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In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Jacqueline Bleomelen was a strict yet very affectionate nanny. Her Breton name being barely pronounceable by the English speaking kids she had at her charge, she was most of the time simply called Nanny.
Once, one of the rude kids from a previous home where she had been serving an atrociously callous French Count, had called her an Old Gibbon, referring to her wrinkled face. But she had a very light-hearted nature, and wouldn’t show any hint of taking offense.
Better, she liked the association with the playful and ingenious apes, and kept the moniker as it was more easily pronounced by the English kids she had in charge, and made them laugh that they could be so irreverent without facing punishment.
For special occasions, Jacqueline was wearing a funny costume that made the children often wonder why she had put some funny hat with little moth-feelers loose on her chin, but that, she had explained was a traditional dress from her homeland of Brittany.
Tonight, Jacqueline, or Nanny Gibbon, was having a funny dream, but perhaps that have been because she had been very excited by that excerpt she had read before going to sleep. As she was very pious, every night before going to bed, she would read a random quote of the Bible.
Last night it had been the Old Testament, from the Book of Joshua. It was about the conquest of the Promise Land, and talked about a king from Hazor named Jabin…
And in her dream, Jabin was a strange looking man, lost in the middle of ruins, who wanted to contact a woman about discoveries he had made in the Promise Land. He had found an entrance to a cave that had befuddled him. He hadn’t ventured too far into the cave, but anytime he had, he had found it impossibly deep and wide. So he wanted to share that discovery with that woman, but she was flying around in a parrot-coloured ballet tutu, on top of a three-humped flying camel…
Even the rigorous Jacqueline couldn’t repress a laugh at the unlikely images that her tired mind had produced.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
The singing in the next room was getting louder. As Dory started to sing along, she felt better. Bugger this! she shouted, and leapt off the musty sofa. The trip to the cave! She felt around the floor with her feet for her shoes, and wasn’t altogether surprised to find her magic flying sandals. Perfect, how perfect is that! She looked around the cluttered shop store room as she buckled the sandals straps. She grabbed a bright blue energy blanket off a pile of coloured shawls, a pith helmet off a hatstand, a mini magic tool kit in a terracotta patterned kilim bag, and on impulse, a glass egg timer with bright fuchsia pink sand.
As she ran out of the back door a parrot in an elaborate wrought iron cage squalked ‘Don’t forget the key, dear, don’t forget the key’.
Key? What key?
‘Don’t forget the key dear don’t forget the key dear don’t forget the key…’
WHAT bloody key dear! Dory was really anxious to get to the cave now, but something held her back.
The key, the key… There was something she couldn’t quite remember about a key. She looked around the room in a panic, It could take me HOURS to find the key in here, she ranted. Ok, ok, I tell you what, she said to the bird, I’ll let you out of that cage, you find the key, and catch me up. Meet me at the cave with the key, OK?
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Sanso was very hungry. He’d been living on the fungus that grew inside the dampest parts of the cave, but the recent stretches of tunnel had been much drier, sandy even. He hadn’t found a cave entrance for days and longed to step out of the cave into air and sunlight and green things, and find something fresh and juicy to eat.
Beginning to feel quite despondent, and with the hunger and thirst making his body ache terribly, he sat down, crumpled into a heap on the sandy floor. He lay back, stretching out flat and slept for what seemed like days.
He woke up mumbling the name Eggleton, which reminded him of a dish he’d encountered at one of the cave entrance worlds. He’d wandered into a beautiful strange green and rainy land, and followed the delicious aroma of something that seemed so delightfully familiar, that he couldn’t quite place, something that reminded him of mornings. Coffee! He remembered now. The smell of coffee had led him to a door with big brass numbers on it: 57. He opened the door and peered round it, wondering if he’d be welcome. It had seemed as though nobody was there, but a table was laid for one, with scrambled eggs on toast (freshly cooked as if whoever had prepared it had known eggsactly when he would arrive) and a steaming pot of black coffee.
Sanso stretched and realized his many aches and pains had been eased by the sleep on the soft sand on the cave floor, and the dry atmosphere, and slowly opened his eyes. Lying flat on his back, he was looking directly up at the tunnel ceiling. There was a door in the ceiling, strangely parrallel to the floor, an odd position for a door, he thought. His heart lurched and his stomach growled again with hunger as he noticed the large brass numbers on the door: 57.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Malvina looked for a moment at the movements of the strings of her enchanted harp before beginning to play herself. The strings were moved very beautifully, and reproduced her own graceful movements, when she played that lovely tune from her homeland .
The sounds were carried down through the many tunnels, and resounded in all the cave, in soothing drops of music. When she observed the creatures through her mind connection with her dragon companion Leörmn, she knew they were loving the sound of it.
And all very naturally, she began to wrap her alabaster hands around the instrument, and as if she was consoling it, inclined her head towards it, and started to move her fingers along the strings, beginning to enhance the previous melody, blending her new sounds into it, until the strings felt so at ease that they let themselves vibrate with the sound, without need to stir more than what Malvina’s fingers was gently asking.
The sound enveloped the cave, and the delightful music even drew some glukenitches closer, even though she was in the plain light falling from the hole at the top of the cave hall, down to the wooden platform where she was seated.
In the silgreen tree which was blooming sparkling flowers of emerald and silver once every moon, that she had planted here when she had first come to the cave, she saw a couple of flying sparflies settle down. These were usually very discreet birds, and their song was one of the treasures of the Worlds. And their accompanying her music was for Malvina a joy beyond compare.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
But the brave front Arona had put on for the dragon crumbled as she looked at the door.
She sat down on the ground and started to cry, and once she started she found she could not stop.
She was so afraid. The courage she felt earlier had deserted her and been replaced by a sadness she did not really even fathom herself.
I am tired of this no man’s land, this endless searching. And I am so afraid that behind the door is just yet another dark tunnel. I hate riddles, people should say what they mean, and yes, I am very tired of this heavy black cape.
And so saying Arona angrily took off the cape and threw it to the ground.
She cried and cried and cried, and the little glukenitch lying unseen in the darkest corner luxuriated in the extra dampness her tears added to the ground.
When she had done crying she found her strength again, enough to keep going with the journey
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
For a moment Arona panicked, then she stood completely still while the strange flying creatures settled back down, and tried to think.
She knew what she had to do, she had to sense which tunnel felt the lightest and then follow that. A perfect test for her intuitive abilities she had been learning to follow.
Look where they have got you so far, whispered a little voice in her head … or she thought it was from her own head … or was it ?…. everything felt so strange all of a sudden.
So she looked at each tunnel in turn, and even looked back the way she had come (but to be honest, she loved an adventure and did not really want to turn back) and she felt the left tunnel beckoning her.
Huh let us hope it is the one leading furtherest away from that dragon, she thought grumpily
You don’t mean that came the little voice again.
No, thought Arona, I don’t mean that really, even his silly dragon face would be better than this aloneness.
She moved quietly forward, not wishing to disturb any more flying things, and entered the tunnel.
