A motley collection of soothsayers, charm mongers, trappers and peddlers have settled in the square behind Tron Kirk. They huddle round camp fires supping from wooden mugs, filled with either infusions of fresh tea herbs or special brew, depending on preference.
For once I'm not here for anything distasteful, dangerous or even illegal; today I'm shopping for bedstraw.
There's a peddler that comes down from the Flow Country, from high high up the valleys. She brings me bundles of dried bed herbs gathered wild from the hills. Sleeping on them gives me dreams steeped in geological time. I lie enfolded in the soft hills, cushioned by the gradual accumulation of peat, my mind empty of anything but 10,000 years of grasses undulating in the wind and the lonely cry of the curlew.
I swap her half an ounce of silver and 150k words of Skyrim fanfic freshly printed from AO3 (she's an avid fic reader but anything more complex than a wristwatch attracts barrow wights, that far up country). Pleased, she throws in a length of bog oak as thick as my forearm and cracks open a horn of mead to celebrate the deal.
It's brewed from clover honey and I get on the bus back home happily fuzzy and distant. When I thank the bus driver my voice buzzes like the metallic chorus of the swarm.
It’s Independence Day Weekend! Let’s celebrate one of the great unsung heroes of the Revolutionary War. People who don’t exist don’t get near enough credit.
“Call me Doctor Pox, my dear,” said the man in the scarlet cloak and theatrical tragedy mask, as he finished binding her wrists behind her back. Beneath the cloak, his proper British attire was spattered with mud from hard-riding the buckboard through the night.
“How dare you?!” she cried for the millionth time. “My father is Colonel….”
“I know your father!” screamed Doctor Pox, silencing her. He quickly regained his composure. “My dear Sybil.”
Turning on his heel, the madman marched off to a dark corner of the barn, out of the small circle of light cast by the single kerosene lamp.
Sybil struggled against the leather straps that bound her to the wooden beam, but to no avail. Her light blue Polonaise gown had been torn to shreds in the struggle and her low-cut bodice had been ripped, exposing an unseemly amount of decolletage. Strands of brown hair fell in her face, her bonnet having been lost in the kidnapping.
Doctor Pox reappeared from the shadows, dragging something heavy through the dirt and straw. “Yes, my dear,” he said, “I met the esteemed Colonel Willing during the Siege of Boston. He was so proud of his cannon upon Dorchester Heights. So proud of his ruffian irregulars who guarded the roads.”
He was dragging a large wooden coach trunk with iron braces; huffing and puffing, he positioned it three feet in front of Sybil. Leaning in close to her, his theatrical tragedy mask, which seemed wrought of copper, hovering near her face, he said, “It is my tender sentiment for your father which has brought you here.”
With a flourish of his scarlet cloak, the doctor turned and flung open the top of the trunk.
When Sybil saw what was inside, she screamed.
And with that, the barn doors burst open and in strode a tall and stately figure.
“Goodman America!” gasped Sybil.
His face entirely masked by white cloth, the famed mystery man was dressed in a waistcoat and tricorn hat of brightest blue; his vest bore thirteen red and white stripes. His breeches were midnight black, as were his rugged highwayman boots. The knob of his walking stick and the rattlesnake insignia on his hat were rumored to be of pure silver, smithed by Paul Revere himself.
“Surrender, Doctor Pox!” he commanded.
“Never!” replied the madman, drawing a flintlock pistol from beneath his scarlet cloak.
But Goodman America was upon him in an instant and knocked the weapon from his hand before he could fire. The two masked men faced off, circling each other warily, preparing for hand-to-hand combat.
Grimacing with disgust, Sybil reached out with her foot– she had lost her shoes in the scuffle as well– and knocked the coach trunk shut with her stockinged toe.
The noise distracted Doctor Pox for but a moment, but it was enough for Goodman America to throw a punch. The mighty blow knocked the theatrical tragedy mask from the madman’s face.
Both Sybil and Goodman America recoiled in horror, for that face was so hideously scarred and twisted that it was barely human.
“Look then!” shrieked the doctor. “Look upon the face of Doctor Silas Conduct! See what the smallpox epidemic of the Siege of Boston did to me! If Colonel Josiah Willing had let us pass that night, I would not be thus disfigured– and my beloved wife would not be DEAD!”
He pointed savagely at the coach trunk.
“But when the bits and pieces of the rotting human remains in that trunk, raging with smallpox, are added to the food and water of the Continental Army, then so too will the American rabble die! And the daughter of my most hated enemy will be the first to….”
The silver knob of Goodman America’s walking stick struck the doctor’s temple sharply, and he fell unconscious to the ground.
“Don’t tread on us,” said Goodman America.
Drawing an officer’s saber from a scabbard hidden beneath his blue waistcoat, he quickly went to work cutting the leather straps that bound Sybil Willing.
“Hurry!” she cried. “We must get away from that horrid trunk!”
As Sybil ran ahead through the open barn doors in her stockinged feet, the masked Patriot grabbed Doctor Pox by the cloak and dragged him out into the night.
“Wait here,” he told Sybil, as he dropped the doctor’s body in the dirt and ran back into the barn.
Taking the kerosene lamp from its hook by the door, Goodman America smashed it upon the coach trunk. Within seconds, flames had engulfed the trunk and begun to spread to the straw and wooden beams.
Returning to the barnyard, as the flames rose into the night sky behind him, the Revolutionary Hero looked around.
“Where has Doctor Pox gone?” he asked.
“He ran off across the fields,” answered Sybil. “But no matter! When that madman kidnapped me, my gentleman friend, Mister Nathan Hand, was knocked to the street and hurt. He is a man of learning, not combat, and I fear for him!”
“Then rest your fears,” said Goodman America. “I have already seen to Mister Hand and he is even now being tended to by the Sons of Liberty in their meeting place.”
Teomi's submission for the 100 - 1k Writing Challenge! A 167 word, gut-wrenching beauty!
Theme: FRIGHTEN
’Choose a hand.’
Theo sat in front of Harry, legs crossed, on the carpet. The Room of Requirement had provided a cozy nook with blankets, pillows and soft rugs. When Harry had asked what kind of room he needed, Theo had only said ‘something comforting.’
For seven decades, I have made this trip down these rough, narrow stone stairs to the sea. For seven decades, under each full moon, in the warmth of the summer and the bitter cold of every winter, I have come to her without fail.
Almost without fail.
I am afraid. Did she think me untrue? Did she feel betrayed and abandoned? Will the pattern be broken? Will she no longer be there for me?
It was not even a heart attack, just another episode of angina. If I had been at home, it would have passed without incident. But the store manager insisted on calling the police and I spent the night-- our night-- in a hospital ward.
Oh, how I love her. I cannot lose her.
My father saw her first, distantly. I read about her in his journal after his death. Two years later, when I returned to take over the family house, I decided to see for myself. And so, in the dead of night, with only the full moon to light my way, I carefully picked my way down the treacherous, ancient steps to the beach.
She was there, standing just above the surf line, staring sadly out to sea, her bobbed hair and slender tea gown suggesting the days of the Great War and the Titanic. Mesmerized, I approached her without fear and held out my hand. She took it in her slim, ethereal fingers and, as if rehearsed, as if by magic, we danced the Hesitation Waltz in the silent night.
So beautiful, my sepia spirit.
Seven decades.
She will be there. She must be there.
Soon I will know her name at last. Soon we will be together for all eternity. Soon I will die in her arms.
"Before we start," the genie said, “I’m not magic. That's a myth. So limit your wishes to physically possible tasks."
Bill nodded. "I want ten million dollars."
The genie sighed, pulling out a pen and paper. "Fine... I'll update my resume. Haven't had a job since Ancient Rome. Are funeral clowns still a thing?"
He protects, she enables. Until something renders him useless. So, she takes over the protective role while they both find a way to get him back on his feet.
She's hopeful and he tries to be too, for her. But the reality's often too cruel. They both put a brave front for each other, until he realises he's becoming a bigger danger to her by the day.
Then, Danger finally happens, and everyone panic because that's all they see. She's the only one who refuses to do so, but someone says she's in denial.
When The Danger's taken out, almost everyone revels. But not her, as she's the only one who knows that The Danger was his sacrifice—a ruse he'd been planning to ensure she'll never fall victim to the monster growing inside him.
The sun had been stuck at 4:17 p.m. for as long as anyone remembered.
In Ambervale, shadows never grew longer. Flowers never closed. Children never knew what stars looked like.
Everyone thought it was normal.
Everyone except Clara.
One afternoon, she noticed a crack in the sky.
Not a cloud. Not lightning.
A tear.
Golden sunlight peeled back like paper, revealing words beyond it:
Clara walked home beneath the endless afternoon...
Her own life.
Day after day, she found more cracks. Missing sentences. Half-finished paragraphs hidden in alleyways. An abandoned notebook buried beneath the clock tower.
On the final page, the story ended mid-sentence:
And then the sun would finally—
Nothing.
The writer had stopped.
The town had been waiting ever since.
Heart pounding, Clara picked up the forgotten pen beside the notebook and wrote the next words herself.
The page trembled.
A breeze swept through Ambervale.
For the first time, the sun moved.
As it slipped below the horizon, thousands of people looked up in wonder.
And somewhere beyond the sky, a forgotten author smiled as the story began writing itself again. ✨📖🌅
