounging in the hammock of her dress.  Haley knew the death probably made the poor boy an orphan, since nobody in his or her right mind would ever send a child to live with the Duke.

“Was it your Momma, Johnny?” asked Haley gently, after his sobs diminished a bit.

“Yes.  My Poppa died in the war last year, but I never really knew him since he was in the service most of my life.  Momma said he was a brave man, but I don’t know how he could run off and leave Momma and me.  Momma got sick this winter and I didn’t know how to help her.  One day she died, and Miss Cleary told the police.  Then the mean lady from the state came by and brought me here.  She didn’t even let me get my books and toys and stuff.  She just threw me in the back of her smelly old car, took me to the funeral, and brought me on the train, straight here.  Uncle Carl stinks like cigars and talks to me like I was a stray cat or something,” said Johnny in a rush of words that came out of him all crowded together so close Haley had difficulty understanding them at all.

“My Poppa died in the war too,” said Haley quietly, while remembering the gentle, big blond haired man who loved to throw her into the sky and catch her.  She still remembered his large hands, the way he talked slow, and never raised his voice.  She also remembered the day Momma got the letter from the War Department, saying Poppa had died for his country.  Momma had cried for nearly a week straight.  Haley had to do all the chores by herself that week, and even spent time at the counter to make sure people didn’t try to steal from the store while Momma was laid up.  They never had a funeral, because an enormous bomb burned Poppa up some place on the other side of the World.  After her week of mourning, Momma never talked about Poppa again.  She just straightened herself up and went to work minding the store saying, “Life goes on.”  Haley had Poppa’s picture in her room, up on her dresser, the one Poppa made with his big hands the year she was born.  Haley thought it would be prudent to change the subject before she started crying too.  Placing a hand on each of Johnny’s shoulders, she turned him to look at her and smiled as bravely as she could.

“I’m going down to the creek.  Do you want to come with me?  There’re crawdads, and trout, and polliwogs, and the water is clean and cool.  We can’t go swimming since I don’t know how yet, but we can dip our feet in and skip rocks across the old mill pond if you like,” she said with a pleading look in her eyes.

“Well…”

Johnny looked in the direction of the Duke’s mansion, and then made a decision, “Okay, but I have to ask my Uncle,” he started to get up but Haley stopped him.

“Wait a second,” she said, “Better wash your face first, because grownups get kind of funny if they see that you’ve been crying.”  He nodded, and sped off toward a large white house behind imposing gates, and hedges of blueberry and hawthorn.  A few minutes later, a cleaner looking Johnny returned, carrying a paper bag.

“What’s that you got there?” she asked, as he bent over with his hands on his knees panting at her side.

“I have a horse blanket and some apples from the larder, since I couldn’t ask my Uncle, because he was in his study.  He told me, when I got here never to disturb him if he was in there, no matter what.”

Haley nodded and grabbed his hand, dragging him down the road toward the stone bridge that crossed the mill creek half a mile beyond the Duke’s place.  The bridge looked like something you’d find trolls under, but Momma had said there was no such thing as trolls, and Momma was always right.  Rising above the creek in a smooth arch, it was made of black stone fitted together tight without mortar, and looked as new as the day of its construction many years ago.

“Momma said Grandpa made this bridge before she was born.  All by his self,” said Haley as they crossed it.  The bridge rose high enough to give a commanding view of the countryside in every direction.  Emerald green fields of wheat and corn, divided by windbreaks of tall poplar and cottonwood stretched out in a wide vista.  About a mile away, the small town of Jander’s Mill nestled against the tall silos of the granary on one side, and a low hill with its radio tower and train station on the other.  To the west, in the opposite direction, the fields stretched unobstructed until they met up in the hazy distance with tall snow capped mountains.  The cicadas buzzed even louder, reminding her of the heat and the promise of cool water.

Haley led the way off the road on the far side of the bridge to a grassy spot next to a dam made from the same stone as the bridge.  The dam was built in the same fashion as the bridge, but with stones as perfectly flat as a mirror.  The black obsidian reflected back the children’s faces as Crunk admired himself in its shiny surface.

“Did your Grandpa make this dam too?” asked Johnny, as he ran his hands over the smooth black stone.  He had read about this sort of work before in one of his books, but couldn’t remember exactly which book it had been in.  It was a moot point since all of his books were probably in a charity box by now.  The one good thing about coming to live with Uncle Carl was the comfortable library packed with just about every book under the sun.  His Uncle had even said it was perfectly fine with him for Johnny to read them, as long as Jonathan, as he addressed the boy, left each book as he had found it, and didn’t remove anything from the library.

“No.  This dam was made by Jander himself,” Haley replied, with a proud smile.  “But Grandpa is an expert in stone craft.  Some say he’s the best in the whole country.  Momma says he came to the town before the War.  We go to visit him sometimes at his house past Beacon Hill.”

Haley took the cloth from the bag and spread it out onto some sweet grass by the sharp bank of the creek.  She flopped down onto the blanket and put her feet into the cool water.  She could hear frogs croaking from the reeds that swayed lazily in a gentle breeze.  One of them jumped into the deeper water of the creek with a splash as Johnny sat down beside her.  Fish fry played in the shallows among streamers of algae over the smooth black stones at the edges of the creek.  A water strider skated across the creek, hunting for mosquito larvae just below the gently rippling surface.

Haley loved this spot most.  Her father had brought her here with Momma before he departed for the War, wearing his ill-fitting uniform of itchy brown wool.  They had stayed here all afternoon, speaking on light subjects, not mentioning the coming walk to the waiting troop train, and his journey, far away, to a distant training camp on the furthest edge of the country.  It had been a day like this one when he left Jander’s Mill, bravely waving to his family from the crowded coach after heavily armed men escorted them onto the train.  She remembered the hard faces of those men, unhappy, but determined to do the difficult job set before them.  “Just obeying orders,” were the words she had overheard one of them say several days earlier when they presented her Poppa with the draft notice at their kitchen door.  On that early summer day, two years past, soldiers forced many men to leave aboard the troop train, and only one of them ever returned.  Sheriff Limpet’s son Morse had taken seriously ill at the war front.  His unit shipped him home for medical treatment mere days before the abrupt end of the war.  It was also a day like this one last year, when the man from the War Department had delivered a painful letter.  Many letters like it went to widows, mothers, and children throughout the Kingdom of New Holland.

Haley hummed tunelessly as she watched a skein of geese head toward their summer feeding grounds among numerous lakes much further north beyond the great curve of the mountains to the west.  She could hear their faint honking, barely audible above the din of cicadas nearby, and the distant roar of a tractor somewhere further from town.  Haley swung her legs gently, as the cool water swirled around them, and could feel the little fish nibbling at her toes.  Apparently, Johnny felt the same thing, because he quickly withdrew his feet from the water.  Haley giggled.

“They won’t hurt you.  Just keep an eye out for Old Snapper,” she added with a mischievous grin.  When he gave a frightened look, she laughed and said, “Actually he stays in the pond and is much too fat and lazy to come down here.  Nobody swims in the mill pond anymore, ever since the Hutton boy drowned.”

“I never lived in the country before.  Did they have blackouts here during the War?” Johnny asked her as he watched a duck feeding with its tail pointing skyward, near the other bank.

“No, the bombers never got this far inland.  It’s nearly a thousand miles to Capitol from here, and the only thing we ever saw were the occasional troop trains from other towns and cities on their way to the War.  My friend Bonnie once saw a Zeppelin when she was in Porter’s Crossing, but it was wrecked and on the ground already,” Haley said slowly as the summer breeze brought a cool gust of air from beneath the nearby willows.  “It probably blew in from a storm.”  The duck quacked angrily from the other side of the stream, occasionally hissing as she ran at Crunk, who had arrived to inspect her poorly hidden nest on the bank.  If that cat had one flaw, it would be his treatment of all things small and fluffy.  She called him back, and after a moment of feline longing, he scampered back across the dam and into her waiting lap.

“How old are you Johnny?” asked Haley.

“I’m ten years old.  My birthday is in January,” answered Johnny.

“I’m nine, but my birthday is next Monday.”

As the day idled on, they exchanged details of their life, and when the sun had begun to near the western mountains, they had become fast friends.  After parting company at the gate leading to the Duke’s place, the two agreed to meet whenever they could.  Walking back along the road toward town, Haley smiled to herself.  Making friends was, by far, her most favorite thing in the world.

Crowns and Castles

Haley arrived at home just in time to hear her mother calling her to dinner.  The savory aroma of fried chicken called her seductively to the kitchen.  Washing her feet in the masonry trough by the door, Haley scrubbed the red dust and grime from her bare toes before entering the cool confines of the house.

“It’s about time you got home, young lady.  I was worried I might have to send Ben after you.  You know how he hates fetching you,” called Momma from inside the kitchen.  Her admonition was accompanied by Ben’s low chuckle, sounding more like a bear than an old man.

“Momma, Momma!” Haley called to her mother as she finished washing, “I met a new boy!  His name is Johnny.  He’s an orphan, and is really nice.”

“Ben was just telling me about the boy.”

Haley rushed into the kitchen, kissed her mother on the cheek, and ran over to an ancient icon of the Holy Virgin mounted prominently on the eastern wall.  Crossing herself, she kissed it as well, and then hurriedly sat at her place at the oak table.  Since it was too early for corn, the fare consisted of fried chicken and leeks, as well as last year’s dried carrots from the root cellar.  Momma already sat at the head of the table, her dark red hair a perfect match of Haley’s, though her mourning had given her a single thin band of white.  She was a beautiful woman, and it wasn’t just Haley’s opinion.  While most of the people in Jander’s Mill had round facial features and stout bodies, she had a strong chin and high cheekbones, and she was lean and tall.  She often had a warm smile on her face, and was still young enough to draw looks from the men in town when they thought she wasn’t looking.  If it wasn’t for the apron she wore like a uniform, she could have been mistaken for a queen, with her exotic amber eyes.  At the other end of the table, sitting on a low bench and occupying two places, Ben watched Haley seat herself with his usual inscrutable expression.

It was rather difficult for Haley to tell whether he was happy to see her or merely annoyed.  With only one eyebrow, and a scar where the other one was supposed to be, he was an intimidating sight.  He had brilliant green eyes under a prominent brow that threw the rest of his face in shadow.  Less than four feet tall, his legs swung slowly from the bench, not quite reaching the floor.  He had a very broad chest, long muscular arms, and a full black beard offsetting a completely baldhead.  Ben lived in the spare room in the attic above the store, acting as night watchman, assistant shopkeeper, and occasionally bouncer.  He ate all of his meals with the family, and sometimes prepared spicy, difficult-to-eat dishes when Momma or Poppa couldn’t.  People said he probably came from the mountains of Swolŭnd, a nation far to the north, but since he wasn’t saying, Haley couldn’t really guess.  She did know he was old, quite old.  He had come before Grandpa, years ago, and everyone in town reckoned he was at least as old.  The funny thing though — he didn’t look that old, and could easily be mistaken for a man in his mid forties.  The few times Haley had seen him smile, he showed great, square teeth in his wide face that made him seem twice as frightening as usual.  However, Haley wasn’t afraid of him anymore, ever since she had discovered Ben’s liking for chocolate.

Momma said the prayers of thanksgiving, and they ate in silence.  Momma with her distant thoughts rarely said a word at meal times.  Ben plowed through half a chicken without looking up, while Momma picked at her food, deep in thought.  Once the meal was finished, Ben cleared away the dishes, returned to his bench and withdrew a battered old pipe from a pocket.  He put it between his teeth, but didn’t light it, out of courtesy for the others at the table.  Holding his belly he looked from Momma to Haley and back again, letting out a sigh that shook the table.

“That new boy is the Duke’s nephew.  Sad story that one is…  We’ll have to keep an eye on the lad, to make sure the Duke doesn’t bring him to any harm.  The Duke’s even harder on his relations than on his enemies.  The boy will need a friend, Haley,” Ben said, his deep rumbling voice actually rattled a pie tin on its shelf as he spoke.

“I think we’ll make good friends,” she replied, “We went down to the creek.  He told me all about Capitol, where he lived, and how his poor Momma passed away.  I think he’s happy to come to the countryside, where things aren’t quite so scary.”  The three exchanged details about their day, a custom that extended back as long as Haley could remember.  Haley fetched the Crowns and Castles set and played a brisk couple of rounds with Ben, while Momma talked about the people she met in the shop.  Haley was getting much better and actually forced Ben to retreat at one point in the match, though of course Ben defeated her, as always, his usurper taking over the throne before she could rally the guard, leaving her king defeated.  For a few moments, Ben held the squirming king in his big hammer fist as though lost in thought, but when it tried to bite him with its stone teeth, he grunted, tapped the king softly on the base, causing it to freeze with a gnashing grimace, and returned it to the box.

Crowns and Castles was easily Haley’s favorite game, but she had a hard time finding anyone to play it with her.  The children her age couldn’t just buy the game in a shop because somebody who could flow stone like Ben or her Grandpa Aden crafted each board and its pieces.  Haley had only met a few people who actually knew about the game and its strict set of rules.  Ben reassured her about how there were plenty of people who played, and how her town was more the exception than the rule.  The King’s fondness for the game was legendary, and he often used the game to settle petty disputes within the court.  The board and pieces were made of the same black stone as the bridge and dam, and were so detailed it was hard to tell how they’d been crafted.  There were forty-eight pieces for the defender, and thirty-two for the attacker, on a rectangular field with a castle in the center.  The pieces moved of their own accord and acted out the drama establish by the players.  How they did do it?  Haley didn’t know, but it was fun all of the same.

Battles could last for days with evenly matched players, since a captured piece returned to its starting position after five rounds, as long as another piece wasn’t already sitting there.  Even the King and Queen could return, but if the attacking Usurper were to remain on either throne for five rounds then the game would be over.  The only exception to this rule was the usurper, who once taken, ended the game in favor of the defender.  The most powerful pieces on the board were the Chimera, who acted in defense, and the Dragon, who could move to any place outside of the castle in a single move.  Battles between pieces were never cut and dried, but instead measured by their previous success.  Each piece had little bumps, which counted the number of battles won and were a measure of how much they had learned.  Thus, a foot solder with five bumps was actually stronger than a dragon with none.  Not every piece moved in a turn.  The chimera and the dragon moved once every three turns, while the humble foot soldier moved twice a turn.  The game remembered the position of pieces in an unresolved match, and returned each to their positions if they swept away by accident or childish pique.  Momma called it magic, but Ben said nonsense to that.  They were just fancy machines without feeling, made of honest-to-goodness stone.

“Patty,” said Ben, turning to Momma later that evening, “I’ll be in my room if you need me.  Thanks for the meal,” and thus he hopped down from the bench.  The floorboards of the kitchen creaked in protest as the heavy man headed for the door

“It was only chicken,” she sighed quietly.  “If we get any more chickens in payment for goods, I’m either going to go broke or have to open up a poultry farm.”  Ben chuckled and left.  She watched through the window as Ben negotiated the steps in front of the house, heading for the center of town where he lived in a room above the her mother’s apothecary shop.

“Speaking of which — Haley, have you done your chores yet?  Those animals don’t feed themselves, and I can’t have Ben doing everything.  He’s been nice enough to help us as much as he has.  Remember what I’ve been telling you.  Tend the animals before dinner!  Animals always eat first!”

“Yes Momma.  Sorry.  I’ll take care of them right away.”

“See that you do.  Now get to it Miss Haley, before I give your desert to the cat!” she teased playfully, batting at Haley’s rump with a rolled up towel.

The Good Neighbor

Exactly a week later, Haley woke up early to tend to the animals, rising before the sun.  She fed Petra the cow last, who lowed in anticipation as Haley carried a flake of alfalfa under one arm and a stool and bucket in the other.  Awkwardly placing the fodder in the trough, and seating herself on the stool, Haley put her hands in her armpits to warm them before milking the cow.  Petra never gave her problems as long as Haley didn’t touch her udders with cold hands.  Nobody fancied getting such a shock so early in the morning.  When she finished, Haley patted Petra gently and took the milk into the house for skimming.

“Good morning young lady.  Chores all done?  Here, give me that,” said Momma as Haley entered the chilly kitchen.  She deftly skimmed the cream off the top and placed the milk in a chilled pitcher.  “Are you going to help me in the shop today?  I still have those boxes of herbs from New Amsterdam to sort out, and I was hoping you could give me a hand.”  Momma was wearing her clean apron over the blue and white dress that was customary for shopkeepers and merchants.

“Momma, I promised Bonnie I’d come over to help her with the flowers.  Can I do the boxes tomorrow, please?” pleaded Haley.  Momma’s eyes softened as she nodded her assent.  She suspected Bonnie’s mother would be doing the flowers while the girls played together.  Grabbing a slice of bread and a hasty sip of milk, Haley slipped out of the house before her mother changed her mind.

“I want you home early today.  Don’t forget!” Momma called after her as she left the house.

Bonnie lived near the train station, above the flower shop situated at the crest of Beacon Hill, half a dozen doors down from Momma’s store.  After a brisk walk into town and up the hill, Haley watched the various shopkeepers opening their doors to the rising sun hanging pendulous on the eastern horizon.  Crunk the cat stretched himself lazily on a porch swing that sat in front of a shop that had a sign reading “Cork Apothecary.”  Stepping onto the wooden porch of the store, Haley was just about to open the door when she heard voices inside.

“He’s up to something, I just know it,” said a woman’s voice, “He sent a special courier last week, and yesterday morning the courier arrived on the train.  I don’t know what to do.  If what the Council says is true, I’ll lose my farm and be at the mercy of that leering weasel!  The last time he tried something like this, he went after the station trade.  Our farm has been in the family for three hundred years!  My son Jacob got killed in that senseless War, and without a male heir, I’ll end up a servant on my own farm.  I have five daughters to look after — and no husband or son to help…”  Her voice trailed off as she began to weep.

“Please don’t fret, Helga.  Your farm is secure.  Before your son left for the war, Jacob made certain provisions to prevent such a thing.  I doubt the King will allow any such breach of his subject’s trust, but even if it came to that, Aden has already settled the matter with the Council”, said Ben, as softly as he could manage, though his deep voice caused the windows to rattle slightly.  “The Duke is predictable if anything,” he continued.  “I thought his last encounter with Aden should have given him cause to reconsider.  I’ll let Aden know your concerns.”

“Thank you, Ben” said Helga, who left the store with two of her small daughters, Olga, and Onid in tow.  Haley knew them from school, identical twins that played the violin in her music class.  Helga’s preoccupation with her troubles and the tears in her eyes almost caused an accident as she crossed the street, narrowly avoiding a truck on its way to the station.  Ducking into the store, Haley greeted Ben at the counter, as he placed bottles of milk in the chill box at the front of the store.  “Momma will be right over Ben.  I’ve got something for you.”

She handed him a small package wrapped in metal foil.  He gently took it from her, and looked inside.  Great white teeth erupted from his smile as he examined the chocolate inside.  “Thank you very much Miss Haley.  What did I do to deserve such a rich reward?”

“I had it left over from Pascha, and thought you might like some.  Aunt Helena sent me a lot this year,” she stated as he continued to smile.  Aunt Helena was Poppa’s sister who lived in a fancy house over in the city of Wallace.  The Corks were wealthy merchants who did a brisk business in textiles throughout the principality.  Ben put a tiny piece in his large mouth, and while he was savoring the taste, she continued, “Well, anyway, I’ve got to head over to the flower shop to help out.  See you at dinner.  Bye now.”

“Well, Miss Haley, I do appreciate the chocolate.  I’ll have to remember to thank your Aunt when I see her next.  I’ll be making Hloth Droog for supper next Sunday evening.  I hope you enjoy it.  My own father used to make it many years ago.  Oh, and I nearly forgot!” said Ben, who reached into his jacket pocket to remove a smooth black stone box and place it into her small hands.  “Though it is not the custom of my people, I believe this is appropriate.  Happy birthday!”  Haley took the box and nearly jumped for joy when she saw it was a new Crowns and Castle set.  Ben smiled at her saying, “I know how much you love the game.”

“Thank you Ben,” she exclaimed with a big smile.  Curtsying, she left the store at a run, and continued up the hill to the flower shop where Bonnie and her mother plied a brisk trade.

The flower shop was situated directly across from the train station, between a pub and the only dress shop in town.  The shop was easily the nicest looking one on the street with its red and gold trim, soft violet curtains, and imported leaded glass windows, which reflected the morning sun in a dazzling spray of colors.  When trains stopped at the station, her shop would often be the first stop of travelers.  A train arrived at Jander’s Mill twice a day, at mid-morning, from where it headed into the city of Wallace, and then in the afternoon, where the train retraced its path to the distant mountain villages in the direction of Capitol.  The engine was a steam turbine often heard growling miles away on quiet summer nights as it climbed the treacherous switchbacks through the mountains.  Haley dreamed about how she would ride the train someday to see Capitol’s towers and museums, but for the moment, more immediate concerns demanded her attention.  Evelien Limpet, Bonnie’s mother, was struggling to carry a large bundle of yellow daffodils through the doorway.

“Thanks, Haley,” said Evelien when Haley held the door open for her, “Bonnie is in the back.  We have to get these into water before they wilt.”  Haley liked working in the flower shop more than the store.  The colors and smells were pleasant, the people varied and interesting, not like the apothecary her mother owned.  In Momma’s store, it was the same old faces, grumbling about increases in prices when Momma barely scraped by; bartering in exchange for goods, and running up huge tabs that they refused to pay until dragged into Council.  The flower shop people paid in cash, not chickens.

“Hi, Bonnie!” called Haley, to her friend, a petite brunette behind a large bundle of daffodils, at the rear of the shop.  Bonnie wore trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, much to her own father’s horror, though nothing he said could make her dress more conventionally.  The boys had long ago discovered little Bonnie could fight as well or better than they could, and thus left off making fun of her for her appearance.  Those who didn’t usually ended up with a black eye or bloody nose for their trouble.  It didn’t hurt that Bonnie’s father was the Sheriff.

“Here to help, Haley?” asked Bonnie, but before Haley could answer, she continued.  “Mum just bought way too many daffodils from the Covey farm, and if we don’t get them on display, they’ll wilt before we can sell them.  The morning train will be here in an hour, so I hope you don’t mind if I don’t slow down,” said Bonnie, a harried look on her face.  She was a year older than Haley, but at least a head shorter.  Though it was too early to tell, she would probably take after her mother’s side of the family, and end up the shortest woman in town.  Yet again, there was a chance that she would catch up and surpass them all, as her tall, muscular father had.  She chewed on a lock of hair as she filled vases with water and flowers.

Morse worked beside his sister.  His hair was the same light brown as his father, though his features were much more handsome.  After his training in His Majesty’s service, Morse carried himself with authority, though he had never actually fought in the War, for which his mother was eternally thankful.  He alternated between helping his mother at the flower shop and helping his father bring criminals to justice.  His justice duties were rather sparse, since very little crime ever happened in Jander’s Mill.  Thus, he spent about half his time in front of the station flirting with the pretty girls.  He already had a reputation amongst the local girls in the year since his return from abroad.

“My, my, Haley!  You’re looking prettier every time I see you!” he said in his deep and pleasant voice.  He winked at Haley, but resumed work when his sister elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

Haley flashed Morse a shy smile.  She then stationed herself on the other side of the table, and helped Bonnie cut the stems of the daffodils and place them in buckets of water.  An hour later, with the last of the blossoms safe, the two girls left the shop and headed down the street to the soda fountain.  As they crossed the street, the great clock on the station house chimed twelve, as the engine came to a hissing stop at the platform.  The engine’s turbine wound down slowly, idling just below the level of human hearing with a deep rumble, which vibrated the sidewalk below Haley’s bare feet.  Wallace was two hours away by train, and if Haley hopped aboard, she could be in the lovely city, with its numerous shops, by noon.  She’d been there several times before, when he grandfather took her along on one of his trips to meet a potential customer or make a delivery.

Wallace, the Provincial capitol, nestled on the shores of Lake Veluwemeer, which drained into the longest river on the continent.  Great ships found their way up the Langlui River, all of the way to Wallace.  Haley still remembered the day when the King’s yacht steamed right up to the dock as they ate in a restaurant overlooking the lake.  Crystal blue sparkles shimmered in its wake in the afternoon sun.  The middle-aged King didn’t impress her very much, but he had a kind face, and the laughter lines about his eyes proved he had a sense of humor, though with the recent appalling tragedy, there was little for him to laugh about.  He owned the largest mansion in Wallace, high atop the only hill.  Though Wallace was gorgeous with its windmills and churches, Haley loved Jander’s Mill the most, because the people were nice, and the countryside was beautiful, without all of the rushing about.

As they drank soda and watched the world pass by, Haley half listened to Bonnie describing the latest automobile she’d spotted in town since the last time they met.  Bonnie was more interested in cars and trains than Haley could ever be, but Haley tried to listen since that was what friends were supposed to do.

“I don’t care what you say; he can’t get away with it!  After what we sacrificed!” cried the woman, over the loud music coming from the jukebox in the crowded shop.  Several people turned to look, which caused the two women to talk a little quieter.

“Josie, half the farms, and most of the shops are in the same situation.  Since our men folk are dead or missing, the only recourse we have is an appeal to the Council.  My husband, Frederick, told me to talk to Aden if the Duke ever came sniffing around.  Just like he predicted, the Duke was by my place nosing about, asking the help about my competence while running the farm, and whether there were any male relatives around.  Kenneth, our horse breaker, told him to get lost before he set the dogs on him.  After that, I told Kenneth to be careful, since the Duke can have the sheriff arrest him,” said the other woman, whom Haley had seen down at the store occasionally, but whose name slipped her mind.  She knew Kenneth, because he was an old man who often brought chickens to the Apothecary.  Momma didn’t have the heart to turn him away.

Bonnie poked Haley abruptly.  “Ouch!” exclaimed Haley, “What did you do that for?”

“The new boy you told me about is out there.”  Bonnie whispered, pointing her finger toward the street.

Sure enough, Johnny was walking up the street pulling a high-railed wagon full of what appeared to be vegetables.  Haley grabbed her friend’s hand and dragged her out outside to meet Johnny.

“Johnny!  It’s me, Haley!”

Johnny turned around to look, nearly losing control of the overloaded wagon.  “Hi, Haley!  Happy birthday!  I made you a present, but it’s back at my Uncle’s house,” said Johnny.  He smiled shyly at Haley, but kept his eyes averted from her friend.

“Johnny, this is my very best friend, Bonnie,” said Haley.  Bonny blushed slightly at the unqualified praise, but she should have been used to it by now.  Haley was always more outgoing than anyone else, and tended to dive into relationships with both feet.  Bonnie was a bit more circumspect and less willing to trust a person at face value.

“Hi, Johnny!  Doing some shopping?” asked Bonnie, and then without waiting for an answer, turned to Haley and said, “Why don’t we help him take his groceries home?”

“Are you sure your mother won’t be upset?” said Haley.

“Nope, I did my part already.  We’re going over to your house this afternoon anyway.  Lead on Johnny!”

Haley grabbed one side of the wagon handle while Bonnie grabbed the other, as the three headed down Beacon Hill on the road to Johnny’s house.

A rabbit scurried across the wide lawn as Johnny led his friends into the gate between two enormous black statues of rampant lions that marked the entrance to the Duke’s estate.  The drive, tiled in blue stone, led through well-groomed grounds to a carriage stop directly in front of the house.  Everything about the place spoke of control, with nothing out of place.  A gardener toiled away in a flower bed at the other end of the iron-fenced property, oblivious to the children’s presence.  Enormous locust trees framed the mansion, a white pillared extravagance of four stories, built in the fashion of those grand mansions more often found in Capitol than in a rural province.  On each corner of the house stood four gun turrets, muzzles pivoting menacingly to train themselves on the children, who paid them no heed.  To the right of the house a wide gravel walk led to the rear for access to the servant’s quarters and kitchen.  Johnny led the girls along the path and knocked at the kitchen door.

“Where have you been, young man!  We have important guests arriving, and I need those vegetables to make lunch!”  A red-cheeked, heavyset woman in her fifties yanked the wagon’s handle from Johnny and dragged it into the kitchen.  “Now, stay out of the way!  The Master doesn’t want you anywhere around when our visitors arrive.  You’ll be eating with us instead, unless you have other plans.  Tell your little friends to move along — this isn’t a tourist stop!  The Master doesn’t like riffraff from town hanging around.”  She shoved Johnny back through the kitchen door and gave the girls a sour look as she slammed it behind herself.

“Gracious!” exclaimed Bonnie, appalled at the woman’s behavior.  “She spends her free time in the pub and calls us riffraff?”  Haley remembered seeing the woman stagger down the street a couple of times, late in the evening when Haley stayed at the shop to help her mother restock.  Bonnie continued.  “Mum would give her an ear full if she could hear Miss Lopt talk to us like that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Johnny with downcast eyes.  He looked embarrassed for the cook’s behavior.

“Johnny, don’t apologize for that woman,” said Bonnie.  “You can’t help it if she’s rotten.”  Haley looked nervously at Bonnie, uncomfortable with her friend’s assessment of the cook.

“My room is back here,” said Johnny, indicating a building behind the house, which had low doors beside what once might have been stables.  “My Uncle said there isn’t any room in the house, so I have to sleep in the servant’s quarters.  He said I shouldn’t complain since I’m an orphan, and undeserving of a higher station.”  He led them to a small door on the end, which revealed a single cot beside a cold fireplace and a bare wooden shelf.  Walking over to the fireplace, he pulled out a loose brick and removed a small wooden figurine from a hiding place.  He produced a lovely replica of Haley, in the flowered dress she had worn the first day they had met.  Smiling sheepishly, he offered it to Haley, who took it gratefully, a hint of tears in her eyes.

“It’s beautiful!  Did you make this Johnny?  How did you do it?” she asked, hugging and kissing Johnny on the cheek before he could turn away.

“I made it this week.  My mother was strong in woodcraft, and taught me what she could before she passed away.  It’s all about drawing out the shapes already in the wood.  Here let me show you.”  Taking his penknife from out of a pocket of his overalls, he began carving a piece of hickory kindling from beside his fireplace.  Almost as if by magic, an object quickly began to emerge.  The locomotive from the station revealed itself, and though it was still crude, both girls could see it wouldn’t have taken much more time for Johnny to make a precise imitation of the real thing.  As they continued to watch, he shaped the piece.  Forming boiler, drivers, and piping, Johnny utilized the grain in the hickory to bring out the machine in intricate detail.  In stunned silence, the girls watched Johnny complete the finishing touches in the brief span of ten minutes.  He handed the model to Bonnie, wiped his sweating brow, and sat down on his cot.  “Here, you can keep it.”

“This is amazing!  I’ve never seen work this fine before,” exclaimed Bonnie as she turned the model over and over, examining every detail.  Johnny blushed, and put his carving knife safely back into his pocket.

“Why don’t you come have dinner with us?  Momma wouldn’t mind, I’m sure,” said Haley as Johnny walked them to the gate.

“Okay, but I have to tell Cook what I’m going to do.  Uncle doesn’t seem to care what I do, as long as I’m not around when he’s entertaining visitors, but Cook gets upset if she can’t find me when she has extra work for me.”  He ran back to the kitchen door, and was back shortly with a fat hand print on his face.  “She said I could go,” was all he said when he returned.

Bonnie and Haley walked quietly beside Johnny, down the road that led back into town.  It was close to noon, and the hot sun was beating down on the three, when an automobile nearly ran them over as it sped past in the direction of the Duke’s mansion.  Haley got a momentary view of two people in the back, one fat, the other thin, but both with the same unsavory pinched expression.  The car was blue and painted with the emblem of the Royal Court.  A choking cloud of red dust followed the car and coated the children from head to toe.  It took several minutes for the dust to settle, and a few more for them to knock it off each other’s clothing.

The corn on either side of the road was about chest high, a sea of green stirred occasionally by momentary breezes, which sent waves across the expanse.  The cornfield filled the long lazy bend between the creek and the road, bordered by a dike to protect it from the brief-but-violent summer storms, which frequented Jander’s Mill.  Somewhere deep in the corn a mother duck was calling out to a duckling, who was crying plaintively as it sought her in desperation.  The occasional fluffy summer cloud caressed the sun, loosing a small shadow to race across the fertile fields.  Out at the far edge, Haley could see the small, wiry woman she’d seen talking to Ben at Cork Apothecary this morning.  She struggled with an irrigation pipe, which wrestled her back.

“Let’s go help her!” Haley urged her friends.  It was hard to resist Haley’s exuberance. In silent agreement, the three bounded into the rows of young corn, taking care not to step on any of the plants.  Running between the rows, they traversed the field, arriving finally at an irrigation dike, where they found the woman at a low receiving trough, trying to get a hose attached to an old but well-maintained pump.

“Do you need some help, Ma’am?” asked Haley, still out of breath from her dash through the rows.

“What’s that?” she asked, wiping her muddy hands on her worn and dusty overalls.  She pushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her calloused hands as she squinted impatiently at the three children.

“We would like to help you,” Haley responded.

“Well, I don’t have any money to give you, if that’s what you are thinking,” said the woman.

“No ma’am, we wouldn’t take it even if you were offering.  We just wanted to be good neighbors.”  Haley smiled sweetly at the woman, whose hard look softened as she took in the eager, sincere looks on the three young faces.

“Well, if that’s the case, help me get this hose connected and straightened out to the far corner where the corn is getting a little dry.  We’re a couple days shy of rain and I don’t want to lose any crop.”  She indicated the direction with her right hand, which bore a simple wedding band on the ring finger.

The girls grabbed the anaconda pipe and slowly untangled it as Johnny wrestled with the heavy nickel fitting.  Once the hose was unraveled, the woman and the two girls dragged the heavy loops down the length of the irrigation dike to the threatened corner.  Once the pipe was in place, the woman went back to her truck, hauled out a heavy diffuser, and lugged it to the end of the hose where she twisted it onto the end with a satisfying click.  By that time, Johnny had succeeded in getting the other end onto the pump fitting.  After immersing the input hose for the pump in the clear cool water of the trough, she grabbed the starter rope and pulled.  The first couple of times the pump merely coughed, but on the third attempt, it roared to life, doing a sort of jittery dance on the smooth stone of the trough.  As the hose began to swell, the children raced the bulge to the far end, giggling as they tumbled into the mown grass near the end of the dike near the fat diffuser.  The diffuser wheezed, sputtered, and coughed, but finally issued a soft spray of gurgling water which began to fill the corner row with a trickling stream.  The woman walked up to the children and looked down on them with a tired smile.

“Thank you for you help, I’m Helga Johansdottar.  And you are…?”

“My name is Haley Cork, ma’am.  My Momma runs the Apothecary in town.  I’ve seen you a couple of times in the store,” said Haley as she curtsied.

“I’m Bonnie, Bonnie Limpet, my mother owns the flower shop in town,” she offered her hand to the woman who took it and gave a single shake.

“I’m Johnny Flattery, I’m new here.  I live with my Uncle,” he offered his hand as well, but she hesitated before taking it.  The look in her eyes was first one of shock and then bitterness.

“Your Uncle I know,” she said with a sneer.  “He’s supposed to inspect my farm sometime this week, which is why I’m working so hard to make sure nothing is out of order.  Would you three like to do me a favor and run up to the house and send my eldest, Ludmilla, out here to give me a hand with the weeding?  I really appreciate your help, but I can’t have the nephew of the man who is trying to take my land, or the daughter of the Sheriff, pulling weeds in my fields.”

“Any time you need more help, just let us know,” Haley said, as though she hadn’t heard what the woman said.  They followed the trough up to a house on the edge of another pond about a quarter of a mile from the field where they had laid the pipe.  The house, brick red like the sway-backed old barn, sat in the center of a well-tended yard under a stately oak whose dark green leaves rustled in the breeze.  A path of crushed gravel led up to a large covered porch.  An old truck sat with the hood up, but nobody appeared to be working on it, despite the toolbox and tools scattered about the vicinity.  Haley ran into the cool shade of the large porch while the other children waited in the hot sun for Haley to knock on the door.  A frail looking girl her age answered the door, her voice a narrow whisper.

“Can I help you?”

“Your Momma wants Ludmilla to help her weed the crop.  She’s down over there,” said Haley, indicating the direction with a sweep of her arm.  The girl nodded acknowledgment and closed the door in her face.  Moments later, a big, muscular girl in her early teens bounded out of the same door nearly knocking Haley onto her backside.

“Hi!  Why did mother send you to get me?” she asked, standing mere inches from Haley and looking down into her face in an intimidating fashion.  Haley recognized her as Millie the Bully, nemesis of the school Haley and Bonnie attended.  Haley hadn’t realized that Millie lived here, or that Helga was her mother.  “Now get out of here, before I pound you!”

The brutish girl jumped off the porch, clearing the stairs, and pelted headlong into the fields in the direction of her mother.  Haley felt a strong urge to enter the woods, and thought better of walking back the way they came lest they encounter Millie again.  Haley led them in the direction of Beacon Hill, the radio tower just visible over the top of a nearby stand of cottonwood and cedar.

The Blue Door

After walking through a field of maturing oats, the three arrived at the woods, where they found an overgrown stone pathway that meandered through the trees in the general direction of town.  It didn’t look like anyone had walked this way for ages, and the three had to struggle against the overgrown blueberry bushes and ferns that encroached on the path.  The wood was strangely silent, as though nature was holding its breath.

The path abruptly ended.  A mature cedar tree had erupted through the stones, and interposed itself like a sentinel.  Picking up a long cedar branch and forcing the ferns aside, Bonnie pushed her way around the tree, making a path for the others to follow.  Once beyond the ancient tree, they found themselves in a small clearing surrounded by a ring of cedar trees.

In the center of the glade stood a doorway containing a large blue door on a wide stone dais.  It was contained in a freestanding archway made of a smooth black stone, shot through with veins of ruby red.  Here and there soft gold sparks glittered, vanishing as quickly as they appeared.  To the left of the door, built into the wide doorframe, was a window, which looked out over an unusual scene, different from what was clearly behind it.  Haley first mistook it for a picture, but the wind on the other side of the window kicked up the occasional cinder, throwing it against the glass with an audible clink.

Beyond the window, Haley saw an enormous red sun covering all of the visible sky.  Fiery prominences danced upon its roiling surface, as white-hot aurora writhed like incandescent serpents near the horizon.  Cracked white rocks surrounded a boiling spring littered with the skeletons of animals and men, who had tried in vain to drink.  Smoking pits were all that remained of what must once have been pools in a creek fed by the spring.  A barren black mountain rose in the distance, with the broken off charred stumps of trees in the immediate foreground.  Nothing could be alive in such desolation, and Haley shuddered to think how such a place was possible.  Haley’s grandfather once took her to a motion picture in Wallace, but these images were in color.  They appeared so real, Haley believed all she had to do was push the door open to enter that charred and forbidding place.

The right side of the archway contained a dimly lit panel displaying a lenticular cloud of lights.  Also on the panel was a shimmering image of a fiery red ball surrounded by a ring of what looked like rocks.  On the inner edge of the ring, floated a tiny gray ball overlaid by a blue circle of symbols.  Beneath the panel, at waist height, a stone block protruded with a human hand engraved upon it.  In the center of the handprint, Haley saw a symbol of a shield with a strange bird upon it, much akin to a coat of arms she had seen in her grandfather’s house.  Haley felt compelled to touch her hand to the symbol but resisted.

“Don’t mess with it, Haley,” said a frightened Johnny.  He looked ready to bolt from the clearing at any moment.  Bonnie though, walked up to the doorway and placed her hand bravely on the symbol.  Nothing happened.  Feeling around the panel with her hands, and even walking around to the other side of the freestanding archway, she finally shook her head and shrugged.

“I don’t know what it does, but we probably should leave it alone and let my father know what we found,” said Bonnie cautiously.

“This is really good work!  I bet even your Grandpa couldn’t do something this good, Haley.  The joints look like they were melted together,” said Johnny, who had finally summoned enough courage to examine the stone of the archway.

Haley walked up to the door and felt the wood.  It was warm to the touch and she could hear a strong wind blowing on the other side.  The grain of the wood looked peculiar though, almost as if were writing, instead of the annual rings found on trees.  The lines shifted about as they responded to Haley touch.  Her hand suddenly tingled where she touched the door, and Haley was compelled to jerk it away.  It sort of felt like an electrical shock that made Haley feel weak, all of the way down to her toes.  The compulsion to touch the symbol grew, and Haley had to struggle to keep from slapping her hand onto it.  Walking over to the panel she suddenly realized what the lights were.

“Hey, this is a picture of a galaxy,” exclaimed Haley.  The others ran to her side as she explained.  “Miss Keeler showed us of pictures of them last fall.  She said it’s a real big group of stars.  She said our sun is in a galaxy, just on the outside of that big bulge there.”  Haley touched the panel and the same electrical tingle met her finger as the display responded to her.  She found she could spin the picture of the galaxy to any angle she wanted just by moving her index finger about.  On the edge of the large bulge in the center of the galaxy, a tiny yellow dot blinked.  Haley touched it with her finger.  The red ball disappeared, replaced with a smaller yellow one, and once it looked eerily familiar.  This time, Johnny spoke up.

“That’s our star system.  You see the blue dot there, that’s our world, five out from the sun.  I saw a picture of this when my school took me to the planetarium in Capitol city.  They have a projector in a big round room that shows everything.  The only thing I don’t get is our system only has ten planets in it, but there are at least fourteen are in this picture.  He touched the display but nothing changed.

The blue planet was blinking, as was a white one, sixth from the sun.  She touched the blue ball, and Bonny let out a gasp.  “The picture just changed!  It shows the trees over there, like it’s only a window now.”  The sun had brightened somewhat when Haley had touched the blue ball, although she only later realized the significance of such an event.  Haley walked to the other side of the window and could see Bonnie looking back at her plain as day, but there was something new on this side of the archway now.  A panel, just like the first one, was on the stone, identical in every way.  Haley touched the white ball.  The scene through her side of the window changed immediately to a snowy expanse near the mouth of an enormous cavern.  There were stones standing on their end in a circle a short distance from the window.  Walking around the archway, Haley noticed the panel on the side she had originally inspected was gone, replaced by the same ruby-veined black stone.

Finally giving into the compulsion, Haley put her hand on the symbol embedded in the block.  Suddenly the tingling became a torrent of strange feelings and thoughts.  Haley couldn’t pull her hand away from the stone, and something inside her didn’t want her to.  The Essence of the Door poured into her flesh through her small hand and met the Essence there already, mingling in an ancient reunion.  She watched paralyzed, as illuminated red and blue symbols crawled across her vision.  Pictures of far away places with countless blue doors flashed through her mind in rapid succession.  A catalogue of history reaching back long before the founding of Haley’s world, revealed vistas unimagined.  Knowledge poured into her young, receptive mind, overwhelming her with concepts and skills beyond her immediate understanding.  A whirling cacophony of voices, of too many teachers, filled her innocent ears, instructing her, guiding her, leading her but not completely changing her.  She then saw some people in a long sequence, each with dark red hair, amber eyes, tall and thin, ending with an image of herself.  Something in Haley Cork knew the Door, knew she was now a guardian of humanity, and Keeper of what it means to be human.

The Door released her.  Haley felt energized, exuberant.  She wanted to sing, shout, laugh, and cry, all at once.  She wanted to whirl around and embrace the entire universe.  She wanted to travel from world to world, and soak in the amazing beauty of it all.  Her soul hummed with revelation and enlightenment.  Out there, up in the summer sky, were worlds alive and interesting.  Filled to the brim with humanity and all of the other races they had encountered.  Suns by the billions, each with planets, some alive, many not, were just a step away through the Blue Door.  For a few seconds the wonder and awe overwhelmed her, but then a deeper, darker sensation of dread stole over her.  She did her best to retain her composure as a new set of realities supplanted her own.  During her brief contact with the Door, Haley learned of a war that dwarfed anything she could imagine – of a loathsome presence up in the sky, which devoured entire worlds, and destroyed all life in its path.

Neither Bonnie nor Johnny were aware of what had happened within the heart, mind, and soul of the Haley Cork they knew.  As far as they could tell, she had touched the hand symbol and taken her hand away moments later, the archway and panel unchanged.  The ten-year-old girl appeared physically unchanged, but an ancient wisdom occupied her mind, while the Blue Doors powerful essence seeded her flesh.  Haley — always considered odd by her schoolmates, with her amber eyes and foreign features — became something vastly different inside.  Taunts and insults would never again reach her, nor would fear and intimidation.  That thing, which had always resided in her, which had slept from before her birth, had now awakened.

Before she did anything else, Haley wanted to test the new knowledge washing over her mind.  She needed to learn whether the visions and knowledge entrusted to her were truth or a strange dream on a hot summer afternoon.  Was Haley able to do what the Door promised?  Would she still be the same person she was before this revelation?

Walking to the door, Haley smiled at her two precious friends, and pushed it open.

Chapter 1 of The Clockwork Soul

The Clockwork Soul

By M. Andrew Sprong

Copyright 1989-2008 All Rights Reserved.

Chapter 1        François’ Day

He didn’t remember when it all started, and if you pressed him on it, he’d just say it had always been that way.  He would go to sleep in Madrid and wake up in Paris or some other city.  When he looked into the mirror on those occasions, he would see a different person each time, but he was always exactly the same age and always a boy.  You might think this peculiar, bizarre in fact, but by the time he was nine years of age, it was just something that happened to him.  Was he borrowing the lives of some other boys, or was his soul on a round robin tour of the world?  During his days in Paris, his French was superb as was his Spanish in Madrid, but it was strange, because he didn’t know either when he lived in Hamburg.

What a peculiar boy — amazing in fact!  Every single morning he would wake up in one of twenty-four different places in a long and happy chain.  All of the families, which called him their own, loved him and cared for him, and he rarely knew pain or sorrow.  To be lucky and blessed not once but twenty-four times was even more miraculous than the nocturnal hopping of his soul.  He didn’t know whose body was rightfully his and thus, he took complete possession of all of them.  What were they doing when he wasn’t there?  Were there twenty-four souls riding upon this spiritual carousel?

Today he was François Louis Guimbretière, a dark-haired boy who lived with his Papa and Mama in Saint-Ouen a canton of Paris upon one of the five corners of Rue Farcot.  Four generations lived within the large stone house, which had weathered everything the Germans could throw at it.  On the mornings he awoke there, he would milk Ravissant and take the bucket to his mother of the day and she would kiss him and tell him what a good boy he was.  He would go to his school to learn all about France and play with his friends who never seemed to notice he was not the same François of yesterday.  Somehow, though he could not remember what had occurred on those other twenty-three days to François, he managed to keep things straight, and nobody knew of his singular condition.  Certainly, he might have confessed the same sin twice to Father Frédéric, who probably attributed the mistake to the good boy’s zeal.  At noon, he would return home for his midday meal and a nap beneath the great elm beside their home.  Oddly, a nap did not send his soul off into the next little boy, but instead he would awaken in half an hour, happy and refreshed.  The afternoon he would spend down in François’ father’s workshop carving maple chairs for the rich and famous.  When he didn’t have a customer, father would sell his furniture at the flea market behind their home, one which served all of Paris and was the pride of canton Saint-Ouen.  Papa was very good at carving, but François still had much to learn.

“Give it time, my dear boy!  Give it time, and you will be as good a carver as me!”

When evening came, Mama would read a story or sing a lovely song, while he curled up in her lap with a kitten in his own.  When you have a cow in Saint-Ouen, you always have many kittens.  When he fell asleep, he remained asleep.  He did not awaken until the morning in another place, in another boy, alert and ready to start a brand new day.  Tomorrow he would be Adriano Del Marco of San Paulo, Brazil, another happy and loved little boy.

“François, … François, can you tell me the name of our president?” said the lovely Madame Marie, who taught the nine years olds and more than a few of the ten years as well.

“Yes, Madame.  It is President Charles De Gaulle elected last year over François Mitterrand.”

“Exactly François, that was very good!  You may choose a flag pin from the basket.”  All of the better flags were long gone, but François found one for the nation of Mexico.  He loved the green, white, and red – colors of springtime!

A girl with ginger hair ran up to him after school.  Abigaëlle lived one door down, a very exuberant young lady with an active imagination.  François liked Abigaëlle very much, but it was also true, he liked almost everyone else as well.  He waited politely for her to catch her breath, and when she had, waited some more for her speak.

“François,” asked Abigaëlle timidly, “if it pleases you, can you help me this afternoon with my arithmetic?  I seem to be having some trouble with the columns.  Every time I try to multiply, I get confused and add instead.”

“I will help you, Abigaëlle,” replied François, “but first you must help me help Papa.  Is that fine with you?”

“Yes, François!” exclaimed the girl, giving him a peck on the check and a big hug as well.  She then ran down the street at her usual gallop to ask her mother.  François never ran home, there were too many things to see on his way.  The candy maker was boiling a big vat of tutti-frutti, and if François helped her stir, she might give him a cup — hot and sticky – just the way he liked it!  Every twenty-fourth day he would also walk by the mechanic, Raphaëlle, who had a tattoo of a sailing ship on his broad smooth chest.  He sometimes let François sit in the driver seat of a customer’s automobile and pretend he was a racecar driver, or better yet, a pilot of a mighty rocket ship.  He would issue great deep belly laughs to François’ antics.  Raphaëlle kept a goat in the yard, which diligently guarded a small circle of grass around her tree, and dared any passerby, especially little boys, to trespass.  Near to home, François walked past an empty lot where a house used to stand.  There was a sad story about that place, but none of the adults would tell, and François was too polite to insist.  Today he stopped to talk to the candy maker.

“Do you need some help, Madame?” asked François politely.  The woman was older than his mother was, and beyond the age where women might have children.  She was tall and thin with powerful muscles from stirring a large round pot filled to the brim with every child’s delight.  The smell of hot candy often drew large crowds of children later in the summer, but in the spring, François had the candy maker to himself.  She was mopping her sweaty brow with the sleeve of her dress, while dousing the flames as she kicked over a bucket of water.

“I’m sorry, François!  I’ve just finished stirring and it will be another hour before I must draw the taffy.  If you come by tomorrow, I might have a little to spare before I take it to the shop.”

“Thank you, Madame,” said François, with a low bow and doff of his hat.  Not all little boys were polite, but you should know François was kind and courteous to a fault.  Though some other boy in François’ body would get the promised candy, today’s François would not insist or beg.  Begging was for the dog, the less fortunate, or Monsieur Mitterrand on the radio.

Proceeding down the street on his habitual rounds, he came across a raven beside the road.  She was guarding her egg, which had fallen from a low branch and to his amazement was unbroken.  He looked at a her, she at him, and there transpired between the two of them a message of mercy and compassion, whereby she hopped backwards, three little hops, and he stepped forward to pick up the egg and place it gently back in its nest.  With a joyous caw, she hopped into her home even before he could remove his hand and offered him a shiny metal key, which he took and put into his pocket.  He didn’t wish to upset her generosity.  Later he would return her treasure, unless he found the lock to which the key fit.  A raven is always a good friend to have, in times of plenty or need.

“Hello, Monsieur Raphaëlle and Madam Chèvre how are you today?” called François, over the load Turkish music coming from the transistor radio hanging from a nail on the open door.  The goat did not answer, but just looked at him with her strange, alien eyes as she chewed on a mouthful of ivy.

“Is that you garçon, François?  I cannot spare the time today, because I must drive and get parts.  Come by tomorrow and I will give you a special treat,” shouted the burly man as he left the shadows of his shop.  His arms were covered in grease and sweat, and he looked exhausted in the noonday sun.  A truck stood up high on jacks behind him with all six tires lying about on the ground.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” said François, bowing again.  He turned on his heel and headed past the lots for the great flee market where venders, estates managers, and wealthy homeowners traded furniture and antiques.  Old men, young ladies, and pickpockets filled the market, all competing for the money of rich young men.  Forbidden to enter the market by his mother, François walked on the other side of the road, until he arrived at his home and it’s squeaky iron gate.

The sun cast no shadow, high and proud above the ivy covered house.  The roses were in full bloom nestled amongst bougainvillea vines, yellow flowers contrasting with soft violet inflorescence.  Both types grew beneath every window to deter any casual burglar who might wander over from the Les Puces de Saint-Ouen.  That bougainvillea and her long thorns could rend the thickest coat, and make a grown man weep bitterly.  Such a place became a perfect hideaway for the mice from the many hungry cats, as well as for the asp from Papa’s hoe.

“Mama, I am home!” called François, as he entered the home.

“Please speak quietly, François,” said her mother from the stairs.  “Grand-mère is not feeling so well today.  Armelle has made soup with onions and bread there in the kitchen.  Please be a good boy and go serve yourself while I tend to my mother.  Make sure to save some for your sisters and your niece as well, okay?”

“Yes, Mama!”

François tossed his hat and his school jacket into the cupboard and made his way to the kitchen.  Now you must understand it wasn’t a small kitchen of the sort found in so many modern houses.  It was large with two stoves and a pine table in the center for cutting and preparing large dishes.  The family had Armelle to cook, whom they treated more like one of their own than a girl from Morocco.  She had a wild eye, which often encouraged spitting, and curses from superstitious old ladies.  Add to that a lock of pure white hair on one so young, and even the culturally more astute students would walk on the other side of the street in fear she was a witch.  In truth, she was by far more devoted to her faith than anyone François knew, and accepted the ridicule and shame as a burden of noble humility.

“Good afternoon, François!  Are you ready to have your supper?” asked the gentle woman at a large cast-iron stove.  She wore long sleeves in the smothering heat of the kitchen, which temped fate as they smoldered near the flames.  One milky eye looked away from François while the perfect brown one looked at him with kindness.  Despite this marring defect, she wasn’t bad to look at, but she would likely never marry or know true romance.

“Yes please, Madame”

With a large ladle, she scooped up a generous helping of onion soup into a bowl, placed a slice from this morning’s baguette, and poured melted cheese upon the whole thing.

“Let it cool a moment.”

“Where is everyone, Madame?” asked François.  He was curious how nobody waited in the kitchen and why he was being served soup instead of something more fitting for the day’s largest meal.

“You do not know, François?” answered the young woman, who was quite pretty from the side where you couldn’t see the roving white eye.  “I’ve told you for the last three days the same thing.  Your father is helping your uncle in the country and will most likely be back tomorrow.  Grand-père is back in court over that communist who commandeered his automobile.  Claire, your uncle, is still courting that wealthy lady who is much too mature for him.  And Célestine – well — she is unable to come to the table this day of the month.  Are you satisfied, my little amnesiac?  If I did not know better, you ask me this because you want to hear my voice, but it is not as lovely as your mother’s.  God bless her for her devotion to Grand-mère.  It won’t be long now, my sweet François.  So prepare your heart for this thing, yes?”

Rather than becoming satisfied with her answers, curiosity plagued him even more, but he knew from experience, too many questions asked would be forgotten unless he wrote them in his journal.  Skipping like a stone across the months of François’ life was not much different from the great trapeze acrobat high up on the wire. To look too close at the audience below would invite mistakes, insanity, and a tragic plummet to destruction.

As he ate his soup in silence, he listened to Armelle hum to herself as she toiled away preparing another meal.  She must be making something to welcome Papa home.  When he was nearly finished eating, he heard the gate squeak and the sound of laughter as his little niece, Mélissandre, bounded up to the door.  She ran, a four-year-old bundle of exuberance, into Armelle’s waiting arms, while François’ oldest sister, Magdalèna, entered behind with a bucket filled to the brim with mushrooms.

“I am going to need a leash for that one, my friend.  She’s always trying to get away.  I hope your morning was good?  There are so many pigs in the woods these days, maybe Papa and Claire could hunt one for you, yes?”

“They could get arrested, Magdalèna, and then how would care for your charming little girl?”

“True, so true.  It is a pity the pigs get to eat the truffles while we are left with this.”  She plopped the overflowing basket onto the table and sat herself down with a sigh.  “Please look at each carefully, Armelle, since Mélissandre insisted on helping.  We don’t want the dreaded Anamita to haunt our house, do we?”

“I will, as always.  Are you finished eating, François?  Please, could you leave the kitchen and go outside to play?” asked Armelle.  He imagined her wild eye was twitching to the beat of unheard Moroccan drums.  It always did so when she was nervous or upset.

When he left the sweltering heat of the kitchen, François exited the house by the back way, and went to his customary place beside the elm.  Lying down upon the sweet clover, he looked up into the branches and watched the birds coming to and fro.  The swallows did not come back this year, which made François both happy and a little sad.  Happy, because they were messy and sleeping on the lawn could become hazardous.  Sad, because he loved to watch them fly so swift, like the rocket ships he imagined going to the moon.  Today, there were no swallows, just the sparrows and finches who stayed all year round.

As he nodded off, he thought how he was like those swallows, but he hoped he would always be able to return to François.  Before he knew it, he was awake again — the ginger-haired Abigaëlle was shaking his shoulder.

“Wake up!  Wake up, François!” she pleaded.  He felt the warmth of her milky skin upon his, but snapped out of his reverie when he looked into her frightened eyes.  He smelled smoke upon her skin, and her beautiful golden hair was singed in places.  Her chemise had little holes burned into it, and tears drew sad little lines through the ashes on her face.  He could hear a fire truck approaching from the station, and could see billowing black smoke rising from the tiny house next door.  Struggling to get to his feet, he peered through the iron gate at the terror of flame consuming his friend’s home.  The fire truck was just arriving when the roof collapsed, which took the wooden walls with it into the basement, to create a huge ball of malevolent fire rolling high into the sky – a mocking image of despair.

“Mama!  Papa!” cried Abigaëlle, and François had to hold his half-naked friend to keep her from plunging into the flames to her death.  She struggled like a wild animal, clawing and biting at him, but he did not let her go.  By the time the men put out the fire, there was nothing left but a smoking pit in the ground and deeper still in Abigaëlle’s heart.  Mama and the others of the household consoled and distracted her, as the police carried her parents’ charred remains to the morgue.  Only Abigaëlle survived, awakened by her brave little terrier, Cavalier, who had gone back into the flames to fetch his dear mistress.  The men found him beneath the bougainvillea, sorely burnt and terrified, but still very much alive.

They all wept together, and thus on that sad day, which began so good and bright, Abigaëlle became a Guimbretière, a foster sister under the same roof.

Hello everyone and welcome!

Welcome to my weblog on wordpress.com.  I already have one on BlogSpot.com, where I discuss my experiences as a writer.  This blog will exclusively provide a service to my fans.  From time to time, I’ll post first chapters and excerpts.  Please comment if you wish, though if you are abusive or just plain stupid you’ll find your post in the bit-bucket.  Now, I’d like to introduce myself.

I am a returning writer who enjoys the act of creation.  For years, I have yearned to create works, which would interest, inspire — and if necessary — haunt the reader.  I have three small boys and live in the Pocono Mountains where every season is beautiful.  My wife is an editor and illustrator of children’s books, and is artistically talented.  I have recently finished a novel titled “Haley Cork and the Blue Door” – a haunting story of a girl who is rapidly stripped of her humanity by an ancient and powerful device.

I am working on a number of books, but fatigue brought about by chronic illness makes things very slow for me. I can write at most an hour a day if I am lucky, so if I don’t immediately respond to your emails, you’ll know why.

If you wish to contact me, do so through my publisher’s email address at Honesdale.Eagle@gmail.com

That’s all there is to it!  I write because I have to, want to, and love to.