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Dronefall

A Travel Guide to the World of Dronefall

Readers know, even in the era of fancy collector’s editions and aesthetic bookshelf setups, at the end of the day, a book isn’t just a product—it’s a destination.

If you’re looking for somewhere to go, I have a recommendation for you. I’ve discovered a new place and time—a rare one, not overcrowded with tourists and hyped-up by reports from all your friends who went last summer without you. The world of Dronefall is something new, fascinating, and full of rich detail you’ll want to come back to for a second look.

So, what have you got to look forward to? What does 2040’s Budapest, with its historic architecture and drone-swarmed skies, have to offer the traveling reader?

Well, there’s more than I can tell you in a blog post, but let me give you my top recs for things to do on your first trip to the world of Dronefall.

7 Things You Must Do When Visiting Cyberpunk Budapest in the 2040’s

  1. Travel by “Blindworm” (jumping off not advised)

You won’t have much choice on this one, since the automated hydrogen train system has all but replaced any other form of transportation in the city. Still, you’ll find “Blindworm” travel extremely smooth and hassle-free. Coaches are comfortable and usually kept immaculately clean, and each one is furnished with both a speaker-system and an HD digital screen to keep commuters informed on the upcoming stops.

  On the outside, the trains are sleek beautiful—white and silver, and always breaking out billows of fog through the “gills” of their water-vapor exhaust system. Their haunting wails can be heard echoing through the city from far away.

2. Drone-watch

    In case you haven’t heard, most major cities in the world of Dronefall are ruled by drones. They watch the streets at all times, from all angles, constantly pacing along their preprogramed grid-lines. Aside from surveillance, drones are also utilized for basically everything else that could possibly be done by a UAV. Drones run deliveries, make repairs, put out fires, clean windows, and handle search and rescue operations all day and all night.

      They come in a dazzling variety of models, and at night, their lights make streetlights redundant in busy areas. From an apartment balcony or rooftop bar, you can watch them flowing by like a river of colorful fireflies. But don’t get too nosy about where they came from and where they’re going. Tracking drones is illegal.

    3. Ask random people on the street what Ambassadors of Humanity is doing

    This one’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but you can actually do it if you’re brave enough, I suppose. Mostly, it’s just going to get you a lot of weird looks. With all the public support for the elusive organization in Budapest, you’d think somebody might be able to tell you something about exactly what they do. Nobody can.

      They can’t even tell you why the Ambassadors are buying up the whole city, bit by bit. It seems like people would want to know. It seems like they would be asking. But they don’t ask. Maybe you shouldn’t either. Disregard this one, if you want.

    4. Visit the Barracks Café at midnight

    Let’s move out of the bustle of the heart of the city a bit. There’s a sort of run-down neighborhood between District 3 and District 4 on the Buda side of the river. This is where it’s at, secretly. The locals here will tell you the cool kids hang out at a place they call the Barracks Café. It’s called that because of the rather unaesthetic building that houses it, which sort of looks like some kind of military housing.

      Inside, however, you’ll find a surprisingly vibey place to chill, lurk and consume caffeine at all hours of night. It’s a lot like some of the city’s famous ‘ruin bars,’ but instead of serving the nightlife crowd who’s off work for the day, they typically serve the crowd that is just starting their work as the sun goes down. Don’t be intimidated by this crowd. They keep to themselves.  

    5. Go Roof-topping in District 3.5

    But if you strike up a conversation, you might want to ask for these people’s recommendations on the best roof-topping spots in the area. Large stretches of housing and business properties in District 3.5 are abandoned. If you’re into scaling buildings and free-running while enjoying beautiful Budapest nightscapes, you should take the opportunity to go roof-topping in this neighborhood. (3.5 is mostly unwatched by drones, so do what you can get away with!)

      From one location on a roof toward the edge of the residential area, you can get a fantastic view of the airport where, very occasionally, one of the huge space-planes from the world’s only commercial Exoliner airline will take off or land.   

    6. Seek out secretive Christian communities

    If you can find them, some of the most welcoming places in the whole city are the ones the authorities will likely warn you to stay away from. Though not technically illegal, Christianity is no longer socially acceptable to mainstream culture in the West. This has forced believers to form quiet communities where they can live and worship God in peace from the privacy of their homes.

      Barred from the city’s many beautiful historic churches, they have formed their own house-churches, where they gather weekly in supportive thriving groups of friends and family. Though they tend to be close-knit, they always welcome visitors.  

    7. Sneak out at night—who knows what you’ll see

    The fact slips by many people who stick to normal routines, but the city isn’t even the same world at night. If you thought 2040’s Budapest was a little strange during the day, wait until after midnight. Things come to life and start to wander around, hunting. Drones fly low and lurk by windows. Mysterious sirens echo through empty streets.

      Be careful. Nothing is safe when everything is anonymous. But don’t you wonder…?

    Ready to Book Your Ticket?

    Lucky for you, I’m paying your fare if you decide to sign up for my email list within the month of October ’24. If you join what I’m calling the October Club—my exclusive pre-release book club for the newly rewritten Dronefall, you will get the ebook free before anybody in the general public has access to it. I know. Not fair. But you’re invited.

    Sign up here!

    Categories
    announcements

    Join the October Club

    Dear Reader,

    With a rush of clear crisp wind and the scent of cinnamon, vanilla, and fallen leaves, October has arrived. Probably my favorite month of the year—and one I share with many book-lovers, I think. It’s a great time to pick up a new book (May I suggest The Boy Who Called the Foxes) or an old book (Hound of the Baskervilles, anybody?) But how about one that’s not even out yet?

    I’m looking seriously at November for the long-awaited relaunch of the Dronefall Series. As some of you know, I completely rewrote book one of my six-book Christian dystopian series this year. The relaunch is going to be a big event, but in the meantime, I wanted to give certain people a chance to be on the cutting edge—and an exclusive look at the new Dronefall One before anybody else gets it.

    What this isn’t:

    No, this isn’t a street team or ARC reader recruitment. I’m not doing this to enlist help for promotion or get flashy reviews for launch-day. Think of it as the formation of a book club—one with very few rules or obligations attached. I wanted to give readers who actually were curious about Dronefall an exclusive experience.

    Here’s the deal, if you join my email list in the month of October, in the year 2024, you automatically will become a member of the October Club.

    What this is:

    So, what are the benefits of joining the October Club, and where’s the catch?

    The benefits:

    • If you are on my email list already, or join anytime this October, you will be sent a free ebook copy of Dronefall—the rewritten second edition.
    • You can read it anytime you want—or ignore it.
    • But you might want to check it out, because during October, I’ll be sending extra emails, giving you a behind-the scenes look at the rewrite and the vision behind it, as well as a chance for you to send me your questions and get answers.
    • You’ll be tagged as the October Club on my email list, so there’s a chance you’ll get October Club exclusive emails and content in the future.

    The catch:

    • None

    You have no obligation to review the book or even read the book, if it turns out to not be your thing. Like I said, you’re not a launch team. This club is for you and your own cozy autumn reading enjoyment. Of course, if you want to review the book when it finally comes out, that would be amazing. Thank you in advance if you plan to. But the book is really just a thank-you and a chance to give you a look at my heart and vision for the series before you support it. I really want to give you that.

    How to Join

    If you’re on my email list already, you’re automatically part of the October Club. No action needed on your part, just wait for the link to the ebook to drop into your inbox. I’ll send it out as soon as it’s ready.

    If you’re not on my email list, go sign up! All I need is your name and an email address that works best for you.

    One final reminder—this is a limited-time opportunity. To join the club and get the book for free you have to sign up before November 1st, 2024. The earlier in October you join, the better, since I will be sending some exclusive emails in real time, but even if you join on October 31st, you’ll still get the book.

    So, join us for some cozy autumn nights in with a hot drink and a good book. Invite a friend or two to sign up with you so you’ll have some people to rant to, and I hope you all have the best October ever.

    Categories
    Dronefall

    My Reason

    I’m done being nice. I’ve been trying to write this post for days, trying to make it a manifesto, a story, an extended bio—but it wasn’t happening. Because it was supposed to be a rant. It was always going to be a rant.

    Over and over throughout my time working on the Dronefall Series, I’ve found myself asking the question, “All this for a made-up story? All this for a cheap paperback? Why?”

    Why?

    I absolutely love Dronefall. I love my characters, my setting, the twisted trajectory of the plot. But man, why do I put up with a process that’s hurt me so much? All that doubt and exhaustion, all that overwhelm and discouragement and raging sense of futility. It’s gotten worse and worse. I could have dropped everything like a lot of would-be authors do. I could have gotten married and moved to a new town and started a family and left this whole little non-sequitur phase of my life behind.

    But I didn’t. And I think I finally know why.

    God could have given me any calling. Anything He wanted me to do I could have done, and He would have used my work for the good of His world. But God made me a dystopian author.  Dystopian authors write what they write because they see things in the world that too many people don’t notice. We want to open people’s eyes to the reality they live in and give them the strength to fight it.

    We’re also just generally full of rage. That’s probably funnier to people who know me in person and probably think I’m one of those people who aren’t even capable of getting mad. It’s not the kind of rage that drives a person to blast their horn in traffic or go around picking fights on the internet, though. It’s something that keeps you awake at night and leaves your mind screaming, “this is wrong! This is wrong! God, please tell them this is wrong.”

    And God answers back, “You tell them.” And so, you go out like the disciples to find that one kid in 5,000 who packed lunch that day. Here’s what I’ve got. I’ve got a weird knack for writing made-up stories. I have no idea how this could ever work, but stranger things have happened.

    A Voice of Dissent

    This society claims to care about our voices. The benevolent media gods look down and see those of us who struggle to be heard. They elevate the ones they deem worthy and bask in the applause they get from doing it. But it’s all a show to distract from all the other voices they stifle in the dark.

    Because they don’t want anybody to think people like us exist. Particularly millennial and gen z Christians. We’re at the age where we’re starting to have some serious influence on the culture. They tried really hard to mold us and shape us into what they wanted the future to look like. The audacity of people like us even existing. It’s bad news for the Enemy.  We’re proof there are cracks in the reality liars have tried to create.

    The last thing they want is the generation that’s taking up the torch to keep carrying the light of Christ. That light exposes too much. And it’s too dangerous to the antichrist’s agenda.

    I wrote these six books because when you write, nobody can talk over you or tell you to sit down and shut up. The books are going to just keep existing and people just have to deal with it. Whole countercultures can be born from art. I have something for the people who are ready to see what’s happening. Or, if you already see it, I want you to know I see it too. You’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.

    The Reason

    And we won’t quietly fade into the background while the world crumbles. The Truth won’t be mocked, shamed and silenced when the light is needed most. We need young adult Christians—not just hidden away in their own little circles only to be seen by those in their community and the occasional passing scoffer—but also those who aren’t afraid to step out and exist boldly and brightly in the world at large. Jesus will never be irrelevant, obsolete or a thing of the past. He goes ahead of us into the future, no matter how bleak it looks. I hope Dronefall makes a point of telling everyone that.

    I don’t know how much sense I’m making. I just know I care intensely about my generation. We won’t be lost. God hasn’t forgotten us. I want my work to awaken the courage for us to live like we haven’t forgotten Him. Because you haven’t, have you?

    It’s because I know people like you exist that I haven’t given up yet.

    Please Join Me

    The rewritten Dronefall One still doesn’t have an official release date. But if you want to be a part of this, please join my email list. It’s the absolute best way to stay up-to-date on the progress and get all the backstory on what goes on. Plus, there’s the comic I made, which gives you a unique preview of the first chapter of Dronefall. You’ll get to download that when you sign up.

    Thanks for reading my rant. I hope, when you get to read the books in the near future, it will all be worth it.

    Categories
    My Books

    Escape Writer’s Block with The Burnout Journal

    A few summers ago, I got the idea for a prompt journal. It was around that time I realized my biggest adversary in my creative life wasn’t rejection, impostor syndrome, or people being rude on the internet. What gets me down the most is burnout. Writer’s block, art block, whatever you want to call it. Paralysis and lack of motivation seemingly from some invisible well running dry.

    I created the journal pretty quickly. Several of my immediate family members didn’t know I was working on it until the proof arrived. I wanted to make something to help other creatives—especially writers, artists, and poets like me, who might be facing the same things.

    What is the journal, exactly?

    It’s a collection of 101 prompts. But these aren’t the usual art or story prompts. They’re not one word or even one sentence written at the top of the page. I wanted to go deeper than that. I wanted to jump-start the creator’s mind by beginning to expand on the ideas before handing them over.

    Writing the prompts in the journal was a good exercise for me in itself. Each prompt is a suggestion—or multiple suggestions in one—of a story. These stories are both full of possible detail and wildly open-ended.

    But there was another element I wanted to address with this prompt journal. I know a burnt-out creative mind is easily overwhelmed, so I wanted to make sure that—while giving you plenty of fuel for your smoldering artistic fire, I also provided some guardrails to keep you from pushing yourself to make every prompt a whole project. I only give you two pages per prompt to explore your story. As a result, you should feel the delight of finishing a mini piece after completing each prompt.

    Another unique thing about the Burnout Journal is the fact that I intended the prompts to be used for whatever creative medium you like. You could be drawing, writing flash fiction, composing poems, experimenting with comic strips or even just rambling on in prose. Here’s an example or a completed spread, using prompt no. 2. I opted to draw a map and write up a little mock travel guide to my fictional self-portrait island.

     Who is the Bunout Journal for?

    Artists and creatives. I know. That covers a lot of ground. Though I’m not really in the camp that insists literally everything is a creative art (come on, now. Let’s not get silly.) I do think most people have a creative streak in them. It might not be highly developed as it is in those of us whose lives revolve around it, but I think a lot of people could get something out of this journal. Or should I say, put something into it.

    However, there is a reason I aimed it at artists and creatives. Here’s the thing: if you’re kind of more of a normal human, burnout is going to manifest in other areas of your life probably more strongly than your creativity. You might struggle with energy or motivation to do things or feel sort of blah and directionless at work or in your social life. But if you’re a creative artist, when burnout hits, the main feeling is going to be, “Help! I can’t CrEAtE sTUFF!”

    And maybe that’s the main difference between creatives and more normal people.

    Where can you get it?

    I published The Burnout Journal through Amazon KDP, so it’s available from Amazon right here.

    Hopefully I can be a part of your escape from burnout and provide you with a refreshing way to shake off the doldrums and get back to doing what you love. Feel free to reach out to me in the comment section if you’re feeling creatively stuck.  I’m working to make this blog a resource for frustrated creative types, so if that’s you, don’t hesitate to request post topics!

    You can get through this.

    Categories
    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice

    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice: finale

    Part: 5/5 read part one

    Wordcount: 296

    Synopsis: Amy returns to the mountain range on her own time.

    I returned to the region in summer of two-thousand six. There were several sites of archeological interest in the valley, and I didn’t have much else to do. It’s really a beautiful place in the summer. The scenery kind of made me wish I was a nature or travel photographer instead. I took some time off while I was there to hike and gave myself permission to snap some photographs recreationally, which I hadn’t done in a while.

      I was making my way through a narrow winding pathway through a dark stand of conifers when something caught my eye from beyond, through the trees. At first it confused me, so I kept moving toward it. As I got closer to the edge of the trees, it appeared as a bright orange blaze, like a silent fire consuming the clearing.

      The trees thinned out and I found I had reached a high slope. The air was cold and bit my face as I emerged from the shelter of the pines. I stopped and gazed in awe. Never in my life had I seen so many poppies.

      To this day, no one has been able to translate the scripts we found in the caves of Mt. X. The story of the people who once lived and died there may never be told. But I’m convinced I know something of them no one else does. I met their king one night. There was a blizzard and neither of us could sleep.

      I don’t know what happened to him after that. He was driven by a longing for his lost people. Maybe he went to search the world over for them, or maybe he was simply looking for a warmer place to sleep. Whatever his quest, I wish him well.

    THE END

    Categories
    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice

    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice: part 4

    Part: 4/5 (read part one)

    Wordcount: 1,121

    Synopsis: The next morning calls everything into question.

    I wasn’t troubled when I awakened the next morning by the fire alone. I knew it had been a dream. The only thing that bothered me was the fact that the whole expedition hadn’t been a dream.

      The morning broke pale and still. The winds of the previous night had changed the landscape around the lodge, heaping snow twelve feet high here, and thinning it almost to bare rock there. I hardly recognized the scenery as what we had traversed yesterday on the way back from the cave.

      After breakfast we all geared up and bundled up to return to the dig. I pushed eerie memories of the night before into the back of my mind and focused on checking my photography equipment. I supposed they would want to look for more firepits in other chambers of the cave. Personally, I was more interested in the layout of the cave itself than any of the artifacts. Lyle said there might be quite a few chambers in the cave that had been blocked by ice and fallen rock. Maybe more tombs.

      The trudge back to the cave was even more exhausting than it had been yesterday. We had to stop twice along the way. I slung my camera-bag over my shoulder and climbed a craggy boulder at our second stop. At the top I sat down and stared out over the bleak glaring vista of Mt. X. We were about a quarter mile above the timberline. I wondered what the mountains were like in the summer.

      I heard Lyle and the guide talking below, standing a bit apart from the rest of the group. “What do you do with a six-thousand-year-old corpse, anyway?” the guide wondered.

      “I don’t know a thing about mummies,” said Lyle. “I suppose we’ll need to leave it to the experts. This is…unprecedented, I’m pretty sure. Never heard of anything like it in my life.”

      “I’ve always thought this mountain was a little strange,” said the guide. “I’ve seen a lot of mountains, but nothing quite like Mt. X.”

      “How’s that?”

      “I can’t put my finger on it.”

      They resumed their trek and in about five minutes they reached the cave. Snow was drifted high around the entrance and they had to plow through it a bit before they could access the doorway again. I carefully followed Lyle down the ancient steps into the muffled silence of the cave. A lot of the openings that had allowed up some natural light yesterday had been covered with snow overnight. Brilliant lanterns supplied the need now as we ventured deeper into the caves.

      The lights glared on the tarp stretched over the stone sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. I didn’t stare it at. They called me from this corner to that to take pictures as they uncovered the remains of a mosaic floor, a set of sealed stone jars, more fragments of copper bells. There was a gap between the back wall and a massive deposit of ice. They widened it with chisels and the blunted blows of icepicks and hammers. The restless beams of flashlights danced through the glacial mass.

      “There’s a doorway back here,” Lyle told me stepping back out into the main chamber. “Doesn’t look like a big room, but it’s something.”

      I joined them exploring the new room. Firepits, markings on the walls, the remains of a torch of some kind—this day would be filled with my usual fare. There was some comfort in that. Maye we would even find some bones if we kept looking. It was so much easier to analyze skeletal remains than what was lying out there in the sarcophagus.

      It was almost time for lunch break when I returned to the main chamber. The sun had broken through the clouds outside and light filtered through the ice and snow where the rock split and cracked to let it in.

      “A lot of new data from this little trip,” I said, coming up beside Lyle and replacing my lens-cap. “I didn’t know these people even existed.”

      “Yeah. This should trigger quite a bit of follow-up study.” He reached down and lifted the edge of the tarp over the sarcophagus. He glanced up at me. “I want to check and be sure the elements aren’t getting to it,” he said.

      I nodded. Once again, I prepared to view the content of the ancient coffin as he gathered the cover back. And once again, neither of us were prepared for what we saw.

      It was empty.

      I don’t remember what I did in the time following our shocking discovery. For all I know, I might have simply stood there in the middle of the chaos and panic, staring at the empty box. They questioned each other. They accused the locals. They once again tried to deduce how they could have been hoaxed. It hadn’t been a real body. Someone must have opened the coffin before they got there. Other things that made even less sense.

      The rest of the day went on like this. We completely ruled out the possibility of anyone stealing the corpse. We were the only people up here and no one would have gone to all that trouble to do something that might destroy the most extraordinary discovery of the century, which we all would have been credited for. No animal could possibly have dragged it off into the snow overnight. No one had seen so much as a bird the whole time we were there, and there was zero evidence of the tarp having been tampered with.

      “Six thousand years, and the body dissolves into thin air overnight. A rotten shame,” said Lyle as we stood near the fire-ring warming our frozen fingers with mugs of coffee.

      Neither of us spoke for a while. We had said everything. Everyone had said everything several times and now everyone was quiet. They had gone off to study what remained of our extraordinary finds. They were off in the corners of the lodge classifying the fragments of things—things the mountain people had brought the boy king. Bone flutes, copper bells, jars…pretty things. But what were they truly worth, in the end?

      “So,” said Lyle. “Here’s the story: mass hallucination. Altitude sickness. How’s that sound?”

      “No good. I’ve got pictures,” I snarled.

      “Go ahead and keep that to yourself. We’re going to glean a lot from this expedition. It’s a pretty fair dig, isn’t it? Who’s the wiser? The tomb was empty when we found it. What’s there to explain? Maybe the boy-king was a legend after all. You and I know what you and I know.”

      He didn’t know the half of it. I still haven’t told him.

    Categories
    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice

    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice: part three

    Part: 3/5 read part one

    Wordcount: 1,303

    Synopsis: Amy encounters the legendary boy-king.

    I had been photographing sites for years. I had been to a lot of places and seen a lot of strange things. You’re bound to encounter strange things when you make it your life’s work to pry into the buried chambers of the past. But the voice of a child in the silence startled me because there were no children at the lodge while we were staying there. And I had thought I was alone.

      He was standing across the fire from me, gazing levelly through the soft amber light. Once I pulled myself away from the eyes my attention flew to the circlet glimmering on his forehead. My vision adjusted so I could see him more clearly and the impossible became unmistakable. The little king had left his bed.

      Strange in retrospect, I didn’t freak out as much as you would think. The first reaction I noticed was a profound sadness that crept up from deep inside me. What did it mean to a child to be undead, uncorrupted, and abandoned in an icy cave on a high mountainside? Poor lonely little boy. Poor forgotten waif. He couldn’t sleep.

      Finally, my rationality returned and I shook my head, getting up, turning away with every intention of ignoring the apparition and going back to my room for the night. But as I made my way out of the ring of rustic couches around the roaring fire, I felt someone close behind me and whirled on him.

     “Leave me alone,” I snapped.

      Tears glowed in his huge dark eyes as he backed away from me. “Are you going to leave too?” he asked in a voice broken with anticipation of the answer.

      I shook my head, trying to reply, but my voice didn’t come. I stood frozen in speechless horror as the childish ghoul remained a few paces from me, shivering in the cold, eyes running with ancient tears but continuously gazing up at me. His beautiful face pleaded with me. He wasn’t a deceptive devil of ashes and ice, he was a troubled child. Had he come out before to haunt the mountain climbers and the people who stayed in this lodge? Had anyone ever acknowledged him?

      “Go back where you came from. I don’t talk to dead people,” I said, still hoping to awaken myself from this dream.

      His breath hitched. “Dead?”

      He didn’t know. At that, my resolve crumbled. I reached out for him. “No. I didn’t mean that, honey. Come here.”

      He lowered his head, sending flashes of firelight from the stone on his brow, and glanced, uncertain, at my hand. Then he came toward me and I gently pulled him in. His head wasn’t even as high as my chest. I wondered how old he was. The small body was warm and surprisingly solid under the robes he wore, and his hair was thick and soft, but wet with melted snow.

      “Did you walk all the way from…?” I didn’t go on. Instead I led him to the couch and invited him to sit beside me in the warmth of the fire. He pulled up his feet, curling into a ball and leaning against me, gazing with still-watery eyes into the dancing flames. “You want to tell me a few things?” I asked.

      “What things?”

      “I don’t know. Maybe why you can’t sleep?”

      He blinked and laid his head on my shoulder. “I don’t like the dreams.”

      “What dreams?”

      “I dream about my people. They come into the cave and they go away again. They pretend they don’t see me. They act like they don’t know who I am. I miss them. They don’t come anymore.”

      They’re dead! All his people are dead. How long has it been? How long has he been dreaming of them coming to his grave to mourn him as dead? But I didn’t ask him. Instead I asked him what any good archeologist would have asked. “What were your people like?”

      He was quiet for a moment. “They made flutes from bones and played beautiful music. They were strong and built houses in the sides of the mountain and walls along the crests of the hills. They tamed the sheep and horses and planted banks of poppies just for the joy of seeing them bloom.

      “And they wanted a king. They choose me to lead them. Everyone was pleased with me, and everyone knew my voice in a crowd. They loved to hear me laugh and would come and stay with me for hours just to listen to the things I told them.

      “But after a while, they seemed unhappy. They stopped talking to me and talked only to each other. The men started talking about other places, and how their leaders were different. And they decided they didn’t want me to lead them anymore.”

      He fell quiet and I sat thinking, trying to imagine the thriving civilization that must have been on this saddleback thousands of years ago. The poppies, the music, the horses—it was all gone now. Nothing remained but drifted snow, and the buried ruins in the mountainside. But why?

      “Well,” I said at last. “Maybe they thought it would be better to have a leader who wasn’t a child.”

      “I’m not a child.”

      And that was when I realized he wasn’t.

      He wrapped his arms around his knees and scowled at the fire. “But that was one of the things they said. They wanted a man to rule them. They wanted a king who would be wise and mighty. But years passed—many years, and I never became what they wanted. Other places they had seen had men leading them with war machines and gold and concubines. Other places they had seen had many kings in the time when they only had one. But what they wanted more than anything else was a king they could put in the ground and venerate as a man gone away. They wanted to have a treasury of dead kings. Like the other places.”

      I couldn’t process all he was saying. But I kept gathering it like my files of photographs. I could analyze it later. “So, what did they do?”

      For a long time, he didn’t answer. The wind moaned around the lodge and sang like a ghost in the chimney. Finally, he drew a small sobbing breath. “They put me in the cave and they told me I was dead.”

      “They made you stay in the cave?”

      He nodded. He rubbed his wrist across his eyes and ducked his head, unable to go on for a while. Then he took a deep breath. “They came now and then. They burned herbs and resin and carved things on the walls, but they didn’t talk to me. They didn’t even look at me. And they never stayed for very long. Sometimes they would leave me things. Bone flutes and copper bells and jars full of flowers—pretty things. But I really just wanted them to stay.” Then he looked up at me. “Are you going to leave too?”

      I smoothed my hand through his long wavy hair and wrapped my arm around him. He settled against my shoulder again. “Not tonight,” I said.

      So, they had always had a boy king. The same king for years—decades? Centuries? How long had he lingered in the form of a child, leading the people in the saddleback of Mt. X? How long did it take for them to become discontented with him, in his staunch unwillingness to change, to age, to die, to decay like the other kings they had seen? When had they abandoned him in the cave and when had the last of his people come to pay homage at his tomb? I didn’t ask him. He was tired. I let him sleep.

    Categories
    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice

    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice: part two

    Part: 2/5 (read part one)

    Wordcount: 1,327

    Synopsis: Amy and Lyle go over the pictures from the day’s work. A restless night follows.

    “Man, that’s about enough to knock me out,” said Lyle, pulling off his heavy knit cap as we staggered into the lodge at long last. None of us could really claim to be mountaineers. People who probably could had reassured us that nothing between the site and the lodge was particularly rugged. It was more rugged than any of us.

      The lodge was a sprawling building with walls like a fortress. Constructed partially from native rock and partially from massive timber, it had withstood the worst Mt. X could conjure. Yet, standing in the fire room at its heart, I could still hear the wind wailing and roaring through the saddleback. A fine grit of ice crystals raced out of the dark and dashed against the heavy glass in the windows. I untangled my musty scarf from my wet hair and unzipped my coat while Lyle conversed with our guide. The guide was a wind-burned St. Bernard of a man with a restless shock of red hair and bright blue eyes shrunken by perpetual snow-blindness. He was close-mouthed about the boy king. He only knew as much as we did.

      I was waiting for my turn with Lyle. The rest of the team broke up and migrated out to their designated places in the lodge for the night. Lyle and I had developed some rapport early on this trip. I reminded him of his sister back in Edinburgh. He was the information hub for the expedition. I’ve always liked information, especially when the inexplicable happens. Surely, Lyle had a theory.

      He bid the guide goodnight and turned to me. He could see the questions in my face, and now that the exertion of the hike had worn off, he seemed ready to talk about the day’s findings. “Got the photographs?”

      “Do you want to review them?” I asked, repositioning the strap of my camera bag on my shoulder.

      He pulled back the wet sleeve of his coat and scowled at his watch. “We’ve got time to take a look over them.”

      Good. Then we can get the whole thing out in the open. I returned to my room to change into dry clothes and pick up my laptop. It was a small room with a bed that creaked like a nest of racoons and a tiny window, plastered with snow. I emptied my camera, pocketing the memory card and leaving the battery to charge. The cold drained it fast. Lyle said to meet back in the fire-room. I grabbed my laptop and went back out.

      He was waiting for me at a table by the wall, surrounded by stapled stacks of paper and a glowing e-reader. He cleared a spot for my laptop and I joined him. As I opened the laptop I glanced toward the windows. “How bad is the storm?”

      “Bad enough that the locals admit it’s a storm. It won’t clear up until tomorrow afternoon. That will set us back a little. But what have we got?” He moved his chair over to see the screen better. I opened the camera card.

      We skipped through some general pictures of the site and moved on. He spent a while analyzing the steps we uncovered leading down into the cave the day before. He had opinions on how they were constructed, but couldn’t decide if they dated from before or after the tomb was built. They had completely uncovered the steps and were making their way into the tomb before anyone noticed the characters carved into the stone over the door. I saw them first. They were simple, angular and runic. They had found similar characters on a slab of basalt under a lake in the valley. No one had been able to translate it, and it seemed unrelated to any other finds in the area. This would be the first time we discovered a similar script.

      Someone dug up a handful of pottery just inside the door, ashes here, ashes there, fragments of a bone flute and what might have been tubular bells. Then there were the markings that first tipped off the locals that this might be the tomb of a boy king. They outlined the ghostly nearly-destroyed figure of a child with a star on his forehead.

      There were dozens of careful shots of the worn-down writing scratched on the walls. It looked different from the runes. More modern, perhaps. But still, there was no way to translate it. If only we could understand what was written on the mausoleum itself. Maybe it would explain a great deal.

      We spent some time staring at the sheepskin with the crest painted on it. Little remained of the pigment. There were shadowy stains where we could guess it once created images and designs. We identified traces of red and blackish pigment and a grimy yellow that Lyle said had once been green. About a quarter of the crest was still visible. It was a wreath of foliage with a star hanging over it. I could make out the faded outline of a bird, or some winged creature in the middle of the wreath. It took about five minutes for Lyle to see it. He might have been stalling.

      I clicked to the next image and it hit me deep in the chest like an electric pulse again. There was the child sleeping in his crypt. “He’s so perfect.” It was all I could think to say yet. I glanced sideways at Lyle. He gazed mutely into the screen.

      “If the bog mummies could see this.” He sat back in his chair and rubbed his fingers together. “The construction methods on the crypt date from the bronze age. We haven’t got much reference for the script, but it’s safe to say with the changes we see in it that this tomb was in existence and possibly a pilgrimage for these people for a long time. It sure would be nice if we could translate some of it. What do you suppose they had to say about this kid?”

      We moved on. No one seemed to have much to say about this kid anymore. But I would have liked to know what we all were thinking when we settled into our rooms that night.

      As for me, my mind refused to stop. At about one a.m. something occurred to me. What if this society had only ever had one boy king? Supposing in some tender early time in the establishment of their civilization, somehow this child became their adored ruler? At his tragic premature passing, his people had embalmed him through some infallible method, lost to science. In that mountainside tomb, they continued to pay tribute to a dead king—their eternal ceremonial monarch, and the boy-king of legend.

      A strange move for a budding civilization, but maybe a lucky one, in the end. A dead king had no reason to go to war, and no lust for conquest. Sometimes the best thing these little civilizations could do was keep to themselves.

      At around two, the wind was howling unbelievably loud and the little heater in my room was barely sufficient to fight the chill of Mt. X. I decided to get up and seek out that huge central open fireplace that heated the lodge like a lurking volcano. Surely, I wasn’t the only one struggling to sleep through this wind.

      The fireplace room was wonderfully warm, but deserted. So, I contented myself with the company of some hot chocolate and sank into the corner of one of the semicircular couches ringing the fire. The heat was already making me sleepier than I had been in my bed, and I propped my feet on the edge of the fire ring. The wind moaned outside in the dark and I thought of the cave in the mountainside, with the cuneiform writing and the bone flute fragments…and the ashes.

      And a child’s voice woke me saying, “I can’t sleep.”

    Categories
    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice

    The Unquiet Slumber of Ashes and Ice: part one

    Part: 1/5

    Wordcount: 1,120

    Synopsis: A photographer working on an archaeological site uncovers a mysterious tomb.

    They had found the tomb of a boy king. Almost all cultures have a legend of a boy king at some point, like the lady warrior, or the prophet bard. The most notable thing about this lost mountain people was that they always had a boy king. Or so tradition said. What became of these monarchs when they grew up, no one knew.

      We waited until winter. It had been a summertime avalanche that uncovered the site. Everyone was familiar with the seasonal rhythm of the mountains. We wanted things to be a bit more stable before we ventured up to the saddleback of Mt. X to excavate. I couldn’t blame the local people for not recognizing the momentum of their discovery. I didn’t either—not until I had spent my whole flight reading through the stack of reports on the ancient people who lived and died in that mountain range six-thousand years ago.

      The walls of ice and rock stifled the roar of the wind. I huddled in the shelter of the glacial battlements the avalanche had partially broken down. Fiddling with my camera on my knee, I watched the slow progress of chisels on the ancient seal of the royal mausoleum. I had photographed so many sites before, but I never had the sophistication it took to see the profundity in faded clay beads and shards of pottery. Skeletal remains were only marginally more interesting. I never did understand what was so sacred about ancient fire-pits. Ashes, of all things, seemed to astound archeologists the most.

      But here I was again, stiff as a corpse frozen where I perched on the icy boulders, watching, waiting for my turn to step in and record the findings. I pulled my dripping braid out of the multilayered collar of my coat, the color of winter-kill, and matted with ice from the climb. Just then, a heavy strip of rust-eaten metal cracked and fell away from the seam of the coffin. A brief silence hung in the cave and then everyone moved forward to get a grip on the edge of the lid. I stood, slipping the strap on the camera around my neck and approaching.

      Wheezing and muttering to each other, the team raised the massive stone lid and shuffled to the side to set it down on the floor of the cave. I had expected to see a second lid revealed by the first—perhaps gold-plated and ornamented with an idealized death-mask. Instead there was a curtain of sheepskin, painted with some manner of crest.

      I raised the camera, adjusting lens and flash-bulb as the rest of the team congregated again around the tomb. The nail heads crumbled away as they lifted the edge of the hide onto a sheet of plexiglass. Others freed it from the opposite side as they slid the sheet under it. Bits of leather flaked off and cracked even with their tedious caution. Slowly they lowered a second sheet to cover it, flattening the warped and brittle material between the sheets of glass. With the same extreme care, they lifted the hide from the opening of the coffin and I stepped in again, camera at the ready.

      What appeared to me in the echoing hollow of the coffin chilled my blood deeper than the mountain wind could bite.

      With the seal dated almost four-thousand years back, nothing could have made less sense than what we all saw that late afternoon in January of Two-thousand Five. But no one remembers any differently than I do, and I’ll never forget.

      He was the most beautiful child I had ever seen—eight or nine years old by my estimation—with markedly fine and regal facial features, almost resembling a young woman more than a boy. The hair that some reverent hands had arranged over his shoulders was lush and black, curling and glossy with the oil of life and health. His soft pearlescent skin filled out his face and smooth white hands, but death’s grim veil aged him beyond his living years. My fingers were ridged on my camera, but I leaned closer to observe the delicate tinge of mauve along the lines of the tremendously long lashes, and the hint of rose in the lips. He was dressed in a long white robe and an ornate silver circlet held a brilliant jewel in the center of his high forehead.

      The first comment I heard from the team was, “It’s a hoax,” another claimed it was not a body at all, but a glass figure to represent him, perhaps containing the bones. But it was the body. And by the end of the discourse, we all believed it was the body—somehow flawlessly preserved under the strange conditions of the mountainside tomb.

      “We certainly can’t move it,” Lyle was saying into his radio. “We’re going to find a way to seal the tomb back up until we can get some chemical analysts up here. We need to try to keep the conditions steady. It would be a shame, after four-thousand years—”

      “We’re not going to be able to replace the seal until we can get some plaster shipped up here. That could take a day or two,” someone said behind me.

      “We’ll see what happens then. It least it’s not going to get above fifteen degrees for the next couple of days.”

      Should they replace the lid? The lid was fragile, and without the seal, did little good. They stretched a tarp over the opening and staked it down. For the rest of the evening, we hovered over the lid, “photograph this, Amy.” “We need a picture of that.” Patterns and pictograms, nonsense in cuneiform. That child in the mausoleum Lyle leaned his back against looked like he had died minutes ago, but if we scoured the binder full of reports and collected images, perhaps we could identify the approximate era when this script was written.

      Dusk fell. We packed up and trudged back down the slope to the lodge. It was a bit of a hike to the saddleback. We probably shouldn’t have stayed out so long. Along the way the team discussed other digs, other times we’ve ventured into dangerous extreme places in the name of history and anthropology. They talked about the scripts we had found and theorized about their origins. But mostly, they talked about ashes.

      No one talked about the remains.

      All the while I kept slowing and lagging behind the others. Sometimes I stopped altogether and looked back at the bleak face behind us. I kept feeling like we had unthinkingly left something behind. But we couldn’t have. We were quite thorough clearing our equipment away. We left nothing but the tarp.

    Categories
    The Webspinner

    The Webspinner: finale

    Part: 4/4 read part one

    Wordcount: 1,051

    Synopsis: Late one night, the breakthrough finally comes.

    For the next few days, the house was very quiet.

      They rarely saw the mute during that time. Occasionally, Falke would glance out the window and see him for a moment in the back garden. But the moment he looked away, he would vanish like a ghost. One night, vary late, he found him in the kitchen, staring into the glowing flames of the stove, perfectly still and unresponsive to anything in the present moment.

      Neither did he have tantrums anymore. He didn’t kick a single doorframe or knock so much as a paperweight off Metzdorff’s desk. Falke became almost panic-stricken several times when he couldn’t find the patient anywhere he looked. The house was large and easy to hide in for one who knew it well, but Falke was so concerned about the state of Camille’s silent mind that his dramatic imagination carried him away quickly. In spite of this, he fought with Metzdorff only once over the decision to deny Camille his thread. From then on, he was silent as Camille on the matter. Metzdorff insisted that the patient was no longer distressed, and had probably forgotten the whole episode.

      Then, two weeks later, something very strange happened. Metzdorff and Falke had spent the evening reading in the study. It grew dark outside, and a gusty wind wuthered around the Gothic peaks of the Metzdorff estate. As Falke sat, half reading, half listening to the unnerving rattling and whistling at the windows, the door opened and Camille was there. Both doctors looked up at him. He hadn’t willingly been in the same room with them since they burned the last of the thread. He entered and quietly went to sit by the window–the window with the jackdaw in it—and then, he was still.

      The doctors slowly went back to their reading.  A heavy sigh of wind trailed off into quiet for a minute and there was another sound from outside. In a tree near the window there was a nightingale. It huddled against the dripping branch in the cold, dark wind, and sung its clear chirping call into the inky night. It sung again and again, the soft voice echoing out into the stifling wind. Falke looked up from his book, scowling pensively. “Do they often sing on nights this stormy?” he asked.

    “Who?”

    “Nightingales.”

    Metzdorf turned a page. “They’ll sing whenever another nightingale’s near enough to hear them, I suppose.” Falke sat listening to the bird out in the darkness, having forgotten the book on his lap. After several minutes, the nightingale stopped singing, or perhaps flew into the woods nearby for better shelter, and more company.  Leastwise, the wind was the only sound again. Falke looked toward the window and his eyes settled on Camille.

      Camille was gazing up into the blackness of the sky. His eyes were wide and searching. A tension had come into his face that Falke had never seen before. The young doctor rose. “Camille, are you alright?” As he spoke, a tear plummeted downthe mute’s cheek, and he hid his face. Quickly, Falke came to him and gripped his shoulder. “What’s the matter?” Suddenly, the tragedy of it all seized him. Perhaps…Camille really couldn’t tell them. They would never know. Whatever made him suffer assailed him in his own world, in isolation and silence, somewhere too far away for the rest of humanity to hear him scream.

    Metzdorff now rose from his seat and stood scowling across the room, holding his book by the cover, forgotten. Then, very quietly, Camille started to cry vocally. That voice had been unheard for at least two decades. The two doctors stood for some time, paralyzed and thunderstruck. At last, Camille lifted his head again, staring once more out at the thrashing night. He sighed…and half a minute passed.

      Then, Falke said, “What’s wrong, Camille? What is it?”

      The wind died. Camille breathed heavily or a few minutes, staring out the window. He swallowed once, blinking liquidly. “The string,” he breathed.

      Falke almost choked on his breath. “You want more thread? Is that it?”

      Camille swallowed, nodding slightly.

      Falke’s eyes, enormously earnest, went to Metzdorf. “By all means!” the German burst out. “Give the man his string!” He seized Falke’s shoulder. “Falke–”

      “I’ll go tonight. I don’t mind walking in the rain.”

      “No, don’t go all the way to town, go to the neighbors. If they’re asleep wake them up. Tell them I sent you—and we’ve got to have thread.”

    When morning came, the sky was still, and overcast.The light came softly, and expectantly, through the windows. The doctors came down the stairway together, cordial for the first time since they had cleared away the webs. Falke reached out his hand and stopped Metzdorf halfway down and they stood gazing at the room below. It was shrouded in Camille’s webs. The newborn sunlight filtered through weavings of gold and red and royal blue that decorated the windows, and a half-rosette of black and silver radiated from the banister. The doctors wandered through the gallery in silence, staring.

      Then there was a foot step behind them. They turned back. There stood Camille, a new spool of fawn-colored thread in his hand. He led them to the door and opened it to the misty morning. They followed him outside. For a moment, he stared at the grove of whispering willows, reviewing the distances between them. Then he leapt off the porch and ran out to them, anchoring his thread. He started to spin.

      They watched him for nearly an hour. At last he finished, thrilled and exulting in his work. He drifted back to the porch where they stood, still frozen where they had been when he started. As he went into the house he turned back to face them. He looked from one to the other, and then his eyes settled on Metzdorf. He smiled and closed the door behind him.

      “Do you suppose he’ll ever speak again?” asked Falke, at length.

      “Who knows?”

      Falke laughed to himself and started down the porch steps, going out to the willows. Metzdorf glanced back at the door, and then stared after him. Then his eyes re-focused to a ghostly orb of spider-silk, rippling gently, and shimmering with tiny globes of dew. He sighed. “Very strange.”

    THE END