Sleeping Lions

This story is Escrisal 2, and if you’re not familiar with the phrase, click on the tag for this post and it will take you to the first entry that explains what (and why) it exists.

I broke the 300 word rule.  In fact, I broke it for #1.  So let’s call that one more of a suggestion than a guideline.  :)  Everything’s coming in around 380.

*   *   *

The hills were sleeping lions, tawny flanks baking in the California sun.  To Walter Groves, they felt more alive than his passengers.   His Greyhound was weaving through the torpor of high noon at fifty miles an hour, a hurtling gray pill filled with ten sleeping bodies.  In the oversized mirror hanging above his head Walter could watch them with their backs flattened to their seats and their heads nodding and swinging with the curves of the coastal highway.  They seemed more like ragdolls than human beings.  And meanwhile the hills were flashing their golden manes of wheat at every turn and dabbling rocky paws in the Pacific, as if only moments away from the hunt, as if the right scent or the right sound would muster them into wakefulness, and only Walter would see them stir. 

                The bus made an odd rumbling noise; Walter heard it as a growl that shook the cabin.  The highway before him was a long black line; a lion’s soot covered tail, ending in a tuft of willows.  He looked up and as startled to see eyes blinking in the hills.  They were emerald and slit like a cat’s.  A mouth opened beneath them—rows of long white teeth, like sun-bleached logs strung together with barbed wire.  A red carpet emerged from a lion’s yawning face and found no parable in nature.  Walter stood stricken by the vision, found his hands in the wheat, in the feline fur.  Where should they be?  Surely not stroking these soft golden stalks that sprouted from the sides of lions.  He heard the beast growl again, felt it through the seat of his pants.  It jogged loose urgent thoughts that had been growing in the slow corners of his brain.  

                He was not alone.  He was not on safari. He was Walter Groves.  He was not driving his bus.

                His head jerked up off his chest.  He looked up, saw a flashing field of blue and white.  In the mirror all his passengers were astronauts, floating up out of their seats.  A nickel passed before his eyes, moving strangely, right to left.  He followed its movement with his head and saw the cliffs, the rocky paws of lions.  They lunged parallel to the bus, past his window, into a wall of water.  That, and the hideous silence, tore a scream from his throat.  From the part of him that remained an observer came the thought that it was a primal, jungle sound.

Escrita de Salão

Brazil is well-known for being a global soccer factory.  One reason some of the best players in the world come from Brazil is related to a national obsession: Futbol de Salão.  The name of the game is translated, from Portuguese, as “Football in the Hall.”  The game is played with a smaller and less bouncy ball than normal soccer, and is played indoors, in rooms much smaller than your traditional grass pitch.  Because of the smaller dimensions and more frenetic pace, players touch the ball some six hundred percent more than in your standard soccer match, and soccer skills are developed much more quickly as a result. 

When I learned this, the first thing I thought was, “how do I apply this to writing?”  The answer is the following experiment.  I call it “Escrita de Salão.”  Writing in the Hall.  The name of this game is imitation of the Brazilian game, the art of condensed repetition.  The rules: each escrisal (the Brazilians similarly smoosh the name together) must tell a complete story.  This story must be under 300 words and have a distinct story arc.  The arc itself is somewhat loosely defined; though it might consist of the classic storytelling elements of beginning, conflict, climax, and resolution, the arc might eschew these in favor of a more narrowly focused story.  Dynamism.  Change.  Metamorphosis.  

As a writer who wants to tell epic stories spanning a wide variety of genres and concepts, I intuitively think this is nuts.  But it’s worth a go, if it worked for Brazilian soccer.  Maybe next week I’ll try a writing exercise inspired by the Netherlands.  If you watched the World Cup this year, you know what I mean.

*     *     *

Escrisal 1

On his way out he looked down at precisely the wrong moment and saw her wedding ring sitting on the kitchen table.  The reminder was a warm wet shock, an internal mechanism flopping loose and hanging obscenely.  He willed his hand to the doorknob and blinked back the sting.  In the car he fumbled to plug his cell phone into the car charger with cold fingers.  He watched the tiny battery in the corner of the screen fill up as the car idled and smoked, and the windshield slowly changed from frost to glass. On a whim he paged over to text messaging.  Stared at her name. 

There had been a trip to Tahoe, in the first years of their marriage, when they had seen a truck hit a deer at fifty miles an hour.  In that instant before the impact she had reached out and grabbed his hand, barked “Ron!” as if somehow he could pause the frame with the deer unharmed, and change the terrible course of physics.  Later, much later, with their second son hours away from being born, he’d called her from Minnesota and wept while she’d listened.  Her voice had been a too-taut violin string on the other end of the line.  “You’ll make it,” she’d said. 

Thinking of how she’d smiled at him, propped up in the hospital bed with their son in her arms, he let go of the breath he’d been holding and looked up through the sweating windshield into leafless branches.  Up past the tangle of gray limbs, up into the second story window where her orchid was blooming.  She’d cooed at the plant all winter long, right up until the end.  The flower had grown sickly beneath the antiseptic glare of the hospital fluorescents, but she’d reassured it during its long sojourn.  “Soon you’ll be right back in your spot,” she’d said, “right back in that East window.  Okay?  You’ll make it.”  Her frail hand had patted the leaves reassuringly. 

He glanced down at the phone, paused.  Her lovely name.  He opened the last message.  “We’ll make a greenthumb of you yet,” it read. 

The engine shuddered to a stop as he turned the key, slipped back out into the cold.  He would be late.  But at least he’d remembered to water the plants.

Playing with Fire

Click or scroll to see more.  |  So, after some wise feedback from the writer’s guild–which I’ve named it in my own private universe, mind you–I’ve put down some of the story arc for Jahn and his band of weirdos, with the following excerpt as a result.  I realized today that I’ve written about 6000 words thus far.  I hadn’t realized I was grooving quite so long on this particular go.  But having found a point at which to begin that seems to satisfy some of the holes my fellow guildies pointed out to me, I find that I am cruising.  So. 

When I put down these excerpts, I sometimes get feedback that would benefit from a longer section.  That’s the curse of only reading a chunk out of context, I suppose.  I’ve tried to include a little more, though in order to truly get the flavor of what’s happening in this section, you’d need another five pages. 

Ah well.

*   *   *

He was dreaming again.

This time he was seated around a campfire, one of five cloaked figures who sat staring into the flames.  The light danced with particular vitality in the eyes of a young woman.  He noted, as he always did when he dreamed of her, how her eyes caught any sort of light and seemed to draw it down deep inside of her.  They were eyes filled with a silent sadness.  Her usually full lips were set in a line—a shame, he thought, since her smile was brighter than flame, brighter even than the red gold of her long hair when it caught the sun at midday, as it had in countless dreams before this.  It was a smile as rare and fleeting as the silence before morning light.  He missed it.

He watched her for a long moment before the figure next to him leaned forward to throw another log on the fire.

“Better not let her catch you staring,” the figure whispered.  His voice had the cold rasp of steel, a sound flexible but crisp, like the long thin sword that lay between them on the log.  The man turned his hooded head.  Only his nose, a beak of a nose, and a few stray wisps of long black hair caught the firelight.

“Jahn,” the man said, even more quietly, “What happened today?”

Don’t ask me, Jahn wanted to say.  I’m dreaming.  But he knew it would do no good. 

Another of the fire watchers pulled something out of a backpack—a small harp—and struck a few plaintive notes.  Everyone around the fire stirred as if waking from dreams of their own.  The beak-nosed man groaned and scuffled his toes in the dirt.

“Please not tonight, Tamper,” said the woman. 

“And why not?”  The man named Tamper threw his hood back.  He was an impish looking man, face slim and sprightly, his head fringed by a perpetually floating halo of thin white hair.  Jahn thought his frown looked petulant.  “This is a morose bunch, is what this is,” he said.

Next to him, the largest of the five figures raised a huge gloved hand to his shadowed face and rubbed at an invisible chin.  “Morose,” it said, slowly and in a voice sounding to Jahn like a subtle avalanche, “What does it mean, Tamper?”

The old man glared at the woman for a moment before answering.  “It means,” he said, “to have a brooding, ill humor.”  He turned a lofty eye towards the woman. 

The massive figure hummed to itself.  “Oh,” it said. 

The woman sighed and glanced at Jahn.  She caught his eyes for only a moment before looking back at Tamper.  He wished she would have let the look linger, would have seen his thoughts unraveled there in his eyes for her to see.  But the rules of the dream were explicit.  He could not speak, could not move—only watch as the dream unfolded around him. 

            Maybe if she looked long enough, she would see: we’ve never met except in dreams, but I love her.  The Weaver bless me, I don’t even know her name.  But I love her.  The thought caught up with him and he shook his head inwardly, marveling at himself.  She’s not even real.  How ridiculous am I?

But there had been many dreams.  He could recall easily how she had looked standing in the market square of Jubal town, the white shirt she wore clinging to her body as they all stood sweating in the heat of the desert city.  He remembered the keen edge of her voice slicing through the crowd to catch the attention of the man who sold them their myriad, felt the warmth of her hand as she handed him the tiny glass bottle of sand that she had purchased with her own silver.  For Tamper’s obscure rituals, she had said. 

In another dream, he recalled her singing.  Her voice wasn’t as fair as the young lady’s with the harp who played before them in the crowded inn, but it had a richness to it, a quality at once warm and sad.  Everything she did was tinged with that great sadness.  She wore it like a second skin.  But though he had spent many nights dreaming of her, her sorrow was as mysterious as her name.  She was the dark beneath the waves, and he was a battered bark riding high on the crest of a dream.

“Tonight is not the night for practice, old man,” she said.  Her eyes grew clouded.

Tamper clutched his harp to his chest.  “Careful your words,” he hissed, “You’ll warp the wood.”

“How about I cut the strings?” the beak-nosed man said, and allowed himself a small chuckle.  “In the name of all those whose purses have inexplicably suffered the same fate in your presence?”

Tamper gave him a look of both horror and disgust, and clutched the harp even tighter.  “When we first met, recall who tried to rob whom,” he said.  Then he drew himself up straight.  “Anyway, the harp is a noble instrument,” he said.  “I wouldn’t expect to find noble ears on a man whose favorite pastime is skewering mice.”

Like lightning, the sword that had laid still and silent between Jahn and the beak-nosed man sang as it was pulled from its sheath.  The man had gone from sitting to crouched on the balls of his feet in an instant, had pulled the sword so fast that it seemed as though it had always been there in his hand, reflecting the fire along its entire curved length.  The tip was pointed right at Tamper’s heart.

“Found one,” said the swordsman.

In the time it took for Jahn to take one long unsteady breath, a complete silence settled around the fire.  Then Tamper began to laugh, a high-pitched, wheezing sound.  He laughed so hard he had to gasp for breath. 

Then he shrugged, and threw the harp in the fire.

“The harp is a miserable instrument,” he said, his eyes wide and serious.

Kal chuckled and put his sword back in its sheath.  Tamper grinned and pretended to be relieved.  Even the woman, as absorbed as she was in her own thoughts, smiled briefly.  Only the huge man seated beside Tamper seemed concerned.  His hand still hung in the air where he had reached out, reflexively, to catch the harp before it arced into the fire.  Slowly he let it drop to his side, empty.  “But Tamper,” came the dull rumble from beneath the man’s hood, “I heard you.  You were talking to yourself, I heard what you said after you took that from the lady’s cabinet.  You’ve always wanted to learn to play the harp.”

The old man sighed and patted the huge fellow on his massive shoulder.  “I am a man of many fancies, Rul,” he said.  “But I fancy my life above all others.  It was only a toy, anyhow.  Not what you’d consider Tryia’s finest.  She’ll hardly miss it.”  He looked up at the man with the long thin blade.  “Oh do sit down, Kal.  You’re making us all nervous.”

Kal, Jahn thought, Shyrian for hawk.  The man certainly seemed to fit the part.  It was the first time he had heard the man’s name spoken aloud, in all his dreams.  And Rul?  Must be something Tamper made up.  I’ve never heard of a golem with a name.

I Buried Him Beneath the Ninth Fairway

Or, another writing prompt.  I liked the first title.

This past Monday we accumulated about the fire and told tall tales again.  I shared an excerpt from the story I am writing and was very grateful for the criticism that came back to me–so grateful, in fact, that I scrapped my entire draft and started anew.  I’m going to post the fruits of that labor here, but in the meantime I wanted to share a writing prompt.

As always, please feel free to submit your own, if you have the time and inclination.  We were given a 20 minute time limit this time.

The Prompt: 

Elise had never owned a cat, for obvious reasons; obvious to anyone who knew her, anyway.

*   *   *

Elise had never owned a cat, for obvious reasons; obvious to anyone who knew her, anyway.

It wasn’t that she was allergic, no—she had grown up in a house, or as her neighbors were fond of saying, a barn—whose doors were always open to the strays of the neighborhood, wayward dogs and cats, mice caught late at night in baking bowls and promptly given names, even the odd turtle that Micah brought home from the pond behind Mr. Lankershire’s house.  There had always been cats. 

No, Elise and cats had gotten along quite swimmingly for the majority of her life.  She had even saved one, once, a bold ginger tabby that had gotten stuck in an oak and mewled outside her apartment window until she went outside and climbed up herself to fetch it.  She had set the kitty down and even given him a little pep-talk to cheer up—it was their little secret. 

No, Elise had never owned a cat because of the episode with Lance Norquist, the one-time editor in chief of Glance Magazine, now moldering corpse tucked mostly forgotten under the ninth fairway at Bittershanks. 

They had met on the subway one evening, when Elise was still waiting tables at the 45^th Street Diner.  It had been one of those days, when she hadn’t bothered to count her tips the pile was so small, and her work-apron had almost caught on fire when she’d taken it off for a break and laid it, stupidly, on the hot stove.  In fact, it was the dark black spot on the front of her apron that had caught Lance’s eye while they were smashed together on the train.

“You have an accident?”  He had looked down at her with his smile, one tooth, a bottom inscisor, slightly crooked.  She had thought that the imperfection was one small proof of justice in an otherwise flawless face, the sort of face that came out of a magazine after it had been photo-shopped into impossibility.  But Lance was real.  Thank God for that crooked tooth. 

All day long she stared at faces and wondered what sort of mind lay behind them.  She was often surprised.  The old curmudgeon with the stormy eyes sweetly complimented her on her blouse.  The heavyset woman in the pink jacket and “I heart puppies” lapel pin swore at her when she brought the woman’s change in one dollar bills instead of a ten.  “Dammit!  You fishing for a tip, sweetheart?” the woman had said, and Elise had found herself staring at the woman’s jowels, how they swung much like a bulldog’s.  In fact, one was waiting for her on a leash outside.  And now this man, with the perfect tan and the angles of a greek statue—what was he like?  Did that one crooked tooth hint at a man whose appearance belied a playful, nonchalant attitude, a devil-may-care outlook on life in the Big Apple?  Or did it imply a certain mindlessness, an inattention to details?  What sort of work did he do?  She imagined him in a movie, imagined him lying with a woman with long blonde hair spread out around him like a fan of gold, and him naked to the waist, their legs twined beneath the sheet–

When she didn’t answer, only stared, Lance tried again.  “I didn’t mean to bother you.  You seem—a little distracted.  Is everything all right?”

More from Fantasy Land

I would particularly appreciate any feedback regarding the pacing within this particular scene.  Just so you’re a bit caught up–the main character is suffering from an affliction in which the various associations we take for granted in everyday life have been damaged.  This is the first dialogue between him and the character that will become a mentor of sorts later on in the story. 

*   *   *

The Magister turned from the window.  “Yes, well.  We had hoped working on the sorting floor would dull any emerging memories as your mind healed, but—“

“Healed from what?” I interrupted.

The Magister said nothing.

You have been mistreated, my friend.  The voice in my head filled the silence, soft as silk.

How?

The Magister tapped the glass where it had cracked, traced the thin line with one finger.  “When you came to us, it was as you are now.  I do not know who damaged your mind and shredded your memory.   Nor do I know what means they used.  There are several magics that obscure or damage the mind—a miasma, or a consumption.  Once the damage is done, it is difficult to determine what myriad was involved.”

I shook my head.  I was frustrated and confused, but mostly I felt hopelessly lost—lost within myself.  My life was an infinite void and my sense of self as insubstantial as a cloud.  Who was I?  And why had I never wondered until now? 

“So it was magic, then.  Someone did this to me.”  I tried to hold on to what was real, what I could control.  “And you have no idea how?”  There was another question I wanted to ask, but I was too afraid.

The Magister tapped the glass again.  “How was this window broken?  All we see here is a crack in the glass.  Was it a rock?  Did someone try to break my window?  Or was it a natural phenomenon, the result of an extreme temperature differential between the cold air out there and the heat in here?  I can’t tell from looking at the window.   Or, still another possibility exists.  Perhaps this is the mark of a sudden accident.”

He put his face close to the glass and looked down, and I saw that a short ledge rimmed the greenhouse, several feet of yellow stone on every side.  I leaned in and looked at the ledge by the bottom of our window.  The body of a pigeon lay there.  It had broken its neck.

“I cannot tell by looking at the cracks,” said the Magister, sighing.  “But perhaps we will find the answers to your questions if we look close at hand.”

New Story Post

This is an excerpt from something in the fantasy genre I’ve been working on in occasional down time over the last two months.  I fell in love with writing when Tolkien introduced me to Middle Earth.  Those books were given to me courtesy my cousin when I was ten, though if I remember right they were supposed to be loaners.

Sorry Brent.

*   *   *

     So imagine the city, Cogweyn in all its furious glory.  I once stood atop the Prince’s tower, beneath which the whole city unfolds like a dented egg, narrow where it approaches the Slumberfire, and fatter where it presents its walls to the plain.  On that narrow side, the mountain side, the walls are notched to accommodate the massive gates that guard the city from the Slumberfire’s children.  Drakes, wyldmen, and worse, all repelled by iron gates, a dozen towers placed at advantage,  and before that—a half-mile span of stone that funnels invaders over the crag.  That span they call the Slenderline, and I believe it was built before the city itself, though Tamper would once again have to instruct me.  It is the only way to approach the gates, since the crag is a half-mile wide and its walls are sheer, and even a drake would find it a difficult climb, even if the bottom weren’t twice as deep as the gap is wide. 

       From the gates, a broad street of yellow paving stones winds its way through a warren of canvas and wood and brick and colored glass.  Cogweyn’s walls are both ancient and formidable, and her engineers are hard pressed to accommodate all her citizens.  Hence the city has grown up over the centuries, rather than out.  You have perhaps seen engravings or illustrations of tall slender towers with arching stone bridges in all your learning regarding magicians and their residences.  Cogweyn would disappoint you.  Even a middle-talent dabbler has only a cramped square apartment in Cogweyn’s jumble, though the old adage is still true that the closer one is to the sun, the more one feels its warmth.  Most buildings look a little like yellow ships’ masts, they are so fully rigged with rope and canvas—the means by which one visits one’s neighbors, or hauls up laundry, or sends down scraps to beggars.  After I left the Distillery, I had the occasion to ride up to a certain magician’s apartment by bucket, though I’m getting ahead of myself by mentioning it.  I remember then, though, how amazed I was at the sheer variety of each hole I passed in the wall—glass ornaments along the window sills, silk and canvas dyed in every color imaginable, mechanisms attached to poles and plates for a myriad of purposes, none of which I could discern merely by guessing.  Magician’s devices, like their dwellings, match their minds.  Convolution does not begin to describe it. 

     But from the Prince’s tower, all you see is the jumble of yellow stone, crisscrossed by webs and magicians scurrying along the netting like spiders jostling each other for flies, and the broad road that slices through the warren towards a massive glass dome at the city’s heart.