When I re-read this old post, I was reluctant to re-blog it. Is it topical or frightening when there’s a pandemic creating havoc? But my better half advised me that I couldn’t ignore it. Do you agree?
This phrase chimes with today – ‘cleanliness is crucial’. So, be sensible and wash your hands etc., be sensible and inspired.
Before the ‘our timeline’ revelation, will you recognise the real historical event. It’s a major historical event. Could it have been avoided?
I attempted to find a route when constructing my Kanata alternative history. The initial trigger, Leif Eriksson’s permanent colonisation of Vinland, inspired me to rewrite other key episodes in history. I wanted the legacy forged from Vikings merging with the indigenous people to ripple down time. Kanata evolved into my vision of a 21st Century Viking Age.
I’ve been playing A Plague Tale: Innocence, a game set in France in 1348. Its realism is both amazing and terrifying – well, as far as I’ve got, elements disturb me. Not the right escapism at present. But I will finish it – one day.
Here’s a short observation on pandemics and a message from a historical fiction author I follow. Do I write the current ‘plague’ out of my alternative history? Or was it inevitable in any reality?
If you are willing to read a detailed article on our present pandemic, this one is informative – with a crucial lesson.
I developed another key changing point in my AH Viking world when science shifts direction with the support of the alternative dynastic power – but all with historical connections.
Before the ‘our timeline’ revelation, will you recognise the real historical events or the ones that occurred later.
These reworkings of reality are all because I couldn’t stop constructing my Kanata alternative history. The initial trigger, Leif Eriksson’s permanent colonisation of Vinland, inspired me to rewrite other key episodes in history. I wanted the legacy forged from Vikings merging with the indigenous people to ripple down time. Kanata evolved into my vision of a 21st Century Viking Age.
Expect more alternative history ahead.
M is also for Masterpiece– the next chapter in my Sparkle Anwyl case, Custody Chain. This is my ongoing WEP/IWSG Challenge entry, started in February with Café Terrace.
Rewriting a new Kanata timeline threw up this turning point, which was a chance to solidify the dynastic ties around Northern Europe. Before the ‘our timeline’ revelation, will you recognise the real historical event or which crucial event in British history may never happen?
And all because I couldn’t stop constructing my Kanata alternative history. The initial trigger, Leif Eriksson’s permanent colonisation of Vinland, inspired me to rewrite other key episodes in history. I wanted the legacy forged from Vikings merging with the indigenous people to ripple down time. Kanata evolved into my vision of a 21st Century Viking Age.
My Kanata alternative history triggered by Leif Eriksson colonising Vinland, inspired me to rewrite some key episodes in history. I wanted the legacy forged by a Viking alliance with the indigenous people rippled down time. A 21st Century Viking Age.
This episode is a crucial stage in the development of the airships at the heart of modern Kanata. Before the ‘our timeline’ revelation, will you recognise the real historical event? Expect more alternative history ahead.
I’ve been doing the A to Z Challenge since 2014 and began pondering my 2020 theme sometime last year. But in the last few months, everything has overwhelmed me – emails, regular posts like IWSG and WEP, replying to comments, and my own writing. Plus, my health issues.
So, I’m taking the simpler way out – reposting my best posts from 2014 to 2019 Challenges.
Thanks to Jacqui Murray for triggering that approach with her 2019 solution: ..a genre for every letter of the alphabet, but with one or two posts every month. Her reasoning chimed with my own thoughts about too many posts to write/read/comment on etcetera in April.
She wasn’t alone as others found other solutions to negotiating the A to Z Challenge.
However, I’m still going to post on the official A to Z days, starting with A for Assault on Wednesday April 1st, 2020. If you’re tempted and follow that link, you will discover Part One of Azure Spark, which evolved into a novella featuring my Welsh detective Sparkle Anwyl. I edited the posts into three acts, and all three will be posted during April: on the 1st, 11th, and 23rd.
I suspect not everyone got to read ‘Azure Spark’ so this will be another chance. A chance to to revisit older posts on other themes; like my 2017 History of Kanata or my 2015 The War of 1812. But I’ve yet to decide what posts to choose.
Watch this space.
All I can say is Sparkle Anwyl’s case will be complete, and Azure Spark is referenced in my WIP ‘Fevered Fuse’ – my current priority along with the more imminent and crucial release of the IWSG Anthology, Voyagers: The Third Ghost on May 5th.
Originally, I had planned to write a Sparkle Anwyl case for the 2019 WEP + IWSG Challenge starting in April and ending in December. I wrote the first episode in April, but then posted the next episode of Kindled Casket, last month. There is a ‘caged bird’ in the episode but not as planned – that follows in the next episode. That case will unfold over the next few months.
Hence, the attached standalone short – Fettered Air. A departure from my Welsh police procedural, so your responses will interest me.
Fettered Air
I slide ski-swift across the winter’s blanket under the Blood Wolf’s Moon. Beside me the chicken-legged hut creak-crashes through the forest.
We’re alone in the taiga.
No sign of Baba Yaga. She’s vanished as have the denizens.
No howling wolves. Nor snow leopard scents. No eagle-owl hoots. Nor honking
swans. No ice-crawlers corpse feeding.
For nothing breathes in the wailing wind.
Yet, Nature writhes in pain, dragon’s bile dripping on her from
mortal fangs.
I am Skaði. Goddess, giantess, huntress and snow-stealth
specialist. Size is not the issue. Speed is.
The house is noisier, but we make a team. This hut can track her mistress better than even I, its feet scratching up clues, windows watching for signs.
Our mission came from Svetovid, seer and guardian god – and
we had no choice.
“Find Baba Yaga before this world rebels.”
Why me, a giantess from Jötunheimr? Because neither Odin nor
Thor will ask me ever since the marital strife with my spouse, Njörðr.
“Nobody else volunteered,” added Svetovid. “Besides those
deities I posted on separate operations.”
He’s as secretive as my Vanir and Aesir brethren. Not just
Loki plays with intelligence. Our trickster-thief and clown has too many
imitators.
“Others are missing?” I asked, expecting evasion.
“Find Baba Yaga. That’s all.”
So, a need-to-know answer means Skaði is disposable. Nothing
has changed.
Am I that terrible?
I had my reasons for smashing my husband’s sand sculptures. The whale-way was a prison with seabirds flaunting freedom.
But he called my majestic mountain retreat a dreary cell. “I’m
trapped here. I can’t ski or snowboard like you.” He ranted and ripped down my hunting
trophies.
“Skadi Hunting in the Mountains” (1901) by H. L. M – Foster, Mary H. 1901. Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology. Silver, Burdett and Company
Marriage dissolved.
Thus, I get the menial tasks. Unless Odin sends his ravens or
wolves with heart-baits.
Not this occasion. A telepathic eagle with four heads.
“Find Baba Yaga.” Svetovid’s orders resound in my brain.
The wilderness wrestles promethium chains. That is enough reason to pursue the quarry.
So we scour Siberia.
The creak-crashing hut spins above the earth-coat. We have
the crone’s spoor.
Calls and cries clamour on the snow-breath.
Ahead a green clearing by a lake glows bright. Invisible to vicious
human eyes, but I see the torches, tents and throng bridging the veils.
Baba has parked her mortar by a host of other vehicles, one
that is familiar – my stepdaughter’s pantherine-drawn chariot.
With groans and creaks, the chicken-legs spin the hut to a
halt by the pestle-guarded mortar. Shutters slam shut. A fence of human bones
topped with skulls encircles them.
My gaze shoots arrows at the polytheistic conclave nobody
invited me to.
Goddesses gathered from the Nine Realms. They have abandoned
their posts to feast. Brews flow, dice roll and deities chatter. Everyone
distracted as Midgard clamours for release.
Baba knocks back vodka, cackling to another crone – Hecate,
clutching a goatskin of wine. Their dice are corpse-stones, and Hel’s are
soul-vessels.
Are they oblivious to the desolation? Among the feasting, denizen envoys are airing their anxiety.
My pounding heart settles. Mind muses past irritable white-out.
Not all the deities are wizen and wild in their attire and behaviour. Some goddesses appear serious.
Freyja, stepdaughter and party animal rises – statuesque and sober, despite her goblet of mead.
Her eyes seize mine as she silences the symposium.
“Sisters, the snow-dancer is here. The world cries, and we have
battle-sweat to spill. But when shall we three score meet again?”
“When the chaos is banished, when the spear-din is won,” Hel
replies.
I add my voice, realising their design. “Ere midnight. After
the sleep of the blade claims those flouting our laws.” Faces flash in my head.
I smile. “Nature’s justice must wield the icicle of blood against false leaders
poisoning life.”
My sisters nod. Creatures yowl.
Freyja smiles and summons her champions. “I come, Durga and Adrastea.
We have fangs to extract.”
Her pantherines roar in response.
We will shatter the fetters on Nature. No more will humans build cages entrapping our laughter and song.
Yes, this is my #WEP/IWSG post for June so part of the 2019 WEP/IWSG Challenge. This a standalone short, although Skaði appears in my novel Eagle Passage, which I wrote the first draft of for NaNoWriMo 2016.
Word Count 660: FCA
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