Goblin mode engaged

Portrait of Krampus against black backgroundIt seemed appropriate that the Oxford Dictionary revealed its Word of the Year for 2022 – goblin mode – earlier this week on the eve of St Nicholas’ feast day or, as we goblins like to call it, Krampusnacht.

I thought that, after a lengthy hiatus, how better to return to these bloggish halls than with a word for Wednesday and a quick etymological romp with some ghoulies and ghosties and European folkloric beasties.

Firstly, goblins. The Oxford Dictionary linguists and lexicographers put the choice of Word of the Year to the public for the first time and were deluged with resounding support for ‘Goblin Mode’. Their president acknowledged that it “resonates with all of us who are feeling a little overwhelmed at this point.” So what, exactly, is goblin mode? They define it as a slang term for ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’

Because … goblins lounge about on sofas, in their pyjamas, binge-watching Netflix, and eating whole packets of Tim Tams. Probably while doing their best Edith Piaf impersonation… Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.

Actually, while they are commonly found scattered through fictional fantasy realms and role-playing games, goblins are quite elusive on the etymological front. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the word may originally stem from a Medieval Latin reference to ‘Gobelinus’ – a spirit haunting the Evreux region of France. Given that the city of Evreux was repeated sacked and burnt down in the Middle Ages, during the wars between Normandy and France, it’s not surprising that the spirit may have been responsible for spawning the Norman French word ‘gobelin’ which was first recorded in the early 14th Century as meaning “a devil, incubus, mischievous and ugly fairy.”

Goblin has come to be a catch-all term for mostly malicious creatures and there’s a lot of line blurring between folkloric tricksters and Hellish minions. Goblins, kobolds, knockers, trow, hobgoblins, phooka, bogey, sprites, brownies, gremlins … oh, there’s a whole parcel full of these delightful things that we must unpack one day. But, for now, what about the Krampus?

The banner image above is cropped from a lovely portrait of this beastie by Gerold Pattis, whose work can be found on Pixabay. The figure of the Krampus has become a pop culture icon, particularly since the 2015 release of the eponymous US horror film. In European Alpine and Germanic traditions, St Nick gives presents to good children and Krampus gives the bad children coal or puts them in his sack and beats them with a birch rod or throws them in an icy river or drags them off to Hell.

Seems legit.

There are plenty of regional variations on Krampus including the Bavarian Klaubauf (who prefers to bake children in pies), Knecht Ruprecht (who hits them with a bag of ashes), and Zwarte Piet from the Low Countries who puts children in his sack and, inexplicably, takes them to Spain rather than Hell.

We’ve also got some gender balancing with tales of the iron-beaked Christmas witch, Perchta, showing it’s not just hairy, horned, man-monsters that get to make the holiday season gory and bright. Perchta or Bertha or Frau Holle or Hulda is sometimes described as a goddess or a shapeshifter, with one large foot that shows her nature as both a swan maiden and a spinner whose foot is enlarged from too much hard-core treadling.

Perchta gets out and about in December and early January on her annual domestic workplace inspections which she takes very seriously indeed. If you haven’t spun all your flax, before the Christmas holidays, she shows up and tramples the unspun flax to punish you. If you’re also a messy housekeeper, she will slit your belly open with the knife she hides in her ragged skirts, pull out your guts, and stuff the hole with straw and stones. Or maybe just beat you with stinging nettles, if you’re lucky.

Here’s a delightful summary of Frau Perchta including the description of her creeping “through the house like a mad Martha Stewart crossed with the Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” Perchta also has an entourage – the Perchten – that is part Wild Hunt and part horde of Krampuses doing her bidding as she goes around on Twelfth Night, looking for slovenly spinners to punish. It’s kind of cool that St Nicholas has one chained Krampus to mete out punishments and Perchta has an army of them.

When facing down the looming festive season I have to admit that I’ve never been that keen on Santa’s list being all or nothing “naughty or nice” and I think the Elf on the Shelf is a creepy little nark. I’m definitely not about to start handing out coal or judging anyone for their commitment to spinning flax and doing domestic chores. In fact, after another weird year, I am 100% behind the notion of seizing the opportunity over the holidays to go into goblin mode.

Just remember, if you feel the same, that you don’t need anyone’s approval. You goblin mode best when you’re unapologetic about rejecting social norms.

No regrets, fellow goblins, no regrets.

Synchronicities of song

feet crushing grapes

I’m not averse to a little whine, but squashed and fermented grapes are not my thing. Instead of reaching for a drink when times are bleak, I have three sources of solace:

  • nature
  • human creativity
  • affection and connection.

Since the bleak has been smeared about a bit lately, I’ve been drinking in the cloudless blue sky and enjoying the antics of garden-flitting birds — finches, tree-creepers, galahs, red wattle birds, eastern and crimson rosellas, and a couple of female satin bower birds which I like to call Plolives… because they are plump and olive-coloured and it took me a while to work out what they actually were.

I’ve also, as always, been reading and listening to music.

I love it when authors include a playlist in the book and there are songs on it I love and new songs to discover. I have the latest Seanan McGuire InCryptid book, Calculated Risks, on my too-be-read pile and I know there will be just such a list in there.

I love it when writers talk about the music they write to – the songs that are the battle anthems or signature themes for their characters, or the moody and atmospheric music they use to sink into the right/write mindset. There was a lovely flurry of suggestion on the Australian Speculative Fiction Group’s FB page last week which included soundtracks and game scores and ambient music from Burial and Boards of Canada (thanks, Ben Marshall!).

And there have been a couple of delightful synchronicities lately which have made the world feel more connected.

A couple of years ago I followed a link to The Spellbinding Swedish Song That Calls Cows Home (at atlasobscura.com). Kulning – the herding call – is one of those weird and wonderful… magical… things that people do as if it’s no big deal. That’s just how they roll in that corner of the world.

It’s…. I can’t even articulate how cool it is. It gave me chills when I first watched it — see if it does the same for you: Kulning – a farewell song to the cows – YouTube

Then I was reading A Song of Flight by Juliet Marillier – the third in her Warrior Bard series, which is out soon (I received an advance reading copy and I’ll be posting a review about it soon) – and one of the new Swan Island recruits uses this cry to avert disaster. Ooh, chills again. I love how this has been woven into the story and how it is, indeed, magic. I can’t help but imagine the author listening to that YouTube clip and thinking, “I have to use this!” And who could blame her?

Two weeks ago, I had a set of headphones popped onto my ears as I was told, “listen to this.” The this in question was The Hu, a Mongolian folk rock and heavy metal band, doing an English language version of their song Wolf Totem featuring Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach.

The sound that The Hu create is just amazing. I recommend watching the original Wolf Totem on YouTube for the joyous juxtaposition of the Mongol hordes on Harley Davidsons. And I know it’s wise to not read the comments but I noticed one comment from a dad whose fairy-tutu-wearing daughter referred to it as “the song with the werewolf singing!!” Which is a fantastic description of the effect of heavy metal throat singing.

Imagine my delight, then, when I read the latest book by Patricia Briggs in her Alpha and Omega series – Wild Sign – and found that the werewolves were, indeed, singing this song. It was just perfect.

If you’ve got a perfect book and music combination to recommend, or your own story of a synchronicity of song, I’d love to hear it.

 

 

 

Join the queue

people in a queue

Have you been busy? My month has whizzed past in an increasingly chilly blur, but before it skitters off entirely I thought I’d post a 500 word story I wrote at the start of the month, for the AWC’s Furious Fiction.

I’ve missed the last six of the monthly writing challenges so I was determined to do this one. The requirements were that the story had to begin in a queue, include the words cross, drop and lucky, and  include a map. Err…. my mind was a perfect blank and then the only thing that entered it was…

The 17th Letter

“Don’t you think it’s ironic?”
“No,” Queenie said, “it’s really not.”
She hunched her shoulders against the wind and sighed. Two metres away, Qiana rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, but no,” Quentin insisted. He shuffled closer, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, size 14 running shoes taking up more than a fair share of the lane’s narrow footpath. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” Queenie said. “And no, it’s not.”
She took an ostentatious step back and wished the lane had those little green crosses on the ground to mark a safe space. It was too cold to be doing the social distance dance, too cold to be waiting in this wind tunnel for one of the twins to unlock the door and start the meeting.
“But you can’t know,” he protested.
“It’s my mutant superpower,” Queenie said. “It’s what a lucky thirteen years of teaching has made me.”
“Psychic?” Doctor Quimby looked up from his book, although Queenie would have sworn he was paying no more attention to them than to the weather.
“Psychotic, maybe.” Qiana grinned.
“Three hundred and sixty-five ten-year-olds have drawn me a comprehensive road map to juvenile humour and I can predict a bad pun at –” Queenie said, but Quentin ignored her.
“Isn’t it ironic,” he said, “that we have to queue to get into the Q Support Group?”
“No,” Queenie said, “It’s typical. Qasim and Qamar are always late.”
“But –”
“And it’s only irony where the expectation is deliberately opposite to the actuality.”
“And we’re not really queued,” Qiana said. “More… clustered.”
She edged away from Quentin with a smile that wouldn’t have embarrassed a shark.
“It is, technically, a queue of Qs,” the doctor conceded.
“A tautology then.” Queenie shrugged. “But a tautology with an irony deficiency.”
She straightened as someone stopped at the end of the lane. Bundled and bulky in a heavy coat and scarf, she couldn’t make out any of their features. Their glasses reflected the streetlights as they scanned the lane and then started forward.
“Newbie,” she murmured.
“Conspiracy theorist?” Qiana suggested. “Like the last four?”
“Or a James Bond fan,” Doctor Quimby said, “looking for Q Division.”
Both were more likely than a genuine member. Few peoples’ names started with Q and even fewer wanted to socialise with others who shared that burden. Qasim was probably right: ‘support group’ sounded too needy, but they’d voted down Quentin’s suggestion to rename the group ‘Q Tips’.
“Are you the Q people?” The figure stopped a considerate distance away and took off the glasses, revealing an elderly Chinese face. “I am Qiang.”
“Hi.” Queenie smiled. “We’re just waiting for the key.”
“Ah, unfortunate. It’s this wind.” He shuddered. “I really need to…”
He stopped, blushing.
Queenie raised her hand.
“Don’t say it,” she warned, but Quentin ignored her.
“You know what the alphabet says: you’ve got to P before you Q.”

And there you have it – flash fiction, or really just a smidgen of juvenile humour, to close out the month.

Sorry.

 

My nice banner image of a queue is a free to use StockSnap from Pixabay.

Witches, please

There’s something endlessly fascinating about witches.

Whether they are fairy tale villains or femme fatales; maidens, mothers or crones; mentors or conspirators or everyday women being persecuted for their uppity attitudes, witches make for great stories. And, across years of reading, I’ve met some fantastic witch characters.

Lolly Willowes. Eva Ernst. The Gale women. Paige Winterbourne. America’s Routewitches. Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching. Baba Yaga. Diana Bishop. Gillian and Sally Owens. Minerva, Courtney, Agnes, Nahri, Jadis, Miryem, Penny, Ekaterina, Jane, Alexandra and Sukie. Mrs Fairfax and Madame Olympia. I could go on, but I’d better stop.

No, wait… I finished reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir last night (hot damn, what a book), and I must add Harrowhark Nonagesimus to this list. I mean, necromancy is a specialised kind of witchcraft and Harrow is… well, she’s horrible and she’s awesome. The best kind of witch.

Doubtless, you’ve got your own favourite fictional witches – please share because I’m always open to reading recommendations. And today’s final recommendation from me is a foretelling of lovely witchy things to come.

It’s a toffee-dipped apple, seeping poisoned juices from its rotten core.

It’s a cold wind blowing no good, whispering words that curdle on the edge of comprehension.

It’s a lonely road and a sullen, flickering light, glimpsed through dead branches, bone-bleached by the full moon.

In short, it’s GOOD SOUTHERN WITCHES.

Editor J.D. Horn of Curious Blue Press has assembled a clever coven of tales about witches from the south-eastern states of America. As the blurb says:

This collection is a love letter to the witch, in all her glorious and fearsome incarnations, because—you have to admit—even when she’s wicked, she’s still damned good.

You want witches? Good Southern Witches has “Baba Yaga reimagined as a Southern socialite, Kentucky granny witches, Texas water witches, Tennessee tricksters, North Carolina guardians, Georgia killers, Mississippi virgins, and Louisiana whores.”

What’s more, this anthology has Tace Bolley, my very own southern witch, who has a tale to tell about Uncle Amos Polkinghorne’s apple orchard which, as she puts it, “ain’t so sweet, neither.”

Publication date is 13 April 2021 and you can pre-order your Kindle copy on Amazon and your paperback copy soon.

I’m looking forward to seeing Tace in company with her southern sisters and reading the hell out of this anthology to discover a new batch of fabulous fictional witches.

 

(My banner image was cropped from a photo by Susann Mielke which she shared on Pixabay).

Writing, of course!

woman with bright hairIs 2021 the year you’re finally going to write your novel?

Or perhaps the demands of everyday life have scaled your resolutions down from 80,000+ words to something more like 4,000 and you just want to write, polish and submit a short story (or maybe two…)

If so, and you live in the Canberra region, AND you’re looking for some creative, writing craft-focused courses to help boot you along… look no further.

My writing buddy and I have four creative writing courses running in the first half of 2021 through CIT Recreational Short Courses. You could do a course on Amigurumi crochet or pizza and bread making*, but mmmm, why not also come to one of our delicious writing courses, which are chock-full of good advice, tips and tricks, and exercises to get your words flowing while you learn about vital aspects of storytelling and writing craft.

What aspects? Writing believable relationships and compelling characters, crafting scenes, and developing plots. The blurbs for each are in italics below:

Romance writing: love, lust and longing is on Saturday the 27th of February – 10am to 3:30pm:

Are you ready for romance? This one-day, writing intensive boot camp puts the best-selling genre under the spotlight. You’ll learn about the four pillars of romance, how to create tension (even when the reader is confident of a Happy Ever After) and how to write convincing relationships and compelling intimacy.

Creating convincing characters will be covered over three Tuesday nights in March – the 16th to the 30th – from 6pm to 8pm.

Are your characters working as hard as they can? Learn what readers connect with and why, and give your characters unique hooks, history and a heart. Workshop dialogue, strengths, flaws, backstory, relationships, goals and more, to make your characters unforgettable.

Scene snapshots: writing effective scenes is also on three Tuesday nights – the 4th to the 18th of May – from 6pm to 8pm:

Develop your writing skills using setting, set-up and action. Break down the nuts and bolts of what makes an effective scene so you can build any sort of story – short or novel length. Learn how to work your scenes to move the story forward, taking your readers with you.

Writing stories: plot, plan, and pillage is on Saturday the 5th of June, from 10am to 3:30pm:

One size does not fit all – this is as true for story structure as it is for clothes. This one-day course deconstructs successful stories to learn their patterns, discusses plotting for character, narrative and genre, and reveals how best to plan your writing.

We’ve run the first two courses before at CIT Bruce, and we got a lot of great feedback and requests for more. What people asked for was a way to take their fully realised characters, in all their emotional variety, and put them into a compelling narrative. So, we’re going to cover scenes, which are the building blocks of fiction, and plots, which provide the structure.

If you want to make the analogy that writing a story is like building a house, we’re covering vital aspects like the frame, bricks, furniture and decor. Or maybe your writing process is more of an extended Frankenstein moment – “Give my creation life!” – and we’re the Igors bringing you bones, muscles, flesh and heart.

In any case, why not come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab?

You know you want to. **

 

*As always, the range of courses is fabulous and inspiring and just perfect for discovering your new favourite thing.

**Just follow the links and sign up on the CIT Solutions website.

(Banner image cropped from a great photo by Allinoch on Pixabay.)

Spring crafting and summer canning

jam jarsSeasons turn, planets (obscurely) align and here we are post-summer solstice, at least in these southerly climes, and zipping towards the finish line in 2020. Even though clouds and rain stopped me from seeing Jupiter and Saturn putting on the bling, it still seems a propitious time to look back at the year and… *shudders*

OK, maybe not. I can report, though, that I had a productive spring. Not in the traditional way of springtime being time for spring cleaning. But who can get excited about that? Woo! – my cupboard is neat. Yah! – the skirting boards have been dusted. Clean all the things and then, before you know it, it’s time to clean again. Bah humbug, I say.

But I was productive in regards to crafting…

Craft stuff. It’s so satisfying. Fun to do and lovely to have an actual thing that I’ve made at the end of it, which I can keep or give away. And while, as usual I have more plans for lovely things that I could do, I’ve actually finished some projects which I’m happy with.

I stitcpatchwork bed runnerhed up a patchwork bed runner for a friend’s early spring birthday…painted globe

I repair glued and painted a mini globe with black and gold nail polish. I really should have taken a ‘before’ shot on this one, which was not only damaged and hence a clearance item, but that awful old orange-pink map colour…

I sewed some cute, up-cycled bags from old jeans which will be used as Christmas gift bags and I drew portraits of Medusa and the Sphinx – neither of whom look exactly thrilled to be involved, but you can’t have everything…

I sewed tentacular tie-backs for my library curtains (Ia! Ia! Curtains fhtagn!) because they are ridiculous and they make me laugh every time I  use them…

tentacular tie backtentacular tie back 2

 

 

 

 

spring flowersAnd it’s not like I’ve only been doing craft. I’ve been writing and reading and baking and, as I said at the start of the season, gardening.

Super, super productive.

And WAY more fun than cleaning.

And now it’s summer and I’ve segued neatly into a frenzy of making jam and sauce. The lovely productive garden had, er, produced. Mostly cherry plums, which I’ve canned as jam and as BBQ plum sauce and a delicious plum and beetroot chutney. I’ve also made a peach and vanilla jam, nectarine jam, and a lovely spiced limoncello peach jam, which is looking likely to make the acquaintance of my Christmas ham, when time comes for a bit of friendly glazing.

My 2020 seasonal gifts will be jars of jam in up-cycled bags, and I figure that’s a fine way to end out a weird year – by spreading some good will and sweetness in the world.

 

The Apocalypse? It’s not all bad

2020 was not the year for writing grim apocalyptic fiction.

Well, not according to me anyway. If that’s the jam in your jelly roll… okay, I’m not judging. You do you, Boo.

Nevertheless, ‘Apocalypse’ was the theme for the 2020 CSFG / Conflux short story competition that I wanted to enter. No. That I wanted to win – because I was so very pleased when my creepy little tale of an archivist and a skin-bound book won last year’s competition.

So, it was just a matter of writing my way into an apocalyptic story which wasn’t unbearably grim. Simple, right?

Step 1 was the opening lines of Lord Byron’s poem Darkness:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space…

Alright, still a little grim, but cut the guy some slack – it was the Year Without Summer so pretty gloomy all round. Anyway, I liked the idea of a dream which was not all a dream.

Step 2… I thought about making a character who had been born on the 10th of August 1997. Why? Because according to Aggai, the Bishop of Edessa in the 1st Century, that was when we could expect the Antichrist to be born and the end of the world to begin. Errr… still a bit grim, I suppose.

But… step 3, there were lots of apocalyptic theories for 2012, which would make someone born in 1997 just 15 years old and that could be fun…

Inspired by a dash of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic and a pinch of Maggie Stiefvater’s Blue Lily, Lily Blue (Book III of the Raven Cycle), I came up with the Delangeur women who foretell the future by various means – cartomancy, ailuromancy, augury and scrying  – and Molly Delangeur, a teenager who dreams of the end of the world.

I just needed to set it in a small hinterland town, surrounded by dairy farms, so I could lighten the tone with an apocalypse cow, a cash cow and the sort of cheerfully cheesy, regional festival that rural Australia does so well and I had my story – Herding Cats.

And the really great thing?

It won the CSFG / Conflux 2020 short story competition, and you can read it here, on the Conflux site, along with the apocalypse stories The Cusp by Kathryn Gossow and Yestermonth by Tim Borella.

Let me know what you think – still too grim or did it make you smile?

 

(The apocalypse cow banner image was cropped from a photograph by Cally Lawson on Pixabay.)

Heroines 3 and The Tenant of Rookwood Hall

barking black terrier

I couldn’t make it to the Heroines festival this year, but right now the new Heroines Anthology is wending its way to me from the wonderful team at Neo Perennial Press. I can’t want to get my hands on it to read this latest crop of stories about amazing women.

The Heroines anthologies contain short fiction and poetry which retells or re-imagines stories about women from history and folklore, fairy tales and legend. They are mythology for the contemporary age. This anthology also presents the outcome of the inaugural Heroines Women’s Writing Prize. From over 350 entries the winner of the short fiction prize was Dasha Maiorova, and the winner of the poetry award was Isabella Luna. Congratulations to them both for reclaiming heroines of the past in a way which strongly resonates with women today.

I was thrilled to make the longlist of 24 authors and poets, because that secured my story’s place in the table of contents for this third anthology.

For the first anthology I wrote Bits and Bolts and Blood – a different kind of Little Red Riding Hood, because a wolf who was better versed in fairy mythology would have known to fear a red cap.

For the second, Melusine’s Daughter considered how that marvelous monster’s daughter would have fared against Heer Halewijn, the original Bluebeard.

This time, I wrote a story called The Tenant of Rookwood Hall. I had started out thinking about fairy ointment and Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (a different tale altogether) and then wandered off on a literary walking tour of the Fells.

And, yeah, I bumped into those Brontë sisters. I don’t think anyone has ever encapsulated my issues with Charlotte’s and Emily’s novels as well as Kate Beaton did, in her web comic Hark a Vagrant.

Poor Anne! She wrote one of the first feminist novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which was incredibly popular – and shocking – when published, because of its depiction of alcoholism and vice. The sound of the heroine’s bedroom door being slammed against her husband “reverberated through Victorian society”. But, her sister Charlotte was critical of the book and refused to allow it to be republished after Anne’s death, describing it as “a mistake” and Anne as “gentle, retiring and inexperienced”.

Actually, Anne appears to have been the only Brontë with much of a spine and the ability to make a go of things without falling prey to sensibility, romanticism, laudanum, etc, etc. Anyway, back to the Fells…

The lonely wild places of the north of England are notoriously beset with fairies, giants, witches, and malevolent beasts. Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous heroine, Jane Eyre, is fleeing from something which may or may not be the fearsome Gytrash when she first encounters Mr Rochester, arguably a far more dangerous creature.

So, when I wrote of an independent young woman crossing the Fells, where the ruins of the fairy king’s rath can be found, it was inevitable that a Brontë influence would seep into my story. If you want to find out how Miss Grey manages when she has to deal with King Eveling and the Gytrash and three squirrel-tailed hedgehog fairy servants, you’ll just have to read The Tenant of Rookwood Hall.

You can purchase a copy of the Heroines Anthology (vol. 3) from Neo Perennial Press by following this link (and volume 1 and volume 2 as well – I mean, they’re right there…)

And take care when you’re out walking, my dears. You never know what you might encounter.

 

(The banner  image is cropped from a photograph of a Patterdale Terrier by Karin Laurila on Pixabay. I know the Patterdale is one of the Fell Terriers, but I’m pretty sure they’re not directly related to the Gytrash.)

Meet the wife

girl in a hood beneath the moon

Wife is one of those words which we think we understand, but it can surprise us.

Hmmm, perhaps I’ll leave that alone and move on…

At its root, wife just means ‘woman’ rather than ‘female spouse’ which solves my childhood puzzlement over how a housewife could be married to a house. It also makes sense of midwife, once you realise the ‘mid’ is the Middle English word for with, so it’s a woman who was with the mother during labour.

Likewise, there was no marriage required for Medieval jobs like alewife and fishwife to apply. The Old English name for a mermaid was merewif – a woman of the sea. I can’t help but feel that making them maids – young and innocent – rather than wives, diminished them somewhat.

One of my favourite ‘wife’ roles is the henwife. Objectively, she’s a woman who keeps domestic fowl. In folklore and fiction, she is more likely a witch or wise woman. I recommend author Terri Windling’s post on Hen Wives, Spinsters and Lolly Willowes.

I recently reread Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, which Windling quotes in her post. It’s an extraordinarily subversive book for its time (1926) and, I think, still resonant now.

All of which is a very long explanation of where my inspiration came from for my entry in this month’s AWC’s Furious Fiction writing challenge.

It had to be a <500 word story, written in 55 hours which:

  • included someone/something being caught.
  • included the words OBJECT, WOUND, BAND, ELABORATE (plurals allowed).
  • had as the final two words THE MOON.

And I thought… if you can have a henwife, why not…

The Eggwife

“You keep day-dreaming,” my father said, “you’ll get caught by the eggwife.”

“Not me.” I grinned which made Pa scowl.

“Caught and kept. It’s not like you could run.”

My smile froze, lips stretched across my teeth, tight as the jagged skin around my leg where flesh and muscle had been torn and devoured.

Pa told me every day how lucky I was to have survived.

“Why would she want me?” I whispered, but he heard and wheezed a bitter laugh.

“She’s not fussy,” he said.

Could she be so easily pleased to want me? No-one else did.

Not the girls who played their elaborate skip rope games in the square, side glances scorching me as they clapped and sang:

Hoppity skit, hoppity skit,

The eggwife is coming, lickety spit.

Hooked by a song or caught by a smell,

The eggwife will trap you inside of her shell.

Not their mothers who clenched their hands into the sign against evil as I passed by.

Not even Pa, who couldn’t forgive that I had lived when Ma had been eaten by the wolf.

Small wonder, then, that I went looking for the eggwife.

I waited until Pa had sloped off to the pub before I took my stick and left the house. I wasn’t sure which would be worse; if he did object to my going, or if he did not.

With every step, a tighter band of pain wrapped my leg. I shivered as the full moon rose, glowing like the bright eye of a great and hungry beast. The night was thick with scurrying claws and the rush of dark wings and the moaning of the wind in the trees. Tears blinded me when I finally reached the crossroads.

“Eggwife!” I cried. “Will you take me, eggwife?”

A figure stepped into the moonlight, cloaked in dark feathers, with a black chicken held close to her side. I could not see her face, only the shadows beneath her hood.

“Why should I, child?” she said.

I wanted to sink to the ground, but I forced myself to clutch my stick and answer her.

“They say you can catch us with a scent or a song, can tuck us inside one of your eggs, and I thought…”

She nodded and stroked the chicken’s feathery breast with one bony finger.

“I thought there would be no pain inside an egg.”

“No child,” she said, “should bear such pain.”

She bent and grabbed my old wound, above the knee where the lancing agony was worst. I opened my mouth to scream and gasped instead as the pain vanished.

She straightened and held out a yellowed wolf’s fang.

“A gift,” she said.

As I took it a shudder passed over me, like a wave of warm water, like the scent of wild honey. I grew fur and fangs and four legs that were straight and strong.

I raised by head and sang to the moon.

 

 

Banner image is cropped from a photo by Алина Осипова from Pixabay.

Rocking that dress

Wake of a boat - image from AWC September writing challenge

With a writing prompt like that picture, you’d think it would all be clear sailing, right? Well, maybe it’s been too long since I had a holiday but I couldn’t conjure blue skies and an idyllic ocean. Instead, I wrote something which valiantly tries to put the fun back in funeral.

As it turned out, that was fine.

While my persistence hasn’t actually paid off – I did not, after all, win the cash prize – I am pleased to say that my 22nd entry into the monthly Furious Fiction challenge from the Australian Writers’ Centre did manage to get longlisted.

The challenge for September was to write <500 words in 55 hours, inspired by the boat image, with a first word that began with the letters SHO, and included the words SCORE, SLICE, SPRINKLE, STAMP and SWITCH (or plural or past tense variations).

Here’s mine:

That Dress

“Shoddy coffin.”

For one awful moment Chloe thinks Liam’s going to rap his knuckles on the wood in the funeral equivalent of kicking a car’s tyres while you’re talking the salesman down.

He leans closer to the corpse, frowning.

“Reckon Bec remembered to switch Auntie Maeve’s diamonds for paste? These are pretty bling.”

She nudges his elbow.

“Respect, Liam, we’re supposed to be paying our respects.”

He shrugs. “Chill, love, Auntie Maeve won’t mind.”

Her black high heels pinch her toes as she tries to think of something nice to say about his great-aunt other than that the old lady made a great pavlova.

“Is that the same outfit she wore to our wedding?” Liam says.

Chloe has been trying not to look at the body. It seems indecent, somehow, to have the top half of the coffin propped open. She’s only been to two other funerals and in one the coffin was so covered in flowers you could have mistaken it for a florist’s counter. The other was a memorial service, with just a portrait on an easel.

She lets her gaze slide up the side of the admittedly cheap-looking pine box, glance over the ruched satin lining and bounce off a slice of turquoise blue dress just visible under a bouquet of lilies. She takes in the other details in a rapid series of ocular jerks, like she’s playing a macabre game of pinball and doesn’t want to raise her eyes to see how close she is to the high score.

Or, in this case, to another glimpse of Auntie Maeve’s unnatural, lurid make-up.

“Yes, same outfit.”

Chloe reminds herself not to speak ill of the dead, especially when you’re right next to them.

Liam shakes his head.

“The one that looked like she’d just tangoed off the set of ‘Dancing with the Stars’?” he says. The sides of his mouth hitch up. “The backless one?”

“That one,” Chloe growls, since no bride wants to have her wedding dress upstaged by their groom’s octogenarian great-aunt, but no-one had known that Auntie Maeve had celebrated her eightieth birthday by getting a tramp stamp tattoo… until she wore that dress.

Liam grins and starts waving his hands around.

“Seriously? With the plunging neckline and the big frothy white fishtail flounces, and the faux pearls sprinkled all over it? How did they fit the damn thing into the coffin?”

Chloe swats one of his hands and says, “Don’t be mean. She said it reminded her of cruising the Greek islands: the blue ocean, the white foam behind the ship.”

“Perfect dress for a wake then,” he says and laughs.