tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86503506704020417852024-03-13T07:48:24.465-04:00The Upper Side of StandardThis blog showcases the fiction writings of author Carole Wolf, featuring the excerpts and promos for the Monasco series (Passage to Anathema, The Last Kappolarian, and The Red Tide), Bone Cave, and Everything, as well as others to come.Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-78082187613153006832014-11-16T12:05:00.001-05:002014-11-16T12:06:30.204-05:00Everything by Carole Wolf: Curve Magazine Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Everything by Carole Wolf</span></h1>
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“Everything” is an epic, monumental and enthralling read. Heart breaking, poignant, moving - a magnificent story of self destruction and redemption.</h3>
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BY THE VELVET LOUNGER</div>
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Published: <time datetime="2014-11-15 22:50" pubdate="">2014.11.15 10:50 PM</time></div>
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In her latest novel “Everything” Carole Wolf sets out to tell the chronicle of a family, a band and an addiction. Interwoven is a tale of growing up, a love story, a road trip and all of this based on the highs and lows of a brilliant, creative, self destructive woman. At 548 pages it is huge. But it needs every one of those pages to cover such an ambitious tragedy.</div>
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Ms Wolf’s writing is outstanding. It flows off the page and wraps around your senses, recreating time, place, atmosphere and ambiance in an effortless tsunami that drowns out the outside world and subsumes the reader. We are swept up in the lives of Jolán, Rachel, Myla and the inhuman fourth character that impacts all of them in the most dramatic of ways.</div>
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The cast is huge, from the core characters of the band, immediate family and friends, to bit players we meet momentarily along the way. They are all drawn with detailed care, forcing their way off the page and into out imaginations so strongly you will remember many well beyond their actual presence. The main players are more than just solid and well rounded; they are so real you feel you know them personally.</div>
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It isn’t an easy read. It is a tough story about a woman’s painful decent into hell, and the impact that has on everyone around her. But while it is a tale of secrecy, deceit and despair it is also about redemption, forgiveness, and ultimately the self-sacrifice to ensure the survival of one you love more than yourself. A novel literally of two halves, the first shows us a constructed life that seems whole and complete, but when the layers of socially accepted appearance are pealed back we are left with something raw, bloody and very real.</div>
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Hats off to Ms Wolf for a creation that had me enthralled. Despite the obvious ‘decline of a rock and roll band’ plot, it had so many twists and turns, unexpected bumps and intriguing plays, to absorb me completely. It has left me churning with emotions from compassion for those whose lives were so severely impacted to joy for a love that survived everything and admiration for the mind of the woman who created it and her skill to deliver such a work.</div>
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<br />Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-58883014869903197852014-11-12T11:49:00.004-05:002014-11-12T11:50:56.860-05:00My new novel Everything--available NOW!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EeSPy7kzRRw/VGOPep7yE0I/AAAAAAAAAPA/Zo8N-MSJVJc/s1600/10702111_10205244363972853_9180915401373171100_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EeSPy7kzRRw/VGOPep7yE0I/AAAAAAAAAPA/Zo8N-MSJVJc/s640/10702111_10205244363972853_9180915401373171100_n.jpg" width="470" /></a></div>
<br />Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-535510629688048962014-11-12T11:45:00.002-05:002014-11-12T11:46:08.369-05:00Goodreads Free Giveaway<span style="font-size: large;">Click to win a free paperback copy of my new book Everything! Limited copies available until November 25th 2014, so get yours! Go!</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/" target="_new">Goodreads</a> Book Giveaway<br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23333030"><img alt="Everything by Carole Wolf" src="https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415725249l/23333030.jpg" title="Everything by Carole Wolf" width="100" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23333030">Everything</a><br />
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by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7112085.Carole_Wolf" style="text-decoration: none;">Carole Wolf</a><br />
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Giveaway ends November 25, 2014.<br />
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See the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/115409" style="text-decoration: none;">giveaway details</a><br />
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<script charset="utf-8" src="https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/widget/115409" type="text/javascript"></script>Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-65038561522871818972014-10-14T11:18:00.001-04:002014-10-14T11:18:33.678-04:00Everything Book Trailer<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V8Thmc9cgos" width="459"></iframe>Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-952865088265598882014-07-29T15:00:00.000-04:002014-07-29T15:00:52.156-04:00Character Blog Roll--Get to know Adrian Randal of "167 Seconds"<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have been invited to participate in the character blog roll for my most recent work in progress, a psychological drama that follows the path of a college student who is sentenced to thirty years in prison for the murder of her brother-in-law. Here are some things you'll certainly want to know about this character.</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">1). What is the name of your character, and is he/she fictional or a historical person?</span></b><br />
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The central character's name is Adrian Randal. She is a fictional person; however, given her circumstances she could easily be any one of us, an "everywoman" of sorts.<br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">2). When and where is the story set?</span></b><br />
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The story is set in 2004 Atlanta, Georgia and takes place over a twelve year span, from 2004 until roughly 2016.<br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">3). What should we know about him/her?</span></b><br />
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Adrian is a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, working on her Masters in sociology and youth counseling, and she is currently completing an internship in which she works with Atlanta's at-risk youth. She is from a working-class family and has one older sister named Emily and a six-year-old niece with whom she is very close. Her mother is living, but her father is deceased. Adrian is altruistic, well grounded, and compassionate. She's always had an uncomplicated and direct vision for her future, and thus far she's been able to follow that path without many obstacles. She prides herself on making solid, educated decisions, on doing the 'right' thing, and on having done all the work necessary to reap the best benefits in life. She's a "good kid" who enjoys college life and is enjoying being in love for the first time with her partner, Sarah.<br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">4). What is the main conflict, and what messes up his/her life?</span></b><br />
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Adrian shocks herself on the night of September 6th, 2004, when she shoots her new brother-in-law, Michael Young, sixteen times with his own nine millimeter handgun. Less than an hour prior to this incident, Adrian and her mother had received a distressing phone call from Adrian's sister Emily (Michael's wife) who is hysterical and sobbing about Michael having beaten her up. When Adrian and her mother Joyce show up to console her, however, Emily reveals yet another detail, a fact more heinous than Adrian can handle. Emotion seems to override all the good sense and temperance for which Adrian is known as she takes the law into her own hands and murders Michael Young in a blind rage, destroying her life before it has even begun.<br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">5). What is the personal goal of the main character?</span></b><br />
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Having been sentenced to thirty years in R.W. Pulman Correctional Facility for Women (fictional), one of Georgia's most dangerous state prisons, Adrian's goals are very simple: stay alive, stay 'invisible', and stay sane so that she might make parole in 2016 and begin to put her life back together again.<br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">6). Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?</span></b><br />
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The title is <i>167 Seconds</i>, and I have a few recent blog entries about it and will be posting more entries on the writing process along the way.<br />
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<b><span style="color: lime;">7). When can we expect the book to be published?</span></b><br />
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I am hoping for an early 2016 release (hopefully through Bedazzled Ink), as the book is in its fetal stages, only on Chapter Two at this point.<br />
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Thanks to Rhavensfyre for inviting me on this blog tour! Rhavensfyre's next book is entitled <i>Rest and Relaxation</i> and is coming soon! You can read all about their work and keep up to date with them at <a href="http://www.rhavensfyre.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">www.rhavensfyre.wordpress.com</a>.<br />
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I am now passing the author blog torch to:<br />
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JL Gaynor <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jl.gaynor?fref=ts" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/jl.gaynor?fref=ts</a><br />
Helen Dunn <a href="http://on.fb.me/1pyvk4Z" target="_blank">http://on.fb.me/1pyvk4Z</a><br />
TT Thomas <a href="http://www.ttthomas.com/" target="_blank">www.ttthomas.com</a><br />
RE Bradshaw <a href="http://rebradshawbooks.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">rebradshawbooks.blogspot.com</a><br />
RJ Samuel <a href="http://www.rjsamuel.com/" target="_blank">www.rjsamuel.com</a><br />
<br />Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-67317194554680053952014-07-10T13:41:00.000-04:002014-07-10T13:49:00.310-04:00Finding the Mood Music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It could be considered a crutch, but without the right music--I mean, the absolute <i>perfect </i>music--my books would never get written. This latest WIP, <i>167 Seconds</i>, seems to require a certain sound (like all of them do) in order to generate provocative imagery, poignant character introspection, and meaningful dialogue. My books are movies in my head, after all, and every movie needs a score, right? I just wish it were possible to somehow include free 'soundtracks' of the music I've used to write these novels, but there are copyright and distribution snags that prevent such a cool perk. So, I've listed a few of the artists whose works have inspired <i>167 Seconds</i> and linked the YouTube videos above. I also make audio files to post to my website, which you can find at <a href="http://www.carolewolfauthor.com/" target="_blank">www.carolewolfauthor.com</a><br />
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If you've listened to any of them, you'll notice the darkness in most of these tracks, which is more than appropriate. A good portion of <i>167 Seconds</i> takes place in a maximum security women's penitentiary, a fictional facility that I've plunked down right in the middle of rural southern Georgia, just twenty miles north of the Florida state line. The central character, 24 year old Adrian Randal, is a Georgia State University student who has murdered her brother-in-law for reasons I won't spoil for you here, but let's just say they're quite controversial. This act has landed her in one of the worst women's correctional facilities in the state for the next thirty years, essentially destroying her life. The place to which she's been sent is a privately owned prison that rivals such institutions as Sing Sing and Attica with a main housing unit designed in the roundhouse style of Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois (an architectural prison style also found in the Netherlands).<br />
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One of the biggest concerns my wife and closest friends have had about this novel is whether the prison theme will end up mimicking <i>Orange is the New Black</i> ::sigh:: No. It will not. I believe I may have touched on that subject in an earlier post and dismissed it there as well, and I can assure you--<i>167 Seconds</i> is about as close to OITNB as the film <i>Gravity</i> is to <i>Spaceballs</i>. So, as a reader, if you're looking forward to some new take on OITNB, you won't find it in <i>167 Seconds</i>. And if you've been cringing at such a cheesy possibility, don't worry, you'll get the same darkness and grit and tortured characters found in my upcoming novel <i>Everything (</i>formerly self-published as <i>The Months of Moon</i>). I promise. </div>
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*all pictures and music copyrighted to their respective owners*</div>
Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-86621480746021696382014-06-24T17:00:00.002-04:002014-06-24T17:00:41.353-04:00Best of Both Worlds, Or Pick One? Since finishing my upcoming novel <i>Everything</i>, I've found myself experiencing some kind of creative, literary bipolar thing. I would typically advise against working on more than one idea at a time, simply because it makes it difficult to commit to a project and hence <i>finish </i>the project. But I am breaking my own steadfast rule and I'm working on two stories at once--one by day, the other after the sun goes down, respectively. I really should make a decision.<br />
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The daytime story (still untitled) is set in the summer of 1978 in Pennsylvania and revolves around the life of twelve-year-old Santana Mae Howard, a young girl being raised solely by her father in a very multicultural, blue collar, urban neighborhood. There's a lot of classic music and vintage imagery from that era, several pre-adolescent characters, a lot of color and sunshine and nostalgia. So, the ideas flow best for that story during the day.<br />
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The second is a very dark novel, which already has the title <i>167 Seconds</i>. It's about a twenty-four-year-old social services student, Adrian Randal, and her experience in a maximum security women's correctional facility after she shoots her brother-in-law sixteen times with a 9mm Beretta (you could say she had a very good reason...or maybe not. Depends on your personal values, I guess). The story line is non-linear and does some jumping around in time, although not to the point of being confusing. For the first half of the book, there are two story lines being told congruently--Adrian's life during the year <b>prior </b>to killing her brother-in-law, and the years she spends incarcerated for that murder. The second half of the book (as I see it right now) will focus on Adrian's re-entry into society after being released from one of the worst women's prisons in the state of Georgia. This prison is fictional, mind you. I could have used Pulaski State Prison, as I had some firsthand research sources for that facility, but I preferred to create my own prison so I could describe it however I wanted and make up my own rules (within realistic reason, of course). <i>167 Seconds</i> will have a huge focus on PTSD and how so many ex-cons experience difficulty trying to re-assimilate into society, into their families, into the workplace, and so forth, after years behind bars. No...this is <b><u>NOT </u></b><i>Orange is the New Black</i>--it isn't even close, not even in the spirit of that book/show, not reminiscent of it at all whatsoever. If you MUST relate it to some previously written prison story...think, I dunno...<i>Oz</i> but with all women, I guess, sort of. That's only a portion of the story, anyway. Unlike the 1978 story, this book has very little color, lots of grays and browns and blacks, lots of metal and concrete, a shitload of profanity, and a great deal of graphic violence. And within all that scary, dark, fretful storytelling, there's a love story. No, not a prison love story. A post-prison love story between Adrian and Thalia, a friend of Adrian's sister who must try to wade through Adrian's acquired dysfunction to get to the wonderful woman she knows is underneath. Thalia must learn to understand PTSD and how it is affecting Adrian if she hopes to have a romantic and fulfilling life with her. And Adrian must learn to understand her own condition as well, if she ever hopes to be emotionally stable and be able to enjoy life as a free woman. The two of them will have an interesting road together, to say the least.<br />
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What's the significance of the title? Well, it came to me almost immediately after writing down the plot summary, before I even wrote the first narrative line. Adrian's attorney discovers that it had taken Adrian right about 2 mins and 47 second (<i>167 Seconds</i>) to commit the murder that changes her life forever, the murder that will change <i>her </i>forever. Doesn't seem like a very long time...and it isn't. There are a few references throughout the book as to what kinds of profound and impacting things can happen to you in under three minutes, actually. Not just Adrian's crime. There are lots of other little factoids and tidbits to think about as well: Was it a crime of passion or something premeditated? Is she a hero for what she's done, or just another vigilante thug? What would you--the reader--have done in her circumstances, or do you even know? That's one of the biggest subconscious questions the story asks, so much that Adrian (including her family members) has no physical description whatsoever. That's intentional because A) I don't want to suggest that anyone of a particular race/nationality would be more or less prone to violence, and B) I want the reader to be able to put themselves in her shoes, and that would be difficult if Adrian was undoubtedly black or white or Asian or Latina, etc. She could be any of those, at least bi-racially so. Her situation could happen to any one of us.<br />
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Looks like I'm making my decision as to which one to put all my time and effort into. The 1978 story is promising, too, though. It's just not where my heart is, apparently. Maybe next time, when this one is finished. My wife and some friends are going to be disappointed, but they were disappointed when I suspended <i>Monasco 3</i> to write <i>Everything, </i>and that one turned out to be a pretty good decision.Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-52699977063341301672014-06-24T14:01:00.000-04:002014-06-24T14:01:02.362-04:00My Interview with author AJ Adaire<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" id="content-parent" style="color: black; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; width: 100%px;"><tbody>
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<strong><span style="color: white;">I originally met Carole Wolf online. I don't remember the exact details, but I think it was when I'd been running a contest trying to increase people following my FaceBook page to the level of 100 likes. Carole made a comment that I needed some 'likes' and she'd spread the word. That was extremely kind of her. This is a <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_1" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjYzMzI6MTAzMzpjaGFyYWN0ZXI6MTM3NWQ4NWQyYTVhZjY4NzIyZjU4OTY0ODAxOTlhYTA6ei0xNTc2LTYzODQyNjphamFkYWlyZS5jb206MTk5ODQwOmMxNDY0NTA0ZmEzYjg5MmFkM2EzMzAzMWVjZmE4MWY2OjIzOTMyM2U0MTIxMTQwYWFhNDA5ODU0MjVjNGU4OTU0OjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">character<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> trait that I find common among most of the authors I've met within the lesfic community. I've had a helping hand along the way from several of my fellow authors. These are essentially people who are my 'competition' but I've yet to meet one who is unwilling to lend a hand or a kind word. With Carole's help I did achieve the 100 likes milestone on my page, although my <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ajadaire">FaceBook page</a> still doesn't have the following I have here on my website. It's where I make most announcements of book releases and other things happening regarding <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_2" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjQwMjE6NTIyMjpib29rczo5NDdhZmQ4NDc1ODIzNDZlNjdhN2Q5MDkwYjQwMzRkZTp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToxOTQzMTI6MDo2MjM0MDRhNzBlODQ0MWFiOTk4YzJjYmQzZTlkNmM1YTox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">books<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>. If you haven't already, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop over and like my page. While you're at it, I'd like to mention there's a newsletter <a href="http://ajadaire.com/Sign_Up_For_Information.php">here</a> on site you can sign up for as well! </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: white;">Okay, following that bit of commercial interruption out of the way, here's my interview with Carole Wolf!</span></strong></td></tr>
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<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Thank you for taking time to answer my questions Carole. Tell us something about yourself that is not commonly known?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I’m a musician (drummer since I was eleven years old) and a music producer. I produced a Neo-Soul album for an artist named Nesrin Asli, which can be found on Amazon and YouTube, and I played drums in her band for close to a year.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: What did you do to earn a living, before this year when you are a full time <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_3" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NTczMDE6Mjg2Mzp3cml0ZXI6YTUzYmM3NGQ2NzU2YzJiMjk1ZjcwYWY2OTMxNjk5YWU6ei0xNTc2LTYzODQyNjphamFkYWlyZS5jb206MTEyMzM0OjU4ZmI1ZDc2ZDAxYmE5MTVjYWVhMjlhYjM2MjJiOWZiOjkxZmJmZmE0YjFmNzQ3NTQ5NjIzNjZkODIzMTY4YjVlOjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">writer<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I worked in restaurants as a line cook for many years, but that is grueling work, which was kicking my butt and aging me way too quickly. I left that behind to go to school for <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_4" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6MjY3MTA6MTMwNDphZGRpY3Rpb24gY291bnNlbGluZzowYWQ4Njg3MDI2MmMyOGVlMjJmOTI1MTQ1MWFkNTgxNzp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToxNzMwNDpmNzVmYmMxYWJhNjIyY2EyZGU4NjIxNzgzMzIxMmNmMjoxOTlhM2Y5YWM4MTk0NmI3ODQzM2NiNGY2NTk2MDBmYzox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">Addiction Counseling<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>. I’m two semesters away from my certification for that.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Congratulations on your achievement. <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_5" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6MjY3MTA6MTMwNDpnb2luZyBiYWNrIHRvIHNjaG9vbDo4MmZjNjE0NTllMTQ2NjgxNDkxMmY2MTlmZTM0MzdmYTp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToxNzE3NjpmNzVmYmMxYWJhNjIyY2EyZGU4NjIxNzgzMzIxMmNmMjowNGIyM2Y2ZDYzNWI0MmE2YjJkYWRjOWVkOTZhM2EzYzox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">Going back to school<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> is always a hard thing to do. What made you decide to become a writer?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: It was never really a conscious decision. I think I was born with the affinity, or maybe it took root from my parents’ influence—they were both in the publishing industry. My dad has a Literature degree and wrote for the Army during Vietnam, and my mother wrote for <em>Prevention</em> magazine. They both worked for Rodale Press and the Allentown <em>Morning Call</em> newspaper when I was a kid, growing up in PA. If I wanted to know what a particular word meant, my dad would never just tell me—he’d make me go look it up. They made sure I spent time at the local library, and they got me books from the <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_6" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjQwMjE6NTIyMjpib29rOjJkN2M0ZmNiNjhmNDcwY2I4YzcyMTY5OTQ1YzFmMjgyOnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjE5NDMxMjowOmM0MmIzY2M2YmI3ODQzYTQ4NTNjZTEzYTdhMDlkNDU2OjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">Book<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> Mobile whenever it came around. I was always writing something, wrote my first ‘book’ in high school, filled up a whole spiral bound notebook with the adventures of my friends and me, with chapters and everything, and called it a novel. So, nature vs. nurture? Not really sure.</span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><strong>AJ: Well, I just learned something interesting, we’re neighbors! </strong> <strong>Do you write full-time or part-time?</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: Well, we <em>were</em> neighbors! I currently live in Columbus, Georgia and have been here since high school. But I’m now fortunate enough for the next year or so to be able to write full-time while going to school part-time.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Oh, my loss. I was hoping I'd finally met an author who lived near me. My loss, for sure. Okay, next question. Do you write on a typewriter, computer, dictate, or write longhand?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I’ve done a little of each over the years. In high school, I wrote everything longhand in the notebooks meant for class notes, which I rarely took because I was usually <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_7" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NTczMDE6Mjg2Mzp3cml0aW5nOmY0ODIxN2QwYTUzNDRkYTgyYmQxNDVkNjBkZDY0YmZhOnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjExMjMzNDo1OGZiNWQ3NmQwMWJhOTE1Y2FlYTI5YWIzNjIyYjlmYjoyZGQ1NGVlYmU4YjI0YTY4OGM4NzY5MjRjYzM5MzEwNjox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">writing<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> my own stuff in class. Then in my early twenties I had an electric typewriter that my mother gave to me. As computers came around and became the thing to have, I eventually got on board and got one of those desktop dinosaurs. Now I use a laptop.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Where do your ideas come from?</span></strong><br />
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<span style="color: white;">CW: They just sort of hit me out of nowhere. My upcoming novel <em>Everything</em> was like that. I was supposed to be working on the third installment of <em>Monasco</em>, an adventure trilogy, but the characters from <em>Everything</em>kept coming into my head instead, ‘speaking to me’, if you will, insisting I tell their story. So, I just went with it. The idea for the book I’m working on now came from an (unsuccessful) attempt at writing about my childhood in PA; the characters just decided to ‘be’ something other than what I was writing, so again, I just went with it. I like to think they all exist in some parallel world, and we authors are like mediums, put here to channel them and their <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_8" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjYzMzI6MTAzMzpzdG9yaWVzOjU0YjhkODY2NDgwZjAxZjk5ZDZmNWVhMmE5YzU3MDE2OnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjE5OTg0MDpjMTQ2NDUwNGZhM2I4OTJhZDNhMzMwMzFlY2ZhODFmNjpiYjJhMTZhYjM1NWU0Njk4YTJlYjllZjk1N2E0N2QwMjox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">stories<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>, which might never have been told, otherwise. We call it fiction but…who knows?</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: That’s an interesting theory. Sometimes those pesky characters want to do what they want to do, regardless of what we have in mind for them. When the characters are speaking to you, what process do you use when <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_9" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NTczMDE6Mjg2Mzp3cml0aW5nOmU5ZTA2MTRkNjQ3NjM0MjQxNWU5NWM5NGM4MzgxOTUxOnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjExMjMzNDo1OGZiNWQ3NmQwMWJhOTE1Y2FlYTI5YWIzNjIyYjlmYjpjNDM0M2E1MGRjNWE0MmY3OWQ2Zjc2NjU5YjM4ZTU0ODox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">writing<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>? Do you work to an outline or plot or do you use a more free flowing style?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I am all free-flowing. I might write a summary of a story or a chapter if the storyline is particularly complicated, but that’s it. I write down character names and sometimes write their respective character sketches. Otherwise, I’ll mentally ‘cast’ my characters with actual actors as a characterization technique, just to keep everyone unique to one another. I think that helps them really jump off the page and not be so one-dimensional, just names on a page that do and say things. I use a LOT of music to write as well. To me, each <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_10" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjQwMjE6NTIyMjpib29rOmFiOTJkZWE2MGE0MGEzMTgwNGFiMWU2NTYwMGZhNzEzOnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjE5NDMxMjowOjNiZWMzNGQ0ZWMyMDQ4NTY4ZGQ3YTRjYjI0MDQ2MWFlOjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">book<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> is like a movie in my head. I’ve got a sound effects website I use and will even find appropriate sound effects to play (city streets, crowded restaurants, sports events, etc.) for my own writing atmosphere. So, I’ll spend as much time on there, Amazon, and iTunes, finding just the right music, as much I do compiling academic research for the subject matter.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Have your characters ever surprised you?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: They have. One of the central characters in the novel I’m working on now completely changed his race, from a white man to a black man. He didn’t start out as a black character, but apparently I had that wrong about him, so he ‘let me know’ quite pointedly that he was not Caucasian! And that detail changed the story completely and is now making it better and richer than it would have even been, otherwise. I had a whole cast of characters in a horror novel I wrote several years ago go from being unwitting bystanders to a terrible crime…to all being in on it together! Again, that was not the original plan, but they led the way, and so I followed.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: On average, how long does it take you to write a book?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: About a year. I do a lot of procrastinating when I’m not doing <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_11" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjY0NjA6MTAzMzpyZXNlYXJjaDo4NTY4NGYyYjkwNDAwYzQzMWQyYjJlMWY5MmU3OWMwNjp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToyMDAxODk6OGMyYTZmZGNlMmIwYWY5ZTJiODE3OTJkNzRjYzJlMGI6MDliODNlM2Y0N2E5NDczZWFjZTMwMzk3NzUwMmE3ZmY6MQ&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">research<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> and music searches.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: If this book is part of a series, tell us a little about it?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW:<em> Everything</em> and the newest one I’m working on are stand-alone projects and not part of a series. <em>The Monasco</em> and <em>Last Kappolarian</em> books, however, are the first two in an adventure trilogy. Book three is coming in 2015…hopefully.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Do you read much and if so who are your favorite authors?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I try to read for at least an hour or two every day. Some of my favorite authors are Cormac McCarthy, Zora Neal Hurston, Frank Herbert, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Tim O’Brien, among many more. But those are the ones I feel most influenced by and whose works inspire me the most. I’m pretty big into poetry as well, and some of my favorite poets are Pablo Neruda, Adrienne Rich, Dominique Christina, and Tracey K. Smith.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: For your own reading, do you prefer e-books or traditional paper/hard back books?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I like both. But now that the <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_12" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjUxNTQ6NTIyMjplYm9vazpiMGJhM2Y2MTNlNTY3MTYzODUzYWNkZjk0ZGFiNjBlMzp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToxOTY3MzM6MDo3MDJkM2IyZDllZGY0NTljOWMwNTViMTFkMWUzNWNlNjox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">eBook<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> option is out there, I’ll say my Kindle has made it easier to take all my books with me wherever I go. And I do enjoy the dictionary feature, right there on the screen.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: What are your favorite ways to connect with your readers to make them aware of your books?</span></strong><br />
<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
<span style="color: white;">CW: Facebook and Twitter have been invaluable resources to not only promote my works, but also to learn about others’ books. I’ve taken full advantage of <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_13" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjY0OTI6MTAzMzpzb2NpYWw6NTJhYjk5OWIzMGFmOGE2NWIwMDA2MDg4ZjMxZTZkNTE6ei0xNTc2LTYzODQyNjphamFkYWlyZS5jb206MjAwMjc4OjY5NDcxYmRhZDE4YmFkNDJiM2UwMjg4NmU5ZDc0NmM4OjlkZTc2OGQ0YmViZDQ1OTQ5NDg5ZDNjYTFlMGFhOTRlOjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">social<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> media over the past couple years to promote my projects, but now that I’ve got a traditional publisher—Bedazzled Ink Publishing—I’m hoping their expertise will assist in the promotional process as well. I’m sure they can teach me a thing or two!</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">AJ: Tell us about the new book you have coming out. What makes it similar/different from your other<a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_14" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjYzMzI6MTAzMzpzdG9yaWVzOmRlMWYwNDFjMGU0YjQzZWFkMTk1NTJkZjIxNTIxYzE5OnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjE5OTg0MDpjMTQ2NDUwNGZhM2I4OTJhZDNhMzMwMzFlY2ZhODFmNjpkYjUwNjIzYmVkNTk0MmZiOWMwNWMzNjliYzQzYTRhNDox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">stories<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: <em>Everything</em> is a frame <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_15" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjYzMzI6MTAzMzpzdG9yeTo2Y2EyNTQ4OThhNmM2YmVhMWYwZDBhODA4YjU2ODQzMzp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToxOTk4NDA6YzE0NjQ1MDRmYTNiODkyYWQzYTMzMDMxZWNmYTgxZjY6YzdlMGRmOGViNjBhNDIxZjg1ZmJiMjlhYzk4Mjk5ZDE6MQ&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">story<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>, a coming-of-age story within a coming-of-age story. It’s written in two parts, in first-person but disguised as third-person, sort of a “first-person omniscient” POV, I suppose. If that’s possible. All that alone makes it different from my other books—the whole POV trick that happens in Part Two. It was previously self-published under a different title (<em>The Months of Moon</em>), which we changed when Bedazzled Ink picked it up last year in December, and it’s due for release in July 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">The story is told by twenty-one year old Myla Edmunds who, in Part One, is reflecting back on having lost her mother, Jolán, to a heart attack when she herself was a freshman in high school. She and her mother had gotten into a terrible argument in which Myla wished Jolán dead. Jolán dies the next day, and so Myla now blames herself. But with the help of family and her mother’s old college flame, Rachel Cole, Myla learns that her mother had a secret past, the activities during which were what truly contributed to Jolán’s premature death. Part Two is the story of Jolán’s college days, the information for which Myla acquires via stories from Rachel, her uncle, and a slew of memorabilia from that era—her mother’s old journals, home video footage, photographs, etc. What Myla learns about Jolán’s youth is devastating, and it <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_16" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6MzU1Njc6MTc6aW5kZWVkOjQ1Njg2MDA1ZjY5MTUyZDg1MmM3NWZiZTkzNWM4Y2U5OnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjExNTQzNjowOmRjODVmNzc1ZWZlYTQ1MGM4NjE1NWM3OTEyMzE2M2FlOjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">indeed<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> explains why she might drop dead of a heart attack at only forty years old. But most importantly, Myla learns about forgiveness. There are strong themes of redemption, forgiveness, and secrecy throughout <em>Everything</em>.</span></div>
<strong><span style="color: white;">What is your favorite line from the <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_17" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjQwMjE6NTIyMjpib29rOjgzY2EyNDM5NDI4NTdlM2VlYmYyOWU0MGJjZDkzNmUxOnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjE5NDMxMjowOjAxOGViYTgzMGY2MzRhNTM4ODQwZDEzODc5MGIzYmJjOjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">book<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: white;">CW: I think one of my favorite lines is from the funeral scene in Chapter Six, when Myla is watching her mother’s girlfriend Rachel sitting outside alone, lost in her own mourning at the post-service gathering. It’s<a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_18" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NTkwMDE6NDptb3JlOmQ5OGU5Yjg4MmQwYzQyZTZhNTY3MGFhYmY5ZjUzOTQwOnotMTU3Ni02Mzg0MjY6YWphZGFpcmUuY29tOjE4MTY2MTowOmQzNjdlMDlkYmRhODQxODg4OGZkMmU3YzA4MjgyYTRhOjE&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">more<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a> of a passage than a single line where Myla, feeling unimaginably guilty, narrates:</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">“She’d held my hand at the funeral, and her hand was unusually cold, but I knew why. She had died that day, too. And now she sat out on our steps, hugging herself at the waist, overcast as the afternoon, a shell that I had picked clean with a forked tongue. “</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">I think that really captures Myla’s guilt, however unnecessary, for having wished her mother dead. There are other, similar lines throughout that chapter, but that one’s my favorite.</span></div>
<span style="color: white;"><strong>AJ: Thank you for the opportunity to learn more about you and your <a href="http://ajadaire.com/AJ_Interviews_Carole_Wolf.php#" id="_GPLITA_19" in_rurl="http://i.txtsrving.info/click?v=VVM6NjQwMjE6NTIyMjpib29rczpmNzYzODVmYWZjOWY0NjExY2RmZDUwNjFmMTBjMmRmZDp6LTE1NzYtNjM4NDI2OmFqYWRhaXJlLmNvbToxOTQzMTI6MDowZWFjYTJhZWUwZDQ0ZDdjYTE2MjA2MDUwYjg0NTA0OTox&subid=g-638426-4410956ed1df43a2828020f872c3c728-" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by Coupon Server">books<img src="http://couponserver-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background-attachment: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; background-image: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; border: none !important; display: inline-block !important; float: none !important; height: 10px !important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px !important; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; vertical-align: super !important; width: 10px !important;" /></a>, Carole. </strong><strong>Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add or have any questions you wish I’d asked that I didn’t?</strong></span><br />
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<span style="color: white;">I guess I’d like to say that I believe Lesbian Fiction can and will and should crossover into the mainstream genres. I see that time coming very soon. Wouldn’t it be awesome for a Lesfic author to win the Pulitzer? Or the National Book Award? We can do it. We’ve got the authors—we just need to be patient, and those opportunities will open up for us.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: white;">You can contact Carole here:</span></strong></div>
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<a href="http://www.carolewolfauthor.com/"><span style="color: white;">www.carolewolfauthor.com</span></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="mailto:cyryus08@gmail.com"><span style="color: white;">cyryus08@gmail.com</span></a></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monasco-Last-Kappolarian-Book-II-ebook/dp/B00722ZOJG/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1401804872&sr=1-2&keywords=carole+wolf" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="79" src="http://ajadaire.com/images/Last_Kappolarian.jpg" width="53" /></a> </span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monasco-Passage-Anathema-Book-I-ebook/dp/B0070Z876W/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1401804872&sr=1-3&keywords=carole+wolf" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="78" src="http://ajadaire.com/images/Monasco_cover2.jpg" width="53" /></a> </span></div>
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<br />Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-89296785373011713242014-06-22T13:32:00.001-04:002014-06-22T13:32:51.334-04:00So, maybe I should do this...At the risk of invisibility among a billion other bloggers, I've let this page wither and cough and gasp for breath over the past couple years. I realize it's a great tool for free-writing, even if it does get sucked into the cyber void forever. So, I will revive it, write some stuff, post the link, and keep on movin'.<br />
<br />
Lately, I've been thinking about my role as a LesFic author and where I'm supposed to fit in to that world. I haven't really read much LesFic, to be honest. What I did read, some years ago, did not impress me in the least, particularly as a fourth-year Literature student, working on my Bachelor's. Over the past year, however, I have been pleasantly surprised in my re-involvement in the LesFic scene, and I realize there's some pretty worthy competition out there (and maybe there always was, but I wasn't exposed to those authors). I've never been an intellectual in the classic sense, although I do consider myself to be reasonably intelligent. I'm part of the writing field and now have a literature degree, but my verbal communication skills have always been much more 'street'. And I think I write best, coming from that same place. My characters in the past have been drawn very neatly with a certain nobility, if you will. I've kept them clean-cut and doing the 'right' thing. And that might appeal to a wider LesFic reading audience, but it just hasn't been my personal experience in life, and so I'm thinking maybe I should be more authentic in my writing, from here on out.<br />
<br />
My experience has been this: I grew up in a multicultural urban neighborhood in PA, just northwest of Philly, then found myself stuck in Alabama throughout high school where I gravitated toward the local kids who drank and smoked weed and had run-ins with the sheriff every other weekend. I was a poor student because in my Alabama high school clique it was 'cooler' to flunk than to do well. I never took the SAT's but did manage to test very highly into our school gifted program--go figure. I did not go to college after high school. Well, I did, but I dropped out after one semester because it cut too much into my free time...which I spent doing a whole lot of nothing. I've lived in five major cities as an adult--Atlanta, Los Angeles, Fresno, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. I've known gang members, homeless alcoholics, and crack addicts (never banged or was addicted to anything myself). I once spent twenty-one much deserved days in the county jail for doing dumb shit as a young person. I spent entirely too much of my twenties in bars and night clubs. I used to be a very talented Hip-Hop MC and also a club DJ in Los Angeles, and so the LA underground Hip-Hop scene was my whole world for most of the 90s. During that era, I ended up becoming technically homeless; I lived in a residential hotel in downtown LA for a year and half, where the hotel manager was shot dead in front of my door by another tenant who thereafter shot himself. I believe in an eye for an eye, but I also believe karma takes care of most of that for you. I think comics like Lewis Black and shows like <i>Veep</i> are hilarious because of the ruthless, brutal humor, and I don't know anyone, to this day, who doesn't use the word "fuck" in everyday conversation. I made it through Army Basic Training at thirty years old and though I don't own a gun at this time, I know how to use one (responsibly) and do plan to buy one in the future, something easy to handle, probably a 9mm something-or-other, strictly for home defense. I'm a smoker. I have been for thirty-five years, though I'm trying to quit--not because it isn't socially acceptable anymore but because thirty-five years is a long fucking time to be sucking on formaldehyde and rat poison and calling it a guilty pleasure.<br />
<br />
These are not things I'm here to glorify nor complain about. They just are what they are--the realities of where I've been, a lot which have shaped me as a writer, some of which have probably shaped me as a person, hopefully for the better. I'd like to think I've learned from my mistakes and under-achievement and that even the scariest experiences have made me well-rounded. Hence, there are topics that I'm likely to write about that other LesFic authors cannot or will not attempt. I can give you grit. I can give you dark humor. I can give you streets and bars and jails and profanity, even a little sex and violence. I'm perfectly comfortable with making you uncomfortable.Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-80194643595340132162014-05-25T11:41:00.000-04:002014-05-25T11:53:12.685-04:00The Writing Process<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">Just a few questions/answers to keep everyone posted on what's been going on, as I have been under a creative rock for a while. But that's a good thing. It usually means I'm on to something worthy. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">1)What am I working on?</span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">I've had two story ideas dueling for my attention over the past few months, so I thought I'd try to work on them both, depending on my mood and which story was shouting at me the loudest on a particular day. But it seems one of those ideas is gaining more traction now, so I'm going with that. It's a coming-of-age story, set in 1978 Allentown, PA, and it is about twelve-year-old Santana Mae Howard and her adoptive father, Nate, whose been raising her on his own after her mother abandons them both for a new husband. Their story is quite unique, not only because single fathers in the '70s were few and far between, but also because there's another interesting factor to their relationship that I cannot disclose just yet. No spoilers. The story's locale will eventually shift to Alabama, the unlikely place in which Santana finds herself during the summer of '78, having been brought there by her mother and new stepfather on an extended 'vacation' to visit relatives. The culture clash is pretty boggling for Santana Mae, a "Yankee" kid trying to navigate her adolescence in the Deep South, all while living with a terribly unfit mother and an arrogant, abusive stepfather. So, she runs away. And the rest of the story is about her epic journey to get back home to PA, back to the father with whom she truly belongs. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">2)How does my work differ from others in the same genre?</span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">I'm sure I'm not the only one--in fact, I know I'm not. But, as a Lesbian fiction author, I sort of refuse to pigeonhole myself. Yes, my central characters tend to be Lesbians--it's what I know and what I relate to the best. But I feel my stories are very much crossover stories. I write for Lesbian readers, but then again, I don't. We're not the only people in the world, so I try not to alienate straight readers with story lines that appeal strictly to Lesbians. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null"><b>3)Why do I write what I do?</b> </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">I like to have themes within my books (addiction, PTSD, race relations, familial dysfunction, etc), and I like to challenge myself, so I tend to pick heavy, gritty topics that require copious amounts of research to get them right. I think a novel should mean something. I think it should speak to the reader as well as entertain them, and if I can pull all that off successfully, then I've done my job as an author. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">4)How does my writing process work?</span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null">Oy! Well, let's see. I can sit with a story for hours; however, I'd venture to say that most of those hours are probably spent reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the most recent passage I've written, tweaking it over and over, just to make it 'perfect'. I self-edit as I go. I'm not one of those authors who just "gets it down" and then worries about editing later. Uh-uh. My first draft is basically my final draft...give or take an added/deleted scene here or there, maybe some dialogue reworked, and so forth. I must also have music in my ears--this has become a crutch of sorts, but so it goes. I'll spend as much time looking for the perfect music as I will doing academic research, sometimes even devoting an entire day to the Amazon MP3 department, browsing movie soundtracks and other genres. For me, my books are movies in my head; I'll even 'cast' my characters with actual actors as a characterization technique because I want the stories to be mental movies for the reader as well. As I see it, my job is to bounce those mental images off the page, so to speak, and then up into the heads of the readers. The right music behind a given scene can be very, very effective in doing that, I think. Hence, I usually have book 'soundtracks' that I'll list for readers to check out. That's always fun. </span></span><b><span class="_5yl5" data-reactid=".4g.$mid=11400806558222=230f5ea1cb1a08bcd59.2:0.0.0.0.0"><span class="null"> </span></span></b></span>Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-84752045570128911162013-11-12T12:49:00.001-05:002013-11-12T13:26:23.341-05:00Monasco I: Passage to Anathema promo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0B8V4yxBBJo/UoJkpwIQGOI/AAAAAAAAAKM/NqkyKPgL0Oo/s1600/Monasco+cover2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0B8V4yxBBJo/UoJkpwIQGOI/AAAAAAAAAKM/NqkyKPgL0Oo/s320/Monasco+cover2.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-themecolor: background1;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc;">Ten-year-old Isaac Bahan is preparing to become
a man. He’ll be branded as official property of the city-state of Calabrecia.
His entire family are in attendance when a raiding band of enemy soldiers from
neighboring Monasco murders Isaac's father and rides off into the Desert of
Sähm with his body as a war trophy. Little Isaac vows revenge, however long it
takes.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A
few miles away, twelve-year-old Monascan army cadet, Tai Ogami, excels in the
brutal Monascan military training. Her progress is monitored by the Monascan
ruler's most trusted advisor, Lieutenant Arturus Olanga. Tai progresses until
reaching god-like status at the age of twenty-one, and Olanga's jealousy boils
as she prepares to make her final rite of passage to the most elite warrior
status. Her mission is to infiltrate a Calabrecian slave colony, and at the end
of one year assassinate one of her generous colony hosts. Deemed “Monasco’s
greatest expectation”, Tai knows this assignment will prove her worthy of a
grander future than she had ever dreamed.<br />
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Tai finds herself in 2<sup>nd</sup>-colony-Calabrecia where she befriends a now
bitter and unpleasant Isaac Bahan. Her mission becomes dangerously complicated
when she soon falls in love with Isaac’s beautiful sister Seraya. Tai must now choose
between revealing to Seraya the truth of what she really is, or maintaining her
cover to achieve Monascan glory. Love of Seraya—an enemy slave—is treason, but
duty means the treacherous murder of a friend and the betrayal of the woman she
loves. This is THE PASSAGE TO ANATHEMA.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monasco-Passage-Anathema-Book-I-ebook/dp/B0070Z876W/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1">http://www.amazon.com/Monasco-Passage-Anathema-Book-I-ebook/dp/B0070Z876W/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1</a></o:p></span></div>
Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-53378424881369271992013-11-12T12:25:00.001-05:002013-11-12T12:45:55.979-05:00Monasco II: The Last Kappolarian promo<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Tàhti Aliviero hasn’t seen the light of day for a
month. She’s been holed up in the ruins of her Kappolarian home with the remains
of her murdered family. Tàhti fears the outside world might place her at the
mercy of their Monascan killers. The Calabrecian War has left Tàhti the sole
survivor of an entire city-state, and the Monascan Empire controls the Desert
of Sähm. When Monascan soldiers return to her doorstep, ten-year-old Tàhti is
certain she will die by the same blade that slaughtered her family. But the
newly-appointed Empress Tai Ogami is among those soldiers, and she offers Tàhti
a permanent home as the Princess of Sähm, heir to the Monascan throne. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Tai Ogami knows the power with which she now rules
the Monascan Empire came to her by default. She is under-prepared for such political
omnipotence, so Empress Ogami will simply have to improvise. Her wife, Seraya
Bahan, is now ruling alongside her as the Queen of Sähm. They are surrounded by
a sundry cast of advisors and staunch politicians who do not always have their
best interest at heart. Lieutenant Arturus Olanga’s vendetta against Tai’s uncanny
rise to power has been keeping him busy. He’s launched a private investigation
into the mystery around her success, and he’s found some unexpected allies
willing to help him solve it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As Tai and Seraya strive toward social progress, the
Desert of Sähm spirals into rebellion and chaos with the young Princess Tàhti,
the last Kappolarian, at the center of the unrest. The new rulers must find a
way to maintain order, protect the life of the princess, and preserve their
marriage while the Imperial dignitaries conspire for control with plots against
the matriarchs’ lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Monasco-Last-Kappolarian-Book-II-ebook/dp/B00722ZOJG/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1384277003&sr=1-2&keywords=monasco">http://www.amazon.com/Monasco-Last-Kappolarian-Book-II-ebook/dp/B00722ZOJG/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1384277003&sr=1-2&keywords=monasco</a></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left">
<span style="font-size: small;"></span> </div>
</td></tr>
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<br />Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-44128718296871125432013-11-12T12:16:00.000-05:002013-11-12T12:25:25.665-05:00Monasco III: The Red Tide promo<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div align="left">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I8wyDnZGuTs/UoJhpt_v4nI/AAAAAAAAAJw/XoM2LpRixs4/s1600/Red+Tide+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I8wyDnZGuTs/UoJhpt_v4nI/AAAAAAAAAJw/XoM2LpRixs4/s320/Red+Tide+cover.jpg" width="234" /></a></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="left">
<span style="font-size: large;">Coming Soon in 2014!</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div align="left">
<span style="font-size: small;">The third installment of the Monasco series currently in progress! </span></div>
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<br />Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-48709918823098530922013-05-21T00:02:00.001-04:002014-07-10T13:43:19.825-04:00Everything Ch. 1<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;">The Months of Moon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chapter One<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Seven years
ago, today, I broke my mother’s heart. Literally. I stood on the bed and cursed
her with all my thirteen-year-old might, screamed it into her face like a
zealot at a protest rally. The next day, Uncle Cameron showed up at the school
office. He signed me out on the grounds of family emergency and walked me to
his Maxima in a cold gray silence. He sat for a very long while with the keys
in his hand, staring at the dashboard as if it contained all the truths of the cosmos,
but there was really only one to be told that day as the words fell from his
lips like stones. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
was a musician, a classical violinist by profession, had been playing since the
age of six. She was rehearsing for a Christmas performance when her solo
suddenly crumbled, and she dropped to a knee, clutching her chest, struggling
for breath that wouldn’t come. Someone from the brass section tried CPR until
paramedics arrived, and she was whisked away through Atlanta’s morning rush
hour to St. Joseph’s Hospital. It was a Tuesday. 10:46 a.m. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
She was thirty-nine
but didn’t look it. Few people believed her. Some even jokingly requested to
see her driver’s license for proof. She’d present it with a sly smirk, chuckle
and wave them off when asked to spill her secret. She looked like a young Sophia
Loren, they’d say, and I guess that’s what attracted my father, back when they
were both just out of college. Not her beauty so much as her humility, because
he admired that most in a person: “<i>Carry yourself with confidence but always
speak with prudence.”</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span>And
she most certainly did, so much that I never really knew her until she was
gone. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Jolán De Carlo-Edmunds
was an anomaly, a finely sketched piece of work that most people thought they
could appraise at a glance, but that was only because she’d designed herself
that way. There were only two people in the world who had seen everything
beneath the recitals and curtain calls, the guest solos and afternoon private
instructions, all the shifts and tones and colors between the first and final
movements of her life. My father was hardly among them, contrary to what he
still thinks. Fifteen years of marriage brought him no closer to who she really
was than would thirty or seventy-five more. Some might say she’d tangled herself
up in a lattice of lies and feel sorry for him, the unwitting victim of a woman
who had the audacity to try to find herself at thirty-eight. Because I did. I
spit on her growing, relentless desire to break free of her own constraints and
reconnect with a woman long forgotten, promising to destroy our family. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
I demanded to live
with my father after the divorce, but I was to begin high school that fall, and
North Springs was closer with a better music program. So, my future was
mutually decided upon by two people who couldn’t even find a way to hold onto
their own. As a third-year violin student, myself, I was to follow directly in
my mother’s path. Or, was I? That had all been up for some very passionate,
awkward debate after her passing, mostly between my father, Uncle Cameron—her
younger brother—and the woman who probably knew her better than any of us. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
And so this is where
I must digress.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Three months before
I killed her, my mother and I were invited out with her best friend Jackie, to
a poetry reading in Buckhead. Poetry had completely escaped me then. I couldn’t
have cared less about it, never understood a word of it and, in fact, pouted
all the way into town, buckled into the back seat of Jackie’s Camry while Mom
and Jackie complained about the music selections on the radio, manufactured
mainstream trash, the decline of innovation, the death of the true artist.
Jackie kept switching stations. Every time a song I liked burst through the
back speakers, either she or Mom would stab the seek button for something else
because at thirteen-years-old my opinions were weightless as feathers on the
moon. They finally found something from the seventies, chugging mid-tempo rock
guitars, a young woman singing about magic hands and summer love spells. They
would have both been in grammar school then. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mom turned in her seat and smiled at me. “This was when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> musicians actually made it to the
radio,” she said, her eyebrows naturally arched, like soft sculpted dark brown check
marks. Most of the time they gave her the appearance of great wisdom, unless
she was irritated or angry. Then they would sharpen like half-folded
switchblades, her green eyes almost electric as she leveled you, making you
feel smaller than an atom with those eyes, or larger than love itself,
depending. Tonight they flickered with a kind of amusement, the clever creative
sage, eager to fill my tabula rasa with poetry and nostalgia that had nothing
to do with me. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jackie said, “You’d be surprised how many rock stars in our day were
classically trained.” She glanced at me through the rearview and nodded once. “It
was rock, but they made the good stuff, the stuff that lives forever, music that
meant something.” </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mom settled back in the passenger’s seat and looked out the window, watched
the city go by. “Changed people’s lives,” she said to no one in particular as the
women on the radio sang. “Changed the world.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
We were to meet
Linda Morgan for dinner before the reading, an older woman and fellow musician
my mother had known since I was in diapers, and she waved us over to a lucky
parking spot on Roswell, not far from Giovanni’s Books. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
We ate at a fancy Thai
restaurant with a long blackwood liquor bar and transparent, amber-lighted wall
fountains that trickled in the dining room corners. The waiter brought menus to
our table, the sleeves of his white button-down creased like folded sheets of
paper, a black satin vest with a little bow tie taut beneath his chin. He
presented a wine list and suggested the Cabernet, but my mother had a Pinot
Noir preference for the red wines, Riesling for the white. She ordered the
California Pinot at the consensus of the table and a Coke for me, then browsed her
menu while Mrs. Morgan and Jackie discussed venue options for the Civic
Orchestra’s first Christmas performance. The Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception. Chastain Park Amphitheater, weather permitting. Emerson Concert
Hall at Emory University. They liked best to play in churches and basilicas for
the acoustics, Mom always said, but they never rehearsed in them because she
said a grand and empty sanctuary blurred the tonality of polyphonic music. Only
when filled with an audience did the sound resonate properly, and all the
subtleties could be intimated to perfection. She had an ear like a hawk owl,
perfect pitch. If a train whistled somewhere in the distance, she could place
every dissonant note and tell you the key if it had one, much the way an
artisan might find hues of burgundy in the shadows of a willow tree, or a
gourmet chef connoting a trace of licorice in a spoonful of brisket, just by
wafting it past his nose. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a game
she played with her surroundings, always testing herself and testing me, but I
didn’t have her gift and often wondered how it didn’t drive her crazy, the
world and all its sound, so many aural textures hiding in the spaces between. My
talent was mediocre at best, and I couldn’t tell the difference between a
G-sharp and a B-flat without first finding them on my violin. I shared half her
genetics, but so far only the physical features, her dark auburn hair in long
natural ringlets, the hazel eyes, her mouth. Everything else seemed to have been
bestowed upon her, and only her, by the diatonic Lydian gods of some melodic
otherworld. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
I scanned my menu
but didn’t find anything appealing. Pearl onions. Cashews. Okra and eggplant. Bamboo
shoots in hot mustard marinade. I folded it shut and sat slouching, wishing she
would have sent me to Dad’s for the weekend so he and I could go out for root
beer and pizza, then maybe downtown to The Bodies Exhibition and browse
roomfuls of cadavers dancing ballets and playing poker, one of them even
conducting an orchestra. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mom poked me in the shoulder and gave me a look. It said, ‘Sit up. Now.
Do not embarrass me’. And so I did. “Find something you like,” she uttered into
the entrée page. “There’s shrimp, chicken, rice and noodles.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“And all of it swimming in goo from another planet,” I mumbled. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Another <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">country</i>. And it’s
sauce, not goo. What is up with your manners?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Everything’s smothered in onions.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Then don’t eat the onions, Myla. Pick them out.” She was growing weary
of me, and she glared at me sideways and pointed to the menu.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wrinkled my nose. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a while the
waiter returned, and so she ordered for me, as if I were four. Pad Zee Eu—white
meat chicken and rice noodles with broccoli in an herb sauce, the only item I
would even consider eating; sometimes I forgot how well she knew me. She got
the Panang Nuea, braised beef short ribs with curry and kaffir lime, ordering
with explicit pronunciation because, to her, that was the respectful and fitting
thing to do, and she handed our menus back to the waiter with a courteous
smile. The societal etiquette extraordinaire. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I imagine you must
be excited, Myla, starting the ninth grade this year,” Mrs. Morgan said. She
was a cellist in the Civic Orchestra, a twice-sponsored artist in residence for
the National Endowment for the Arts and Chamber Music, just like my mom. She
poured herself a glass of wine and said to my mother, “The school’s got a
wonderful orchestra, one of the best in Atlanta, so I’m told.” </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You were told
right,” Mom said. She looked over at me then, trying to decide what she thought
of my future there, my future anywhere. I had been drifting since the divorce,
floating farther away from her ideals than she would have liked, and I could
see the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes begin to gather with uncertainty.
She didn’t say what she was thinking, that she had no idea if I’d even be in
the orchestra at all, come Spring, that she wondered if her accomplishments
still inspired me like they once did and if I would eventually just abandon her
dreams altogether. She’d been pushing me toward all the things she wanted for
so long, and now I was pushing back. Linda Morgan had no business peering
through that lens into our life, and so my mother draped an arm across the back
of my chair and poured herself a glass of Pinot Noir with the other, smiling
thinly. “I’m sure she’ll make the most of it.” She swirled the wine in her
glass and watched the pale pink runnels slide down the Bordeaux crystal and
took a sip. “What kid of mine wouldn’t?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Have you thought yet
about sending her to Richard Bernadeaux?” Linda then asked, and I held my
breath and waited for Mom to break into a bitter diatribe. Dr. Richard
Bernadeaux was a violin teacher up in Kennesaw, the most sought-after by those
who hadn’t yet learned of my mother, a transplant from the Curtis Institute of
Music, my mother’s alma mater. The competition, for all rights, and a subject
she disliked because it challenged her authority over me. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom set her glass
down on the table and didn’t look at Linda. “No, I haven’t.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Linda said, “I know
you’ve been teaching her for the past few years, but objectivity is key if you
want her to improve. Studies show—“</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I know what the
studies show, Linda, and I’d just feel better that she learns from me. At least
until she’s further into high school. We’ve been over this.” Mom stopped there,
held her tongue because we were in public, but I could almost see her eyes
changing color, pleasant golden-green to a dark, agitated emerald, like mood
rings forever bound to her psychological chemistry.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Linda gave her a
scolding glance over the brim of her glass. “He’s a good teacher, a phenomenal
musician,” she pressed, unmoved by my mother’s distaste for this topic.
“Objectivity. Distance,” she reminded her again. No one had even considered
asking me what I thought, but had they ever? </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I heard he’s a
recluse,” Jackie then muttered, scrolling through her cell phone. She always
knew just when to douse the fire. “A total shut-in when he’s not teaching.
Never even performs, anymore, hasn’t done a show in six years. He’s gotta be
about a hundred now, anyway, isn’t he?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom gestured to
Jackie with conclusive shrug. “So there you go,” she told Linda. “I’m not
carting my kid off to Kennesaw to learn from a hundred-year-old hermit, even if
he was once the artist chair of performance studies at Curtis. Sometime during
my parents’ childhood,” she smirked.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The man’s my age,
which would be nearly a half-century from a hundred, thank you,” Linda said.
“And so what if he’s an eccentric? Does it really matter? This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> art we’re talking about.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Jolán’s plenty
eccentric,” Jackie waved her off. “Never know what you’re gonna get with this
one,” and she tossed a finger toward my mother. “I’ve known her for a decade
and still can’t figure out whether she’s a closet hippie or just a straight
with a flair for breaking all the right rules.” </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She made my mother
smile. “I’m no hippie,” she huffed with a grin. “Way too many responsibilities
for that.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You know all the
words to Voodoo Chile,” Jackie taunted. She had taken out a compact mirror and
sat primping, and she glanced at my mother with a guiltless shrug.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Who over the age
of thirty-five doesn’t?” Mom insisted. “Hell, for that matter, so do you, Lotus
Moonbeam. We weren’t even old enough to be hippies then, anyway, and by the
time we were, it was the eighties, and that was the end of that.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The beginning of
the end of music as we’d known it,” Jackie muttered. She snapped the compact
shut and dropped it into her purse. “The dawn of the button-pushers. Thank God
classical never fell victim. I can still perform Stravinsky as it was intended,
work a little, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">earn</i> my spot in that
woodwind section.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hear, hear,” Linda
declared, and she raised her glass. “To traditionalism.” But then she
reconsidered and pulled her drink away and raised an eyebrow at my mother.
“You’re sure you want to toast to that, Ms. De Carlo? Queen of creative
license, sower of the misplaced grace note? It just might fly in the face of
your aesthetic liberties.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom lifted her
glass and looked intently at Linda Morgan. “It’s called improvisation,” she
said. “And the name’s still Edmunds. I’m keeping it for professional reasons.
How’s that for tradition?” she smirked with a wink. “Cheers.” </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jackie grabbed my
soda and handed it to me. “You, too, kiddo. Come on.” And the four of us
clinked our glasses to all the musical rules my mother so loved to break. </div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>.</b></div>
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Giovanni’s Books was
a new place, its grand opening heralded by a reading from up-and-coming poet,
Rachel Kingsley. Mom remained rather indifferent about the event and was there only
to replace Jackie’s husband who’d been called away on last-minute business. I
was hoping maybe we’d forego this and stay at the restaurant so I could listen
to Mom eviscerate Linda Morgan in a debate about classical improv, but they’d
dropped it when our food came and spent the meal talking about politics,
something they all agreed on. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Mom was unfamiliar
with Giovanni’s guest reader and shook her head when Mrs. Morgan asked if she’d
seen Ms. Kingsley’s feature in <i>The New Yorker</i> that month.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Never heard of her,” she confessed with a simple smile. “But then
again, she might turn up in the reading I plan on doing when things slow down a
bit.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Interesting young woman,” Mrs. Morgan said as we found seats in the
back of a surprisingly crowded little shop. “In fact, she’s about your age,
been struggling for years to get published, but you know it’s more difficult
for poets. It’s a genre for a dying breed, I think, trying to breathe life into
a lost art, gifted as some may be.” </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mom gave that a nod and a half-smile. Something in her eyes scrutinized
Linda Morgan for a microsecond, but she kept that fleeting judgment to herself
and instead turned to me.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“<i>Must</i> you mope?” she insisted. “You’ve been doing this all
evening. What is your deal?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’m <i>not</i>. I’m here, aren’t I?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Well, Myla, it wasn’t as if you had a choice, now was it?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Exactly.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She opened her mouth to say more but then reconsidered and let it lie. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Soon
the place fell silent, and the poet Rachel emerged from the back room and took
a seat before a store full of patrons. She was sandy-blonde, her hair pulled up
into a casual twist, and she wore a cream-colored, peasant-style, bohemian
shirt but was otherwise difficult to see around the heads and hats in my view
line. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Forgive me if I’ve interrupted
your journey,”</i> she began over the hush. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“But
it seems my muse has taken a shine to you. She’s cast herself down upon you,
spinning the embers of your sparkle spirit into a thousand diamonds, diamonds
that melt into raindrop perfection and shower me with a fascination for
everything that moves you…”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I heaved a deep sigh and propped a foot across my knee and toyed with a
loose thread at the cuff of my jeans, secretly hoping this subtle display of
discourtesy just might prick my mother’s nerves. But this time she said
nothing. There was no peripheral ominous glare, no hand reaching over to swat me
from my fidgeting, and so I began picking at the scuffed rubber soles of the
Birkenstocks she asked me not to wear tonight but hadn’t yet noticed, either.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Out here, in your universe, your
smile commands the stars to dance a glittering ballet for you to watch from a
mountaintop on Venus. And I am spellbound. Earthbound. Listening to your smile.
Wondering if there is enough room on that mountaintop for an imagineer and her
muse. Or, would you flutter away on frightened wings, like a dove, fearful of
my approach. In slow motion flight….”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
I dared peer over at
Mom again to see if she saw my insolence, to see if she could intimate the
quiet loathing I had for the absolute power she held over me since Dad left,
the disdain I felt for being dragged here against my will. Rachel’s first presentation
concluded and Giovanni’s filled with applause. But Mom didn’t move. She just sat
there, still as stone with her hands in her lap, and she scarcely issued a
breath. I watched her for a long moment as the applause began to settle. That’s
when I realized her olive complexion had gone suddenly pale as she stared out at
the poet at the head of the room. I frowned and craned my neck around the man
in front of me for a better look at Rachel Kingsley who smiled at the audience
and began a personable and enthusiastic preface to her next work, a story of her
time as a student at USC in Los Angeles, which had inspired her next poem about
emotional resolve. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Mom shifted in her
seat. She inhaled a gentle but shuddering breath, then brushed imaginary dust
from her jacket sleeve and then looked back out at Rachel Kingsley. A very
small droplet of sweat had begun to bead beneath the wavy auburn baby hairs at
her temple, and I thought I’d been transported into some other galaxy, some
parallel universe where self-assured, dauntless women came quietly undone at
the mention of celestial mountaintops and raindrop diamonds. She looked as
though she were facing execution by firing squad as her eyes swept anxiously
around the room and stopped at the exit. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I really do hope she does the one from <i>The New Yorker</i>,” Mrs.
Morgan leaned in and whispered to her. “Such a great piece. I’m surprised
you’re not familiar with it, as much as you read that thing.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
My mother shot her a
glance that could have seared the lashes from her coral-shadowed lids, but it
went unnoticed, and I couldn’t figure what Linda Morgan said to deserve that
one. Many thought Linda was pretentious, the haughty first cellist in an
orchestra over which my mother was concertmaster and first violin. Professionally,
they had always been on fairly equal footing, so I never understood the subtle,
ongoing battle of wills that served as a friendship. Linda indeed made my
mother twitch with irritation, and my mother brought out the arrogance in Linda
Morgan, but that wasn’t what that look was for. Linda had spoken amid some
other kind of turmoil, a turmoil that wrung my mother’s hands in her lap as
Rachel Kingsley told pining love stories in syllabic meter under golden-amber
track lights. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I’ve got no tales of glory,”</i>
she recited, peering into the faces before her with an honesty I thought
inappropriate for a roomful of strangers. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I’ve
got train wrecks and mid-air collisions and sinking ships. And as I crawl from
the wreckage, away into the weeds to watch it all burn, you find a wildflower
and place it in my hair.” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
looked to my mother again, and she was following along with profound ambiguity,
her knee bouncing as if her heel was on a loaded spring. I stretched my neck
for another glimpse of Rachel Kingsley, the voice behind my mother’s sudden,
inexplicable anxiety. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Sit back, Myla, please,” she uttered lowly, and so I did.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jackie handed me a program to share for distraction. I took it and
perused seven glossy pages filled with several, short, six-line poems,
apparently her signature style. A biographical blurb on the back with a
black-and-white headshot. She was beautiful, really. Brown-eyed with full lips
and a warm smile that pulled you in close. I offered it to my mother, but she
didn’t take it. She stared down her nose at it instead, like an idle grenade,
as if taking it from my hand might cause it to detonate and blow us all to
hell. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She shook her head and looked away. “I don’t need that.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
spent the next thirty minutes in a peculiar daze, her legs crossed, then
uncrossed, another smudge of invisible dust on a pant cuff, overwhelmed and
trapped there by an invitation we wouldn’t have even accepted if her evening
student hadn’t canceled. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
the reading concluded, the audience rose from wooden folding chairs and turned
to one another for goodbyes and small talk. Some wandered to a table of Gouda
cheese hor d’oeuvres and tiny lemon cake squares. A second table was lined with
sparkling Sommelier glasses of pink Chablis. Mom took one, and I followed as
she worked her way through the crowd, heading for an inconspicuous spot by the
door, but then someone stopped her. It was Gabe Neale, a French horn player in
the Civic Orchestra, and she switched on a smile and turned to him with a
friendly embrace. She was very good at that, good at giving people what they
wanted, at keeping in step with everyone’s expectations, even when she was so
unimaginably distressed that she wanted to dive through the front bay window to
escape. Jackie was immersed in conversation with a University of Georgia
literature professor over by the refreshment table, so Mom indulged Gabe Neale
for several unending minutes while he discussed song selections for their
upcoming performance at Emory. He was frumpy and balding, older than she, and
he had the continuous habit of pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up onto the
bridge of his nose as he spoke, but I think she just made him nervous. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“…and I was thinking we could finish with Paganini,” he finally
suggested. “Violin concerto in D minor? It’ll certainly give <i>you</i> a
chance to shine, but of course it’s up to you and the conductor at the end of
the day. Just some thoughts.” He sipped his wine and gave my mother a smile
that hovered between kindliness and flirtation. It might have been thought this
kind of swooning began the first time Jolán Edmunds’ ring finger was noticeably
bare. But in truth it had always been this way and merely peaked when whispers
of “irreconcilable differences” fluttered around rehearsal sessions and out
into the concert halls. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Dad was absent for
most of my mother’s musical events. He dressed me up and shuffled me along to
the major performances and only if they hadn’t fallen on a school night. He would
otherwise offer his complimentary seat to a neighbor or co-worker, and Mom and
I would find him fast asleep in his recliner when we got home. He was a jazz
man, a fair-weather fan of Pat Metheny and Manheim Steamroller, an executive
mechanical engineer for LMI Products in Adamsville who blamed the majority of
his disinterest in my mother’s career on an exhausting daily commute. He had
our neatly packaged suburban life covered with a healthy six figures, so my
mother never needed to work, but she couldn’t be dragged away from the
classical community by a Peterbuilt semi and a sixty-foot towing chain. Music
was oxygen to her, and so my father left her to her ‘<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">hobby</span>’ and waved her away to the ogles of other men, to the Ph.D’s
in crisp Oxford button-downs and salt-and-pepper sideburns, and the post-graduate
neo-hippy boys who longed to impress her with experimental improv on Schubert
or Liszt. Gabe Neale fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, too old for
clever innovation and too young not to undress her with his eyes, hoping to disguise
it with shoptalk. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’ll see what I can do, Gabe,” she smiled with a wink and touched his
forearm with manicured fingertips, just enough to send him on his way without condescension.
There was a wisp of her Omnia Crystaline cologne on his jacket from their embrace
as he turned away, which would linger for days until he saw her again at
rehearsal. Subtle traces of her presence. Like lipstick on a wine glass. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jackie joined us at the door and asked if we were ready to leave.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“You have no idea,” Mom breathed as we turned for the exit. But then
Linda Morgan called from the back of the shop, waving a hand above her head to
flag us down. She had someone by the arm, leading her to where we stood at the
threshold to freedom, just paces from the sidewalk. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I’ve got a surprise before you go,” she sang and commenced a rather
formal introduction between my mother, Jackie, and Rachel Kingsley herself.
“Rachel, this is Jackie Lembke, second clarinetist in the Atlanta Civic
Orchestra.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jackie offered a hand. “Wonderful to meet you,” she smiled. “Beautiful
work, just beautifully written, like painting pictures with words. A pleasure.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rachel Kingsley nodded her thanks but her eyes began to dart between
Jackie and my mother, and her expression dampened and went flat, as if she’d
swallowed something sharp. But she kept her professional bearing as Linda
presented a rather stiff and unresolved Jolán Edmunds.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“She’s our concertmaster and premier violin soloist,” Linda boasted, not
so much for my mother’s benefit as for her own, for having lassoed the star
performer from the exit door and into a personal chat. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Their
eyes met and locked, and it was like an iceberg dropped between them, the very
same iceberg that sank the Titanic. Linda prattled on.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“She’s been performing here in Atlanta for…what has it been, now, Jolán?
About twelve years?” she mused. “Recently she was a guest soloist for the
Atlanta Symphony, performed Schubert’s Der Erlkoenig with the grace of a
magician, I’ll tell you. And now she’s all ours with the new Civic Orchestra,”
Linda beamed. “Now that you’re living in the area, Rachel, you should try to
make it to one of our concerts. I do think you’d enjoy yourself.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Linda
was the only one in our slowly dilating circle who hadn’t noticed the stale
air. Then Mom broke the tension and extended her hand. “How’ve you been?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rachel Kingsley stared at my mother for a long moment, as if she’d lost
something in those hazel eyes that she didn’t know how to get back. Finally, she
reached for the handshake, slack with misgiving. “Um, fine. I’ve been fine. I
didn’t…I mean…” Her lips began to form what looked like an apology but she
stopped short and smiled strangely instead. She flitted a glance down to my
mother’s empty wedding finger, then across to me—Jolán Edmunds’ little mirror
image, and her eyes narrowed with subtle bewilderment.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“You two <i>know</i> each other?” Linda chuckled, at once thrilled and
perplexed. “Well, now doesn’t that beat all.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Been a long time,” Rachel uttered, and my mother nodded, much the way a
surgeon might respond when asked if he did everything he could before
pronouncing someone’s mother, sister, daughter. Then she snapped out of it and
remembered me.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“This is my daughter Myla.” She rested her hands on my shoulders and
urged me to mind my manners with a nudge to offer my hand. I did. Rachel took
it into hers and gazed at me like a delightful mystery. Her hands were warm and
soft, and her smile was the sincerest I’d seen all night. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Well, you are just beautiful,” she said and looked up at my mother as
if she’d done very well, though it puzzled me as to why that came as such a
moving surprise to Ms. Kingsley. “And you’re how old?” she asked me.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoHeader" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Thirteen and a half,” I told her. “I’ll be fourteen in two months.” I
wanted her to know that I wasn’t a child, that I could handle whatever was
looming between them like a radioactive dust cloud, but then my mother
suggested that I go with Jackie who had excused herself to mingle, leaving Mom
and Rachel to some reluctant privacy. Linda Morgan finally took that cue and wandered
off as well. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From an
empty folding chair I watched them, tried to read their lips as they muttered
awkward explanations, shrugging away a clearly inscrutable history. Whatever it
was, even I knew this wasn’t the time nor the place. College alumni? Grade
school classmates, perhaps? No. It wasn’t that simple. Not the way my mother
did quick and cagey scans of the room for scrutiny as she spoke, the way she
shoved her hands into her coat pockets, insecure, sniffing the air for danger.
I’d never seen her so shifted off her axis, so utterly rattled while struggling
to keep face, the woman whose very presence was required on stage before a
single symphonic note could crack the air, who garnered applause just for showing
up to work. No, this was something much more complicated than losing an old
address or searching hopelessly for an unlisted number. I couldn’t have been
more certain of that as Rachel Kingsley bid my mother a good evening with a
lonely smile and left her standing by the door, lost in a flurry of troubling
thoughts. </div>
Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-16443154950855960672011-12-24T17:40:00.000-05:002011-12-24T17:40:39.447-05:00The Last Kappolarian Prt. 1(The Last Kappolarian is Book Two in the Monasco Trilogy, containing twelve parts.)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>Monasco: The Last Kappolarian </strong></div><div style="text-align: center;">Part I</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>The New World</em></div><br />
The once thriving cities of Calabrecia and Kappolaris were travesties of crumbling stone, buried in a catastrophic silence, all but for the plodding of horses that meandered through the debris. Four members of the Imperial Guard and a squad of eight Monascan infantrymen, including the newly appointed head of artillery, Lieutenant Arehlya Seguro, shadowed Empress Ogami in an exhaustive reconnaissance operation throughout the Kappolarian province. Monascan cavalry had seen its opportunity to lay the smaller city to waste, once Calabrecia’s walls had been breached. The troops certainly did their job, the empress thought, perhaps a bit too well. This twenty-fourth passing after the war showed little promise for survivors, only the need for another extensive, massive, reconstruction campaign. <br />
<br />
As she trudged through the devastation, the empress found herself in a critical disposition over General Monasco’s tactics. Kappolaris had been inhabited predominantly by scholars, businessmen, and academics, the minds that fed Calabrecia with philosophy and trade strategies, hardly akin to the ideals of warlords. The Kappolarian military was sparse and poorly trained, having relied for three hundred seasons on the shield of her sovereign sister city. If the General wished to make a statement of the might of Monasco, he had already done so on the battlefield; this annihilation was entirely unnecessary, a fool-hearted consumption of time and resources and money.<br />
<br />
The Kappolarian residential district endured less physical damage than it had the terror of the Monascan blade. Broken doorframes and fractured windows exposed an atrocity. Civilians resisted, attempted to fend off the inescapable. But conquest spattered the mud brick and coagulated in corners; it dried in mid-stream over thresholds and emanated into the streets, fermenting under the heat of twenty-four desolate passings. <br />
<br />
Tai Ogami dismounted her steed and wandered along the borough, her hands clasped behind her back as she muzzled her indignation. The guards followed closely, carrying pistols for wild dogs and vultures as they strolled through a peculiar opus of a thousand flies against the rattle of armor. Most of what was left behind had already been devoured by predators that required no invitation to any abode; they’d come and gone, but for a single crow that squawked at them from the nearby frame of a twisted shutter. <br />
<br />
Her senior officer drew his weapon and shot it, knocked it into a feathering tumult to the dirt.<br />
<br />
“Stand down.” The empress held up a hand and glared over her shoulder. <br />
<br />
He holstered his pistol. <br />
<br />
She was focused on the cedar wood door to the next dwelling. It was splintered and shucked by the force of a battle-ax. Several blows made concave trenches which had driven it off its hinges and slammed it to the floor, whereafter it was trampled by foot soldiers on a mission to mutilate. She could see the blood-dried bootprints scuffed across the surface. But it was closed now, propped back into the jamb from the inside, snug and firm. The shattered adjacent window was also sealed by what looked like a painting, a portrait of a woman of similar descent to the empress herself. At the base of the door were claw marks in an endeavor to dig under and in, but whatever it was had given up and gone to find sustenance elsewhere. She placed a palm on the door and pushed. The guards brandished firearms and cutlery from behind. It was fixed tight, and so she went to window but hesitated at the dignified smile of the woman who reminded her of her mother. She wouldn’t damage the artifact any more than it already was, for she could see further attempts at entry pecked and scratched into the heavily matted canvas. She strolled back to the door, examined it again, then gestured to one of the guards to kick it in, and he did. <br />
<br />
The pungency of death burst into the open as a swirl of flies took flight at the entrance and flurried about the darkness inside. Daylight cast a wide yellow column onto limbs and hair and shredded clothing, animated by a frenzy of tiny intruders, industrious enough to have surmounted the desert’s finer scavengers. Crimson had gone brown and pasted the walls, the tile floor, the ceiling. A man lay draped over a very small child, just a few paces into the kitchen area, and on a table to her right Tai saw clearly the face of the woman in the painting, upside down, gaping into the golden shaft of mid-day sunlight. She was on her back, her legs spread and dangling over the table’s edge, her dress torn away with a deep gash from sternum to womanhood crawling with parasites. Tai shut her eyes away from it, searched her memory for which unit had been deployed into this sector, for she would establish legislation toward rules of engagement the moment she returned to Monasco. Whoever was responsible for this would face execution without falter, and without the pacifist sway of the queen.<br />
<br />
Then she heard a rustling toward the rear, beyond the sunlight’s reach. Her soldiers had no torches to illuminate the shadows, so when she heard another shuffle the empress tightened a grip around the handle of her scimitar and unsheathed it slowly, quietly. She motioned to her senior officer to remove the portrait that blocked the front window. He stepped around the ravaged woman and pried the picture away from where it had been forcibly jammed into the window border. Another amber stream fell across the interior as a trembling gasp escaped from somewhere around the partition between the kitchen and a larger room. Tai Ogami cross-stepped over a toppled dining chair, sunlight glinting off her blade, reflecting a dancing yellow disk onto the opposite wall as she crept. She hesitated, isolated the origin of the sound, then whirled around the partition and pinned the culprit to the wall at the tip of her scimitar.<br />
<br />
She withdrew it at once. A child. A female child. The empress estimated her to be about eight, nine perhaps. The little girl regarded her with eyes wide as plates, a distinctive almond shape like the woman in the painting. A tattered frock hung from her narrow shoulders, stained with the burgundy remnants of all that had happened there, and she recoiled against the wall and shrunk under a worktable, drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them tightly. <br />
<br />
The empress cocked her head in bewilderment. She sheathed her weapon and stooped down to meet her at the eye. The child shifted her eyes from the empress to the guards, seized by a frightful recollection, which Tai interpreted quite clearly.<br />
<br />
“Leave us,” she told them, but the troops dawdled, bound by an oath of provision for her safety, and so she restated the command, this time with a bit more fervor. They exchanged wary glances, then exited out into the city, leaving Empress Ogami alone with her discovery. <br />
<br />
“What is your name?” she asked delicately. <br />
<br />
The child responded with a whisper lower than a whisper, swallowed by gloom and flooded with sorrow. “Tàhti,” she said and watched the empress with a doubtful eye. She tucked her bare feet in close and made herself as small as possible. <br />
<br />
“Well, my name is Tai,” Empress Ogami said with a brief smile. “Is this your home, Tàhti?”<br />
<br />
The girl did not answer. She rested her chin on her knee and stared at Tai as though the truth might conjure another monster in the doorway. <br />
<br />
Tai glanced behind her at the carnage and tried again. “Is that your family?” <br />
<br />
Tàhti scanned the kitchen but said nothing.<br />
<br />
Tai shifted her weight to the other heel, and when she did, the little girl flinched. “You don’t have to fear me,” she assured and inched back. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, not even those big soldiers outside. I promise.”<br />
<br />
The girl was unconvinced, and she let out a tiny sigh as if waiting for the empress to state her business. <br />
<br />
“How old are you, Tàhti?” Tai questioned, hoping to establish a sense of trust with a change of subject.<br />
<br />
After a moment the little girl held up both hands and spread her fingers.<br />
<br />
“Ten,” Tai confirmed with another smile. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” she offered. “I don’t think this is a place for a ten-year-old little girl to be living, do you?” She surveyed the filth and took a mental inventory of the dried beans, corn meal, and pekha juice on which the girl had apparently been surviving for twenty-four passings, too terrified of the New World to search it for assistance. <br />
<br />
Tàhti shrugged ever so slightly, and so the Empress held out her hand.<br />
<br />
“I know where we can get something to eat,” she coaxed. “There are some very nice ladies there who’ll get you washed up and into some new clothes.” And she waited for the girl to decide between the grisly sanctuary of a home no longer inhabitable or the hand of a stranger with a promise. “I’ll make sure those soldiers outside keep you safe from the soldiers who did this. I know they look the same, but they’re not. In fact, I’ll send them back here myself to gather your family for a proper burial, according to your customs. You won’t be leaving them behind. You have my word.”<br />
<br />
The little girl bit her lip with deep temptation and contemplated the proposal. It was either the motivation of hunger or the certain notion of a hapless future that moved her to reach out and take the empress’ hand. Tai helped her up from the shadows and walked with her to the door. <br />
<br />
As Empress Ogami emerged with the child, Lieutenant Seguro approached. She gave the girl a dubious glance and asked Tai, “What are you doing?” <br />
<br />
Though she was Tai’s first choice for special operations, her casual posture had been slightly vexing. “I’m taking her out of here, taking her with us.”<br />
<br />
“And what do you suppose we do with her?” Seguro questioned lowly. <br />
<br />
“We’ll bring her to Monasco, that’s what,” Tai said. “She can’t stay here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”<br />
<br />
Seguro peered skeptically out across the desert, then settled a troubled gaze on Tai and spoke to her in confidence. “So, we take her to Monasco and then what? Put her up for adoption? Set her loose on the city streets? This isn’t our responsibility. We’re here to do recon, not to be good will ambassadors. Send someone else back for her, if it’s that important.”<br />
<br />
“I’m taking her to the palace,” Tai told her as she tightened the straps of Stratigo’s saddle. “And yes, it is our responsibility. It’s my responsibility,” she insisted. Then she turned away from Tàhti and the others and suggested to Seguro, “Maybe if she was a Monascan child, you’d be a little more inclined toward ‘good will’.” She arched a perceptive eyebrow and ordered her back to the group to ride out.<br />
<br />
“Have you ever ridden a horse before?” she then asked Tàhti, and the girl shook her head. “Well, that’s all right.” Tai placed a boot in the stirrup and swung a leg over. One of the guards grabbed the bridle and guided Stratigo to the ground and the child was lifted up onto the mantle. She placed the girl’s hands on the saddle horn, telling her in her ear, “You hold on to this, and I’ll hold on to you. All right?” And the stallion shook his head with an anxious bray. Then she maneuvered the animal around and addressed the troops, “This child will be under my care from this day forth. You will treat her as royalty, and you will protect her as you protect me. Is that understood?”<br />
<br />
They responded with a unanimous, “Yes, Your Majesty” as the child glanced around at her with renewed curiosity. <br />
<br />
With a spur of her heel, Empress Ogami goaded the stallion forward through the broken city, one hand on the reigns and the other curled around an orphan girl, destined to become the Princess of Sähm. <br />
<br />
*******<br />
<br />
The Queen of Monasco admired herself in a full-length mirror. She turned to either side, smoothed the neckline of a white silk evening gown, smiled at the way the hem swept gently across the marble floor as she moved. It was more of an eggshell cream than a pure white, she thought, as she gazed more closely at her reflection, an image she had seen most often in the Ylles River when the wind desisted. Silver sequins and diamond chips sparkled in the sunlight, embroidered into subtle arrays along the right seam. Queen Seraya Bahan could hardly wait for the moment in which this dress would render the empress helplessly spellbound. <br />
<br />
Jun Ogami admired her own handiwork. She strolled around her new daughter-in-law in a broad circle, kept a reflective distance and nodded. Seraya possessed the ideal frame for elegant attire; the fabric--particularly silk--took well to the curve of her waist and the graceful arc of her shoulders. And the color blended richly with her light toffee complexion. She made quite an effortless vision of mere thread and cloth, Mrs. Ogami mused, surprised at how well she took to the refinements of civilized culture.<br />
<br />
“Now,” Jun declared and draped the final accessory around Seraya’s shoulders. “Hold it out. See how it flows, how the design catches the light.”<br />
<br />
Seraya extended an arm. Additional diamonds and silver, woven into the delicate mesh of a chiffon wrap, glistened and breathed in the blue daylight, and the Queen of Monasco felt less like royalty and more like a seraph of the High Goddess. <br />
<br />
“I can’t keep any of this on, you know,” Seraya told her and glanced through the open window at the sun’s position, nearing the Ahagaar peaks. “Tai should be returning shortly, and I don’t want her to see this until next passing at the induction banquet. I want it to be a surprise.”<br />
<br />
“Well, then you’d better let me hang it,” Jun chuckled. “I’ll keep it in my room until next sunfall.” And she removed the shawl and draped it over a suede-padded hanger. A procession of boots and armor then echoed through the hall, moving toward the royal suite. Seraya hurried out of the gown. <br />
<br />
“I said shortly,” she muttered as Jun eased the delicate dress over her daughter-in-laws’s hips. “I didn’t mean this instant. It’s like she listens to my very thoughts at times.” <br />
<br />
Tai approached the bedroom and dismissed the guards. She turned the handle and cracked the door, but her mother met her there with a nervous smile, barring entrance.<br />
<br />
“Just one moment, dear,” she assured and shut the door in the empress’ face. <br />
<br />
Tai blinked, her nose to the wood, and she glanced down at the curious little girl at her side. “That would be one of those nice ladies,” she said, pointing to the door.<br />
<br />
Tàhti peered up at her, bewilderment moving through her huge brown eyes as she waited with her rescuer for someone else to reappear. <br />
<br />
After a moment the door opened wide, and Seraya smiled brightly from inside, adjusting the waist of a wispy wrap-around skirt. She wore it with a sea green tunic and matching emerald bangles around her wrists and ankles, her mahogany ringlets gathered into a casual bun. She slipped into her sandals as Jun made a nonchalant attempt at concealing the diamond gown.<br />
<br />
“Honey, I’m home,” Tai sang with a smirk, her eyes twinkling with suspicious amusement. She stepped inside with a smile for her mother and a kiss for her wife, then peeked around the door, looking for clues to their odd behavior, but they were riveted on the little girl in the doorway behind her. So, Tai persuaded her into the room. She took her hand and crouched beside her. “These are the ladies I was telling you about,” she said and gestured to them both. “That’s my mother, Lady Jun.” Then Seraya came closer, perplexed and intrigued. “And this is Seraya, the Queen of Sähm,” Tai told her. She looked to her family and said, “This is Tàhti, and Tàhti is ten. She’s from Kappolaris, and I’m willing to bet she’s pretty hungry right now. She needs a good bath and something clean to wear as well, and I thought maybe we could see about that for her.”<br />
<br />
“Well, hello, Tàhti.” Seraya knelt to her with a sweet smile. “You’ve come all the way from Kappolaris, huh?”<br />
<br />
The child did not respond. She gazed upon the face of the queen, fascinated by the Calabrecian slave’s brand that marred her left cheek, just a shadow of a scar but visible to anyone who stood as close.<br />
<br />
“Well,” Seraya said, anyway. “That’s a pretty long ride. I’ve made that trip myself, and I know I was famished by the time I got here. In fact, if I were a little girl as pretty as this, I’d want a bath and to have my hair brushed and fixed, too. Would you like that?”<br />
<br />
This time Tàhti nodded, and so Jun held out her hand, accepting the task. The little girl stared at it for a moment, then looked to the Empress.<br />
<br />
“It’s okay,” Tai assured with a wink.<br />
<br />
Tàhti took another moment to consider the idea, then grabbed Jun’s hand to be escorted through the halls. <br />
<br />
Seraya had a puzzled frown as she watched them leave. “What’s happened to her?” she asked. “Where’s her family?”<br />
<br />
It was more than Tai cared to divulge until she could sift through all the details with her advisors, and so she cautiously refrained. “She’s been through a terrible ordeal. And as far as her family, well, it looks like we’re it now. She’ll need something to wear. I thought maybe you and my mother might work on a wardrobe for her, if you would. But in the meantime she’ll need something to suffice. I’ll see if my mother has any old clothes of mine stored away. I’m sure we can come up with something. But right now I’ve got some business to handle that really can’t wait. In fact, you might have to do dinner without me. I’m not sure how long I’ll be.” She left her with a kiss and disappeared out into the palace. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
After a hot bath, steaming with honeysuckle oil and ginger petals and a healthy portion of harira soup, Tàhti’s coal black hair was combed and braided by her newly-appointed grandmother, and she was presented to the queen to be tucked in to bed. <br />
<br />
Seraya chuckled at Tai’s old pullover, which would substitute as a nightgown for the time being. “Well, this thing nearly drags the floor on you.” She tugged at it with a smile and inspected the tiny plaits pulled into a ponytail. “My mother used to fix my hair like this, too,” Seraya recalled. “Next passing we’ll tie it up in a nice bun for you, and maybe Lady Jun might have finished a pretty dress for you to wear. What do you think?”<br />
<br />
Tàhti sat cross-legged on a feather bed in the guest room closest to the royal suite. She uttered not a word but gave the queen the slightest nod, and Seraya urged the little girl under the satin down blankets and pulled them up to her chin. <br />
<br />
“I know you’re very confused right now,” she cooed. “All these strangers. This big palace in a far away city. But you know what? I know exactly how you feel. I’m almost as new to all this as you. But one day the empress showed up and changed everything, made everything colorful and safe. I have a feeling you and I are two of the luckiest girls in all of Sähm right now,” she smiled. “So, you sleep well tonight and don’t you be afraid of a thing.” And she lowered the flame on the oil lamp and began a bedtime story about the woman who was a commoner and became a princess. But this time she changed the ending, and the princess became the queen of her own land, grew old and content and smiled upon her children and grandchildren each passing. And with that the little girl fell asleep. Seraya extinguished the lamp, pulled the window shut and returned to the royal suite.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Two halls away in the war room, Empress Ogami, Prime Minister Lior, Captain Olanga, Lieutenant Seguro, and three members of the Imperial Council deliberated over the outcome of the soldiers in the Monascan 4th Infantry unit. Olanga produced a registry with the names and ranks of thirty-seven troops, each a member of 4th Infantry’s 2nd platoon, which, according to the Captain, had been ordered to secure the Kappolarian sector once the battle had ended. Nothing more. After what she’d seen that afternoon, the empress hadn’t enough compassion to consider the various interpretations of that order. And so she arrived at her decision without reluctance.<br />
<br />
“Send a security squad in to Camp Vallone, immediately after this meeting,” she directed. “Arrest them and charge them each with disobeying a direct order, with dereliction of duty and a violation the Warrior Code. How many victims were there? Do we know?”<br />
<br />
“So far there seems to be close to a hundred and fifty,” Olanga said. <br />
<br />
The empress breathed an irritated sigh and leaned back in her chair at the head of the table. “A hundred and fifty,” she muttered. “All right. Then charge them each with one hundred and fifty counts of murder as well…and one count of attempted murder,” she appended.<br />
<br />
“One count of attempted murder?” Lior questioned. “I’m not sure I understand, Your Highness.”<br />
<br />
The empress gave him a faint smile and said, “I know. But you will next passing.”<br />
<br />
Lior shrugged. “As you wish, Your Majesty.” And he noted the charges for permanent record. <br />
<br />
“Once they’ve been detained,” the Empress continued. “Have them brought to the city and scheduled for execution by archery squad next passing. And I want it public. I want the entire city to bear witness, to be made aware that this regime will not tolerate martial impudence of any kind. This is my military now, and there are going to be some changes as to the way we conduct ourselves, laws that will be followed in a professional manner by soldiers and citizens alike. The only way we’re going to unify this region is through a common appreciation and respect for the tenets set forth here and now. This is a new era, and we’re going to enter it in a righteous and qualified fashion. Is that understood?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the table resounded, all but the Captain who responded with a desultory nod to which the Empress took notice but said nothing. He had his orders as well, and she had very little concern for what he thought of her personally. Next passing’s events were to send a message to everyone in her charge, not discounting the individuals at that very table. She rose, and they rose with her. “I have some related issues to discuss with the queen before next passing,” she said and dismissed them for the evening.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Inside the royal suite, the lamp flames were doused and all the candles extinguished but one that flickered on the mantle. Seraya was tucked under the sheets asleep, and the candlelight threw amber shadows across her bare shoulders. Before the empress settled in for the night, she chose first to check on Tàhti, just down the hall. She shut the bedroom door softly and went to the next guarded room with her finger to her lips. The soldiers that flanked the doorway remained at parade rest as not to rattle the little girl from her sleep. Tai peaked inside to find her wide-awake, fidgeting with a rag doll, watching the moon through the stained glass window. She opted to leave her to her thoughts, rather than keep her awake with idle conversation, and so she left her be. She could remember her first few sleepless nights at military school, haunted by uncertainty, homesick and disorientated. It would be quite an adjustment period, but at least she would spend it in the care of the most gracious women Tai had ever known. And with that she gently shut the door and she headed back to the royal suite. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Seraya turned groggily to face her wife as she took a seat at the edge of the bed to remove her boots. <br />
<br />
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Tai whispered, shedding her uniform. “I just wanted to check on Tàhti before I came to bed. She’s still awake, but I left her alone.”<br />
<br />
Seraya frowned. “Well, when I left her she was asleep. Do you think she’s had a nightmare? Maybe I should go see about her again.”<br />
<br />
“No, no,” Tai insisted. “She’ll be fine. She has to learn to trust the darkness.”<br />
<br />
Seraya was unconvinced, but she settled back into the sheets and said, “It’s a bit rigid, don’t you think? To leave her alone in there. She’s only ten, and she’s obviously been through an awful time.”<br />
<br />
“She’s fine,” Tai said as she kissed her forehead and took her in her arms for the night. “She’s a survivor, believe me. And speaking of, there was something I wanted to talk with you about, since you’re awake.”<br />
<br />
“And what would that be?”<br />
<br />
“I need a minister, a holy man from your culture to perform a burial ceremony. Calabrecians and Kappolarians share the same spiritual beliefs, so I thought maybe you’d know what to do about something like that.”<br />
<br />
Seraya nodded and snuggled close to her. “Well, of course,” she uttered. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then she peered up at her with concern. “Is it for her family?”<br />
<br />
Tai heaved a sigh, telling her, “For them and about a hundred and forty-seven other Kappolarians.”<br />
<br />
Seraya held her breath as an awful notion fell across her face. “The war?”<br />
<br />
“You could say that,” Tai mumbled. “There’s something I have to do next passing, something to which you’re probably going to be greatly opposed, but it has to be done.”<br />
<br />
“Greatly opposed?” Seraya questioned. “Well, so far I think I’ve been very supportive of your decisions. What exactly would I be so opposed to?”<br />
<br />
“An execution,” Tai told her flatly. The queen said nothing for several beats, and so her wife continued. “When the battle at Calabrecia ended, the General ordered an infantry platoon to make rounds through Kappolaris to look for survivors,” she explained. “And today we found them. Slaughtered. All of them. A hundred and fifty civilians in their homes, women and children, infants, elderly. It was senseless enough what was done to the city itself. But then a few dozen soldiers went in and eradicated what was left of an entire culture of people. All but one. And so, next passing they themselves will be put to death in the city square to ensure that this empire and its military have a clear understanding of the laws concerning the rules of engagement.”<br />
<br />
“And I suppose those rules can be bent when it suits the regime,” Seraya countered quietly. “Murder them for committing murder.”<br />
<br />
“I knew you were going to say that.”<br />
<br />
“Then why did you tell me?”<br />
<br />
“Because you’ve got just as much influence over this empire as I do, an equal stake. And besides, it’s a public execution. It’s not like I could hide it from you if I wanted to.”<br />
<br />
“And there’s nothing else that can be done? Life imprisonment? Expulsion from the military? Nothing else? It must be a death sentence?”<br />
<br />
Tai exhaled noisily and told her, “Under the circumstances, yes. I’ve got to make examples of these soldiers to establish some respect from the people and the army. In fact, they’re not even soldiers; they’re criminals who were left to govern themselves and made a massacre of Kappolaris in the process. There’s absolutely no honor in that. None whatsoever.”<br />
<br />
The queen shifted onto her back with a sigh. “Well, you’re right. I am greatly opposed, however, it seems my influence only extends so far, since you’ve apparently made your decision.”<br />
<br />
“This time, yes.” <br />
<br />
“I see,” she breathed. “Well, I’m not going to be present for it, just so you know. I’ll take Tàhti and we’ll make a trip to Gaddis or to the Ylles for the day. I don’t think she should have to see that, do you?”<br />
<br />
“No, I don’t want her to be here,” the Empress agreed. “It’s a good idea, Gaddis. It’s likely she’s never been there, so she might enjoy seeing the ocean.”<br />
<br />
Queen Seraya’s response was indistinct, and she shut her eyes and tried to sleep.<br />
<br />
“Will I still have your support for the burial ceremony?” Tai asked.<br />
<br />
“Yes.” <br />
<br />
Seraya said nothing more and turned to her side. Tai didn’t push. She expected this, and she hoped to avoid it in the future, to find ways to keep order that would make her queen happy. Perhaps next passing’s events would be the first and last of their kind, and then she might begin to build the utopia that Seraya dreamt about. <br />
<br />
Tai turned to her and kissed her shoulder, but Seraya kept her back to her. And so she rested an arm in the curve of her sleeping form and invited the scent of jasmine in her lover’s hair to soothe her to sleep. <br />
********<br />
Tàhti awoke to a tender voice, bidding her good morning. Queen Seraya sat at the edge of the bed and smiled as she smoothed a hand over Tàhti’s braids, but her eyes held traces of disappointment that were not there last passing. In fact, sadness in any form seemed an unusual quality for this woman, and the little girl wondered if it had anything to do with the recent war. Tàhti herself hadn’t become quite so acquainted with gloom until all the fighting and commotion began. And it wouldn’t have surprised her if this Queen of Sähm had been touched by the turmoil as well, having come from Calabrecia where most of the chaos had taken place. She wasn’t even aware that there was a Queen of Sähm until last passing, nor an empress, and she pondered over their separate functions—an empress and queen over the same land. Where was the emperor? <br />
<br />
“I was afraid you didn’t sleep well,” the queen said with an expression of sympathy. She didn’t. The moon made her anxious, and it had been glaring at her from just over the dunes like an all-seeing eye, not of the High Goddess but of something sinister, the way it spied through the cracks in the picture frame that blocked her window for so many nights. She took comfort, however, in that the wolves had gone and hadn’t followed her here. She took comfort in the downy mattress and the stone walls on all sides and in the blue gems sewn onto the face of her doll as the eyes. They had charmed the ill-starred moonlight and spun it into tiny sparkles, and now they did a similar trick with the morning sunshine.<br />
<br />
The queen grinned, took the doll with a chuckle and toyed with it. “You like this thing, huh?” she remarked. “It used to belong to the empress, if you can believe that. To look at her now, you’d think she slept with a hunting knife instead,” she laughed and handed it back to her. “Well, we should get you dressed, little lady. I thought you and I might go on a trip today. Have you ever been to Gaddis?”<br />
<br />
She hadn’t, and so she shook her head.<br />
<br />
“Well, all the better,” the queen said. “Then it will be even more fun to take you. I’ve been once with Empress Tai, and I had no idea how beautiful a place could be. The water is breathtaking, endless, as blue as the eyes of your doll.”<br />
<br />
And filled with monsters, Tàhti was always told. Fish the size of a dôcha with teeth like a carpenter’s saw. Bigger, even. Sharper. She wondered if they had the ability to walk on land, and if so, how often they breached the shores. <br />
<br />
She climbed out of bed and was dressed in the empress’ old clothes, her hair twisted neatly into a topknot, adorned with a white lace ribbon. She took the queen’s hand and as they entered out into the hall, the guards at the door shifted to attention, giving her a start. They remained at the doorway and gave no chase, yet the little girl watched them cautiously until she and her new caregiver turned the next corner. <br />
<br />
Palace workers chiseled at the walls and painted the borders. Then they suddenly halted at the sight of the queen and knelt to a knee with their heads bowed, and Tàhti wondered if she should do the same.<br />
<br />
“No, no. As you were. Please,” Seraya insisted as if it discomfited her to be revered, and they all returned to their tasks, like a complex apparatus that had been shut down and then restarted. The queen stopped at a fresco in progress on one of the facades and admired it. The artist, a young man not much older than the queen herself, folded his hands against his chest and took a step back with a slight bow. She smiled at him and his work—plush trees with leaves of red and gold in a bursting canopy above a winding brook, over which was a red wooden bridge like the one at the palace entrance, and in the background stood an enormous blue and white mountain, bigger than any mountain Tàhti had ever seen. She was inclined to think this painter had quite an imagination until Queen Seraya grabbed an old picture book from a nearby worktable. The text was a series of symbols in a language unfamiliar to Tàhti, nothing like her native L’ghälii. <br />
<br />
“Remarkable,” Seraya whispered, comparing the image on the tattered page to that of the young man’s work. “What has the Empress offered you for your time?” she then asked him.<br />
<br />
“Twenty-five rikks, Your Highness,” he responded.<br />
<br />
She nodded and laid the book in its place. Then she gazed up at the mural and told him, “Well, I’ll see that she doubles it. And your name?”<br />
<br />
“Odion, Your Highness. Of third-colony-Monasco.”<br />
<br />
“Well, Odion,” she smiled. “My compliments. And I’m sure the empress will agree. Carry on, please,” she encouraged him, a former slave who would go home with as many rikks as Tàhti’s father made in five passings as a school teacher. Her world had made a quite a turn while she cringed in the rancid darkness of her ruined home, and she took the queen’s hand to venture forth into more intrigue. <br />
<br />
Drums soon resounded from the city square, a distant thunder that shot a flash of dread across the queen’s face, and she hurried Tàhti along.<br />
<br />
“We need to move quickly, sweetie,” she urged with a brief smile. “There’s a carriage waiting for us out back, and we don’t want to keep them.” And she was whisked away through the halls in a rush.<br />
<br />
They were greeted by five soldiers at the end of a long conduit that led from the rear of the palace to the outside. A horse-driven transport wagon awaited there, decorated with golden baubles and red silk fringe on a white sheer canopy. One of the soldiers held out a hand to assist his queen into the carriage, then he did the same for Tàhti, but she shrank away from him. The queen encouraged her forth, but Tàhti found her feet had turned to granite as she was struck with the sudden recollection of bloodstained iron and the wails of her infant brother. It was all revisiting her as if she had fallen through some crevice in time, flung backward to the final hours of the war itself. When she finally shook it away, her dress was damp with sweat and she was on the ground in a ball, trembling. <br />
<br />
The queen had gotten out of the carriage and tried to soothe her with gentle strokes and pitiful words, but to Tàhti it was as foreign as Odion’s picture book, and she cast her off. She wanted her mother. She needed to feel the largeness of her father’s arms, lifting her from the floor into a cosseted embrace, but there was only this young strange woman and the rattle of armor and shuffling of boots. How had she gone from a fearless city girl with thick skin and a thirst for adventure to this cowering mad little imp? The question turned her fear around somewhat, and she stopped shaking. The reality of the present slowly returned, and she dared peer up at Queen Seraya whose face was a pale blank sheet. <br />
<br />
“It’s all right,” she cooed. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.” She repeated that several times as she helped Tàhti to her feet, bewildered and cautious. She stayed with her, crouched before her with wide brown eyes that seemed to be searching for what to do or say next as the drums from the city bounced around the walls and crescendoed. One of the guards stepped close again, and Tàhti flinched at the broadsword that dangled off his weapon belt, which shot the queen to her feet with a stern and rather crude stipulation.<br />
<br />
“Just back away,” she snapped. “Can’t you see you’re scaring her? Now, go! Move back!” The men obeyed and stepped away, but she still wasn’t satisfied. “In fact…” and she went over to horse closest to them and began unfastening its bridle from the carriage. “We can manage just as well on our own, I think,” she uttered. When the animal was free of its equipment, she held out a hand to Tàhti and beckoned her over. “Come on. Just you and me, okay? Just us girls. To the Ylles for the day? It’ll be closer, not so many strangers,” she promised. <br />
<br />
The same soldier who’d sent Tàhti reeling into the past then spoke up. “Your Highness, I really wouldn’t advise you to go off on your own. The desert isn’t safe, and—“<br />
<br />
“Has it ever been?” she quipped. The execution cadence rumbled in the distance as she secured the horse’s stirrups. “There’s certainly less iniquity out there than here, this passing. We’ll be fine. You’ll return to your posts in the palace and report to the empress when all this…” And she waved a hand around at the goings-on out in the city. “….all this madness is finished.” <br />
<br />
The guards exchanged a wary glance and beseeched her once again, but she refused and ordered them to stay behind as she and Tàhti set out for the eastern Ylles River.<br />
*********<br />
The Monascan city square was packed with spectators, awaiting a mass execution, anticipating an appearance from the empress. Thirty-seven relegated soldiers trembled against heavy wooden posts, bound at the wrists and ankles, blindfolded and stripped of their uniforms. To each prisoner an expert archer had been assigned, positioned exactly ten paces off, and they tugged at their bowstrings and examined arrow tips for lethal accuracy as the drums thundered throughout the city.<br />
<br />
Empress Tai Ogami gazed out across the red desert from the window of the palace watchtower. She lowered her eyes to the marble with a sigh and wondered if Seraya would return in time for the inauguration banquet, as she was quite poised to stand her up without regret. <br />
<br />
“The prisoners are in place, Your Majesty,” Prime Minister Lior informed her from the doorway. <br />
<br />
She nodded and lifted her eyes out to the empty sand as a reverie sailed through her mind; the banks of the Ylles; the horizon a spectacle of orange and lavender; a question hanging on the silver splinters of fading sunlight—what if you could be a queen? <br />
<br />
Well, if I were your queen, there’d be no more war, no more bloodshed. There‘s already been enough of that. <br />
<br />
Her lover’s eyes were glistening pools the color of molasses that passing, imagining this New World as if it already passed her by in a lifetime forgotten.<br />
<br />
Ten hide beaters pummeled a death cadence to the roar of the crowd as Prime Minister Lior abided patiently at the door. “Your Majesty?” <br />
<br />
The Empress nodded. She straightened the sash of her uniform and followed him out to the terrace.<br />
<br />
The citizens of Sähm erupted as she approached the banister and gazed down upon a thousand faces. The accused were lined along the main thoroughfare, facing the palace, facing her. The executioners readied themselves on the opposite side of the concourse as citizens were ushered aside by security soldiers. <br />
<br />
“Citizens and nobles of Sähm,” the event herald then announced from the opposite end of the terrace, and the crowd noise dwindled as the drums rolled softly. “You have all been called to witness the sentencing of these men and women for war crimes against the Monascan Empire.” And he read their names and ranks from a long roll, read them slowly with explicit pronunciation—thirteen corporals, nineteen sergeants, five lieutenants, and a captain. “For the crime of murder, one hundred and fifty counts, these prisoners are hereby sentenced to death on this passing, the eighty-first of Lumina in the season of one thousand and three. For the crime of attempted murder, one count, the sentence is also death as decreed by Her Royal Majesty, Empress Tai Ogami, ruler of the Monascan Empire of Sähm.” <br />
<br />
Tai glanced around to find her mother had joined the terrace entourage, but Jun stood back and gave her daughter a vanguard at the railing and observed without interruption. <br />
<br />
“Archery squad, draw your weapons!” the head of security then commanded, and thirty-seven assassins stretched their bows in practiced unison, pointed them toward a pale blue sky as the drums began to build. <br />
<br />
Empress Ogami raised a hand high above her head, the preliminary signal to proceed, and the cadence quickened as the crowd chanted in resolute favor of death. <br />
<br />
“Ready!” the commander bellowed. The archery line lowered their weapons and took simultaneous aim at their respective targets.<br />
<br />
She had promised to use her authority to create a land undisrupted by hostility and turmoil, to make reforms that ensured a peaceable future, free of butchery and oppression. She was fully empowered with the option to pardon these criminals, possessed solely the fates of thirty-seven lives, god-like in that respect, tyrannical in the eyes of her wife. Three-dozen prisoners waited below for Empress Tai Ogami to honor her commitment to change as a thousand more lobbied for their demise. <br />
<br />
She abided with stoic detachment, unwilling to display her conflicting emotions as she kept a hand held high in limbo. And as the rumbling death cadence strengthened, the Empress of Sähm sliced the air with the order to fire at will. <br />
<br />
Thirty-seven arrows whizzed across the thoroughfare in an unmitigated instant and pierced the chests of their targets. Knees buckled, shoulders slumped, and heads hung. The crowd exploded and chanted her name, adoration for the merciless intolerance of their new leader. Then it grew quiet as they awaited an oration, but the Empress had little to say. She took a final account of the scene below, then turned away into the palace, hoping her decision would find her in better spirits for the ceremony at sunfall. <br />
<br />
Captain Arturus Olanga shook his head at the spectacle. He strolled inside with the other officers and found Lieutenant Seguro who approached with a pall of disapproval. <br />
<br />
“So, I guess we’re in the business of killing our own, now,” she muttered, and Olanga gave it an ineffective shrug.<br />
<br />
“Well, we’ve got plenty of enemy soldiers in prison, ready to replace them,” he said as they walked together. “How many are there? Five hundred or so? All of them poised to give their lives, certainly not for Tai Ogami, but for their beloved and beautiful new Queen Seraya, I’m sure.”<br />
<br />
“The beloved Seraya who hasn’t got the stomach to call them into battle, even if she had to,” Seguro said. “She wasn’t even present today. Makes you wonder what the Council proposes if the fate of this empire is ever left to that bleeding-heart dreg.”<br />
<br />
Olanga smiled with a humorless chuckle. “Well, Seraya Bahan has more sway than either you or I care to contemplate, and I’m willing to bet her influence began long before this regime ever existed. How else could she have finagled her way into power? To have advanced from a slave colonist to a comfortable seat at the throne in…what? A season or two? Perhaps she truly is a force to be reckoned with,” he said with affected unease and a smile. <br />
<br />
Seguro rolled her eyes. “I think the only force at work was Tai Ogami’s libido. She’s always had a weakness where women were concerned, and I’m not so sure that’s changed. Believe me, I’m all too familiar with it.”<br />
<br />
Olanga gave that a smirk and laughed lightly. They had come to the main foyer, and he stopped and said, “Well, whether it was by lust or calculation, it certainly was no fluke that an enemy dreg found her way from Calabrecia to Monasco, into the Imperial palace, and into the arms of a Monascan deserter as our most gracious and noble queen.” His words were tinged with irony and defeat, but Seguro shook her head and stepped up close to him.<br />
<br />
“Yes, but you see, Captain, that’s the difference right there,” she told him irreverently. “She’s not my queen.” And she turned away and swaggered out into the city, leaving him with his thoughts and queries.<br />
<br />
*********<br />
When they reached the river, Queen Seraya found a comfortable patch beneath a baobab tree for them to sit. The Lumina sun fanned out across the desert and sparkled the river plane, and Tàhti recalled her neighbor, Mr. Salaambo, a reed boat captain who used to fish along the Ylles and often brought her family fresh tilapia and butterfly fish. <br />
<br />
“This is my favorite place in all of Sähm,” the queen smiled. “The empress and I had some very interesting conversations on these banks.” Then her smile waned and she said, “Seems longer ago, now, than it actually was. A lot has changed in a very short time.” <br />
<br />
Tàhti leaned against the tree trunk and said nothing. She picked up a chip of limestone and drew circles in the dirt. The queen took no slight from her silence and continued the unaccompanied conversation, telling her, “I used to be afraid of them, too, you know. The soldiers. And for similar reasons. They came into our colony when I was a girl, not much younger than you, and they killed my father for no reason at all, really. I didn’t actually see it happen; my mother turned away and kept my face buried in her shoulder, and the next thing I knew they’d taken him, and then it was over. My brother suffered the most, I think. He watched it all and never really got past it, not that it’s a thing to get on with, but he’s had a fire burning in him for twenty seasons, and it’s been devouring him, little by little, each day since.” <br />
<br />
Tàhti glanced up at her and wondered how she’d made such a remarkable leap in social status and what the empress’ role had been in that promotion. She thought back to when Empress Tai had brought her to the palace last passing; she met the queen with a kiss, a lover’s kiss, and Tàhti was beginning to suspect there was no emperor over this land. She couldn’t figure how their lives had intersected to a romantic extent, but she imagined a love between an empress and a queen was like any other. It seemed so, anyway. She took the stone and carved another design into the earth. <br />
<br />
The queen said, “There’s going to be a formal burial for your family next passing. The empress and I are working together to see to it, for everyone in Kappolaris.” She gazed at her for a long moment and said, “I’m so sorry you had to go through something so awful. It was a different ruler then. You need to remember that, and things are going to be different now, I can promise you.”<br />
<br />
They were kind words but futile still. It only brought back the recollection of her mother’s screams as they took her for pleasure on the kitchen table while her father lay unconscious with her baby brother crying on the floor next to him. He’d scooped him up in an attempt to flee through the back door, faced with the unimaginable choice between wife and children. But they knocked him cold with heavy iron weapons and gouged him through the shoulder as he fell. They presumed him dead, and so they left her brother, Leandro, to the same fate, sliced her mother open, and disappeared to wreak similar havoc on Mr. Salaambo’s home. All the while she herself cowered in the shadows, hidden away in a dark corner of the adjoining room. It took almost half a passing for Leandro to stop crying. But she didn’t move, never let a single breath drift across the room until the commotion out in the city finally fell silent and she heard her father groaning. She saw him move to get up and started over to him, but he held up a stern hand and warded her back to the shadows. “No. You stay put,” he wheezed, and then he pushed himself from the floor, lifted the cedar wood door that had been rammed off its hinges, tilted it upright, and forced it back into place with all the strength he had left. Then he slid to floor again, took Leandro into his arms and began to sob. And that was how he left this world, in tears with his murdered infant son in his lap. A formal burial in a sarcophagus of gold could not wipe that away—nothing ever would. <br />
<br />
When the memory faded, she realized the drawings in the dirt had made their way to the flesh on her thigh where she had begun the first three letters of her brother’s name, and the queen saw it, too, and she snatched the stone from Tahti's hand with sudden alarm and an admonishment to match.<br />
<br />
“What in the name of Méraah are you doing, child?” she scolded. She hurled the rock as far into the desert as it would go and regarded Tàhti strangely. “There’s enough blood drawn in this forsaken desert without us doing it to ourselves. You have to promise you’ll never do such a thing again. Ever.” She waited for a response, but Tàhti owed her no promises and no recants because she was no one’s child, anymore, and the sting of torn skin felt better than the throb of a broken heart. <br />
<br />
Queen Seraya was growing flustered with Tàhti’s silence, and she said, “You can only keep your thoughts penned up for so long, you know. Eventually you’re going to have to set them free if you ever want to be free, yourself. And trust me, I know a thing or two about freedom and the lack of it. The way you’re going, you’re no better than I was as a slave to Calabrecia, except you’re bound by pain and loss, and there are no laws that govern that. Only the ones we create for ourselves.” She studied the bleeding cuts on Tàhti’s leg, shook her head with a deep sigh, and tore away a small section of the hem of her skirt as a bandage. Tàhti allowed her to dab the wound clean but remained quiet. She thought about their common sorrows and considered, for a moment, that perhaps she was right. But then it all made another resentful turn and Tàhti shut her out again. <br />
<br />
They remained at the Ylles for most of the day as the queen prattled on in a one-sided dialogue. They watched the river boats and fishing canoes float along soft currents and snacked on date cakes and papayas that’d been stored in the horse’s saddle pack. Queen Seraya talked about democracy and an all-inclusive Sähm where every citizen had a voice and no one’s beliefs were discounted. She said it was the empress’ greatest and boldest achievement, the abolition of slavery, but capital punishment was an issue left unsettled between them. The queen’s father would have been opposed to violence in any form, and it was up to her to carry on that legacy, particularly having found herself in the unlikeliest position of power, a position that neither of them could’ve ever predicted. She spoke fondly of his memory, but her expression saddened at the mention of her mother. She glossed over that topic and left Tàhti with an abridged, disjointed account of their estrangement, saving the complicated details for when Tàhti was older. The queen talked and dreamt aloud until the sun rubbed against the mountainside with the reminder to head back to the city before dark, and so they packed up the horse and headed west.<br />
<br />
The Ahagaar shadows fell across the plains quickly, and they had only come to what was once Calabrecian territory with another twelve miles to cover. The Queen goaded the horse into a gallop, trying to make up the time as she held Tàhti close around the waist. It was getting cold, and the wind was obnoxious and stole her breath on occasion. <br />
<br />
And then at the far southern horizon they saw the silhouettes of four riders, encroaching rapidly. Queen Seraya kept onward but watched them with a cautious eye. They had a hundred miles of open wasteland in which to choose a course but seemed bent on that of Tàhti and the queen, and Seraya chose not to tempt disaster. <br />
<br />
“You’re going to have to hold on to the mantle,” she said into Tàhti’s ear and placed the girl’s hands firmly around the saddle horn. “Do not let go, no matter what.” Then she snapped both reigns and gave the steed a kick and a shout that bolted him forth as if shot from a cannon. But the distant riders did the same and kicked up a black dust cloud as they took off in unmistakable pursuit. <br />
<br />
There was nowhere to take cover, no ravines to delve into or dunes behind which to vanish, and the riders were able to take strategic routes that soon placed one on at each flank, one gaining at the rear, and another in a boomerang course around in front until the queen was surrounded without escape. When the gap was successfully closed, the five of them skidded to a halt in the center of Sähm’s vast empty tundra. <br />
<br />
Seraya swerved the stallion in half-circles and braced an arm across Tàhti’s chest, her eyes shooting around at the faces of four men dressed in the tatters of nomads, armed with batliffs across their backs and khanjars on their waistbands. They hadn’t the appearance of soldiers, despite the military weapons on hand, but they were not arbitrary wanderers, either. Not entirely. They were some new amalgamation of paupers and mercenaries, too skilled at hunting games to be farmers, yet lacking the discipline of a professional army.<br />
<br />
“We’ve got nothing of use to you. Just let us be on our way, and you do the same,” Seraya demanded.<br />
<br />
The men said nothing. They settled onto their steeds and studied their newest catch with thoughtful consideration.<br />
<br />
“I’ve got a child with me, for the love of Méraah,” Seraya insisted. “I would think even bandits have a code of some sort? What threat could she possibly pose? Just let us go.”<br />
<br />
One of them wore a ragged bandana and a faded leather eye patch, and he guided his animal up next to the queen and said to the others, “Bandits?” He smirked at Seraya and said, “Well, now that’s a first. Been called many things, and probably fit the bill to most of them, but never a bandit. I kinda like it, though.” Then he reached across and touched a fingertip to Tàhti’s chin, like a sportive big brother, but she recoiled. “Bet you never gone that fast on a horse before in your life, have you?” he said to her. “Your mother’s quite a rider, the equestrian type, I bet, judging from all those pretty gems and trinkets around her wrists. Now, tell me, is that a pure chiffon skirt or the kind they make now with hemp linen to make it look real?” he asked Seraya. <br />
<br />
“What do you want from us? My jewelry? Fine,” Seraya scoffed. She reached down and unfastened the emerald bracelet and held it out to him. “Take it.” <br />
<br />
The one-eyed man studied the bracelet with a peculiar smile but did not reach for it.<br />
<br />
Then the queen said, “If you want the skirt, well then I’m afraid we’ll have to get it resized, seeing as you’re at least my brother’s height, if not taller. And I’m really not sure green is your color, even in the moonlight.”<br />
<br />
The man laughed aloud, a genuine hearty chuckle that evaporated into the evening air. One of his cohorts leaned in and said something in his ear about confiscating the jewelry as a means to fund their future ventures, but the one-eyed outlaw waved him away. “I think the lady is correct in that even ‘bandits’ have a code,” he said, looking directly at Seraya. “So, we’ll let her keep her wares. I mean, after all, what would a noblewoman be without her diamonds and gold? Funny thing what defines us, isn’t it?”<br />
<br />
“I’m not sure I catch your meaning,” Seraya sighed.<br />
<br />
The man shrugged and said, “Well, I’m sure you don’t. How could you ever know what it is to live in squalor and watch your oppressors reap the rewards of your labor? I wonder how many slaves died mining for those beautiful jewels that you so easily toss away to crooks, as you say. What do you think? Ten? Twenty? One?”<br />
<br />
“I think you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about and that your grievances are sorely misplaced,” Seraya told him. <br />
<br />
He shook his head and sat up on his horse. “Oh, I wouldn’t be so quick to say that, madam. I’ve watched your kind all my life, had the best seat in the house, as a matter of fact. But you’re right. It wouldn’t be wise to take a thing from a helpless mother and child, out here all alone in the desert after dark. There are other ways to make a point.”<br />
<br />
“Well, these two have got to belong to somebody,” the third rider then spoke up. He had taken the khanjar from its holster and was cleaning his nails with the tip, and it was through this exchange that Seraya realized her own anonymity. The pale blue half-light had obscured the scar on her face, and they had no idea to whom they were speaking, but the brandished blade still made her uneasy, if for no other reason than Tàhti’s safety. Then the man with the knife suggested, “We can take them with us for ransom. The Goddess knows we need the money.”<br />
<br />
Calabrecians, Seraya then deduced, and so she looked for a window in the dialogue to lobby for their release. But the ransom proposal was met with the one-eyed marauder’s fierce distaste, and he spun his horse around to his comrade and gave him a heavy shove. “What kind of a cretin are you? That’s not what we do. That’s not how we’ve ever operated, and we’re not gonna start tonight.” And he turned away from with a scowl. “Imbecile.” <br />
<br />
“Well, then what is it that you do,” Seraya finally interjected. “Because if it’s not thievery or kidnapping or cross-dressing or anything else of that sort, then you might let us be on our way.” Then she eyed the khanjar in the third man’s hand and added, “And you should know that a crime against royalty carries a certain penalty of death, particularly an assault on the queen and princess of Sähm…as I have not yet been able to convince the empress otherwise.” She raised an eyebrow and stared into the face of the one-eyed man with deadpan severity. He stared back at her, as if she had just grown a second head, and he sized her up again, taking another account of the fineries and gemstones and the black and red-fringed silk riding mantle that carried the Monascan Imperial emblem. And when the moonlight shifted, it revealed, at last, the faint shadow of a slave’s brand on her cheek. <br />
<br />
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered, and a sly grin crept across his face that Seraya was unable to interpret. “It couldn’t be,” he said, staring narrowly through the darkness at an impossibility. He was turning something over in his mind that left him artfully astounded, and Seraya was beginning to feel like an insect in a jar. “So, then it’s true,” he uttered to himself, then said to her, “I thought it was the delirium of newfound freedom that started rumors of a Calabrecian slave at the throne of an empire. A Monascan empire, at that.” He maneuvered his horse around to get a better look at her and the child and said, “Who’d have thought that Seraya Bahan would stumble into royalty and that I would stumble onto her, all these many seasons later.”<br />
<br />
Seraya regarded him with suspicion. She looked him over thoroughly but came to no useful conclusions, aside from the Monascan slave’s brand on the side of his neck, which made the previous Meraavian reference odd, she thought. “I really don’t believe we’ve met, sir,” she denounced. “I’ve never had contact with Monascan slaves prior to the war, which would limit our acquaintance to the last thirty passings, and I’ve never seen you before in my life.”<br />
<br />
He gave her a thin, knowing smile but did not pursue the subject further except to say, “Well, Your Highness. That’s too bad. We might’ve been very instrumental in each other’s lives if things had been different.”<br />
<br />
“This is a jackpot if I’ve ever seen one,” one of the others then announced. “If we’re ever gonna change our game plan, then now’s the time. We take the queen of Sähm, and there’s no limit to the leverage we’d have. And the child’s just a bonus. Think about it. It’s like chess,” he said. “You’re a chess man. Well, this is an obvious checkmate, friend. We’ve got to do this.”<br />
<br />
The man with the patch couldn’t tear his gaze from the eyes of Queen Seraya Bahan. He considered his options with great care and quantity and said, “Or a stalemate.” <br />
<br />
The queen tightened an arm around the little girl on the saddle and waited for his verdict. <br />
<br />
“Let them go,” he ordered, and the others broke into a gale of discord, thought him crazy for letting the biggest fish of all slip the line and disappear into the abyss, but he ripped the batliff from over his back and swung his animal around at them with the blade sweeping past each man’s throat. “I said we’re letting them go!” he roared. “There’s a better way to get things done, and taking them prisoner is not it. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this.” He glanced back at Seraya Bahan and said to his men, “I know what I’m doing. Just let them go about their business, and I’ll explain everything later.” Then he held out an arm toward the west, granting them safe passage.<br />
<br />
The queen nodded once with a polite, “Thank you.” And she spurred the stallion into a trot and headed out across the desert, leaving the one-eyed man to contemplate the encounter in befuddled amazement.<br />
**********<br />
The Empress sat quietly at the banquet table, watching the inauguration festivities with a troubled frown. It was the official celebration of the new sovereignty, and so far her queen was a no-show. <br />
<br />
A percussion ensemble of taiko drums, darbukas, and bongos rattled behind veiled dancers as political dignitaries mingled with nobles and military officers, exchanging ideas on how best to organize the affairs of the new regime. Tai Ogami possessed absolute power in the war and conference rooms, yet very little in her own union with Seraya. The empress would give her wayward spouse until the conclusion of the Khintari performance, and then she would proceed without her. <br />
<br />
The Khintari rumbled through the hall with a metallic thunder. Musicians traded smaller instruments for huge, elephant-hide taiko drums as acrobat dancers soared in lofty somersaults to splashing gongs and clanging bronze pipe bells. Guests stood around the main floor and observed the performance, shouting them on. Carousing fit for an Empress. An Empress with empty seats on either side. Tai let out a defeated sigh and glanced around the hall for her wife and Tàhti, but she found only formal dress military uniforms, old men in dignitary robes and their wives, raising cups, laughing, calling out kudos to the Khintari dancers. She sipped her wine, toyed with her napkin, fidgeted with her silverware, even engaged in small talk with Captain Olanga to pass the time.<br />
<br />
One of the palace guards then approached the table. He came around behind the empress’ chair, and he leaned down and whispered in her ear. Tai threw her napkin into her plate and motioned for the Prime Minister and Olanga to follow her.<br />
<br />
On the far eastern side of the city, a flaming kiosk raged as citizens and soldiers formed a water chain, dowsing the blaze one heavy bucket at a time. It had been a rug and tapestry stand, and the scorching fabric sent a pungent odor of charred camel hair through the city. A bolt of fear struck the empress’ heart for having no word on the whereabouts of Tàhti and Seraya, and she dispatched two soldiers into the city to look for them while the fire raged.<br />
<br />
“Vandals,” Prime Minister Lior muttered as he and Olanga assessed the scene. “That’s all they are. Vandals, trying to send a message.”<br />
<br />
“Well, it’s a point duly noted,” the Captain sighed and watched the flames claw the sky. “Duly noted for the third time, this season. Set the animals free, and they’ll certainly run amuck, won’t they?”<br />
<br />
“And some who’ve always had their freedom are little more than animals themselves,” the empress remarked, keeping her eyes on the blaze. “I’m sure you know that as well as I do.” And she folded her arms across her chest and started to walk away but stopped and faced him. “And if I were you, Captain,” she warned, “I’d be very careful when voicing my prejudices, particularly in the presence of myself or the queen.” <br />
<br />
He cleared his throat and nodded once. “Yes, Your Majesty.” But in his eyes were pyres of contempt as fierce as the fire before him. The Empress left him there and strolled away to speak with the Prime Minister. <br />
<br />
Olanga straightened his uniform and surveyed the area on his own, silently scorning her. He kicked through stumps of charred debris and thought about the outrage that sparked this mayhem. He shared in the malcontent of it thoroughly. Ogami’s lofty aspirations would be problematical to say the least. And as long as this anarchy continued, her unified Sähm would remain the grandiloquent imaginings of a slave girl and her beloved renegade. <br />
<br />
There was little that could be done about the incident. There hadn’t been any casualties, only the merchant’s lost property and revenue. And so it was logged for future review as the Empress and her entourage headed back to the palace with yet another disruption to consider. <br />
*********<br />
Seraya and Tàhti were met by a squad of security soldiers a mile outside Monasco, and they escorted them into the city where Jun was waiting at the rear palace entrance. <br />
<br />
“Tai has been beside herself all evening,” she warned as she helped Tàhti out of the saddle. “We’ve had trouble in the city again, and no one knew if the two of you were all right.” Then she looked at Seraya straight on and said, “There’s a reason why there are guards assigned to your safekeeping. We can’t afford to have you put at risk. The desert isn’t what it was before the war.”<br />
<br />
“No, it certainly isn’t,” Seraya muttered. She brushed herself off and added, “Not that everyone in Sähm had the luxury of a day trip without being run down and accosted. First it was military patrols, now it’s thieves and marauders. Can’t say what’s changed, actually.”<br />
<br />
As she said this, Jun took sudden notice to Seraya’s torn skirt and the specks of blood that had seeped through Tàhti’s dress from the wound on her thigh. She looked to Seraya with alarm.<br />
<br />
“It’s a long story,” Seraya said. “But we’re fine. Both of us are fine.”<br />
<br />
Jun exhaled sharply with a look of reproach and checked over her shoulder for Tai. Then she took Tàhti by the hand and Seraya by the arm. “Come with me.”<br />
<br />
She led them into the palace to a side chamber and shut the door. “What in the name of all the gods happened to you?” she demanded in a low voice. “This is precisely the thing that—“<br />
<br />
“Do you have any idea how terrified she is of those soldiers?” Seraya said of Tàhti. “We had every intention of going in the carriage, but then one of them reached for her like a piece of baggage, and she…I dunno…she had some sort of episode.” <br />
<br />
Tàhti withdrew to a seat at nearby table and watched and listened. <br />
<br />
“What was I supposed to do?” Seraya continued. “I couldn’t keep her here, not with a public execution taking place just paces from the palace doors, and she was shaking like a leaf in the wind. She wouldn’t let anyone near her but me.”<br />
<br />
Jun took it all into consideration, but she was bound to the statutes of her daughter, and she said, “There are few circumstances, if any, in which the Queen of Sähm should ever find herself miles from the city, alone and unprotected. Now, I’ve said my peace, and you can ponder it as you wish. And I suggest you do, for you own sake.” She went over to Tàhti to inspect the injury on her leg, then gave Seraya a mortified glare when she saw the nature of the wound. <br />
<br />
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever she went through during the war is beyond anything you or I could understand,” Seraya told her. “And she still hasn’t said a word. So, we’re never really going to know until she decides to tell us.”<br />
<br />
Jun cupped her hands under the girl’s chin and looked at her with dispirited sympathy. “What would make a child so broken?” she uttered. “You’ve got nothing to fear, anymore. You’re in a safe place, and you can have anything you want here. You can have all the toys in Sähm that you could possibly imagine, more food and clothes and games than a child could ask for. But the soldiers have to do their jobs, and the most important one is to keep you out of harm’s way. Do you understand?”<br />
<br />
Tàhti lowered her eyes to the floor with a slight nod, which was enough to satisfy Jun Ogami, and she took her hand and coaxed her along to have a proper bandage applied by the medical staff. “Tell Tai I’ll have her back and ready for bed shortly,” she said as she left the room. “And if you don’t care to tell me what happened out there, then I’m sure Tai will be quite the avid listener.”<br />
. . . .<br />
When Seraya came to the royal suite, her wife was seated in the corner of the room, waiting for her. Seraya proceeded to the vanity table and let down her hair. There wasn’t going to be an exchange of pleasantries, so she readied herself for bed in a pensive silence as Tai watched, wordless, motionless. Seraya removed her jewelry and set it on the table. She rubbed jasmine oil into her pores and combed her hair with a peripheral view of the empress in the edge of the mirror, ruminating from the shadows. All that filled their silence was the crackle of the fireplace, and when it became too much to ignore, Seraya opened her mouth to explain but was cut short.<br />
<br />
“I gave a speech tonight about the future of Sähm,” Tai announced. “About building a naval fleet for exploration purposes and preparing for the inception of global trade.” She remained in her seat and spoke with unsettling sobriety. “I denounced most of the old military training methods and initiated new ones, and I stood behind my decision to end slavery, which was when I intended to introduce you as a political leader, as my wife and the queen of a new empire. But,” she shrugged, “you were mysteriously absent, so I was forced to turn one of the most powerful women in Sähm into a side note. Not quite the way I saw that playing out, but I’m sure you had your reasons, and I’d certainly like to hear them, if that’s all right with you.”<br />
<br />
“I had every intention to be here,” Seraya told her. “But as we were headed back, we were met by a group of gentlemen who mistook me for someone else. And after a very brief conversation, we went our separate ways, but not soon enough to return to Monasco and make myself and Tàhti ready for the banquet. And for that, I’m sorry.”<br />
<br />
Tai shifted in her seat and crossed a leg over the other and said, “Maybe an apology wouldn’t be necessary if you hadn’t stolen away across the desert on a military horse and ordered the guards to stay behind, which, I might add, is an abuse of power that not only put your own life at risk, but Tàhti’s as well,” Tai said. “And a group of gentlemen in the middle of Sähm after sunfall have nothing good on their minds when stumbling upon the Queen of Monasco, alone.” The anger in her eyes faded as they traveled over Seraya’s dogged appearance and stopped on the tattered hem of her gown. “What did they do to you?”<br />
<br />
Seraya pursed her lips. “Nothing. And if they had—I imagine you’d have them hunted down and crucified to the palace doors,” she chided. “They did nothing to either of us. They stopped us and mistook me for someone else. One of them thought he’d known me under different circumstances, but it was just dribble, trying to impress the others, I imagine. It’s nothing to get alarmed about. I apologize for not being here, and I only went alone because Tàhti was afraid of the soldiers. And I might be royalty in the wake of recent things, but you seem to forget, I lived a very different life until now. I think I can handle a few wayward rogues with chips on their shoulders.”<br />
<br />
Tai shook her head and searched the marble floor for how to respond. Then she said, “I understand Tàhti’s afraid of them, and she has good reason, but she’s going to have to get used to them, one way or another. It doesn’t help to take her out of what she thinks is a threatening situation and then put her into one that actually is. I want you to promise me you’ll take the guards with you from now on. I have enough to worry about, and your safety isn’t supposed to be on that list.” Then she added, “And it was likely those ‘chips’ that burned down a merchant stand tonight, by the way. One man’s life savings incinerated before the sun could find its way behind the Ahagaar. You should be thankful they didn’t recognize you, or you and I might be having very different evening.”<br />
<br />
Seraya turned back to the mirror. She lit a pinch of incense over a candle flame and let it smolder in a copper bowl. “Well, they knew exactly who I was when I told them. And as it came clear, whatever ill intentions they might have had were put aside for fear that you might have them drawn and quartered by elephants.”<br />
<br />
Tai rose from her chair and crossed the room, perturbed. She unfastened the buttons of her uniform jacket and threw it to the bed. “And you don’t see that as reckless and foolish?” she insisted. She pulled off her boots and said, “There are times when your identity can get you killed, Seraya. I’m sorry, but it’s just the nature of things right now. I never intended there to be so much civil instability, but it is what it is, and until I can figure out how to steady the social politics, you have got to promise to keep security soldiers with you outside the palace at all times.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, I promise,” Seraya mumbled to the mirror and finished her regimen. The nature of things had taken a remarkable turn in recent weeks, and she felt as confined as when the Calabrecian boundaries had her hemmed in to 2nd-Colony. It wasn’t what Tai had imagined for them. This, she understood. All the opulence and sophisticated grandeur of royalty was supposed to have released her from her daydreams and made them tangible, palpable, real. But it had all become so complicated so fast, and now there was a child to consider, a child with a frightening mystery at the tip of her tongue whose future was as uncertain as anyone’s at the present. <br />
<br />
Tai let the issue dissolve into an awkward hush that followed them both to bed but kept her awake and brooding. She stared at the ceiling, hardly able to make out the mosaic through the waning firelight—a tiled portrait of Monascan deities intermingling with honored mortals like herself, offering blessed tokens of prosperity among the ossuaries of an oasis. It was a dichotomy that had narrated a thousand seasons of Monascan culture, a people anointed with all the gifts of greatness but at an everlasting price. And as the primary ruler of the first empire, what she valued most was worth more than anything that could be immortalized in stone. She turned and watched the gentle rise and fall of her wife’s shoulders as she slept, and she touched her face, grateful to be able to do so. She was just like her mother, fiercely independent and courageous without apology, but her naivety was a lethal factor which, if left unbridled, could bring all things of marble and stone down upon them in a cascade of ruin. <br />
<br />
When sleep finally came she dreamt of fire and demons and the betrayal of close companions, the loss of her lover’s kiss, the collapse of a pantheon.Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8650350670402041785.post-14188664211403810982010-09-01T21:22:00.000-04:002013-11-12T12:19:43.871-05:00Monasco: Passage to Anathema (Part II)<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>Part Two</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>The Inception</em></div>
<br />
<br />
The desert had a fickle climate during the season of Abeya, and the night had grown colder than usual. The sandstorm persisted most of the way to Camp Vallone but was showing signs of reprieve in the final miles. Forty recruits had dwindled down to thirty-three as they trudged through the dunes in a trail of desperation, stepping over the fallen while the cadre ushered the rest along on horseback. Tai had been paired with Arehlya Seguro and a boy she knew only as “Driss” and together they’d hauled the dead man for an eternity. Cold as he was, he kept them warm. His listless remains, so much larger than they, shielded them from the wind and the stinging spray and the snap of the switch. But Driss was buckling under now. The weight of the man was like pulling an ox through a rabbit hole, and Tai could scarcely feel her own legs, couldn’t figure how they kept her up, limp as gooseberry vines. Driss took two more steps then crumbled to his knees and the dead man drove them all down with him. Seguro was tall and stocky for her age, and so she bore the weight until Tai could hook an arm around the boy and drag him to his feet again, and they pressed on. <br />
<br />
She lifted her eyes from the path and saw faintly the smoke from a campfire at the horizon, then the tiny silhouette of civilization like a dark phantom resting in an ocean of sand. Driss spit up something black and bloody and vomited more of it down the front of his shirt. <br />
<br />
“Just a little longer,” Tai breathed, hefting the corpse up onto her shoulders. He was beginning to rot and she choked back last night’s dinner and told Driss, “We’re almost there. Maybe a mile. Maybe two.”<br />
<br />
“We should cut him loose,” Seguro growled. She had a hold of the dead man’s shredded pullover, had it twined around her forearms for leverage; remnants of blood from a gaping wound at his throat had coagulated into the back of her hair. “He’s not gonna make it, and we can’t afford his weight, too. Just let him drop.”<br />
<br />
“No,” Tai insisted raspily. <br />
<br />
Seguro heaved the body forward in an angry huff. “You’re sympathy’s gonna cost us both,” she warned. “This is a test. Don’t you see that? Weeding us out. The strong survive, not the compassionate.”<br />
<br />
Tai dropped an arm to grab at Driss and pulled him along, and the body toppled and the three of them were driven knee-deep again, buried in the dead man’s stench. <br />
<br />
“You see?” Seguro wheezed as she stumbled for footing. “Let him go!”<br />
<br />
“No!” Tai crawled around and placed herself at the rear, braced each of the dead man’s stiffening legs onto her shoulders and stood upright. She reached back to Driss, took his hand and lured him in close so that he could hang onto her waistband. “There’s supposed to be a code,” she grumbled and staggered forth. “You never leave a warrior behind. It’s written in the Hall of the Gods. You’re supposed to know that.”<br />
<br />
“Well, I’m not one of the gods, and I’m telling you—“ <br />
<br />
A war horse plodded over to where they bickered, and Tai winced up into the face of Sergeant Muralii. She was at once beautiful and frightening, and she glared down at them as if to burn a hole right where they stood that would swallow them away, dead man and all. She flicked her eyes over the situation to asses it for consequence and saw Driss sprawled in the sand back behind them. Muralii dismounted. She went over and touched fingertips to the boy’s neck. When she rose her expression darkened with finality, and Tai heaved a dispirited sigh. <br />
<br />
“Move out,” Muralii snapped. “Go.” <br />
<br />
“I told you,” Seguro muttered to Tai as they steadied themselves in the sand. Then Sergeant Muralii produced a leather snakewhip from her weapon belt and slashed a bleeding welt across Seguro’s face and Tai cowered, awaiting a similar blow, but nothing happened. <br />
<br />
“I said move out,” the sergeant hissed. She glanced at Tai, and her eyes were black wells filled with a complicated muddle of venom and duty. <br />
<br />
The cadets obeyed and secured the dead man for the last mile. Tai wondered when Driss had actually passed because she thought he’d had a hold of her for several paces. She stole a glimpse behind her for a silent goodbye, to wish him safe travels on the heels of Numaih, but when the wind desisted and her visibility cleared, Driss was gone. She thought perhaps he had faked his death and was now skulking across the desert in an attempt to defect. She scoured the landscape but found no trace of him until Sergeant Muralii trotted past with the boy’s body draped over the back of her stallion, and she continued on toward Camp Vallone. <em>Leave no warrior behind.</em> <br />
<br />
When they arrived at the training grounds, Tai sank to the earth like a boulder on quicksand but it was short-lived. The recruits were summoned into formation at the barracks; it was a haggard lot, thirty-one left barely standing, and the silence among them was eerie. The murdered slaves were heaped like firewood in the center of the camp where a hole would be dug in which the bodies would later burn. She thought about Driss and whether he would join them, but as she awaited further instructions, one of the cadre pulled a transport wagon up next to the formation. It was the same wagon that had carried them, bound and kicking, from Monasco out into the middle of Sähm. Only now it carried twenty-seven dead cadets, wrapped in treated linens for the same trip back to the city where their families could claim them for burial. That had been a tradition, one that Tai thought might have been abandoned with the rest of the old protocol as she stumbled over so many lifeless friends en route to the encampment. <br />
<br />
The cadre went over a list of names of those who had lived to secure a bunk in the barracks, and then they were dismissed, at last, for a water break. Tai spotted Seguro standing at the wagon with blood in her hair and a swollen gash on her face, gazing into the pile of Monascan children with tired troubled eyes. <br />
<br />
Tai strode up beside her and took a long hard look at it, too. She said a silent prayer and then turned to Arehlya Seguro. “See. I told you,” she uttered, then headed for the water bags. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
**************</div>
By the end of Abeya the cadre seemed less bent on eliminating recruits and had focused their efforts on survival training. Basic skills would be necessary to sustain themselves under Sähm’s harshest conditions, and so they learned to make fire from animal fat and a polished section of body armor. They learned how to hunt with a long bow and shot down red deer and antelope and jack rabbits. They removed the hides and dried them on spikes in the sweltering Lumina sun, extracted blood meal from the innards to fertilize small gardens where they planted leeks, radishes, and papyrus root, which they were forbidden to eat. After days of enforced fasting, limited rations of corn meal and flatbread were delivered from the city, but this was a luxury that pitted one recruit against another in sudden slapdash brawls, the spoils of which went to the cadet who was still conscious when it was finished. <br />
<br />
Tai Ogami found herself embroiled with Seguro over a bowl of wheat gruel and throttled her with a flax rope until she turned purple and finally relented. It was calculated chaos, sanctioned by the cadre, a closely-monitored interface to establish leaders and followers. And Tai was making quick and solid headway. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
On the eighty-first day of Lumina the cadets were called to formation. Two large wooden crates were placed before the group, and within them something moved and scrambled about like earthworms trapped in a mud hole. The recruits stood by with wary faces as their names were called, one by one, each summoned from the ranks into a single-file line for instructions on the next exercise in soldier readiness. Sergeants Kiraç and Siva pried open the lids with iron rods and threw them aside. Then Kiraç reached inside and produced a wriggling shepherd pup that couldn’t have been older than a season; he handed it over to Seth Broussard and ordered him back in line. And the process continued until thirty-one pups found thirty-one new masters. The cadets were delighted and bewildered. Tai’s animal was a male with a black saddle, huge brindle paws, and a wet black nose that nudged her neck and nibbled her fingertips. The recruits had consequently forgotten themselves and an eager chatter moved through the ranks, but it was abruptly squelched when Kiraç bellowed for them to be silent and brought them to attention with the pups milling about at the ends of their leads. <br />
<br />
“These animals are not gifts,” he roared. “They are not a cuddly reward, nor a pleasant distraction from your training. On the contrary. They are a direct and critical part of your training, for you will be required to care for, groom, and condition these canines for military service, just as we are grooming you.” He strolled over to Seth, grabbed his pup by the scruff of her neck and held her up high for the others to see as he continued. “The dogs of war,” he announced. “These animals are future warriors that will serve a vital purpose in combat operations. They will learn to hunt, to detect foreign intruders a hundred yards off, and they will leap into battle without hesitation to protect those who have protected them. Sound familiar? You will learn as much from your canine as they will from you. Loyalty. Fearlessness. Perseverance.” He handed the dog back to Broussard and made a slow and deliberate circle around the formation while he spoke. “Your dogs are not your pets—they are your responsibility. Each animal will, in time, be a direct reflection of the warrior that molded him, and if he grows to be timid or unfaithful or disobedient he will be deemed unfit for warfare and will be disposed of…and so will his master. It shouldn’t take more than a few seasons to make that assessment, so I suggest you begin the bonding process now, as if your lives depended upon it.” He stopped in front of Tai and made direct eye contact for a long moment. “Because they do.” Then he lifted his eyes to the group and dismissed them to the barracks for the night. <br />
<br />
Seth named his female Lyrah, after the goddess of good fortune, with hopes that doing so might exempt them both from certain demise. Seguro, after thinking long and hard, would call hers Nikos, after no such deity; it had been her grandfather’s name, now deceased. <br />
<br />
“Sure that’s a good idea?” Seth mumbled as Seguro examined the dog’s teeth and paw size. “Might wanna rethink naming him after somebody who’s already dead,” he smirked.<br />
<br />
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” she quipped. “And disrespect my grandfather like that again and I’ll cut your tongue out,” she snarled. <br />
<br />
Seth made a preposterous sound. “Yeah, right. With what? Your wooden khanjar? They won’t let us have real blades for another four seasons, so I’d hate for you to splinter me to death,” he chuckled.<br />
<br />
Seguro shot from her bunk with a hand around the boy’s throat, but Tai stepped between them and broke it up. “Knock it off!” she demanded. “This isn’t the time. You need to stop thinking about yourselves and figure out how to keep these dogs from running wild.” She left them be and dropped onto her bunk. “If they don’t start learning early, we’ll never gain their trust.” Her pup groped for footing to climb onto the bunk with her, and she firmly pushed him back to the floor where she felt he belonged. The straw mattress might prove too comfortable and make him lethargic and hesitant to one day leap at an intruder.<br />
<br />
“Well, what’d you decide to name yours?” Seth asked. “You could call him Apaimah, after the god of war. Or Tahar, after your father’s horse?”<br />
<br />
“I’m naming him Sargon,” she told him.<br />
<br />
Seguro made a sour face and said, “Sargon? Never heard of that god. What kinda name is that?”<br />
<br />
“If you read your Pre-World history books instead of looking for ways to bully people all the time, then maybe you’d know,” Tai mumbled. <br />
<br />
Seguro rolled her eyes but had nothing to say, and Seth giggled. He stretched out on his bunk with Lyrah on his chest, pawing at his face and licking his chin. He smiled fondly at her and scratched her ears, muttered playful mantras under his breath. Then the barracks doors burst open and Muralii and Siva stormed inside with torches blazing and broadswords drawn. They clanged at the bedposts and made an alarming cacophony that sent Nikos and Lyrah tumbling to the floor as their masters bolted to attention. Sargon tried to shimmy under the bunk on his belly, but Tai fished him back out into the commotion and, with a firm grip on his lead, had him lay still and quiet at her feet. She found it easy to subdue him with fear but preferred if she could do so through discipline and respect. For now, however, fear would have to suffice as the training sergeants ordered the cadets out into camp for an impromptu round of evening calisthenics. They tied their animals together and did diving push-ups and ran in place, bringing the knees up to the chest until it was nearly impossible to lift their feet. They rolled in the dirt and used each other’s weight for resistance while struggling through an endless series of squats and wide-arm pull-ups. When the group was thoroughly spent, they were ordered back to formation and brought to attention, slouched and teetering, and there they remained until the cadre finally grew bored and, alas, returned them to the barracks to sleep. <br />
<br />
This would become a daily ritual. They had lost only one more cadet to heat exhaustion, but the remainder flourished over the next two seasons, as did their animals. Sargon had grown into an eighty-pound brute and still had another season of growing left in him. Lyrah was affectionate and cunning; she loved Seth Broussard and it was evident in the way she watched his every move, waiting for command or a proud slap on the side. Nikos was protective. He didn’t need a leash and instead followed Seguro on his own, but if one stepped too close he warded them back with a show of teeth and a low rumble. <br />
<br />
And this continued through the following season, and the season after that. Everywhere the cadets went, their canines followed. They tailed them up into the mountains where the most rigorous training exercises took place on rugged, ankle-breaking terrain. They crept alongside through mountain caves and sniffed the air for danger, investigated every crevice and crag and negotiated over three hundred foot ravines on tremulous rope bridges with no more fear than their young masters. They sat by with watchful patience while cadets crossed wooden broadswords in the cliffs, and they later ran through training exercises of their own. Each canine was fitted with an elephant hide vest and a spiked collar and deployed into mock prison camps to track their masters’ scents and neutralize ‘enemy guards’. Tai’s dog Sargon excelled at this exercise, tearing a bloody gash in a fellow cadet’s forearm who’d posed as a Calabrecian sentry and lunged at the animal with a pole ax. When the threat was defused, Tai played her part well and lay as still as death while Sargon clenched her uniform collar and dragged her thirty meters to a predetermined safe zone. <br />
<br />
Nikos thrived on his function in hand-to-hand combat training. Sergeant Siva kept him detained and snarling, several yards off, while Seguro and Broussard grappled in the dirt. It was Seth’s job to subdue his battlemate and pin her to the ground, which he now did with ease at age fourteen, for his shoulders had broadened and his chest was filling out. When Seguro was satisfactorily restrained, Nikos was released. He sprinted for Broussard, leapt like a mountain lion, and knocked him into a tumbling heap with glistening fangs poised to take a piece of his throat. Seguro stumbled to her feet and called the dog back but not quickly enough for Seth who shook it off, then darted across the sand after her. But the two never made contact—their animals fought in their stead as Nikos charged the boy again in his master’s defense and collided with Lyrah who sprang from the rocks and took him down in a vicious tumult. The cadets called their animals off but continued their own confrontation.<br />
<br />
“What’s your problem?” Seth demanded, stepping into Seguro’s face. “How long was it gonna take before you stopped him from ripping my head off!”<br />
<br />
“That’s what he’s supposed to do! Where’ve you been for the last four seasons? And I called him back as soon as I could after you crushed my ribs back there! Could you give me a second to get up?” <br />
<br />
Seth winced at her. “Oh, yeah right, Seguro. You waited on purpose, and you know it. You were hoping he’d do just enough damage to take me outa training ‘cause you’re jealous that I can beat you now. Just admit it.”<br />
<br />
“Well, if I’d known you were gonna whine like this I would’ve brought you a bottle and a blanket,” she sassed. “You knew he was gonna take you down; it’s part of the exercise. You’re supposed to brace for it, dummy, and take the hit, not cry like a baby just ‘cause he scared you.”<br />
<br />
“You’re the only thing that scares me, with that ugly face ‘a yours, Brutilda,” he snapped, and she laughed at him.<br />
<br />
“Ohhhh, that really hurt,” she sang. “Real clever come-back. Been thinkin all season on that one, sissy boy?”<br />
<br />
“Enough!” Sergeant Muralii then commanded. She strode up between them and brought them both to attention. Tai Ogami pulled Sargon in close to her, kept her mouth shut, and watched from a safe distance. She hadn’t yet lost a sparring match with anyone and found such competitiveness to be petty and trifling. Apparently, Sergeant Muralii agreed. “I’ve just about had my fill of watching you two bicker like a couple of old women,” she growled. “You can despise each other all you want…on your own time. But when you’re out here, in my training circle, you’ll keep your differences to yourselves. Out here, you better figure out how to the best of friends because out there…” and she pointed out across the desert, “….all you’ll have is each other. You wanna know why the Monascan army was so successful at the Battle of Buhari? Why we leveled the Nyians in just two passings? Because they were disorganized, and their infrastructure was weakened by dissention among the ranks. Too many generals and not enough warriors. No cohesion whatsoever. Instead of aiming their hostility at the army on the other side of the battle ground, they let personal disputes become a distraction that ultimately destroyed them. And I’ll be damned to the gods if that happens here.” She shoved them both back into the training group and said, “If I hear another word or even think I see so much as a scowl from either of you, I’ll have you strung up by the wrists and whipped until the flesh falls.” <br />
<br />
For the next several passings each recruit was required to wear a cumbersome hemp jacket, lined with thirty pounds of sand. They were forbidden to take it off, even while they slept, and the cadets’ initially understood it to be a mass punishment, shared with Broussard and Seguro for all the infractions they had accumulated to date. The combat exercises also continued, without canine intervention but under the scrutiny of General Monasco’s military advisers instead. They made frequent visits and strolled through camp in formal-dress uniforms, stood at the sides of Sergeants Kiraç and Siva, watching the goings-on with severity. <br />
<br />
On the fifteenth passing of the sand jacket sentence the cadre went around the training circle and confiscated each cadet’s wooden sword. Then they went around again and distributed to each a thick leather breastplate, heavy rawhide greaves for the thighs, and a handheld katar knife, filed sharp as the edge of an eagle feather. Tai turned the weapon in her hands and marveled at its craftsmanship. It was a promotion of sorts, to be offered the tools of a true warrior. The katar wasn’t much more than a hunting knife but lethal nonetheless, if handled properly. She looked at Seth who offered a smirk and an eager wink. They had all been waiting for this moment since the cadre dumped them out into the middle of that sandstorm, six seasons ago. <br />
<br />
“This is the first and only blade you will be issued until you graduate to Corporal status,” Sergeant Muralii announced. “There are a variety of others with which you will eventually become very proficient—kendo swords, batliffs, khanjars, broadswords. But those will be introduced in due time. Until then, this weapon will become your best friend. Not your canine or your beloved battlemate, but this.” And she held hers up high for them to see. “You will keep it at your side in the same sheath that once held your training weapon, and there it will remain until death do you part. You will learn to make precision strikes at close range as well as how to eliminate the enemy from as far off as twenty meters.” She flipped the blade in her hand and flung it across the encampment with all the might and swiftness of a bolt of lightning, and it speared the trunk of a baobab tree behind the barracks. She dispatched a recruit to retrieve it and continued. “Cadet Ogami.”<br />
<br />
Tai’s stomach soared. She brought herself to attention and stepped forward, her chest pounding. Muralii rarely singled her out, and Tai spent the past four seasons punishing herself with overachievement, defeating everyone who challenged her, honing her fitness and survival abilities, excelling in her classroom studies, all with hopes that Sergeant Muralii just might take notice. <br />
<br />
“Cadets Ogami and Seguro will be the first demonstration subjects,” Muralii said, and Seguro came forth as well. “Suit up and take your positions.”<br />
<br />
The new uniform was bulky and felt like she’d strapped a small child to her back, which now accounted for the sand jacket assignment. The breastplate was too big, though the greaves were adjustable and snug. She stole a quick glance at Seth who was suiting up as well, and she envied his masculine frame, for his armor fit quite well and looked good on him. Seguro wasn’t fairing much better than she but they tightened the buckles as best they could and faced each other in the center of the circle. The exercise was identical to those they’d learned with cedar wood blades, and they knew the maneuvers well. Cadet Seguro harbored four seasons and twelve losing bouts worth of angst toward Tai Ogami, and it was evident in her strike, wild and careless. Tai took full advantage of this weakness and with the protection of polished elephant hide she could make it a more intimate match. She lunged at Seguro with a quick change of hand and a half turn that connected elbow to jaw and lay Seguro flat on her back; Tai grasped Seguro’s breastplate and rested her katar against her battlemate’s windpipe and the bout was over. She looked to Sergeant Muralii for approval and could have sworn she saw a smile, ever so slight. Her confidence exploded. She held out a hand to help Seguro up but she batted it away and scrambled to her own feet, seething. <br />
<br />
Tai chuckled lightly and shook her head. “Whatever. Suit yourself. So, who’s next? Seth? Wanna see if your reverse cut has improved since the last match?” she teased, twirling the weapon through her fingers the way Muralii had done in the desert at reception. It’d taken her two years to master it with cedar wood, and now she tested the skill with the new blade.<br />
<br />
“I’m next,” Muralii then announced and an anxious murmur traveled through the training circle. She gestured for Tai to take her position, and suddenly the cadet had boots of granite. She fumbled and dropped the katar into the sand.<br />
<br />
“Go ahead, Ogami,” Seguro taunted, dusting herself off. “We’re all on the edge of our seats, here. Show us how skilled you really are,” she smirked.<br />
<br />
A group of the General’s officers gathered at the circle and looked on. They folded their arms across the medals on their chests and spoke amongst themselves, taking note of the newest training techniques. <br />
<br />
Tai swiped her weapon from the dirt, gave Seguro a scowl, and readjusted the straps of her breastplate. She stood before Sergeant Muralii and took a fighting stance. She was solid and well-defined, like a sculpture of something from another time, and her brown eyes were sharp as any predator, yet sparkled in a way that moved Cadet Ogami to daydream. <br />
<br />
Together they side-stepped slowly, cautiously, mirroring each other’s movements in a strategic limbo, waiting for the other to flinch. It made Tai uneasy. She expected Muralii to charge her and in one broad sweep, slam her to the dust with a boot across the back of her neck and a khanjar poised to take her life, the way she herself had leveled Seguro. But instead the sergeant just circled and stared, piercing Ogami’s eyes with the coolness of a hooded cobra.<br />
<br />
And then she struck. It was so quick and flawless that Tai wasn’t sure it even happened until she found herself stumbling into her battlemates. They roared with the thrill of conflict and shoved her back into the circle. She could have blamed her sluggishness on the armor, but even if she were covered in fine silk, Muralii’s speed was astonishing and her technique unparalleled. Tai tossed the katar to the other hand, thought about attempting the same unorthodox maneuver that confused Seguro, then reconsidered and thought it wiser to toss it back to her strong hand. She watched Muralii’s eyes, searched them for a flicker or a glint that might warn of another strike. Muralii then glanced over Tai’s shoulder, as if someone approached from behind and Tai glimpsed back to secure herself, for she didn’t put it past Seguro to sabotage the bout for spite. Before she could refocus on Muralii, she was airborne. Her face hit the sand and somewhere in the toss her katar vanished and she heard a thunderous ringing in her skull and felt the dull throb of a knee between her shoulder blades. And then the roar of the others.<br />
<br />
“Never watch your opponent’s eyes, cadet,” Muralii hissed into her ear. “Eyes tell lies, and lies will get you killed.” She released her and dropped the katar into the dirt at her face. “You might want that back.”<br />
<br />
Tai lay there for several moments, staring at her weapon. She did not relish the idea of facing her fellow cadets after such a punishing display, but two more recruits were suiting up and needed the space to practice. She pushed herself to her knees and sheathed her katar. Seguro came over and gave her a slap on the back and told her not to feel so bad; no one ever expects the mouse to out-wrestle the python.<br />
<br />
“Shut up,” she muttered and staggered to her feet. Then she made a promise to herself. From this passing, she would never lose another match, and before she left for her final rite of passage she would challenge Sergeant Muralii again…and win.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
When the training was finished for the day and everyone made themselves ready for bed, Seth came to Tai’s bunk and eyed her strangely.<br />
<br />
She pulled off her boots and returned his curious stare. “What?”<br />
<br />
“How’d you do that?” he asked and Tai winced at him, befuddled.<br />
<br />
“Do what?” She massaged her throbbing shoulder and peered up at him with a shrug.<br />
<br />
“She charged you, full on, weapon drawn and ready to take a piece of you, and you made her miss. How’d you do that?”<br />
<br />
Tai issued a breath of humorless laughter and told him, “I stumbled over my own two feet, that’s what. If she missed, it was because I just happened to not be in the wrong place at the right time. I couldn’t even get out of her way fast enough to keep from getting run over. So, I dunno what you’re talking about.”<br />
<br />
He considered that for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. Well…yeah, okay. Your form was pretty wretched, and you looked like you’d seen a monster when she came after you. But when she made contact, you blocked and spun away with exceptional poise, it was like—“<br />
<br />
“She tossed me into four cadets, Seth,” Tai grumbled refutably. “And they threw me right back into her path.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, but that was only ‘cause she got an arm around you after the fact and then gave you a shove. It was all she could do. I’m telling you. You couldn’t see yourself, but from my vantage point, it was awesome. Next passing,” he said. “I’ll show you exactly what you did. I dunno if I can do it the same way, but I’ll show you what I saw.”<br />
<br />
Tai shrugged it off and stretched out on her bunk. “If you want. But whatever it was, I’m sure it was beginner’s luck. At least against Muralii, anyway.” Then she grinned and said, “Now, if I was sparring with you, then yeah. Totally intentional.”<br />
<br />
He smirked and shook his head. “Hey, don’t get too cocky, Ogami. You know I’m taller than you now. And I have a longer reach, so just watch yourself. There’s a glorious upset in your future that’s gonna bring that undefeated streak to an end, so I suggest you be ready.”<br />
<br />
Tai made a terrified face, then waved him away, and they bid each other goodnight. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***********</div>
Over the next seasons Tai learned to feint and parry with a kendo sword. It was no accident that her abilities remained unrivaled, and regular reports of her progress were being dispatched to the general by his most trusted advisor, Lieutenant Arturus Olanga. But Tai had a secret. She had watched the schedules of the barracks guards until she had every shift memorized according who was on post and for how long. There was a brief intermission between shifts, and in those prized moments Tai crept from her bunk and out into the shadows of Camp Vallone. Each night in the officer’s pavilion Sergeant Muralii sparred with Sergeant Siva, and Tai had found a shaded corner from which to watch from the outside. She peered through the wall slats, transfixed on Muralii’s technique, and she committed to memory every rising cut, every thrust, every turn, twist, and block until her head could hold no more. Then she put it all into practice on her own time, spearing and gouging imaginary enemies by the droves until she fancied having slain the entire Calabrecian infantry. <br />
<br />
By the age of fifteen Corporal Ogami could disengage her opponents with such alarming quickness that many of them refused to spar with her unless she was blindfolded. She took to swordsmanship like breathing and had developed a hand so steady that it advanced her toward the art of snake handling, as vipers were a common desert nuisance and showed little mercy for a noisy, trampling horde of military cadets. She learned how to creep up slowly and snare it behind the head as it struck, and in one swift twist, fracture its neck. She was bitten only once on the arm and transported to the infirmary in a heavy daze during which she caught glimpses of Sergeant Muralii from where she hung across the back of Muralii’s horse. Snatches of conversation, Muralii’s voice. Tai spent the next six passings in the throes of the most hideous visions until the wound seeped dry and finally closed. When she awoke, Muralii was standing over her bunk with a scimitar sword pointed at her chest. Tai scarcely issued a breath for fear the sergeant might slice her from sternum to midsection for some mysterious infraction. But instead she withdrew it and stood down.<br />
<br />
“I have to leave,” she told her matter-of-factly.<br />
<br />
Tai rubbed the grogginess from her eyes and sat up. “What do you mean, leave? I don’t understand, Sergeant.”<br />
<br />
Muralii thought on it for several moments and said, “A classified mission. I just wanted to check in on you because we ride out at sunfall. Lieutenant Olanga will be monitoring the training with Kiraç and Siva until I return. Shouldn’t be more than a few passings.” <br />
<br />
Tai could not put words to the weight of the situation and sat mute, blinking at Muralii with a gamut of possibilities swarming in her head. Perhaps she was a spy doing a tour in the desert to observe Calabrecian training tactics. Or maybe she had been chosen as a clandestine assassin to creep into Mirielle Delamere’s bed chamber and slit her throat while she slept. Corporal Ogami was delighted by the thought of either and further so that Sergeant Muralii would make her privy to such speculations. <br />
<br />
Then she revealed the scimitar again. She slid it into a decorative black sheath, studded with ruby gems and silver etching, and she offered it over to Tai. “For your accomplishments,” she said. “It was given to me when I was much younger than you by Saidi-Saif, and it’s time it changed hands.”<br />
<br />
Tai’s eyes grew wide as saucers as she ran her fingertips over the design and she said, “<em>Master</em> Saidi-Saif? You mean, <em>the</em> menguasai, Saidi-Saif, gave you a gift? I thought he was just a Monascan legend, dead and gone a hundred seasons ago, if he lived at all.”<br />
<br />
A very faint smile flickered across Muralii’s face and she told her, “He is a legend, yes, but very much alive. He’s selective about who he instructs, sometimes no one at all for ten seasons, and then someone’s name drifts his way, and there he is.” She rose to her feet and turned for the door with a solemn goodbye. Then she stopped and said, “Oh, and just so it’s abundantly clear, do not brandish that weapon until you’re twenty-one. If you do I’ll cut your hands off.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, Sergeant. And thank you!”<br />
<br />
“Don’t thank me,” she said over her shoulder. “Thank the gods you’re still alive.” And she disappeared out into Camp Vallone.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
***********</div>
A few passings came and went and Muralii had not returned. Instead Lieutenant Olanga orchestrated the training exercises in a very rigid fashion. He oversaw the kendo matches and often assigned himself as partner to the less experienced recruits. It seemed he took a Machiavellian delight in defeating them in only a few moves, and Tai found it less like training and more like an overt display of supremacy. When he advanced to the older trainees, Seth gave him significant trouble. He had borrowed several maneuvers from those Tai solicited from Muralii and put Olanga in an exhausted state after the first round. The Lieutenant caught his breath and responded with a series of combat patterns that hadn’t yet been taught, and it threw Seth into a desperate windmill of defense that ended with a broken nose and two cracked ribs. He called Seguro forth, and though her skills had improved immensely over the seasons, she was no match for Seth and in turn took a punishing kick to the midsection from the Lieutenant. He made examples of all the advanced Corporals. He used his expertise to subjugate them, one by one, round after round, until it was indisputable who the alpha was among them. Tai stood by and watched her comrades falter and stumble, cough and bleed, and she twirled the katar between her fingers and paced like a panther in a cage, waiting for her turn with venom in her veins. But it never came. Lieutenant Olanga dismissed them to their classes and took his leave, having passed her over without the slightest acknowledgment. She watched him as he disappeared through the camp, unsure as to whether he had forgotten her or if he was just saving himself for a fight much deadlier than she anticipated. <br />
<br />
“Thus is the man whose talent brings him prominence, but whose pride makes him a coward,” she heard someone say from behind. Corporal Ogami turned to face the frailest man she had ever seen. He was no taller than she and propped himself up on a knotted Blackwood cane. He smiled through a silver braided beard as he shuffled closer. “He fears you. And by leaving you to ponder his motives, he can disguise fear with indifference and turn jealousy into power.” He smiled at her again, fondly. <br />
<br />
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. Then a sudden and startling realization hit her, and she nearly backed into a thorn tree. “Wait a second. You’re him, aren’t you,” she marveled. “You’re really him. The menguasai. Sergeant Muralii said you were real, but I didn’t believe her. By the gods, you must be as old as the desert itself.”<br />
<br />
Saidi-Saif chuckled and said, “Older. Or so it feels at times. But you—you have many seasons in front of you and few behind. Inexperience is often a better teacher than I; it provides immeasurable opportunity, which is why we must get started without delay.”<br />
<br />
“Started?” she gaped. “You mean, you and <em>me?”</em><br />
<br />
Saidi-Saif nodded once and told her, “I had the privilege to guide the late Lieutenant Ogami when he was not much older than you. Why should I expect any less from the daughter of an icon?”<br />
<br />
Moved by the recollection of her father, Tai thought on those words at great length, then squared her shoulders and said, “You shouldn’t. And you won’t be disappointed.”<br />
<br />
And so a new brand of instruction began the following sunrise. Master Saidi-Saif held great respect for the requirements of a burgeoning soldier and insisted Tai maintain her studies and that she not forego Sergeant Kiraç’s training agenda for his own. It filled each passing with a brutal inventory of philosophy and history classes, kendo katas, calisthenics, canine scenarios, and sparring bouts. When all military requisites had been satisfied, she came to Saidi-Saif each sunfall and balanced acacia leaves on her fingertips, counted water droplets in mid-air, and learned a myriad of acrobatics to surpass those in the city carnivals. The dog Sargon watched with ears pricked in bewilderment as she dug holes in the dirt with her bare hands and put the dirt back, as she carried stones from one pile, twenty meters to another pile, and back again until her palms cracked and bled. And after twenty-seven passings of this she hadn’t yet picked up a formal weapon or blade under the tutelage of Master Saidi-Saif. So, during each day of military schooling, Corporal Ogami was like a racing stallion bucking at the stall. <br />
<br />
The other recruits were mystified by Saidi-Saif’s presence in the camp, for his prodigy as the most revered and elusive menguasai—or ‘spirit guide’—had made him a categorical myth, and so they were driven to all sorts of fantastical speculations. They deliberated over his function among the gods and wondered if his instruction was reserved for gods themselves. For every sunfall that Tai Ogami spent with him in the desert, she returned at sunrise a more dazzling combatant than when she left. <br />
<br />
Lieutenant Olanga continued to pass her over. He paired her up for sparring with every Corporal in the training platoon, and she defeated them as if it bored her, and perhaps it did. But Olanga would not indulge her, still. It wasn’t long before the recruits became exasperated with his methods and longed for those of their true instructor, and one of them spoke up.<br />
<br />
“When’s Sergeant Muralii coming back?” Corporal Ahmat Kabadi questioned after Seguro’s collarbone was fractured by the butt of Olanga’s broadsword. Casualties were commonplace in Camp Vallone, and fatalities were no less ordinary. But the trainees’ respect was quickly waning under the Lieutenant’s unbridled ego. <br />
<br />
Olanga gave the young Corporal a detached gaze, sheathed his weapon, and told them all flatly, “Sergeant Muralii isn’t coming back. Sergeant Muralii is dead. So, unless you all would like to meet the same careless fate, then I suggest you stop pining for the past and learn to defend yourselves.” The group crescendoed with a flurry of talk, and he silenced them. Then he commenced the exercises again without ever returning to the subject of Sergeant Muralii again.<br />
<br />
Tai Ogami thought she had been bludgeoned with an iron club. It felt as if something had reached inside and tore a hole in her gut and filled it with flames. And Olanga’s callous disposition only fed those flames, and so she broke rank and approached him with a defiant tongue.<br />
<br />
“What do you mean, she’s dead?” she demanded, stepping into his space. “How do you know that? You can’t possibly know that for certain. What if she’s just…I dunno, detained? Or maybe she just needs more time to—“<br />
<br />
Olanga’s sword whipped around from his side with a metallic swoosh and stopped Tai Ogami in her tracks. She stood at the tip of all his resentment as it pierced a tiny slit in the leather of her breastplate. She lifted a malevolent glare from the edge of his blade and met his eyes for the first time all season. The training circle fell silent.<br />
<br />
Olanga said, “You’ll get back in line and stand down, or I will see to it that you and Sergeant Muralii have plenty of time to discuss her combat inefficiency in the <em>afterlife</em>…<em>Corporal</em>.”<br />
<br />
The consequences for threatening an agent of the general’s court, if it were perceived as such, were expulsion from the Monascan army and life imprisonment, and he was baiting her, salivating for a reason to make that report. She wanted to slip a hand around his sword arm, snap it at the elbow, appropriate his weapon, and jam it into his throat. If for no other reason than the apathetic delivery of the news of Muralii’s death. He honored nothing and no one but himself, and in that moment of clarity, Corporal Ogami deemed him unworthy of the dust on her boots.<br />
<br />
She uttered a begrudging, “Yes, sir.” <br />
<br />
Tai took her place with the others as the subject was abandoned and the incident dismissed.<br />
<br />
They practiced until they were offered a short meal break where they ate well. For having advanced to the rank of Corporal, they were permitted—and encouraged—to eat with the enlisted soldiers on the far side of the camp where cooks roasted wild boar over glowing hickory coals and shucked cacti and crushed maize for polenta cakes. They were no longer required to go hungry for the sake of endurance and elimination. It was important now that they maintain a robust physique and a vigilant mind because each season would become more combat-intensive until the final rite of passage at twenty-one. <br />
<br />
Tai had no appetite. She took a cup of pehka juice to a remote seat outside the refectory and watched an eagle owl as it soared across the Ahagaar. Sargon lay at her feet and rested his head on her boots. A tangle of emotions twined around her heart and confused her, for she had never loved anyone before, aside from her parents. She loved Seth dearly, but that was something else. Inside she had always known that looking for affection from Sergeant Muralii was like hoping for the love of a wild tiger—capricious, unpromised, and hypothetical. It was forbidden, foremost. Military laws against fraternization would have made it a dangerous and impossible affair. And Muralii was fourteen years her senior; what would she have ever wanted with a lovesick Corporal whose life had been so systematically predesigned by her superiors. And what in all of Sähm had she done to get herself killed? Tai hadn’t considered that possibility, couldn’t envision her mentor taking a death blow. Mortality made her shudder—she despised death and all its black mystery. She knew all the promises of the Order Of Gods, studied the ancient texts and listened to the proselytizing of holy men and still could not reconcile the finite with the eternal. She wondered if Muralii’s death had been glorious enough to secure her place in Osyrion, the warrior’s paradise, or if it was all for not. <br />
<br />
“Crazy passing, eh?” Seth approached with Lyrah and took a seat beside her. “Can’t believe that about Sergeant Muralii,” he said through a deep sigh. He peered over at her for a long quiet moment. “You gonna be okay?” <br />
<br />
She shrugged. Tears welled in her eyes and threatened to expose her sensitivities, and Seth’s gentle understanding did little to prevent it. She swiped a stray tear from her chin and tried to steel herself. It was better to be hardened. “Well, whatever happened, it was probably her destiny, anyway, so it really doesn’t matter, does it? It’s not like we have any control over it, so why sit around obsessing?” She knew her words were weighted with cynicism and she didn’t care if it made her seem pitiless. She picked up a stone and skipped it across the sand. And then another.<br />
<br />
Seth took it all into consideration and said, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with being upset. We’re human beings first, then soldiers, I suppose.”<br />
<br />
“Not if we can help it.”<br />
<br />
Seth chuckled. “Wow. Okay. Well, it’s good to see Sergeant Kiraç has rubbed off on you. He’d be very proud of such merciless devotion.” And he laughed again, hoping for a little levity, but she just shrugged it all off and flung another rock out into the desert. He tried again and said, “Hey, you better be careful or you’re gonna end up like Olanga. What a vulture <em>he</em> is. Mr. Brutality. It’s supposed to be sparring, not enemy combat. You know?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, well, <em>he</em> better be careful, not me,” she mumbled. <br />
<br />
He laughed heartily and recounted that passing’s events with excited grandeur. “Oh, man! I thought I was gonna swallow my tongue when you confronted him like that! You’ve got elephant balls, Tai Ogami, that’s for sure. We all thought we’d finally see the ultimate match when he pointed that saber at you. I mean, what was that all about? He doesn’t mind cracking everyone else’s skulls, but when he had the chance to fight you, all he did was pull rank. What a blockhead. I mean, with everything you’ve been learning from Master Saidi-Saif, you had to be so ready to put him in the dirt. Seriously,” he told her, shaking his head. He stroked Lyrah’s fur and looked to Tai for response, but she said nothing. She gazed out at the Ahagaar, brooding, turning something mysterious over in her mind, and so Seth left it well enough alone. He sat with her in silence but could not bring himself to leave her side unless she demanded he go. Together they watched the sun make its approach along the horizon toward the mountains. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
************</div>
When she returned to Master Saidi-Saif the following sunfall, he regarded her thoughtfully as she prepared for their session. Her strict silence reaffirmed what he already understood, and so he left her to it and spoke without expectation.<br />
<br />
“Absence does not unravel matters of the heart. You can remove yourself from every circumstance, ignore your commitments, disappear altogether, if you like. But antipathy is a thing you carry like a satchel, everywhere you go, and it only fills with more suffering until you put it down and leave it.”<br />
<br />
Tai breathed a sigh and said, “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t here last passing, okay? I just had something I needed to do. And I’m not ‘suffering’,” she insisted, then added darkly, “I don’t do that, anymore.” <br />
<br />
“One cannot <em>try</em> to eliminate the anger experience,” he said. “The more you anticipate being separate from it, the more united with it you are.” She was balanced against an acacia tree, stretching her limbs for the punishing tasks ahead, and he shuffled across the sand and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sit.”<br />
<br />
She indulged him with an eye roll and took a seat in the dirt. She peered up into his sun-weathered complexion, dark as ground chicory, his beard like sewn cotton. He stood before her for a long moment and leaned on his walking stick. Then he said, “There are three illusions that have upheld the human condition from the onset of the first season of seasons. The first is that of separateness from the Gods. Be it one singular god, a god<em>dess</em>, or a pantheon, this understanding has been man’s most significant source of doubt and the endless cause of his own demise.”<br />
<br />
Tai exhaled sharply and said, “Okay, and so what does this have to do with me? What does it have to do with Sergeant Muralii’s death or Lieutenant Olanga’s arrogance or Calabrecian supremacy or anything else that makes no sense? It’s all the will of the Gods, and we don’t have a say in any of it because we’re human. Nothing on earth is of our own design. We just wait around for things to happen to us, whether we like it or not, and that’s that. Seems pretty clear to me, so I really don’t see where the illusion comes in.”<br />
<br />
“Precisely.”<br />
<br />
“Okay. And?”<br />
<br />
“You don’t see the illusion,” he said. “Which is how illusion works, or else it wouldn’t be so.”<br />
<br />
“Okay, you lost me.”<br />
<br />
The menguasai grinned. “Your spirit is bright and fervent, but instead of being a sponge that absorbs knowledge and experience, you are in a state of devouring, of consumption. Everything that gets in is evaluated, judged, defined, and ultimately expelled as a waste of your energy. When you learn to simply receive information <em>as</em> it is and accept experience for <em>what</em> it is, the illusions will begin to fall away and you will be left with an elevated consciousness that will liberate you from such bondage. But until then…” and he reached around to a cloth sack behind the tree and drew from it a pair of iron shackles. He tossed them to the dirt where she sat. “You’ll wear these.”<br />
<br />
Tai shot him a preposterous glare and said, “You can’t be serious, menguasai. You want me to wear these things everywhere I go? Well, that’s just ridiculous. How am I supposed to train?”<br />
<br />
“In the very same manner that you’ve been training,” he said. “We are simply making it a more literal experience so that you can truly comprehend the magnitude of your circumstances. And further, Corporal,” he clarified, “it is <em>you</em> who wants you to wear them, not I. And so you will. Until you don’t anymore.” He gestured for her to clamp them around her wrists.<br />
<br />
Tai Ogami gaped at him. She picked the chains out of the sand and gaped at those, too. “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered in disbelief as she turned the rusted iron in her hands. “So, I guess I’m supposed to just trust you on this, huh?”<br />
<br />
He shook his head. “No. Trust <em>yourself</em>.”<br />
<br />
And so Corporal Ogami set aside her misgivings and placed her wrists in the cuffs. They were tight and abrasive but there was enough slack in the chain to perform general functions such as strapping her boots and sharpening her katar, but all other activities would be considerably hampered. “This is never gonna work,” she mumbled. <br />
<br />
“And so it won’t.”<br />
<br />
“Then why am I doing it?”<br />
<br />
“Because it is necessary in order for you to be free.”<br />
<br />
“I’m gonna find freedom with my hands in chains.”<br />
<br />
“That is more like it,” he said. “Whatever you profess to the skies, the Gods throw back to you as truth but only if you believe it thoroughly. You must know that you know that you know.” <br />
<br />
“Well, it was more of a question, really. But, whatever you say,” she muttered. <br />
<br />
He turned from her and walked away. “Come with me.”<br />
<br />
She and Sargon started after him, but he insisted the dog stay behind, and so she gave him the command to return to the barracks, and he obeyed and trotted off toward camp. She followed the menguasai through the desert, shackles jangling at her waist like a captive of war, and after a long trek he stopped at the Ahagaar foothills and beckoned her into a small cavern where he built a fire for light. She sat on the rocks and waited while he disappeared out into the desert again for a lengthy spell. When he returned he carried the cloth sack, and in it something twisted and stirred. He opened it quite carefully and dumped into the dirt a five-foot queen cobra. The snake spun around to him and flared her hood, and he waved the bag like a slow hypnotic pendulum while steering the snake toward Tai with the tip of his walking stick. She rose to her feet to put some distance between herself and the agitated queen, but Saidi-Saif forbid her that luxury. “Sit,” he insisted. “This is neither for sport nor a demonstration of your own ego. You’re going to learn something quite different than what you’ve been accustomed to.”<br />
<br />
She locked her eyes on the creature’s movements and told him, “That’s all fine, but you’re going to have to take these shackles off, or else that thing’s gonna put me right back in the infirmary. And I have a feeling we’re a long way from Camp Vallone,” she said, backing out of the cobra’s reach. “So if you’ll just do me that favor, I’ll do whatever you ask.”<br />
<br />
“The second illusion that afflicts man is that of superiority,” he replied. “You’ve no cause to fear this creature any more than it should fear you.”<br />
<br />
“I’m not afraid of it,” she explained. “But I do know what it’s capable of, and I need two hands, two <em>free</em> hands, to catch it before it strikes either one of us. I know what I’m doing, menguasai. I’ve done this before. But you’ve got to take these off.”<br />
<br />
The cobra made figure-eights in the dust as it vacillated between which threat to monitor more closely, the old man with the big black stick or the female whose intrepid scent promised it a swift and sudden death. <br />
<br />
Saidi-Saif paid her no mind. “Sit,” he instructed again. “Only when you abandon your pride and the desire for dominance will you find your ki, the inner spirit directed outward, and for that journey to begin you must accept the reality of oneness.”<br />
<br />
Tai lowered herself to a seat on the rocks and shook her head. She held her hands out in front of her and pulled the shackle chain taut with the notion that perhaps she could strangle the thing if it lunged at her. Then she said to Saidi-Saif, “Oneness with a queen cobra typically results with fangs embedded in your flesh, pumping poison into your veins. That’s really not how I wanna be one with the cobra.”<br />
<br />
The snake saw her posture and stood up tall with its neck spread wide, mirroring what it interpreted as an attempt to appear large and fearsome, and she flicked her tongue with a low hiss, then delivered a quick warning strike but did not make contact. Tai flinched, unnerved by the physical impediment of the iron cuffs, but she was beginning to welcome this heretical challenge and remained in her seat while the snake danced between her and the fire. <br />
<br />
Saidi-Saif watched from the other side and strolled the grotto as he spoke. “If separation from the Gods is not reality, then the very same logic must apply to all living things. If we are the Gods and the Gods are the givers of life and power, then all life is us and all power is preordained accordingly. The serpent is a reflection of you in the moment of now. Because she is you and you are her explains why she is so fixated on your gestures, your scent, your intentions. But what she understands that you do not is that there is only this moment. And she will exist within it and only within it because there are no expectations other than what presents itself in the now. You, on the other hand, are existing through the possibility of venom in your veins and the anticipation of not surviving a trip back to Camp Vallone, both of which are scenarios that your spirit already determined before it chose this life, in that body, which you are protecting so valiantly.”<br />
<br />
The cobra delivered another warning strike, and Tai jumped.<br />
<br />
“I want you to close your eyes,” the menguasai instructed.<br />
<br />
Tai threw him a bewildered glance and frowned. “Close my eyes? <em>Now?</em> That’s crazy. Why in all of Sähm would you ask me to do that?”<br />
<br />
“Crazy is a judgment borne of fear, and fear is a lie, another illusion that stems from the misconception of separation from self, separation from the Gods. Embrace these truths and you will understand that what you fear is all of your own design, and the only power it holds over you is the power you have already given it. Close your eyes.”<br />
<br />
Corporal Ogami was at once fascinated and affronted by the notion of being at the mercy of her own fears. She thought, without having ever reconsidered, that she had left them the desert eight seasons ago, when she’d witnessed the deaths of twenty-seven friends and wallowed in the rotted remains of an enemy dreg. She had out-lived the fiercest woman in the Monascan Army and won favor from a demigod. Yet, to look death in its glassy, obsidian eye and shut her own took an extraordinary, unfamiliar valor, like stepping off the edge of a cliff toward the promise of an invisible bridge. The cobra swayed and studied her. Tai lowered her hands and let the chain fall slack in her lap. <br />
<br />
“You have lived in this moment for an eternity and have decided upon every possible outcome and survived them all,” the menguasai said. “Even when you knew you hadn’t. It is the paradox of spiritual perpetuity, the difference between consciousness and oblivion. Trust the darkness and in it you will find your ki.”<br />
<br />
And so she inhaled the mesquite of the wood smoke, exhaled all her consternation, and gave herself up to the Gods. The serpent faded into the quiet nothing. She could still feel it there in the space before her and wondered if it had drifted closer, encouraged by her vulnerability. And, in fact, it had; the forked tongue flitted across her cheek, and she felt the cool corrugated skin glide along the length of her calf. Her chest hammered. She wanted to open her eyes and for a moment she did, and in that moment she found the snake had retracted its hood and backed away, but it flared again at the sudden change in Tai’s cognizance, and the queen snapped at her with another warning. A cobra strike was significantly slower than that of a viper or python, and if the circumstances had allowed it, she could have destroyed the thing in an instant. But this game had a peculiar set of rules to which she was mortally bound, so she tried again to still herself and shut her eyes.<br />
<br />
“The lack of knowledge of who we are has been an insurmountable crisis to man,” the menguasai explained. “It is the third and most significant illusion because it is the most difficult to accept. He has learned to consider the physical first, then the mental, then the spiritual, the order of which has led him toward unnecessary anguish and needless trepidation. In reality, the spirit controls the mind, which controls the body, but in reverse a human being is merely a pawn for the Gods’ delight and amusement. Helplessness is a figment of your imagination, Corporal Ogami, as is powerlessness. To be a truly effective warrior, you must understand that they are all intertwined—separateness, fear, and ignorance of self, and when you begin to look to your own spirit for guidance, your thought process will follow, and the body will obey whatever the spirit ultimately wishes. Do you wish to die tonight, beside the fire in a cavern in the middle of Sähm?”<br />
<br />
Tai shook her head, listened to the dry subtle chafe of the serpent moving through the sand.<br />
<br />
“The question is not whether your mind fears the destruction of the body and the mystery that awaits the spirit after,” he reiterated. “The question is whether you want to die this passing, <em>you</em>, the quintessence of the Gods that gives you life in this moment. You’ll have to look much deeper than the hiss of a cobra to find that answer, I’m afraid. When your fear is elevated, so is your heart rate. The body temperature rises, thus giving off the corresponding scent to a predator such as our good queen, and she, like anything that threatens your well-being, will react accordingly. Control the spirit, find serenity in the mind, and the body will follow. For the spirit already knows the manner by which it will leave the body to conclude its time as Corporal Tai Ogami. <em>You</em> already know whether tonight will be your last.”<br />
<br />
These things settled in Tai’s heart like an unacceptable sickness. She struggled toward tranquility, needed to face these new ideas, but the queen cobra slid across her lap and around behind her, tasted her secret fear with another fluttering kiss, and growled with disapproval. Tai could not bring herself to a place of harmony between spirit and snake, and her eyes flashed open again to find the cobra at her nose, hood spread open for a strike that would put an end to her by sunrise. It reared back, and in a wisp of a breath and with a single sweep she leaned out of its path and snagged it by the neck as it brushed her left ear. She snapped its vertebra before it could whip around for another strike, and the creature fell limp in the dust. <br />
<br />
“I’m sorry,” she uttered, catching her breath. “Guess I failed that test.”<br />
<br />
Saidi-Saif smiled. “Another trick of the mind, failure. You answered the question, did you not?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, but I wasn’t really acting from my ki, was I? I was afraid, and so I eliminated the threat...barely. It’s all I know, I guess,” she sighed.<br />
<br />
The menguasai chuckled at her and said, “You know more than you think. Your spirit was at work, whether you accept it or not. It is a truth that cannot be defeated because it is all there is.” He motioned for her to rise. “Come. Back to camp, so you can sleep now. Next passing we’ll try it again,” he winked.<br />
<br />
And so she followed him back the way they had come, chains rattling in the darkness, her mind turning over the events of that evening. If she had not yet learned to conquer her fear, then she had certainly gained an unsettling respect for it. She wondered if the Gods were watching when she’d saved herself from the serpent’s strike and if they’d marked her as a coward. The notion itself frightened her further and placed her at a crossroads; from this passing forth, she would have to learn to eliminate emotion altogether if she meant to survive a lifetime as a Monascan soldier. She saw no other option for a future sewn with ambiguity and harvested by fate.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
**********</div>
The remaining days of Abeya reinforced her notoriety, particularly among the established soldiers who marveled at her ability to maneuver a batliff blade with her wrists tethered in chains. Through her continued sessions with Saidi-Saif, she learned to slow the rhythm of her heartbeat and to internalize her emotions as if she had none. Her reputation traveled through the ranks, around the encampment, and up Lieutenant Olanga’s spine until it throttled him with envy. It would be his final season as a training officer, as his duties called him back to the city of Monasco for the inception of a classified weapons project, and he intended to leave his subordinates with an indelible contribution to their military growth. He called them out into formation and had them bring their animals.<br />
<br />
“Take out your weapons,” he instructed, and they did. Each unsheathed his katar and waited for additional orders. Then he said to them, “As Monascans in an era so unkind as these past forty seasons, it is vital that the newest recruits understand the importance of your final training mission. You are all aware of what will be expected during that time, and if it is not carried out to the satisfaction of everyone on the Warrior Council, to the satisfaction of myself and General Monasco, your status in this army will be nullified. You will count for absolutely nothing, regardless of your time spent here, and regardless…” he announced, peering directly into the face of Corporal Ogami, “…of whatever popularity you’ve managed to garner from the troops.” He gazed out at the rest of the platoon and continued. “Failure to complete the rite of passage will not only disqualify you from military service—it will label you as combat inefficient, at which time you will no longer be of use to your city-state, and your public execution will be scheduled directly thereafter. That’s how it has been done for four hundred seasons, and it is not going to change for you. So, to be certain that you all avoid such a demoralizing fate, we’re going to have a little practice session, this passing.” His eyes swept around the group for their undivided attention, and when he was sure he’d captured it, he said, “Secure your canines.”<br />
<br />
Tai and Seth shared a cagey glance with Seguro and the others, as it seemed they all came to a unanimous deduction, and Seguro gripped Nikos’ collar tight and stepped back. Seth frowned and backed away as well, and he said, “Wait a second. You can’t do this. These dogs are <em>soldiers</em>. Like us. Like any soldier in this camp. They’re not livestock, some wild things to practice on. We’ve <em>done</em> that,” he demanded. “What you’re suggesting now is treason, and I’m sorry but I won’t have any part of it, sir. No way.”<br />
<br />
Olanga stood tall and composed and told him, “Treason is disobeying a lawful order, Corporal. <em>Treason</em>,” he clarified further, “is refusing to submit to your commanding officer. Now, secure that animal and take out your weapon, or consider this your last day as a Monascan soldier. I’m sure your father, the esteemed colonel, would be quite proud to bury his young son in a nameless grave for such reckless heroics.” He raised a cunning eyebrow and stared the boy down.<br />
<br />
Then Tai stepped up to Broussard and met him at the eye. She stood close and spoke to him in confidence as Seguro took note. “Listen to me,” she said lowly. “Everything and everyone in this army is expendable. Including us. <em>Especially</em> us. They’ve got a whole new cycle of recruits in their first season, waiting to advance far enough to take any one of our places, if necessary. That’s never changed, so why should this be any different?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, but—“<br />
<br />
“But nothing,” she insisted. “You wanna throw everything away over a dog, then that’s fine. But if you do that, then your fate is on <em>his</em> terms, not your own, no matter how much integrity you think you’ve got. You’re gonna have to just put your feelings aside and do this. It’s a game, Seth, a test. Play by your own rules if you want, but there’s a bigger picture than this, and you’re either gonna be in it with the rest of us, or you’re not.”<br />
<br />
He smoldered, clenched his jaws at the boggling politics. “This is <em>not</em> part of the training,” he hissed. “Sparring fatalities are one thing, but murdering our own was <em>never</em> supposed to be a consideration.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, well, today it is.” She turned from him to take her place in formation. “Either your terms or his, Seth. Figure it out.”<br />
<br />
He stood back from the group and deliberated over his choices. The first of thirty canines yelped from somewhere on the opposite side of the ranks. And then another. He glared out at Olanga with all the malevolence of his fifteen years compounded into one passing and stroked Lyrah’s coat. He knelt down to the animal and pulled her close, scratched her chest and spoke to her in a gallant whisper as another dog fell to its master’s blade. Olanga monitored the proceedings with a running commentary on loyalty and the desolate future of Monasco in the hands of traitors. He spoke of commitment to the Monascan ideal and promised them all a lifetime of security in exchange for ruthless detachment and tireless duty. He promised a utopia, washed in the blood of all who were opposed. <br />
<br />
Seth weighed the consequences of rejecting Olanga’s orders against his father’s vision for Monasco, which wasn’t much different than that of the Lieutenant, except for a code of honor that Olanga seemed to have forgotten in his recent bid for succession to the General’s seat. General Monasco understood that code, as did Colonel Broussard, and then, of course, there was Tai whose ambitions toward the betterment of their people surpassed them both. And that, to him, was the biggest picture of all, the ultimate future in the making. Seth searched the ranks for her. She was on her knees in the dirt with blood on her shackled hands and Sargon limp in her arms, but he could see she was as troubled as he, despite all the noble talk. <br />
<br />
Seth ruffled the fur under Lyrah’s collar. He smiled at her and let her lap his chin. Then he took the katar from his weapon belt and fixed his eyes on the cloudless sky. The animal struggled for only a moment, and then it was finished. He rose to his feet, disgusted and disillusioned, yet strangely empowered just the same. He walked away and left the dog for whatever disposal Olanga had arranged and did not return to the training circle again that passing. <br />
<br />
The Lieutenant was stricken with a moment of good will at sunfall and allowed the recruits to bury their canines in the fashion of any fallen soldier. Corporal Broussard was the last to mound his animal’s grave. He packed the final shovel of loose dirt and let himself down into the sand for a rest where Tai found him much later in a sober state of reflection. <br />
<br />
“Missed you at dinner,” she said and took a seat beside him. <br />
<br />
“Not much of an appetite, I don’t guess,” he shrugged.<br />
<br />
She thought for a long while on how to console him, then chose her words carefully. “If I was harsh earlier it was for your own good,” she confessed. <br />
<br />
“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “That’s not what I’m angry about, so don’t worry about it.”<br />
<br />
She took another moment to collect her thoughts, fidgeted with the wrist irons, which had begun to scrape away the flesh and had to be treated with vinegar and lard to prevent infection. She looked at him and said, “Those dogs were never meant to be ours, anyway, you know.”<br />
<br />
“What makes you so sure of that?” he grumbled. “They gave us sole care, threatened our lives if we abandoned them. So, why wouldn’t they have been ours? Makes no sense.”<br />
<br />
“Well, you gotta think about the timeline,” she explained. “We got them in our second season here, and they were all five years old last season. By the time we would be ready for service, they’d be almost eleven.”<br />
<br />
Seth shrugged. “So?”<br />
<br />
“Large breed dogs have shorter life spans,” she pointed out. “They’d have been too old for battle. The army’s not gonna put a canine into service that only has a few good seasons left. They’re gonna want dogs that are young and strong with lots of time ahead of them. No different than any other soldier.” <br />
<br />
"Then why not just give them away to the veterans?" he demanded. "Why'd we have to kill them? All it did was waste time and eliminate valuable troops. What kind of insanity is that?"<br />
<br />
"There's a canine unit already established, Seth, and they've been breeding those dogs since before you and I were born. They train more than a hundred dogs a season. Thirty canines sent to their deaths to teach some recruits a hard lesson is nothing in the whole scheme of things."<br />
<br />
Seth was struck with the indisputable soundness of that and exhaled a foolish sigh. Then his expression darkened and he said, “So, they always knew, then. It was all just an exercise.”<br />
<br />
Tai nodded and gave him a sympathetic smile. “From day-one. I figured that out when I saw them bring the new recruits in. That’s why I didn’t want you to get so worked up in front of Olanga and do something stupid just because you thought you were being honorable. It really was not the time to be virtuous. You’ve got a great future in this army, and I just didn’t wanna see you make a terrible mistake.”<br />
<br />
He shook his head at all of it and scoffed, “Well, if that’s the way things are done, is there <em>ever</em> a time to be virtuous?”<br />
<br />
It was a rhetorical question, but Tai indulged him, anyway. “I dunno,” she sighed. “I guess if I’m ever in a situation where I’ve got to make a choice between honor and military law, then I can only hope my head and my heart are on the same side.” <br />
<br />
Corporal Broussard took her words into full account as he rested his eyes on the desert horizon. She had, in fact, saved his life that passing, for if she hadn’t shaken him out of a dutiful rage, he would surely be among the walking dead, stripped of his rank and bound for the dungeons. There were many anomalies that he would have to put behind him, a surplus of indecision that would take seasons to dispose. He looked over at her as she studied the distance and found himself with only one certainty, and that was that he loved her. <br />
<br />
It had grown cooler and the daylight was all but extinguished as the sun leaned against the mountainside. They sat for a long while and talked a lot about nothing, and when the conversation waned they made their way back to Camp Vallone to face the seasons ahead.Carole Wolfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15962825836946942742noreply@blogger.com0