Charmed: Part 10 of 11, A Disney-Like Halloween Story (Without the Singing)

October 30, 2023September 23, 2023M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Chapter 10

All of the creatures and people, with Mary, Jake, Jessica, Elizabeth, Cinnamon, Nuggets the dwarf and Mister Greely Putterwig found themselves back in the pine forest where the adventure first began. “Time to go home,” Mister Putterwig sighed, but before he could do anything, he got interrupted.

“We got you now.” It was Marrow the goblin. Worms and Maggot were with him, as was Big Tooth, the troll. “You need to take us to Earth or we will tell Lady Alice that you stole a human child.”

“We already did that part,” Mary got right into the goblin’s face and did not even blink. “Lady Alice has forgiven him now that he has set Elizabeth free.”

“Hey.” Worms sounded very unhappy. “Does that mean we can’t go and scare the children to death?”

“You are not going to scare any children to death,” Jake spoke up, loud, but it was from fear. The goblins were frightful to look at. “I won’t let you.”

“Me neither,” Jessica stood right beside Jake, and they both protected Elizabeth between them.

“How are we going to feast?” Maggot asked.

“Quiet. I’m thinking.” Marrow frowned and pulled on his chin.

“The portal,” Big Tooth suggested.

“That’s right,” Marrow grinned, a look almost more frightening than his frown. “You got an unauthorized portal to the human Earth. You need to let us go there or we will tell Lady Alice.”

“I am sure she already knows,” Cinnamon said.

“No doubt about that,” Nuggets agreed.

“Puts!” Marrow swore.

All that while, Mister Putterwig worked on opening the way to Earth, but he was not quite finished when they were all interrupted again, this time by the ghost of Thackery James Barrett, Esquire.

“Sir,” Thackery came up beside Jake and Jessica as if to protect them, and he stared at the goblins. “You are brigands to be sure. You should certainly be hanged for highway robbery, but I confess you have the upper hand at present. Thus I implore you, in the name of Christian decency, let the women and children go unharmed.”

“You’re not a woman or a child,” Marrow responded. “I suppose that makes you free game, doesn’t it?”

There was a sudden flash of blinding light as the portal between here and there formed. Thackery let out a chilling shriek before the light settled down and Thackery became able to speak with more calm. “I remember,” he said. “I remember those very words. Suddenly a great light appeared beside me. I was facing certain death, so I ran toward the light. I heard the gun. I stumbled into the light. My God, the man shot me in the back and killed me, and I ended up here.” Thackery began to weep. “Gone. Gonnnne!” He wailed a true ghostly wail and then shouted. “Abigail. Abigail.” And he went into the light. Everyone stayed silent for a moment before Jake spoke loud and clear to the goblins.

“Doesn’t matter. I won’t let you eat any children.” He reached for the cutlass and got a bit unhappy to realize it had vanished along with the Lady Alice.

“What eat children?” Marrow responded with a dumbfounded shrug.

“Do you know the penalty for eating humans, especially children?” Maggot said, and the goblins, troll, and several of the others in that big group from the circle moaned and shivered at the thought.

Marrow spoke. “We just want to scare them so bad they drop their bags. Then we plan to feast on all that Halloween candy.”

“I want to eat so much I throw up,” Worms said, and sounded happy with that prospect.

“Don’t forget,” Maggot said. “I claim the vomit.”

Most of the people moaned again at that thought.

The portal wavered.

“Hey!” The goblins yelled, but Mary, Jake, Jessica, Elizabeth and Mister Putterwig went though first. Everyone else followed and got directed by Mister Putterwig out the back door, toward the big back yard where an old fairy circle was already present. It wouldn’t take long to put up some lights and get the music started.

Jake, Jessica, Elizabeth and Mary went out the front door and got surprised to find Tommy, Blockhead, Mike and Serena still there, sitting around, nibbling on Elizabeth’s candy. It turned out to be a bit after seven, and they had been waiting for more than an hour. At least they were sitting and waiting before the ghost came through the locked door. They backed up to the yard and the fence, and Blockhead looked ready to bolt every time Thackery wailed for Abigail.

“Watch it! There’s another one,” Mike shouted. It did not help being by the street, under the street light, when another ghost came floating up into that light. In fact, Mike and the others moved back into the shadows since the ghosts appeared to be attracted to the light.

“Thackery?” the ghost called. It looked like a woman, dressed in a fine traveling dress and cloak. She looked very young and pretty, even if she did not seem to have any feet.

“Abigail?”

“A very fine and proper lady named Alice said I would find you here,” the woman ghost said.

“Oh Abigail. I searched for you for ever so long.” Thackery flew to her and they embraced.

“At last, at last.” Abigail hugged him before he set his lips to hers in a passionate kiss. The two faded from sight and were not seen again in this world. Everyone sighed, except Blockhead, who looked more relieved. Then Jessica made a decision.

“Serena,” Jessica said. “Call Vanessa and tell her the party is being moved to the old Putterwig house.”

“Really?” Serena looked uncertain.

“Hey, we are talking Halloween party.” The music began to work its enchantment from the back to the front yard.

“There is that,” Serena said, and she got out her phone.

“Tommy,” Jake called. “I got twenty bucks. Take Mike down to the supermarket and buy as much candy as they have left. We got some big kids that are dying for Halloween treats.”

“Keep your money,” Tommy said. “For the ghost show it’s my treat. So how did you do that?”

“Holographic?” Mike suggested.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Elizabeth said, and she tugged on Jake’s hand to take her out back. Fortunately, just then Sage and Thyme, with their mother Cinnamon, all in their natural small fairy form, came to fetch the little girl. This time, they sprinkled her all over with fairy dust and Elizabeth giggled when she lifted right off the ground and flew with the fairies down the hall and out the back door.

“Serena shut your mouth and get the party here,” Jessica yelled, while Jake reached over and took her hand. Jessica stared at their hands for a minute.

“Blockhead, how’s your dancing?” Jake asked.

Blockhead said nothing. He just began to bounce up and down in a way that showed he had no sense of rhythm. Serena interrupted. “Hold it big boy. Save it for when we get to the dance floor.” She grabbed his football jersey and pulled him toward the back.

Jessica suddenly turned Jake to face her. She looked him square in the eyes. She tried to listen to her thumper, and she said, “I am loving you.”

“Well.” Jake hardly knew what to say, so he returned the words. “I am loving you, too.”

“Goody,” Jessica said, sounding like a genuine fairy, and she locked her lips to his. Jake was surprised for all of a second.

Tommy and Mike came back after a while. A bunch of other kids from the high school came. But neither Jake nor Jessica wanted to stop long enough to take a breath.

Greely Putterwig came out of the house, looking once again like an ordinary enough old man. Mary had pulled up a chair and was quietly knitting, have gotten her needles and yarn from some unknown source, presumably by magic. She gave the hobgoblin a look that he thought to explain. He pointed at himself. “You might call this my un-Halloween costume.” He chuckled.

Mary merely smiled and patted the seat on the rocking chair beside her. Greely sat and then stared at the witch for a few minutes before he spoke again. “So,” he said. “Want to go out on a date?”

Mary stopped knitting and her jaw dropped.

“Then again, we could just get some DVDs and stay in and cuddle by the fire.

Mary’s face turned red, but she did not say no.

************************

Charmed is either a very, very small book or a long story offered in eleven parts over this October, 2023, leading up to Halloween. The posts have be put up on the blog on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so, don’t miss tomorrow’s post and a note on November 1st. If you have missed a post, or want to go back to the beginning, Just click on the archives and select October 2023. Charmed is the main posting for the month … So after today, I say to you all, Happy Halloween, you know, aliens, robots, cyborgs and such.

Ghosts 11

September 20, 2023August 26, 2023M G Kizzia Leave a comment

After that experience, neither felt any desire or need to return again to the scene of the accident—the name they finally settled on calling it. Nathan decided that they needed something good to do, so he led them to a nearby garden which he knew and which always seemed to have something in bloom, and certainly at that time of year promised plenty.

While they walked, Mya found a question that started with her short summary of recent events. “So, the suicide bomber thought he would go straight to paradise, but he didn’t. That young man thought God owed him tons of good, but nothing happened there. The minster refused to believe that he was not already perfect, though he was still stuck on a park bench, and the burly man refused to believe in anything at all, even if his own experience proved the opposite of what he was saying. I don’t get it? Why don’t they just say, I was wrong and get on with it?”

Nathan looked at Mya and slipped his arm over her shoulder. She responded by placing hers around his waist. She looked up at him like a girl might look up to her father to explain the hard bumps and curves of life in a way that she could understand.

“I have made plenty of mistakes in my time, and I have generally admitted them, but for most people these days that is not how the world works,” Nathan began. He paused for a moment while he remembered a story. “There was a woman in church way back when Mildred and I were going. I remember whenever the preacher started talking about sin; she would arch her back and give him terrible stares. I heard her once going out the door in front of us. Even as she shook the preacher’s hand she said, “Some of us don’t think of ourselves as sinners.”

“But that’s crazy,” Mya said.

“But she was absolutely sincere. You see, the world has become a very hard and fast place. If you admit doing something wrong, and especially if you apologize and say you are sorry, most people see that as a weakness, as something they can hold over your head and manipulate you with. Consequently, most people will never admit a mistake even if they know better, and they will never, ever say they are sorry. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Mya said. “You are telling me the whole world has gone crazy.”

“Maybe the world is crazy.” He would not object to that description. “But it gets really bad when you think that no one can ever start over. You see, when you admit the wrong and apologize, you get over it and it gives you the chance to try something else, something different or new; but if you never admit that you were wrong, you get stuck. It’s kind of like telling a lie, and then trying to cover it up with another lie, and then another. If you don’t confess, you never get over it. It just gets worse and worse.” Then Nathan added another thought. “I think the whole problem with every one of those men is they are unwilling to admit that they were wrong.”

“What about you?” Mya asked.

Nathan leaned over and rubbed his knuckles gently, lovingly really on the top of her head. He spoke instantly. “Sorry. That was wrong of me.”

Mya pinched him in the roll he still had around his stomach and caused him to yelp. “That might have been wrong of me.’ Mya grinned. “But I’m not sorry.”

Nathan grinned right back at her.

When they arrived at the garden, Nathan did not feel disappointed. It looked as beautiful as he remembered.

“It’s lovely,” Mya remarked. “So charming and quaint.” She tried out the words, and then she tried something else. She got on her tip-toes, steadied herself with a hand on Nathan’s arm, and she kissed Nathan right on the cheek. She smiled as she stared at him with true love and affection in her eyes. No one would have ever guessed that a day ago they were complete strangers.

Nathan coughed to bring her back to the flowers. He also took her to a bench where they sat and drew in the myriad of scents. Mya kept saying how beautiful everything was, and she got up a couple of times to take a closer look when she saw a more distant flower with a new color. Nathan could hardly bring himself to move at all. He felt amazed at being able to catch all of the aromas, which were indeed beautiful, and he found he could even pull out the scent of one or more flowers independently from all the rest. Poor Nathan could hardly smell anything after the age of seventy-five or so. Now, the return of this most vital sense positively overwhelmed him with pleasure.

He got startled out of his reverie when he heard Mya let out a little shriek. He bolted to her side, his first run in more than twenty years, but he found her delighted, indeed, enchanted, and not in danger as he feared.

“Look.” Mya pointed, and they saw a kind of light fluttering around one of the flowers. Nathan looked again, and he noticed that there were several lights in that corner of the garden. Then he looked closer and gave his new, wonderful eyes their first real workout. He saw a little human-like figure with wings, a figure no bigger than a hummingbird hovering over a rose. He noticed, because the light right then noticed him.

“Fairies.” Mya named them and she clasped her hands together in pure delight. Obviously her seven-year-old world view had no trouble accepting such things. But that was not fair, Nathan thought, because she was clearly now more like seventeen, and he knew it.

One part of Nathan’s mind tried to say that fairies were impossible, but it another piece of his mind parted the silence of his lips. “I knew it,” he said. “I always knew this universe was not the way I was taught.” Mya looked curious, so he explained. “Like the burly man. We were all taught that this earth was no more than dead matter and energy, that our minds, our consciousness, mere accidents of nature.” Mya shook her head as if that did not make any sense, especially in light of their experience. “But somehow, deep inside, I always knew the universe was alive, everywhere. I bet there are all sorts of things in the real world about which the living with their closed matter and energy minds have no idea.” He concluded, and Mya nodded as if to say that now she understood.

The fairy flew up to Mya’s face and then Nathan’s face, and finally began to fly around them in a circle of streaming pink light. Other fairies were attracted to this and joined in adding gold, lavender and pale blue lights to the mix. Round and round they went, faster and faster so that Mya and Nathan could not keep up and began to get dizzy. The two humans drew closer to each other, and eventually held on tight. They got as close as they could lest they inadvertently bumped one of the speeding fairies which they could no longer distinguish from the light. Then the circles of light began to rise and for a second, Mya and Nathan thought they were going to rise with it; but as soon as the circles got above their heads, they began to contract in size. They became smaller and smaller circles until it came to a single point and the light and the fairies vanished altogether.

Mya clapped her hands and squealed with delight. If she had been younger, like closer to actually being seven, she probably could not have resisted making the sound. Nathan stood with his mouth open in wonder. It was the most glorious sight he had ever seen! Then he remembered the angel and said to himself, the second most glorious.

Nathan started to let go of Mya, though he felt very comfortable holding her in that way. Mya also did not seem to want to let go, but they did, and Nathan had a terrific thought. He held out his hand, palm up as he spoke.

“Would my lady care to attend the symphony with me this evening?”

“Yes.” Mya spoke a bit loud and much too quickly. “A date?” she asked.

Nathan shrugged off the implication even if he could not stop smiling. “No, no,” he said. “You are supposed to say, “Yes, My Lord. I would be delighted.” And then you put your hand, palm on my palm, and give a little curtsey while I bow.

Mya laughed briefly at the idea, and it sounded like no little girl giggle. She offered her hand and spoke as requested, and then Nathan drew her in to hold his arm again and noted that she was now as tall as his shoulder, and then just a little bit more.

************************

MONDAY the symphony, a night of tears, and a morning of surprises. Until next week, Happy Reading

Avalon 9.5 Men in Black, part 3 of 6

May 31, 2023April 30, 2023M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“When you say Wolv, I assume you don’t mean an ordinary wolf,” Sir Leslie said as he rode up beside Elizabeth. It stopped raining for the time being, so Erin pulled her horse back to make room.

Elizabeth grinned. “They can run on all fours, but their front paws can function like hands. When they stand on their hind legs, they are maybe six or seven feet tall. Their mouth is like something between a wolf and a bear—maybe a snub-nosed wolf, and the teeth are like daggers. They are constantly hungry and strictly carnivores. They eat people.”

“Sounds bad.”

“Oh, it is worse,” Elizabeth continued. “They are intelligent.”

“They are clever? Very clever?”

Elizbeth shook her head. “Intelligent,” she said. “They have a language and talk to one another, share ideas and so forth. At one time, they had access to a technology more advanced than anything you would understand. This one has probably been asleep for more than a thousand years. It is a special kind of sleep where they don’t age. The problem is the material they sleep in begins to break down and degrades after a thousand years or so. Think of it like old bread that starts to get moldy, or milk that goes sour. If the Wolv has been set free from rancid material, there is no telling what condition it may be in. Mad, certainly, but that might be hard to tell from normal Wolv behavior.”

“And how did you get wind of this?” Sir Leslie asked before he shook his head. “Of course, the fairies.”

“Not exactly,” Elizabeth said. “There have been reports of wolf scares around the lake going back for centuries. That suggests an escape pod from a ship. Something like a longboat with sailors needing rescue from a sunken ship. The pod has an automatic distress signal limited only by the rechargeable power source. Needs sunlight. Not a problem in space. It notes who is in stasis and projects that information in the distress. It almost guarantees Lord so-and-so will be picked up by someone, and even if he is then held for ransom, at least he is alive. Anyway, my guess is the projector malfunctioned in some way and it projected on the wetlands around the lake like a ghost image.”

“I had not heard of that,” Sir Leslie said. “I heard of a monster in Loch Ness, but not Loch Lomond.”

“The projected image probably did not last long, and it would stop and take time to recharge, maybe decades, before it could send the message again. That suggests the pod is buried or more likely, underwater, stuck in the mud where it gets at best very filtered sunlight.”

“But now the Wolv has gotten free.” Jack Horner spoke from behind where he moved up next to Erin.

“Do we need to capture it?” Sir Leslie asked.

Elizabeth shook her head again. “Sadly, there is no way to send it back into space, and some species are too dangerous to be left running free.”

“So, we hunt the Wolv and end its days,” Jack said. “My powder is dry.”

Sir Leslie looked back at the man with a thought. “But I have a feeling this is not all we are looking for.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Something you said. What more is there?”

Elizabeth hesitated because she did not know what to say. Finally, she came out with it. “Lights in the night sky. Moving lights seen even when the sky is clouded over, and no stars are visible. It clearly indicates something is up there flying around, checking us out, looking for a place to set down.”

“I don’t understand,” Sir Leslie admitted. “What do you mean, set down?”

“Land,” she answered. “Probably attracted to the distress call. Listen, I have already used the ship at sea image. Consider it a ship, but instead of floating on water, it floats on the air. When a ship at sea makes landfall, they reach the shore and sometimes sail off the coast for a time looking for a good place to come ashore. It is honestly no different with spaceships. They fly close to the earth but stay in the air until they find the place where they want to land.”

“I see that. It makes sense,” Sir Leslie thought about it.

“But what are these alien people looking for?” Jack asked.

Elizabeth shrugged. “What does the Englishman want with the natives in New England or Virginia, or the Africans along the Gold and Ivory coasts?”

Sir Leslie grumbled. “Gold and Ivory. Every precious thing the people have. Land, and most of all, slaves.”

Jack countered. “We bring them civilization and the true faith.”

“They have their own civilization,” Elizabeth said. “It is just different from our way of thinking.”

“They have slaves of their own,” Jack responded. “Some of them are headhunters and cannibals. I heard the natives in New Spain practiced human sacrifice. They cut out people’s hearts.”

“And the celts used to build wicker cages for their enemies in order to sacrifice them to the flames. The Romans used to crucify their enemies and criminals. To this day, Moslems go to war in order to impose their prophet on the whole world, and we fine Englishmen, when someone won’t agree to our way and believe the way we believe, we chop their heads off. What is your point?”

Jack fell silent, but Leslie had a thought, and another question.

“Basically, there is no way we can know what these alien people might want.”

Elizabeth shook her head once again.

“But say, where do these aliens come from? You have not made that clear.”

Elizabeth had to think again as they climbed a hill. She stopped at the top where the wagons and the others could go around. They saw a village in the valley, and would stop there for the night, though at this rate it might take them three whole days to reach Glasgow, and maybe another two days to the loch, and another three for the children to reach home in Gray Havens. Finally, Elizabeth spoke.

“Look down into the village. There, in the center square. What is that?”

Sir Leslie squinted. He might need glasses. Jack hesitated before he spoke.

“A tree. Maybe an Elm.”

“Yes,” Sir Leslie nodded. “A tree. I can’t claim Elm.”

“It looks so small and hard to see because it is so far away. It is no different when you look up into the night sky. On a clear night, you might see some small lights in the sky, but you know, being educated, that a few of those small lights are actually planets, like the Earth, only they look small because they are so very far away. We call them Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.”

“You are not suggesting these aliens are from Mars, are you?”

Elizabeth smiled. “Martians would be too rich, but no, they come from much further away. Do you know what the stars are?”

Sir Leslie nodded. “I understand they are like sparks of the sun, or like the sun in some way.”

“They are suns. Some are bigger than our sun. They only look small to our eyes because they are so very far away, like the tree.”

“Good Lord,” Jack spouted. “The distance must be enormous.”

“Indeed,” Elizabeth said. “And it is only natural to assume those distant suns have planets of their own; planets like Earth where life exists and where some of that life has learned to fly, and even fly between the stars. Some of the people from out there look like us, or similar to us, or like things that we have some familiarity with. Like the Wolv. Some look very different from us. But here is the key point. People come in both good and bad, and even some of the things that they may consider good for us, like civilization imposed on us primitives, may actually be violence against us. Some may want to hunt and eat us like we hunt the deer in the forest, not thinking of deer as intelligent and worthy of respect. Some may wish to enslave us, or experiment on us, or gather us and take us to their home world as exotic specimens. Pray that they are good. Some may encourage us, like a parent might encourage a child. Some may want to defend us from other intruders, but that might be dangerous in itself. Think of the English and Spanish fighting a pitched battle over a village of little or no consequences. The village will probably be burned to the ground, and many innocent people, men, women, and children will be killed.”

“So, we can’t know ahead of time what they want, what they intend to do, or even how they think,” Sir Leslie mused.

“They may look like us, or not at all like us,” Jack added. “People do come in all shapes and sizes, and all manner of good and evil.”

Elizabeth agreed. “The main thing is they don’t belong here. Our job will be to encourage them to leave this world alone, whatever their intentions. We may ask them to leave. Some we may have to force, but that will be difficult since they will have contraptions and greater power and weapons than we can imagine. Think of native people who first faced artillery and muskets.”

“I get that idea,” Sir Leslie said.

“We are, in a way, much like children,” Elizabeth agreed. “We deserve a chance to grow in our own way and see what we may become. But keeping intruders from interfering will be difficult.” Elizabeth saw the wagon with her children pass her by and she added, “Speaking of children. I must see to mine. We will stop the night in the village below. It looks like it may begin to rain again. We will rest here, though at this rate it may take us a week to reach the Loch.” She waited for the wagon to pass. “You gentlemen can see how big the tree is up close when we arrive. Erin,” she called to her maid, and they moved in to follow the wagon.

###

The merchants found an inn on the road and took one of the two available rooms for the three of them. Lockhart let Decker and Nanette have the other room, while he and Katie stayed with the rest of the crew in the main room downstairs, at two-thirds the price, paying only for supper and horse feed.

“I don’t mind,” Katie said. “They are still like newlyweds.”

“It has been a while since the days of Helen and Robin Hood,” Lockhart said, but he nodded.

“My Father,” Sukki spoke up. Both Elder Stow and Lockhart looked up, but in this case, she spoke to Lockhart. “I checked the amulet several times today. The Kairos is moving west.” People understood, but they committed to the lowland road until Perth. Then they would see.

The sky cleared that night, and everyone piled outside to see the northern lights, which looked spectacular, until it got interrupted. Something distant and glowing shot across the sky. Katie almost called it a shooting star, but it stopped overhead for a minute before it sped off to the south. “A UFO,” Lockhart named it. Lincoln frowned. He would have to get out the database to see what mess the Kairos was into now. Elder Stow got out his scanner, but the UFO had already moved out of range.

************************

MONDAY

Elizabeth and her men will confront the aliens around Loch Lomond, and the travelers will arrive there, maybe on time. Until Monday, Happy Reading

Avalon 8.3 Above and Beyond, part 4 of 4

May 19, 2022April 9, 2022M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Everyone found themselves in a living room kind of room, with comfortable chairs, tables, lamps with warm lights, and no more bugs. They had a door that said bathroom in three languages just in case anyone did not get it. They even had a big picture window, though presently all it showed was the dark, the stars, and the moon much closer than it should be.

Lincoln pointed. “I can practically count the boulders in that crater.”

“The moon?” Brianna, Father Aden, Jennifer, and Elsbeth all pressed up against the glass, which Katie at least assumed was not honestly glass.

“The moon,” Lockhart assured them. Nanette pushed up to the glass as well, but the others were not so fascinated. All but Katie had been in space before, and they all saw plenty of films and close-up pictures of the moon before.

A woman with long green hair appeared behind them, and the travelers responded.

“Thank you for taking us out of a bad situation” Katie said.

“I assume we are on a different ship,” Lincoln had to make sure.

“Did the Kairos send you?” Lockhart asked. He temporarily blanked out on the name of the Kairos in that time period even if it had been said and told to him a billion times.

“The Kairos asked, time traveler,” Sheen said. “But if you will excuse me.” A spaceship came into view in the glass. It exploded, and people saw the pieces fall toward the moon, including all that water. “In the future, when your people go exploring, don’t blame me if you find water on the moon.” The woman with the green hair smiled and vanished.

People blinked and the view of the moon from space became replaced with a view of the earth from space. Only Brianna said, “It’s lovely.,” though Jennifer nodded in agreement. Elsbeth never closed her mouth.

Another blink, and everyone found themselves back on the ground outside the manor house. Margueritte came racing outside and hugged her mother. She hugged Jennifer, and Elsbeth, and then her mother again, and she began to cry.

Lord Barth stood in the doorway, but Owien ran to Elsbeth. They hugged before they awkwardly separated and looked at the ground and elsewhere.

Elder Stow grumbled about his scanner, though it was fixable. Sukki and Tony followed Boston around while she hugged all of the travelers except Nanette, who ran to Decker as he ran to her. They stopped and faced each other inches apart, not moving, like two statues. They kissed, and at least Jennifer said, “Aww…”

Lord Barth and Father Aden got everyone to come inside. They left the lovers kissing on the front lawn where no one disturbed them.

###

The next day, everyone arrived. The travelers already had their tents up on the ground beside the chapel, the ground that Katie and Alexis agreed might one day be a small cemetery ground. The Breton, including the king camped on the farm field that started just down the small hill from the barn and the triangle. Sir Thomas of Evandell, the king’s bard, brought Crown Prince Judon to the house right away. Clearly, the bard was an old family friend.

Lord Charles and Sir Roland, the groom with several officers of the Franks set up their tents on the other side of the church. Tomberlain, Margueritte’s older brother, shared his old room in the manor house with Owien. The whole Frankish army camped down the hill from the church off what they called the Paris Road. The long, flat field that sat on both sides of the road was more than big enough, and the woods beyond the field offered plenty of wood for the hundreds of cooking fires and hundreds of men camped there. Most of the army went home after the action in Aquitaine and Vascony ended. Even so, Lord Barth worried about having enough beef for everyone.

Sadly, Roland’s family lived on the Saxon March, all the way on the other side of Francia. No way they could make such a long journey to attend the wedding. Fortunately, he had plenty of support from Charles and the Franks, and Margueritte’s parents and family who apparently already accepted him as a son and brother.

The travelers stayed good. They encouraged Margueritte when they saw her, but otherwise did not get into the middle of everything. Margueritte had enough to worry about. She fretted, cried, got deliriously happy, and cried some more, while her mother, Jennifer, and Elsbeth helped her with her dress, hair, make-up, and everything else, including the crying.

The local fairy troop supplied an abundance of flowers, Goldenrod right there in the midst of them. Several gnomes, with Sir Thomas, took over the barn to practice the music. Lolly, the dwarf cook enlisted several other dwarf wives to help cook for so many. And between the two servants in the house, Marta fretted, and Maven snuck off to catch the occasional nap. All felt right with the world, even if nothing went exactly right.

The following day, early in the morning, it turned bright and sunny. People crowded into the church or stood outside, and Father Aden performed a wonderful ceremony. They had a big mid-day meal on the outside table under the awning, and then Roland and Margueritte disappeared while everyone else celebrated with music and dancing into the night.

The following morning, the travelers went with Lord Charles and the Franks to Paris. Roland and Margueritte with a small troop of men would follow in two weeks. Roland had apartments in Paris, but Charles said they might not get much time. He was not happy with the reports he got from the Bavarian-Burgundian border.

The time gate sat before the city, and just a bit south off the road to Orleans. It was just a well Charles and his men did not see the travelers disappear. Charles’ father, the Mayor of the Palace was not well and the political wrangling about who would succeed him did not bode well for the future.

“714,” Lincoln reported the year. “Margueritte was born in 697, and she married at seventeen, so it must be 714. Charles’ father will die this year, in December. There will be civil war.”

Katie nodded. “And I was so proud to have fine conversations with Charles all this week, and never once called him Charles Martel.”

“Tony did once, but I think if was by accident,” Lockhart said.

Katie waved it off. “The two knight-captains that heard him simply laughed and nodded, like they thought maybe that was a good name for the man.”

“He is a hard man,” Lockhart admitted. “A no nonsense kind of guy.”

“What are you looking at?” Lincoln interrupted the conversation to ask Alexis. She kept looking back. Sukki rode quietly beside Elder Stow. Tony drove the wagon. Nanette and Decker rode side by side in the rear, occasionally talked, but mostly Nanette smiled, and Decker looked stoic.

“I was thinking we might have our own wedding soon,” she said, and Katie grinned, but the men did not want to touch that topic. Fortunately, Boston came back from the front.

“The time gate is just ahead of us, right beside the road,” Boston reported. “It is eight in the morning. I vote we go through.”

They did.

************************

MONDAY

Another Wedding. This time, Mistress Genevieve in the days of Charlemagne will be given to the March Lord of Provence, an old man with an eight-year-old son. Well, the aliens won’t interfere, though the Masters might.

M4 Margueritte: Watch and Rescue, part 2 of 3

February 22, 2022January 17, 2022M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Out where the town met the castle, the walls that came down from the Paris gate was nine feet for almost a hundred yards before it dropped down to less than seven feet. DuBois was backing up slowly, trying to make the ground as costly as he could. Michael and his men were ready to fight and had a hard time keeping still when they saw the men at the back of duBois’ troop coming down through the streets. Olderon the elf had three hundred elves on top of the short wall to back up Michael. He, and his command group of six elf lords followed the action as duBois backed away from the castle corner and got into the streets.

“Brave man,” Olderon said quietly. The others kept silent. They were on the wall when Ragenfrid’s catapults sent the first volley of stones over the castle wall. “To your posts,” Olderon ordered as fairies came speeding down the lane Michael made in front of the wall.

“Keep back. Keep your heads down. Keep to your places,” the fairies shouted, until they reached duBois. Then they shouted, “Get in the houses. Get out of the street. Get back against the house walls.”

Six hundred lancers, squires, and few knights among them, came roaring down the streets and roads. Ragenfrid’s men fled back the way they had come, poured out of the town and raced down the Paris Road. The lancers stopped at the head of the road. They did not appear the best organized or most impressive looking group, but Ragenfrid’s army wanted no part of those lancers, after they heard what they did to the men of LeMans.

At the same time, Bedwin slowly pulled his men back, like duBois, as Talliso concentrated on the end of King David’s line in the hope of turning it. Peppin, with three hundred men from the County who came up, and in Tomberlain’s name, drove back the men of Anjou. When Talliso saw his own flank being turned, and the men of Ragenfrid fleeing, he pulled his men back and retreated carefully to his own camp.

LeMans did not get away with such ease. His men assaulted the front wall in vain, as Birch and his fairies easily thrust down their ladders, cut their ropes, and kept them away with arrows that rarely missed hitting somewhere. They saw Creasy withdraw and Talliso follow, so they pulled back without waiting to be told. But LeMans was around the corner, among the apple trees, concentrating on the postern door. Unfortunately, he could not figure out how to stick his head out from the trees without getting shot at by the kobold, the brownies, or both.

Luckless and a large party of dwarfs finally pushed up to the postern door. “You can’t go out there,” Childemund argued.

“Can’t stay in here,” Luckless responded, and pointed at the sky where the rocks were falling.

“They busted the forge,” a red headed dwarf said as he cradled a two-headed axe as big as himself. Childemund did not doubt these dwarfs were ready for battle.

“On condition,” Childemund said. “If you succeed in driving LeMans off, let him go and come back into the castle. You must promise.”

Luckless and all the dwarfs promised with great and colorful language. After they were let loose, Ringwald the brownie Lord heard that the dwarfs promised, and he laughed and laughed.

“And you believed them?” he asked. When Childemund nodded, Ringwald laughed harder.

“Heurst,” Childemund called to the kobold lord. “Bring some men if you want to participate. We need to go get the dwarfs.”

“They promised to be right back,” Ringwald said, barely, before he laughed some more.

In the end, they got Luckless, and everyone back behind the postern door, but in the meanwhile, Luckless and his dwarfs not only chased off LeMans, they also took a chunk out of the man’s leg. The man made it back to Ragenfrid’s camp, but he would not live for many days.

Ragenfrid saw his men pulling back and decided on an early lunch. He would have to revise his attack plans for the afternoon. The sun would not be favorable by then, so he would have to make some change in direction. He would also have to decide what to do about Count Amager and Baron Bouchart. They promised to hold the camp and stay in reserve, but Ragenfrid doubted they would fight.

“What to do?” he said, even as a series of explosions occurred in his line. He stood and saw the nearest catapult broken to pieces and burning. He seriously underestimated the resources of the witch. He would have to finish this quickly. His source said Rotrude and her children were in the castle. That was all he wanted. He knew he could not get her by stealth. It was going to have to be brute force and manpower. He still felt confident he would succeed, but first he would have a good lunch.

Lord Yellow Leaf and his warrior fairies flew from Ragenfrid’s lines back to the Paris gate. He laughed as he spoke. “Those cat-of-puts won’t be bothering us anymore.” He let out a Cherokee war cry, and Childemund’s men on the gate all applauded.

Margueritte, Margo, Elsbeth and Jennifer all came upstairs to survey the damage. The chapel near the short wall looked undamaged. “I would guess Ragenfrid did not want the stones landing too close to the wall he expected his men to be crawling over,” Jennifer said.

The barn and stables took some hits, along with the manor house. The house, mostly the roof holes and one spot in the floor of Margueritte’s room all looked repairable. The stables looked solid, with holes, but the old barn looked ruined. One whole corner collapsed, the milk cows were out in the yard, one wounded, and the chickens were running wild while potatoes rolled around the yard. The men would be getting pork for a while as the hog pen looked crushed. It all looked like a real mess, but it could have been much worse. The women all showed stiff upper lips until they found the big old oak that had stood all their lives out in front of the house. It had a crack down the middle and could not have been killed cleaner if it had been struck by lightning.

Margo stared. Jennifer cried. Elsbeth wept. And Margueritte wailed. Her mother left the oak tree in the yard because it held mistletoe—the last gasp of her pagan, druidic days, when she first married and became a Christian. She kept the tree up, and it became a sign of stability at times for the whole family. Margueritte felt this atrocity too much, and everything felt broken in that moment. Her father got poisoned. Her baby got killed before he was even born. Her mother got murdered. This became too much.

Margueritte felt Elsbeth and Jennifer hold her as she sank to her knees.

###

Margueritte struggled in her funk, but finally resurfaced enough to pull back David’s troops. She put them on the edge of town where they could fall back to Michael’s position, and she made sure they put out as many obstacles as they could. On the one hand, it would give the enemy boxes to hide behind, but on the other hand, it would negate a concerted charge and make the enemy crawl around and over things, thus exposing themselves to arrow fire. It would also give her outnumbered troops plenty of cover.

Peppin complained that putting out all those obstacles would negate his chance to charge with his cavalry. Margueritte told him he already revealed himself and they now knew where he was. She told him to send his footmen to reinforce duBois and protect the Paris gate, while his horsemen, dismounted, protected the Breton gate. She told him, true knights had to be the best and fiercest of fighters, even when their horse got taken away. In this case, they had to keep a path of access to the gates if they could, in case David and Michael had to retreat behind the wall.

Finally, Margueritte got Ringwald to move down and spread out and hold the front wall, while Heurst and his kobold covered both sides around the postern gate. This freed Lord Birch and his fairies. Lord Larchmont went with Peppin, and Lord Yellow Leaf went with duBois, but she borrowed them all, about five hundred fairies, and sent them to the roofs in the line where King David and Count duBois had been. She knew fairies had to be big to fire their arrows, but she also knew they could get big, fire, and get small again quickly, and thus present a very little target for return fire. They were to harass the enemy, and not be caught, if possible. She knew she was tempting the enemy to burn the town to give the men over their heads no place to stand, but she wanted to make the taking of Potentius as costly as possible.

After that, she went back to her tears, but Margo and Elsbeth got her to climb again to the lookout roof which had miraculously survived the catapult bombardment. Margueritte even roused enough in the climb to comment.

“At least we destroyed the catapults before they started in with the big, wall buster stones.”

“Yes, Lady,” Calista and Melanie echoed each other as they helped Margueritte climb.

Margueritte turned her eyes to Ragenfrid’s lines only long enough to see where he went. He did, in fact, what she expected. He concentrated his attack on the center of the town, and poured so many men up that easy incline, King David’s line would have busted open right in the middle.

As expected, Ragenfrid started burning the houses so Birch, Larchmont, and Yellow Leaf would have no place to land. The fairies got off a number of good shots, and Ragenfrid’s men had to be nervously scanning the skies as they spread out in the streets and came up on King David’s position.

Margueritte guessed Ragenfrid had as many as seven thousand men. He must have scraped the bottom of the barrel, since Count Amager and Baron Bouchart were holding their men back. But with those numbers, David’s eighteen hundred beat up men would not hold them back for long. They might do better when they fell back and got reinforced by Michael’s fresh five hundred, not to mention the elf archers on the wall itself, but they were still outnumbered by more than two to one.

Margueritte had six hundred men on each gate, and that should hold for a time, especially when Larchmont and Yellow Leaf got back into position. She did not specify where Birch should go, but she imagined he would join the elves under Olderon in the center. She did not want to watch.

M4 Margueritte: Watch and Rescue, part 1 of 3

February 21, 2022January 17, 2022M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Ragenfrid moved some men out before dawn to test the hill between the castle around the Paris gate and the edge of town where the diverted Paris Road entered the town. That was duBois stronghold, and he was not fooled. He wanted to give fight but was held back as the goblins and a few trolls had some fun.

At the same time, Talliso tested the south end of town where Bedwin waited behind a barricade with his men ready for the fight. Again, they held back to allow the dark elves a free hand to chase off the men of Anjou.

The third test, still under the cover of darkness, came from LeMans. He sent fifty men secretly to the small copse of apple trees outside the postern gate, but by the time they arrived, the dawn came upon them. The goblins and the few trolls there got a few soldiers and scared enough more so they ran. That turned out fortuitous for the men of LeMans, because Lord Birch, the old fairy lord, had his archers ready to fire as soon as the sun broke the horizon.

Though all three sorties were easily driven back in the dark, Ragenfrid decided to attack in the morning. “Besides,” he said. “Those infernal demons dare not come out in daylight.”

He waited until the sun came fully up and in his enemy’s eyes, then he concentrated on the town. LeMans with two thousand men got sent to the castle wall around the postern door, and their job was to break in, if possible, but if not, to keep the castle defenders busy in a place where they could not concentrate on what happened in the town.

For three days they watched guardsmen walk the castle walls. They saw all the activity associated with evacuating the town, but they saw no such guardsmen in town. Margueritte, of course, had her little ones put up glamours to disguise her intentions. The town looked minimally defended, and as is true with all good glamours, Ragenfrid’s men were encouraged to think wrongly about the truth. They imagined Margueritte pulled the majority of her men inside the castle to defend the walls, which is what they would have done, so they did not look at the town too closely.

In truth, if Margueritte did not have her little ones to defend the castle, she would have shifted King David’s two thousand men toward the castle to hold the Paris Road, would have moved duBois and his three hundred against the short wall. Michael’s five hundred would have been the only ones she would have taken inside the castle, and that was it. She would not have changed Peppin’s position at all. Three thousand men would have still defended the town, and Ragenfrid’s men would have still been surprised.

As it was, Ragenfrid ignored the Paris gate altogether, and massed two thousand men under Creasy to strike up the Paris Road to town. He let Talliso with another two thousand rush the hill which petered out at that end of town. They were to turn the defenders and press them back to the short wall that Ragenfrid knew faced the town. They had ladders to scale that wall, and groups set to attack the Breton and Paris gates from the inside. Ragenfrid figured once the gates were open, it would only be a matter of time before the castle fell and all opposition ceased. He had orders to leave the manor house alone so he could take Rotrude, Margo, Margueritte and the other women and children alive, but realistically, in the heat of battle, he did not know what might happen.

Needless to say, things did not go as Ragenfrid planned.

Talliso ran into a wall of Breton, equal to his numbers. He almost retreated as soon as he arrived. Bedwin nearly turned Talliso’s flank, and in the end, they became two armies, just within bowshot, staring at each other across an open space, the Breton taunting, and the men of Anjou frustrated. Talliso would have to do some serious rearranging to break through into the town.

Creasy found his approach to the city equally blocked. Though duBois had only three hundred to Creasy’s two thousand, the way Creasy came up the Paris Road made it hard for his superior numbers to have an impact. Creasy also had to rearrange things and send several companies into the area between the road and the Paris gate. It spread his men, but soon enough his numbers began to tell and duBois had to slowly pull back.

LeMans came up to the corner of the castle where the little postern door looked inviting, and the small group of apple trees appeared to give some cover against any arrow fire from the walls. His men had big ladders, and a battering ram to pound the door open. He actually thought he might breach the defenses, but the castle shape appeared deceptive.

West of the door, the wall ran a short way to the completed tower that had long stood near the manor house, where the workmen and Redux the old blacksmith lived. There, the wall turned ninety degrees and marched down the hill to the farm field before it turned again due west at a half-finished tower. That stretch of wall sat within bowshot of the back door, and the tower gave a strong redoubt against any enemy who might make it up to the top of the wall with ladders and ropes. The unfinished wall in that place stood nine feet tall, at the point where Ronan got ready to build an enclosed inner hallway. Ropes and ladders were going to be the only way up, if LeMans wanted to test it.

East of the door, the wall curved out until it met another, unfinished tower. Inside the castle, that curve allowed for a space behind the manor house and beside the kitchen where a great vegetable garden could grow. Though not ideal for a garden, being on the north side and behind the manor house which would block some of the sun, Margueritte had been assured it would suffice for vegetables. On the outside, the curve in the wall allowed another group of archers to draw a bead on whoever might approach the gate and being able to shoot at an enemy from both sides as well as from the front made for a withering fire of arrows. LeMans found this out, too late.

Childemund had thirty men on the door itself, and the oak in that door, being little one designed, proved far thicker and stronger than LeMans imagined. His tree trunk of a battering ram did not even shake it, and they did not get many whacks before they had to retreat. They left a dozen dead, being hit, as they felt, from all sides. Heurst had his kobold archers on the wall section that dropped down to the field. Ringwald had his brownies on the curve in the wall. Childemund’s men cheered when LeMans retreated to the trees, which were, in fact, apple trees in full bloom

Birch had his hands full on the front wall facing the enemy. Fortunately, Ronan started building the section in the front that would eventually make a six-foot arch for the hallway. What they had was three feet of extra wall on the front quarter, with regular spaces where the arrow slits would be built. Birch and his fairies had to be in their big size to fire arrows on the enemy, but the three-foot sections allowed them to fire from the opening and curl back for protection.

“You should build evenly spaced sections like that at the top of the wall when the wall is finished,” Elsbeth said. The women had gone up to the top of the manor house to watch. Margueritte had built a small third story room off the corner of the servant’s room where the ladies in waiting, as Margueritte called them, lived in dormitory conditions. She put a flat roof on top of the third-floor room where people could go and get sun, or see the view over the walls, or take in the stars at night. Right then, Margo, Elsbeth, Margueritte, Calista and Melanie were watching, and well out of bow range. Rotrude and Jennifer preferred to stay underground with the dwarf wives and the children. Neither wanted anything to do with war.

“I think the wall is going to be too big for this tower to see over,” Margo said. “When it is finished, I mean.”

Margueritte sipped her tea. “I know. I was thinking of adding a fourth room, maybe with open arches and a bell, like a church bell tower, and another flat roof on top of that. what do you think?” Margueritte felt nervous. She again wondered how Greta managed to watch everything with such calm. She decided Greta was fine until she got in the middle of things. Then she panicked. She did not do well in Panic situations. Margueritte, quite to the contrary, did well when she felt part of something. She had good instincts and good reflexes. But just sitting and watching got nerve wracking.

“What is that?” Elsbeth noticed. It looked like dots in the distance that rapidly got bigger.

“Shit!” Margueritte swore. “Down in, now. We have to get underground.” A dozen rocks the size of cannon balls crashed into the house and courtyard below. The roof of the house got three big holes, and down below, the women and few men they brought in from LeMans’ camp on the farm field screamed in panic. People got hurt and one or two maybe got killed.

While Calista helped Margo and Elsbeth down the hatch, Margueritte leaned over the railing and shouted, knowing the gnomes would hear her despite the noise and screaming. “Grimly, Pipes, Catspaw. Get your friends and get these women and men out the barn gate and into the woods for their own safety. Hurry.” Then it was her turn to get down the hatch.

M4 Margueritte: Negotiations, part 4 of 4

February 16, 2022January 17, 2022M G Kizzia Leave a comment

They eventually got to discussing just Neustria, and Margueritte pointed out that Orleans, Chartres, Paris, and Soissons all failed to come to Ragenfrid’s call, which was the eastern half of Neustria

“I did not call for their help yet,” Ragenfrid lied.

“Well, even so, I can guarantee Lord Tomberlain, Marquis of the Breton March, will never support you. His taxes as well as his right arm belong to Charles.”

“He can be replaced,” Ragenfrid threatened.

“Count Michael, what say you?”

“My loyalty is to Tomberlain as it was to his father, Bartholomew, and the people of Nantes and the whole southern march listen to my wife.”

“Here, here,” duBois said. “And to be honest, I don’t know if Normandy will accept Lord Ragenfrid as Suzerain.”

Ragenfrid yelled. “This is all nonsense. I will decide who will be on my border.”

Margueritte smiled, because it was a concession that the Breton March would be on his border, not his territory, though she expected him to backtrack.

“And so will I,” King David spoke up. “I have a small force here on short notice. Do not be foolish to think this represents the strength of the Breton people.”

“But he does not know how many men and resources we may have right now,” Margueritte said, coyly.

“Not enough to drive me off,” Ragenfrid responded.

“Or maybe we were just hoping we could come to an agreement without the need for further bloodshed,” Childemund suggested.

“I will appoint men to hold the march that will be acceptable to King David,” Ragenfrid said, with a smile that made Margueritte want to gag.

No one believed him, including his own men.

Eventually, the idea of Marquis of Neustria came up, a title equal to Tomberlain, but not over him. Ragenfrid insisted on the mayoralty, but that was not going to work. Charles would see to that, and not be giving it up.

Then Margueritte brought up eastern Neustria again, and Tomberlain’s independence, and offered the title, Marquis of central Neustria.

“But I don’t know if Normandy will accept that,” duBois repeated.

“It had better be acceptable,” Ragenfrid said gruffly

“Of course, that would mean sending taxes and men to fight on the frontier, and accepting Charles as your suzerain,” Margueritte pointed out.

Ragenfrid yelled again that the suggestion of submitting to Charles was totally unacceptable, and no land deal would suffice without the march. Obviously, he wanted the land to take what he wanted for himself and use the rest to pay off LeMans and Talliso for their loyalty.

Margueritte signaled, and Peppin stood and growled. “Totally unacceptable. Lord Tomberlain will not give his place to a rebel.” He did a credible job, and the Childemund stood and spoke in a quiet voice.

“I don’t believe Charles will allow you to take fully half of Neustria, like a king. You are not a king, but I will talk to Peppin and Lady Rotrude and find a compromise.” He walked off, and Margueritte stood, so David, Michael and duBois stood.

“Please,” she said in her most forlorn voice. “Give me tonight to try and talk sense into Peppin. Give us tonight,” she said, pointing to the others. “I know it is my brother Tomberlain whom you would beggar, but I would do almost anything to make peace.”

“Why?” Creasy asked for his own reasons, whatever they might be, and Margueritte suddenly wondered if Ragenfrid promised the man Tomberlain’s place.

“Because if you fight, I will not be able to save you from Charles’ wrath. If you fight, he will come and destroy you, and your families will be the ones beggared, and the whole Frankish nation will suffer. Please, give me tonight to talk sense to my friends, and we will have pork tomorrow, if you like.” She looked at Amager.

“Pork would be fine,” he said, with a smile and a nod.

As she turned to walk up the hill, Baron Bouchart added, “Looking forward to it.”

Margueritte wondered if the baron understood enough of what was going on to have second thoughts. At least he heard things from a point of view she was sure he never considered.

When she reached the top of the hill and climbed up the half-wall this time, Peppin and Childemund were waiting, and David, Michael and duBois followed her up. Calista and Melanie, being elves, no doubt heard every word of the meeting and reported as much to the women. This time the women were as quiet as the men.

“He will attack,” Margueritte said. “My guess would be first thing in the morning when the sun is in our eyes.” No one objected to her assessment. “Even the Storyteller came to that conclusion, and he is a minister, what you would call a priest, and about the most non-violent person I know.”

“Then we better prepare our men and strengthen the sentry posts,” Peppin said. As sergeant at arms, it was his duty to think of such things.

Margueritte nodded. “But we are going to have to shift our positions. I talked to my fairy spies last night. Ragenfrid has moved away from the castle and toward the town. I don’t know if he has become aware of the short wall facing the town or not. Ronan and his men have been working like mad, and they have the wall just short of seven feet tall, so it is too high to jump, but not so high that it cannot be easily climbed. Gerraint and the others who know about such things say we have to protect the wall.”

“I can move Bedwin and his men to the wall,” King David suggested, but Margueritte shook her head.

“LeMans and Amager are facing the castle, and I have hope that Amager may refuse to fight. He is still suffering from the enchantment, but he has enough of his own spirit now to where he should be able to fight the enchantment. I hope Bouchart may also back away, but I have less hope with him, and it should not seriously diminish Ragenfrid’s numbers for the attack on the town. The people of the town have all been evacuated to Vergenville, so, if necessary, we may all withdraw to the wall. It is best if we can defend the property, but not imperative. David, your men fight best together. DuBois, I need you to stay where you are, at the corner of the castle and the town. Michael, you need to make a space between the town and the wall, which sadly means tearing down a couple of houses. Then you need to get whatever wagons, boxes, barrels, and such to build a wall in front of the castle wall, one that your men can get behind. You need to practice your archery skills.”

Peppin groused. “You want my men inside the castle?”

“No,” Margueritte said. “You need to stay in reserve. Let your veteran men on horseback and foot support David and duBois in the line as needed, and let the rest, the young men on horseback, be ready to sweep in on the flank if it looks like Michael’s line is going to be overwhelmed.”

“And me?” Childemund did not exactly protest. “You expect my hundred men to hold the castle alone? If LeMans is facing the castle, I doubt we will be spared from the assault, even if Tours backs off.”

“I want twenty men on the Breton gate, thirty on the postern gate by the kitchens and forty on the main, Paris gate. I want the other ten outside Rotrude’s room, unless we can convince her to go to Vergenville, at which point the ten can escort her safely there. I will take care of the defense of the castle walls, and woe to LeMans if he attacks.”

“Lady,” Jennifer objected again. “It has always been your way to refuse to put your little ones directly in the battle.”

“The Princess put little ones in the battle, I remember. Generally, you are right, but in this case, Rotrude, Margo, Elsbeth and you, along with all the children who will be held captive underground, no exceptions, makes a difference. The women and children must be protected, and if you will not evacuate, I have no choice. I just hope whichever one of you said we could hold him off for a day, two at the most was right.”

“Lady,” Calista stepped up, Melanie right beside her. “We are honored to be included in your battle plans, for once.”

“And you are one of the women with children we will gladly protect,” Melanie said.

Margueritte shook her finger, and her voice was stern. “And you better not get hurt, either.”

************************

MONDAY

Battle seems inevitable. The defenders need to hold out long enough for help to arrive. Good luck. Until Monday, Happy Reading.

M4 Margueritte: Strike Back, part 2 of 3

December 7, 2021November 13, 2021M G Kizzia Leave a comment

On the first day of the siege, when some soldiers set up two tents for Margueritte and her women, other men dug a great pit in the woods and constructed two wooden seats and a wooden covering with a curtain so the women could go in private. Sigisurd knew what went on there, besides sitting and thinking, but no one else knew. After her first conversation with Abd al-Makti, Margueritte knew she could not trust anyone, and even Sigisurd’s memory got deliberately blunted to be safe.

Abd al-Makti came to her tent after giving her a week to settle in for a long wait, as sieges often become. “If the Lady is at liberty, I would ask a few questions about things of the Franks and such. I am a stranger here, and I do not understood as I should.”

Margueritte would have corrected the man’s grammar, but presently she felt something like a fly speck against her mind, and she tried not to laugh. When she became invested as the Kairos in ancient days, given the responsibility for the little spirits of the earth, air, fire and water, and counted among the gods as the god or goddess of history, the gods understood her mind contained too much information about the future; information that would be dangerous in the wrong hands. Therefore, it was decided to establish unbreakable barriers around her mind. Even the gods could not read her mind. This Islamic sorcerer had no chance, but in trying, he gave himself away. She would have to be careful whom she trusted and with what information as long as this man walked around the camp reading people’s minds.

“Can I help you?” Margueritte finally spoke and watched the frustration cross Abd al-Makti’s face.

“Indeed. I thought a lady such as yourself might offer a more pleasant conversation than these men of war. It appears we will be here for a long time, and full of much boredom. I hope things are settled before the diseases begin.”

“As I think. Cholera, dysentery, and such are not to be hoped for. I say, the things I have seen in long sieges would make you shudder. I suppose it is a good thing you cannot read my mind.” She could not resist the jab.

“Indeed.”

The conversation continued for a time, but Margueritte represented herself well as a paragon of Christian virtues, and otherwise just the ordinary Frankish woman that she was, well, half Frankish, half Breton. And Abd al-Makti kept saying indeed until he had enough. He would not get anything out of her by direct questioning. If she was a witch, or worse, the power his Lord and Master insisted, he could not prove it. For her part, Margueritte saw no other signs of the man’s power, though she did not doubt he was a powerful wizard. She suspected there was more to it, something more behind this man of power, but she caught no indication of what or who that might be. This man appeared to be a genuine Muslim missionary, well versed in the Koran and his faith. She checked with her Storyteller who studied all that and could look things up.

“I must be off,” Abd al-Makti said at last. “My servant Marco has much to be watched, but I may return, and we will speak again.”

“We may speak again, another time,” Margueritte said with a smile, and thought, then again, we may not, God willing.

“That was interesting,” Sigisurd said.

“Don’t be fooled,” Margueritte responded. “Christ is the way of life. The Prophet is the way of death to all who will not submit to their greedy ambition. Besides, they treat women like cattle.”

“And how is that different from the way we are treated now?”

“Trust me, you have no idea.”

When they reached the toilet, Margueritte called out. “Tulip.” The fairy appeared and immediately sprinkled Sigisurd with dust.

After a moment, Tulip announced, “She’s clean,” and Margueritte checked to be sure Tulip was clean as well.

Margueritte called, “Maywood. Larchmont.” Both fairies appeared, and Maywood spoke first.

“Plectrude is still in isolation, but she has spoken with a local midwife. The feeling I get is she has heard about your situation and is willing to send help if Ragenfrid will let the woman through the lines.”

“We shall see. That is good news. I know Doctor Mishka and Greta can only do so much, being me, if you know what I mean, and I am sure Ragenfrid does not have a midwife in the camp.”

“Mother Mary checked on that,” Sigisurd said, and shook her head.

“And how is my husband?” Margueritte asked Larchmont.

“Impatient. Every time I tell him you are fine; he keeps saying he is missing it all. He wants to go yesterday, but Charles keeps saying, not until they are ready. I get the feeling if this siege goes on much longer, they will get ready. Charles has twice as many men as before, and he is pushing them hard to prepare.”

“Good for him. Please tell him I had a talk with the bishop today. His name is Boniface, and they should meet one day. Remind him if he will support the Church, the Church will surely support him. Then tell him Abd-al-Makti the Sorcerer has plans and is gathering information on our strengths and weaknesses, which I have no doubt will be shared with the invading Islamic generals in Iberia.”

“I do remind him of this and will again. Charles is worried about the south coast of Septimania, it being in Visigoth hands. He says the Visigoths in Iberia have put up little struggle against the invading Muslims and he feels sure they will not stop at the Pyrenees.”

“And I agree,” Margueritte said. “Thank you.” She waved her hand, and Larchmont and Maywood went back to the place from which she called them. Then she went behind the curtain and left Sigisurd with Tulip because she really did have to go.

“What is the news from the coasts?” Margueritte asked from behind the curtain.

“All is quiet, and lovely,” Tulip reported. She was in love with a fairy named Waterborn and had been for going on three hundred years. Tulip now neared seven hundred years old. But everything was lovely when a fairy was in love, so Margueritte asked.

“Tell me about the Christians in Frisia.” Tulip was certainly old enough and mature enough to not ask, “What about them?”

“The priests and churches are mostly gone,” Tulip said. “But the people are mostly good neighbors, and families that have been friends for generations remain friends, and what one family believes does not make them bad neighbors.”

Margueritte considered Abd al-Makti. Muslims could also be good neighbors until they got the upper hand. Islam spread, not as a religion of gentle persuasion, like Christianity for the most part. Christians had their convert or die moments, but they were rare. Convert or die became standard practice for Islam, from the beginning, and Margueritte decided if that made her prejudiced, then so be it. Boniface was right about that. She felt driven to save life, not take it.

“Thank you, Tulip,” she said, as she came out from behind the curtain.

“Can I stay this time and be friends with Sigisurd?” Tulip pleaded sweetly, and Sigisurd looked hopeful, but Margueritte shook her head.

“Not this time. Not as long as the sorcerer-spy is around, but some day things will be better.” Tulip vanished as Margueritte sent her back to her troop that lived and worked along what would one day be called the Dutch coast. Sigisurd looked sad, but understood, and in short order she forgot all about the fairies. It was safer that way.

###

Summer became autumn and the leaves began to change. Ragenfrid saw that the local harvest got brought in and took the lion’s share for his army. No siege is perfect, especially when the General wants to own the city, not destroy it. The trick is to let just enough food inside the city to keep the population near starvation, but not too little so the people are not forced to survive on rats. Ragenfrid sat on the fence about that with Cologne. He would destroy the city if he had to. Chilperic had been declared king of the Neustrian Franks, not the Austrasian Franks, and Cologne was a very Austrasian city. Both the king and Ragenfrid assumed if the people turned from Plectrude and her son, they might just as easily swear allegiance to Charles rather than to him.

The city had the normal supply of foodstuffs until the harvest, but after that, they were at the mercy of Ragenfrid, and instead of standing watch on the walls, the people began to protest in the streets. Rat was a dish not to be taken lightly, no matter the sauce.

Plectrude came out of her isolation when things in the city began to turn. She had to do something before hunger caused a revolt and the people handed the city and her life to Ragenfrid. To be sure, surrender seemed her only option, but she was not above haggling. When her husband Pepin died, she brought much of his treasure, the treasure of Austrasia, with her to Cologne. She trusted in Chilperic, a man who once went under the name of Daniel, who got dragged out of a monastery and given a crown, and trust in his forgiving Christian nature, that Plectrude turned over the treasure and renounced the mayoralty of her son on condition Ragenfrid go away and leave Cologne, and her, alone.

Chilperic agreed, and after great arguments, Ragenfrid and Radbod agreed, especially after Radbod got paid off.

M4 Margueritte: Prisoners, part 1 of 3

November 29, 2021November 13, 2021M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Margueritte: The New Way Has Come

After 697 AD: Francia

“Shut-up. Shut-up,” Margueritte whispered with as much strength as she could and still keep quiet. “If you two don’t shut-up we will be discovered.”

“He started it,” Grimly pointed.

“You made a crack about my mother,” Pipes came right back.

“Catspaw,” Margueritte whispered. Catspaw put her hands over the mouths of the boys and she looked at them like two birds she would have for supper if they protested. Margueritte ignored the three gnomes that should have been named Moe, Larry and Curly and peeked out from behind the big tapestry. They found no one in the hall two hours before sunrise. She knew it would get busy soon enough.

“Is this the right vent?” she asked.

Grimly said, “Mumphs mus mumph mum.”

“He says yes,” Catspaw whispered.

“Get it open. Pipes, the rope.”

Grimly got out a fold of fairy weave cloth and covered the pegs which he then popped out without a sound. Pipes tied one end of the rope securely to the fixture that held up the heavy tapestry and Catspaw let it down into the dark as soon as Grimly and Margueritte moved the vent enough to squeeze through.

“Now, Catspaw. You know what to do,” Margueritte said, as Grimly shimmied down to where he could light a small light and check the room to be sure it was empty. Margueritte followed carefully, hand under hand, until her feet touched down. The room was small, but a crossroads of a sort. They saw two open corridors, a staircase, and two big wooden doors.

“Which room?” Grimly asked. He pointed to the big doors. All he knew for certain was the prisoner was in this general location.

Margueritte pressed her dress down with her hands, wiped off some dust and dirt, and shrugged. “The locked one,” she suggested, and reached for the door on her left. It popped open and three soldiers jumped. “Oops,” Margueritte said quietly, before she thought fast. “Why isn’t one of you out in the hall?” she yelled. “This prisoner is to be guarded at all times. I hope for your sakes you weren’t sleeping on the job.”

Two of the soldiers straightened up and made military type excuse noises, but the third wasn’t so easily taken. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“Countess DeWinter, here from Cologne to question the prisoner, on the authority of the church and my good friend, your mayor’s mother. It is only an hour before sunrise, and I can’t sleep so I see no reason why the prisoner should sleep.”

“You have papers?”

Margueritte stepped up and slapped the man. “Your lord got my papers when I arrived last night. Can you even read? Now, come along and open-up. I need to make the man miserable.”

One man got some keys from a hook on the wall, picked up and lit a torch out of a brazier, and nodded toward one of the others. One of the men mumbled that she was obviously talented at making people miserable. Margueritte knew the third man would go upstairs to check on her authorization, and she could only hope it took time to wake the old lord of the fortress. Even so, she would have to be quick.

After the man lit the two torches in the small central room, he unlocked and opened the other door. He stepped in first with the torch still in his hand while his fellow soldier stayed outside in case there was trouble.

“Charles,” Margueritte yelled. “I come with greetings from the outside world.”

The short but broad-shouldered man, under thirty, though with the bearing of one much older, sat on a rough-hewn slat bed that only had straw for a mattress and no covers. The way he had been chained around his wrists and ankles suggested he had a hard time lying down, so the uncomfortable bed hardly mattered. He looked up at his name, but his eyes seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to the light.

“Come. Let me look at you so I can see who it is that is speaking.”

“Now Charles, are your ears bound as well so you do not know my voice?”

Charles shook his head. “Who would have thought you would be here for me rather than the other way around? Last I saw you, what? you turned sixteen, still a child and tied up to be burned at the stake?”

“Seventeen and just married, and now I am eighteen and in some circles that makes me a full-grown woman.” She turned to the guard and smiled. “What do you think?”

He returned the smile as he looked her once over. “That was never a question.”

“Charles, I brought some friends who want to hear what tales you have to tell.”

“Not the big fellow, I hope.”

Margueritte knew the big fellow was Hammerhead the ogre that Charles met once and said that was enough. “No, but I can call him if you like.”

“All clear,” Grimly spoke from the hall. The guard inside the room turned, but Margueritte raised her hands. An electrical charge flowed out of her fingers and struck the guard. He jiggled and jiggled before he dropped the torch and collapsed to the floor. Margueritte called to Grimly and bent down to move the torch before it set the straw on fire, and then searched through the pile of keys.

“Never mind,” Grimly said. He applied a little gnome magic and popped the wrist and ankle chains open.

“I hope you’re not too stiff.” Margueritte helped Charles stand. “We have some climbing to do, up and down.” They went into the hall and stepped over the unconscious guard that Grimly took care of. Grimly called to Catspaw to let the rope back down. When the rope hit the floor, he shimmied up and gave the all clear.

“Ladies first,” Charles said, always the gentleman.

“No way,” she nudged him. “If I get caught, I have friends who can help, but this may be the only chance to get you out. Climb, mister.” He did, but it looked painful and slow. By the time Margueritte grabbed the rope, she heard noises down the hall. While she climbed, she called her armor out of Avalon in the Second Heavens. It replaced her dress in an instant. The chain mail, made by the god Hephaestus in the ancient days, would repel about any weapon, and the knee boots with the hard soles would protect her feet at a dead run equally through gravel and briars. The fingerless gloves helped her grip the rope better, and her cloak, woven by Athena and turned black side out, would make her all but invisible in the night and in the shadows. Sadly, at present she felt all too visible.

Margueritte got half-way out of the vent when a man reached the rope beneath her feet. That man yelled and yanked on the rope to shake her loose, but Charles grabbed Margueritte’s hand and pulled her the rest of the way out. Margueritte breathed her thank you before she said flatly, “Now we run.” True, her hard-soled boots made a clop-clop sound in the hall, but that hardly mattered with all the yelling.

At the end of the hall, Catspaw urged them on. Pipes stood at the top of the stairs and indicated the all clear. They stopped short of the very top when they reached a watch room with slit windows for bowmen. Grimly opened the door and he yelled, “Keep your heads down.” They burst through the door and ran down the wall of the fortress.

“How about a little fire, Scarecrow,” Margueritte quipped.

A big rope had been tied fast to the top of the wall, and again Margueritte insisted Charles go first. “Lord Birch, stay with him. He may need the Peter Pan treatment if his hands give way.”

“Right,” Birch, the old fairy lord responded even as Lord Yellow Leaf let out a Cherokee war cry and let loose another arrow. Margueritte saw several dead guardsmen littered about, barely discernible in the torch light. It was hard to tell how many, but there were plenty more soldiers where the first ones came from, and they would all arrive soon enough. Margueritte felt an arrow strike her back. It bounced off the armor, did not even penetrate the cloak of Athena, but it proved time was short. Margueritte did not wait for Charles to reach the bottom. She scrambled over the top of the wall and grabbed the rope while Grimly, Catspaw and Pipes jumped over the side and floated down. The gnomes could not exactly fly, but they could float pretty well. Last of all, the fairy lords Larchmont and Yellow Leaf got small, their normal fairy size, and exited the wall. They had horses down below, and Charles did not have to ask what they were for.

A hundred yards out from the fortress, and they ran into Roland with a party of thirty men. Roland yelled as loud as he could, much louder than all the yelling so far, and Margueritte wilted a bit, but they did not stop. They had a hard ride ahead of them.

M4 Festuscato: A Little Romance, part 1 of 3

October 4, 2021August 29, 2021M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Heather found an unbranded dapple gray seven-year-old that seemed gentle enough. They had gotten a couple of gnomes to do the actual looking, and the gnomes had the horse saddled and ready to go. They also had a glamour covering the horse so instead of being dapple gray, it looked like a natural brown.

Margueritte looked around at her little ones and said, “Thank you all so very much. It was lovely meeting you all, and I do hope to see you again some time. Say a special thank you to Fangs.” She looked at Heather. “I don’t like rats and bats either. Good-bye,” she said and went away, so Gerraint could take his turn.

“All right then, Ironwood.” Gerraint appeared a commanding contrast to Margueritte. To an outsider, it would have been hard to imagine they were actually the same person, or maybe different persons but the same being. “Let’s make this fairy weave imitate a Visigoth soldier’s uniform. I feel silly in a dress.” It took several minutes. Gerraint called to Excalibur as his most Gothic looking sword and set it at his left side, Visigoth style. He set Defender to his right side and stepped back to ask how he looked. Naturally, everyone said he looked great, but he frowned. “Well, let’s just hope it fools the men at the various gates.”

“Actually, you don’t look very much like a Goth, with your dark brown hair,” Clover said, in a sudden fit of honesty. “You might pass for a half breed, but you have a Celtic look about you.”

“So maybe I have to swear and spit a lot,” Gerraint said, as he slipped on his helmet, mounted his horse, and rode off. “These baby blue eyes ought to count for something.”

None of the guards gave him any trouble, even though he stumbled on a couple of words and once had to revert to Latin. Gerraint, a big man at six feet, had finally perfected his mean stare, so no one argued. Once he left Tolouse, he turned in an unexpected direction, towards Provence instead of Narbonne. The gnomes had thought to fill his satchels with some quality food, so there were no worries there. The fairies still followed but kept their distance when there were people around. They came in close when the road finally brought Gerraint into the shelter of some trees.

Gerraint changed to Greta and let his fairy weave change back to Margueritte’s washer woman dress. Greta immediately stomped her foot. “What is she, a size two?”

“She is a couple of inches taller than your five foot, four inches, but she is a size four, petite. Short waist, with nice, long legs,” someone said in Greta’s mind. She assumed it was the Storyteller, and she responded to him out loud in her grumpy voice.

“So, I have stumpy legs and have to make everything bigger, especially around the middle. I must be a size twelve,” she said, and added, “at least,” before someone else said it. Greta considered the clothing then and opted for her old riding clothes which were still being kept somewhere in Avalon. She called her red cloak with the hood to have against the fall chill in the night. She mounted her supposed brown horse and headed toward Arles.

Around noon, a large troop of Visigoths caught up with her. They were looking for a man with red hair, possibly riding on a dapple-gray horse.

“I have seen no such man,” Greta said, in all honesty, since she did not have a mirror.

“It is not safe here for a young maiden alone on the road,” the captain said.

“I will be careful,” Greta promised. “I am not going far.”

The captain smiled for her and took his troop off at a gallop. Heather stuck her head out from Greta’s hair where she had been standing on Greta’s shoulder, whispering in Greta’s ear.

“That was close,” Heather said.

“Clover, you need to watch behind. Ironwood, you need to watch ahead. If that captain comes back this way, I need warning, so I have time to get off the road and hide.” That said, Greta and Heather settled into a long day’s ride, with Heather talking most of the way.

At sunset, Greta pulled well off the road, but did not light a fire. She ate a little before she curled up in her cloak. She slept well. It had been a long day. It just turned to sunrise, however, when she got rudely awakened. Someone screamed, and the first thing Greta thought was she was back in Dacia, traveling with her friends, and she jumped up. The scream came again. The second thing Greta thought was, Margueritte, that’s how you do it if you want a good scream. There came a third scream as Greta woke enough to go away so Festuscato could return. He arrived dressed in his armor with the sword Wyrd in his hand. He ran through the woods but stopped short of the action.

Three women crouched behind a fallen log. He knew immediately that the one with the long black hair and the bow in her hands was a half-elf, and he also knew her father was a Macreedy.

“Man,” he said to himself. “Those Macreedys get around more than I do.” Then he shut down those thoughts because he did not want to know how many little Festuscato’s he might have left in his wake.

The other two girls appeared human. The one with the plain brown hair held tight to a long knife and looked prepared to do whatever might be necessary. The blonde looked to be a basket case; obviously, the screamer.

Their camp had two tents and two bodies, one young man and one older man who still clutched a sword. He just caught a glimpse of the men on the far side of the camp hidden among the trees when Ironwood flew up with a report.

“Five men, Huns. One has an arrow in his leg. One has an arrow in his chest, right side.”

“Oh, girls,” one of the Huns called.

“Not alive,” the one with the brown hair shouted over the log without sticking her head up. “You might as well go away.”

“What do you want?” Festuscato interrupted the sparkling conversation and heard silence for a minute, while Festuscato called to Heather and Clover. He spoke softly. “You two need to fly over to Mirowen’s Macreedy cousin and tell her we are on her side. Ironwood get big. I need you with your bow.”

Ironwood appeared as a twenty-four-year-old, covered in a fine armor, and took up a position by the next tree. “We mean no harm to you women, but what do you men want?”

There followed a long pause before a man answered. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Fair enough. Now here is an offer. You can leave right now while you still live, or you can die.” Festuscato had sheathed his sword and pulled out his own bow. He had an arrow ready and three more in his hand. Diana, the goddess, had given a gift of her own spirit to his genetic reflection, whenever that might have been in the past, much like Bodanagus had been gifted and Margueritte reflected those gifts. In Festuscato, the gift of the goddess presently pushed deep into his hands and eyes. Given any sort of shot and he knew he would not miss. “Time is up. What’s your answer?”

“Who in Mitra’s name do you think you are?”

“I am the dragon who tied Megla up like a pig and threw him and his men off my island. I am the dragon who just kicked Attila’s butt so hard he took all of his men and friends and ran away. I am the dragon who is going to burn you to ashes if you don’t leave these women alone, right now.”

No one answered, but they heard the Huns getting up on horses and riding off at a gallop. Festuscato called again to his fairies, and they came right away. “Ironwood, I need you small again, to follow the Huns and tell me where they land. I don’t want them to set up an ambush down the road. Clover, you have to search the whole area to make sure they didn’t leave one behind. Heather, is it safe to visit the women?”

“Oh, yes,” Heather said. “But Mirowen Macreedy’s cousin is crying.” Heather did not understand that the tears were happy tears. Soon enough, the blonde started wailing, definitely unhappy tears. Apparently, the old man had been her father, and the younger one, her father’s son by another marriage. Mercedes was seventeen, the youngest of the three half-sisters, but her father had arranged a marriage with the son of a successful merchant in Arles, and now surely that would never happen.

Storyteller Tales & Thoughts

Stories and reflections on storytelling

Fairies

Charmed: Part 10 of 11, A Disney-Like Halloween Story (Without the Singing)

Chapter 10

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Ghosts 11

Avalon 9.5 Men in Black, part 3 of 6

Avalon 8.3 Above and Beyond, part 4 of 4

M4 Margueritte: Watch and Rescue, part 2 of 3

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M4 Margueritte: Watch and Rescue, part 1 of 3

M4 Margueritte: Negotiations, part 4 of 4

M4 Margueritte: Strike Back, part 2 of 3

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M4 Margueritte: Prisoners, part 1 of 3

Margueritte: The New Way Has Come

After 697 AD: Francia

M4 Festuscato: A Little Romance, part 1 of 3