Haley Cork and the Blue Door

Haley Cork and the Blue Door

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Haley Cork and the Blue Door

When a war-ending blast incinerates Haley Cork’s father half a world away, she becomes the only one who can get justice for the billions of dead, and must use the powers of the mysterious Blue Door to find and imprison those responsible.

Science Fantasy: 110,000 words

Most of the world’s fighting men are gone and their widows left behind as prey to corrupt noblemen. The Blue Door called Haley to do more than avenge their deaths — it selected her to become the latest member of a race of immortals called Keepers. Her dark red hair and amber eyes already set her apart from her own community, but the Blue Door intends to take away her very humanity as it pursues its own hidden agenda. Every answer leads to more questions: Who detonated the bomb? What exactly is the Blue Door? Why has the Blue Door chosen a little girl to combat an Enemy who devours entire worlds? Who are these mysterious Keepers? Most adolescent girls are ill equipped to investigate the mystery behind the terrible bombing. Not many girls are like Haley Cork, who changes in unexpected ways on her path to destiny.

Haley Cork's World of Frija Five

If you like cats, dragons, and girls who can step between worlds then this book is for you. If you like weak, prissy girls then it isn’t. Haley is strong, determined, and full of a desire to bring justice straight into the enemy’s camp. She is fearless but not foolish. By the end of the book, Haley’s universe will have you begging for more.  — Marsha Blaine

This a fantasy adventure you don’t want to miss. Haley Cork is tough! She’s the sort of person who can dish it out and then ask for more. Though she is just a little kid, that doesn’t stop her from setting right some humongous wrongs. The story of the Chithtuk alone is worth the read. — Piers Braxton

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 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.