Tag Archives: short-story

Exiles Incorporated: the opening to Joyeuse

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Through twelve evocative tales of longing and loss, Exiles Incorporated depicts a volatile world of hostile landscapes, where humans strive to belong amid the cruelty of conquest, the madness of desire and the transience of love. Set at Christmas time in Rome 800 AD, the fourth story Joyeuse is the tale of two elite soldiers who pursue a lethal love affair against the backdrop of Charlemagne’s imperial coronation.

Our union began on the most joyous of days and ended on the most savage. For the power of the cross is like the power of the sword, until you can’t see which is deceiving which on the descent into fire. An elite soldier should never drop his guard. On Christmas Day in Europe’s holiest city, I lowered mine, letting a higher love lower its beguiling veil and thrust its lance into my heart.

My name is Benoît. I was twenty years old when I became a soldier in Charlemagne’s army. A provincial boy from the green fields of the west swishing swords with the Frankish aristocracy. I was unnaturally strong and mentally agile, anticipating opponents’ moves and striking at the canniest of moments. In combat I envisioned myself a snarling dragon with angelic grace. Soon a mystique swirled around me, and I was happy to wear its magic fabric.

I have always believed in miracles.

Within a year I was a member of the Scara, an honour usually reserved for the finest warriors from the wealthiest families. We protected Europe’s most powerful man; his strongest, quickest and most ruthless soldiers. The most prone to adulation. The most likely to be betrayed by a kiss. An accomplished swordsman reads what isn’t there and acts upon it. A doomed one reads too much and is confounded.

The omens said I would be a warrior of faith. My arrival in this world was heralded by a knight’s sword driven into the door of a rural church in Aquitaine. Stirred from his crypt by the sound, Michel the priest surfaced to see my infant form mewling on the steps, steel shaft and gold hilt vibrating above my head. I was hot to the touch. A trio of ravens watched from the churchyard wall and a nearby oak tree flamed white with fire. Michel, a performer of piety who secretly loved the occult, believed I was a changeling.

“You’re a gift from the shadow world,” he whispered. “As bright, blinding and powerful as the sword which came with you. You have cured me of my loneliness, boy. Rescued me from this enduring chill.”

Or so I was told. To me, it doesn’t matter where you’re from. Only what you do. Whatever happened to my birth sword, or if it even existed, I could not say. Some stories are useful, others less so. While the uncivilised villagers feared folk tales of demons and goblins, I flourished above a well of wisdom. In the crypt, I absorbed the great literature of antiquity, scrutinised the scriptures and pledged my sword to God.

“This is all a show,” Michel warned of the Gospels. “All a show.”

The Bible was his virtuous pretence, the glory of Rome his passionate vice. On winter evenings, he would light candles and tell tales of Tiberius, Caligula and Nero. I dreamed of escaping servitude’s swamp to lead an army into that fabled city where Caesar was slain and Peter martyred.

I have always preferred the company of men. Those who enjoy mine rarely forget it.

Exiles Incorporated is available to buy on Apple Books, Amazon and Google Play as an e-book, plus on Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a paperback.

Exiles Incorporated: the opening to Nazca

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Through twelve evocative tales of longing and loss, Exiles Incorporated depicts a volatile world of hostile landscapes, where humans strive to belong amid the cruelty of conquest, the madness of desire and the transience of love. In the third story Nazca, set in the dry plains of first-century Peru, two teenage girls are commanded to ensure rainfall by completing one of the Nazca geoglyphs.

It was another dry morning and nothing much was happening in the sky. The community had buried its leader the night before, merrily watering the ground with fluids as his spirit soared. When dawn broke, younger folk expected to see his happy red face floating in the clouds, but the endless blue offered only wispy white. Men refused to emerge from their huts. The strongest claimed to be sick with grief. The weakest were too poorly to release anything but hot air.

Caya knew it was the shaman’s broth. The demented old fool seemed distracted when mixing the snake blood into the stewing pot and incantating to the Great Being. Only men could sup the maroon drink. Only men fell sick. As the sun rose over the plain, Caya noticed how her mother exchanged a knowing smile with other women as they fluttered through their chores like fledging birds.

One day I will be like them, thought Caya as she swept outside her family’s hut. She glanced down the track to see if Yavi was up, sunlight glinting on his broad shoulders. If he was curled in bed whimpering, she’d be disappointed. And angry with his parents for letting him touch the broth. He was a boy. One day he would be a man. She needed him strong, healthy and wise.

One day. When her chest was bigger, hips wider and the bleeding had begun. Caya was worryingly late. Her friend Mita became a woman last summer, welcomed into the bosom of those squawking ladies who flapped around the shaman. Caya turned the brush upside down and used the handle to draw a picture of herself and Yavi embracing. It looked silly, so she swept it away.

Last night was silly too. The broth had crippled father. Caya peered into her parents’ room and saw him face down with a damp cloth on his bald head. She could smell his insides. Above the bed was the wall hanging of the Great Being with its string of ugly heads, cavernous eyes and snake-like tongues. The colours were pretty, though. Woven into pretty patterns by pretty women’s hands. The ones who cooked, cleaned and swelled with new life. The real rainmakers.

Once when she was tiny, Caya experienced sky water. Infrequent taps on the roof during a sleepless night. A child then, far away from adulthood. Now she was neither. Unready to be a rainmaker, as her father kept telling her. She must bleed first so her insides could receive the male seed. On this morning’s evidence, she would be surprised if any men could summon the strength.

After finishing the cleaning, Caya walked past Yavi’s hut. Her heart quickened. She lingered for a while, drawing another picture of them both in the ground with her fingertips. Nobody emerged. Bored, she wandered to Mita’s hut. Her mother, a grumpy fat lady who shouted at people all day, said Mita was with the shaman learning the ways of the sky. Eventually the Great Being would flood the dry land with life. Not yet though. One day.

Drifting to the outermost huts, Caya saw the other settlement in the distance. There’d been another falling out, because they hadn’t sent anyone to mourn the leader. Caya wondered if their shaman was more capable. Surely it would be better if they all prayed together, so they could take flight as one to see beyond the air.

Exiles Incorporated is available to buy on Apple Books, Amazon and Google Play as an e-book, plus on Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a paperback.

Exiles Incorporated: the opening to Athena

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Through twelve evocative tales of longing and loss, Exiles Incorporated depicts a volatile world of hostile landscapes, where humans strive to belong amid the cruelty of conquest, the madness of desire and the transience of love. In the second story Athena, set in an Athens devastated by plague in 430 BC, orphan Christos searches for wisdom, only to experience nightmarish revelations about the sickness of the adult world.

Christos bounded through the door of his aunt’s home onto the twilight street. Swishing an olive branch into the frigid air, the man of the house decapitated one, two, three Medusas with his sword of fire. Tonight, his quest for wisdom would begin. Athens would conceive a new hero from its infected slums, while nobility shrank indoors bolting the locks in their minds.

The boy twirled through the darkening labyrinth, skirting round snoring and spluttering vagrants. The late afternoon sun no longer sparkled on the luscious crop of blond hair curling around Christos’s shoulders. The most handsome eight-year-old in Athens, his mother said before she fell ill. Definitely the tallest. Blessed by Apollo himself. Destined to shine like the sun over our city.

These days Christos preferred the night-time. Sunlight exposed Athens at its worst. A mazy mess of wood and marble, smeared by neglect, war and disease. The corpses piled high in the squares and alleys; swollen faces twisted to the sky. Our city is a beacon of civilisation, said his father, before the plague laid waste to mind and flesh. When both he and Pericles were alive.

Scorching mythical creatures as he skipped, Christos weaved past the dying and the drunk to his new tutor’s home on the city’s outskirts. Chilly wind nipped his ears. He pulled the hood of his brown cloak over his head, imagining he was an incognito prince rescuing a beautiful maiden. Or Thanatos himself, stalking the neighbourhood to drag the plague’s victims to the Styx. Both these fantasies he’d exchange for a decent meal. Aunt Cassie never cooked.

“Nestor’s house is at the very south of the city, at a forking point between two tracks leading to the city walls,” she had shouted through the curtain, her sickly perfumed stench wafting through the one-storey house.

He hadn’t seen Cassie’s face for four days. She’d retreated to her private room behind a curtain of purple and gold, tied to a wooden post from the inside and embroidered with spindly spiderweb patterns. In the evening, while Christos played Perseus in the street, he would hear a bubbling sound and see smoke rise through the hole in the room’s ceiling.

“Look for a small house set off from the others,” she barked. “There is an olive tree growing around it. The branches curl into the windows, like they’re about to lift the roof away. Be careful Christy. Stay away from anyone who looks like they don’t know any better. When you meet Nestor, show him this.”

Cassie’s bony hand crept underneath the curtain hem and slid a silver tetradrachm coin across the stone floor. Her flesh was unmarked by sores; she wasn’t coughing either. Christos had no idea why neither of them were sick. She wasn’t that special. Maybe he was though.

Exiles Incorporated is available to buy on Apple Books, Amazon and Google Play as an e-book, plus on Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a paperback.

Exiles Incorporated: the opening to Uluru

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Through twelve evocative tales of longing and loss, Exiles Incorporated depicts a volatile world of hostile landscapes, where humans strive to belong amid the cruelty of conquest, the madness of desire and the transience of love. In the first story Uluru, set in dawn-of-creation Australia, the four elements of Air, Wind, Fire and Mother Earth bury the mystery of Spirit in a ground rumbling with strange voices.

“Don’t leave me, mama.”

Spirit burrowed deeper into her guardian’s bosom. She craved closeness, but Air, Wind, Fire and Mother Earth wanted to bury her in the wilderness. She was only a shared dream to them. An unfathomable weight slowing their advance. Let the ground swallow her.

“I’m scared, mama,” she shivered. “Scared I won’t find my way back…”

Home. A realm of dark fog. She didn’t know what she was or where she came from. Only that she’d woken misshapen in the four elements’ minds. She’d not arrived alone. Voices followed. Rattling cries underground only she could hear. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.

 Air, Wind, Fire and Mother Earth accelerated into the void. The golden orb above had summoned the four elements to carve a new world with their thoughts. This was dreamtime, explained Mother Earth. First to flow from their minds was a dry, blood-orange plain. The second, a suffocating roof of endless blue. Why the elements created was a mystery to them.

Spirit was a mystery too. Too inanimate to challenge; too unsettling to ignore. A lone thing lodged in their consciousness. When the time was right, they would feed her to the parched plains. Until then, Mother Earth absorbed the gentle questions dripping from the child’s mind.

“What am I mama?”

“I’m not sure, little one. We don’t know yet.”

“When will we know?”

“Soon. Our dreams will tell us where you belong.”

“What’s a dream, mama?”

“It’s what brings this world into existence.”

“Will I ever dream?”

“We don’t know. Just be still, little one. Just be still.”

Spirit watched as Air, Wind, Fire and Mother Earth spawned the landscape, slowing to stillness then sleep. In dreams they convulsed and contracted, bleeding together. Fusion culminated in a splintering screech and the grinding of invisible jaws. Krrrraccck. Chuggachug. Krrrraccck. Chuggachug. Krrrraccck. Chuggachug. Spirit thought space itself would shatter.

Each time one element was most powerful, their primacy signalled by a spasm of colour. Air’s white vapour. Fire’s reddish smoke. Water’s blue swirls. Mother Earth’s hazy green. Ripples of energy surged and subsided with a boom and a crackle. Droplets of light spurted upwards then softly descended.

There were two kinds of droplets. Sleepers and dreamers. Sleepers hovered with uncertainty, then evaporated. Pffffffftishhh. Pffffffftishhh. Pffffffftishhh. Dreamers flourished, swelling into material form, flecking the void with silver-grey streaks, brownish-green smears and fluffy patches of white ascending to blue. Plink. Plink. Plink. Rivers. Trees. Plants. Rocks. Jagged, beautiful, solitary rocks. Spirit loved those most. She did not change, so was neither sleeper nor dreamer. Not real or unreal. Somewhere in between.

While Air, Wind, Fire and Mother Earth woke from dreamtime and sped into the dark, Spirit drew patterns between the rocks in their wake. The fragments changed colour in the sunlight, from orange to red to pink to brown to amber to yellow. Plink. Plink. Plink. Once part of something, now alone. Spirit wished a huge rock would reunite them all one day.

Exiles Incorporated is available to buy on Apple Books, Amazon and Google Play as an e-book, plus on Amazon and Barnes & Noble as a paperback.