You see, the problem with the rich acting out, and the reason so many people spread gossip of the most mundane infractions is that the rich have the means by which to truly act out. When a lovelorn Baron decides he wants to cheat on his wife, no on asks him why he did it or how his wife feels. No, they want to know what he bought, how big was the fight and where he’ll be living for the coming months.

That’s not to say that I was overly expressive with my rebellion. I was just a bit…frivolous and in my frivolity I decided I would seek out a means by which to define myself within my family. Too bad for me and my family that method came looking for me instead.

I never really left my parents’ home, but I did start gathering as many men of intellectual and artistic importance as I could find. More importantly, I sought out those who no one of noble lineage would recognize. You see, my handmaid Clare visits her family in the lower city every three days when she is given leave. I sent with her a message and a small bounty. Anyone who could provide me with something no one had ever seen before would receive my favor and a residence in the upper city.

I didn’t honestly expect to find anyone with an incredibly invention or heart melting masterpiece. I just wanted to make my parents squirm as penniless wretch after wretch trudged through their drawing rooms. I admit it now…it was the poorest decision I could have made at the time. It was heartless and unnecessary. The upper city was full to the brim with men and women whose ideas would lead the kingdom into a new era, anyone of whom needed a patroness with only time on her hands.

But, my hunger for acceptance was matched by the desire to be different and so I asked for the lowlifes and the poor, giving them false hope every evening as handfuls arrived at my parents’ gates wearing the best imitation of fine dress they could find. One man, no doubt a shoemaker or carpenter by the looks of his hands, arrived dressed in a torn and stained yellow undergarment that I could have sworn I threw out myself only weeks before. The man had brought me a rather striking painting actually – a style unlike any I’d seen before, a combination of odd cube-shaped noses and swooping currents of air and water. My hypocrisy showed that much clearer when I turned the man away.

Another hopeful, a girl who could not be any older than me, seventeen at most, arrived with an overwrought version of a telescope. It was long and spindly with numerous tacked on knobs and scopes. She claimed that it would allow me to see the surface of the moon. The sun was still more than two hours from setting though and the poor girl was scratching violently at the back of her head while the servants sweated nervously behind us. I told her to come back another day, that I had pressing business that evening.

I was always a spoiled child. I know that. I never pretended I wasn’t, but the world looks at you differently no matter how well you handle your fortunes. My mother was the fourth daughter of a Countess and my father a moderately well off merchant from outside the city. The two met casually at random during some or another royal family member’s birthday ball. Nine months later I was born, Sarina Bell McConnell, forty-third in line to the throne and the daughter of the richest couple in the city beside the king and queen.

So, things were different for me compared to other children, even for the upper city. I was schooled in my father’s study by one of the premier scholars at the University, an old friend of my father’s from his long past education. I was never left alone in the city, for fear that rabble from the lower city – no offense to your home – would find me appealing and take advantage of my standing by kidnapping me…or worse.

So, I grew up in the silver plate bird cage of the city’s finest veranda’s and drawing rooms, drinking tea with the Queen’s cousins and being courted by the sons and nephews of Dukes. It was an incredibly boring life; to be blunt I was quite ungrateful for what I had been given and started acting out as soon as I was old enough to carry my own purse and command my own servants.

For me, the life of a child of privilege was stifling. However, I used those privileges to attempt my rebellion, defeating my cause before I had even begun. I was trapped in the world I was born into, eager to get out, only because I had never seen anything else. I admit I made mistakes. You must know what it is like though, being trapped in the shell of the regal hypocrisy on the hills for so long that you yearn for anything else to happen.

So, eventually I did act out. I left home and started searching for a means by which to claim an identity for myself. I was reckless and childish and the warnings I’d received for years from my tutors, parents, and servants were meaningless as I strode to see the outside world for myself. That was only 8 months ago.

Brutus lit another candle and poured an extra glass of the lacy, dark whiskey into the only other glass he owned and had the troublesome blond sit in the sturdy assessor’s chair on which he occasionally ate his dinner. She moved nervously at first, dragging her feet through the dust and tapping her toe anxiously, but eventually she settled down in the chair.
The room was small and dank, filled with ants and enough dust to take down an asthmatic horse but it was warm. That little wood stove did its job well; the heat was one of the few things Brutus was willing to admit he liked about the place. So, it didn’t take more than a handful of heartbeats settled at the edge of that chair before the woman stretched her arms behind her and started peeling the heft of the black cloak free of her back.

“Do you mind if I take this off. It’s like a furnace in here.”

Brutus didn’t say anything – maybe it was because he was still thinking about Reggie….or maybe it was the fact that a woman hadn’t peeled any piece of clothing off in his presence in far too long. He reached and took the blackened lump of wet fabric from her and did his best to look the part of a host, hanging it carefully alongside his own meager collection of clothing beside his bed.

“Much better.” And it was much better. Without the veil of that cloak, Brutus could see the sleek body he had almost immediately assumed was there. Dressed in a blood red evening gown that cut just the right amount of inches above her knees, she looked as though she had just left an uptown ball. She also looked as though she had been beaten on the way out the door. Swollen scarlet welts littered her shoulders, grouped together in fours, the impressions of a meaty hand that had gripped too hard.

“Looks like your ‘Reggie’ wasn’t very gentle.”

Her face flushed and the welts temporarily disappeared. “Oh…no, these aren’t from him,” she said, “these are…well, he said you’d help me.”

“Did he now?”

“He said you were the best detective in the city.”

“Now I know he’s a liar. Did he also tell you I haven’t had a case in over 6 months?” Brutus instinctively reached for the cigar in his pocket and stopped…it was the last one. “Or that I have a standing arrest decree on my head if I go anywhere near the upper city…where I’m assuming you just arrived from?”

“You didn’t let me finish. He said you were the best detective in the city who wouldn’t ask questions,” she fingered a fist-sized leather pouch he hadn’t seen appear. “for the right price.”
He eyed the pouch hungrily, the half empty bottle of whiskey and stale loaf of bread reminding him that he was quite willing to withhold questions if necessary. It didn’t change the fact that there was something wrong though. No, not just something. Everything was wrong with this woman. Her appearance, her story, the slender curve of the pale skin above the straps of her dress. She shouldn’t be there. But the money spoke volumes, “I’m listening.”

“No…that can’t be right. I just saw Regg. We had a drink uptown. He gave me this,” she pulled a yellow slip of paper from inside that disturbingly sensual cloak.

Bruutus reached and snagged the crumpled up mess from her hand, not wanting to play cat and mouse with 20 questions. “I’ll just look at that.” The paper was new, some kind of legal script, the kind he’d seen when he was at the city offices all day – the kind they write your disciplinary notices on.

He unfolded it quickly and scanned the contents. It was directions – to his office. They were written in neat little letters, arranged in perfect words that never touched one another. No way Reggie would have written something like this. “Whoever gave you this, it wasn’t Reggie. I’m of half a mind to put you in the street right now.”

“You’d send me back out in the dark alone? Mr. Weaver, please. It was hard enough just walking down here. This cloak doesn’t hide me from the rats.”

“What did he look like?”

“What?”

“The man who gave you this; what did he look like?”

“Reggie…”

“No, it was not Reggie Hunter. What did this man,” Brutus waved the building block lettering in her face, “look like?”

For her part, the shapely blond woman in the dripping black cloths didn’t flinch or cry, she just looked surprised. That look Brutus knew too well of a woman who was used to getting what she wanted being rebuked. He took special pleasure in creating that expression when he was still serving notices and protecting heiresses.

“He was short, shorter than me by about an inch. He had a thick, curly head of black hair and a little bit of hair over his upper lip. He was a strong man – handled his frame well,” Brutus tried not to laugh when he heard her essentially admit she had slept with the little liar. “And he absolutely assured me he knew you.”

“Well, whoever it was, he was not Reggie Hunter. That poor son of a bitch died two years ago next week…” Brutus stopped as he realized that it really was almost two years since Reggie had been stabbed in that warehouse. Immediately he turned to the woman in front of him suspiciously, “now, we just need to figure out who exactly is trying to fuck with me.”

The door hadn’t been attached when Brutus first moved in. A loosely retained collection of rotting wood, crawling with ants had been sitting against the woodstove. For the most part, Brutus didn’t take the time to clean or alter the places in which he stayed. For the money he was paying, it wasn’t worth his effort. But, the door had been a special case. No self respecting detective, regardless of his occasional bent for danger would sleep with an open door to the rats and vermin of the city.

So, when the pounding started and the whisky bounced to the edge of the table along with a thick blanket of dust that tended to gather over things that were not cleaned at least once a month, the door didn’t budge.

It took Brutus about as long to get up from the sodden folds of his bed as it took whoever was outside to vent another trio of hearty pounds on the door. It sounded urgent, which in the mind of a hungry, bored ex-city guard sounded more like the jingle of gold coins. He raked his still booted feet across the dusty floor and grabbed hold of the door’s solid brass lock, the one and only thing in the place that looked like it had been touched in recent memory.

“Yeah, what do you want?”

“Mr. Weaver? Is that you?”

“Could be. Depends…who are you?”

“Reggie Hunter sent me. Said you could help me.”

Brutus didn’t say anything, but the name took him in the stomach with the full force of repressed memory. Reggie was supposed to be dead.

He twisted the heavy bolt free of the door and slowly eased it back open, reigniting the rat-infested alley with what meager light he could afford to live off. “Come in.”

“Thank you very much.” The woman at the door – of course it was a woman; he’d been hoping for trouble hadn’t he – was dripping wet, sodden from head to toe as though it had been raining. Brutus tried to remember if it had rained at all. Maybe a puddle or two when he was outside last, but no rain.

“Plenty of time for thanks later. How did you know Reggie’s name?”

The woman was shivering and had stepped directly in line with the woodstove, rubbing her hands and squeezing her hair to get out some of the water. Not bad looking, this one. She had the look of a woman who was going to wring him dry if he let her – sharp features, long slick nose and thick black eyelashes, flittering nervously above the deep blue of her otherwise bloodshot eyes. She was tired, cold and scared, but be damned if she wasn’t gorgeous. Dressed from head to toe in black, wearing the pleated cloak of either a city guard or a serial killer, the brilliant shock of blond hair stood out even now as it dribbled water onto a swarm of ants that had come out to see the visitor.

“I..I told you…he sent me to see you.”

“Don’t feed me lines, hun. Reggie Hunter is dead. I was standing next to him when that snake put a dagger in his gut. Now, who told you to give me that name?”

Chapter 1

Brutus looked deep into the alleyway, obscured by the dust and detritus of a hundred hungry rats and dozens more of the insects that fed on them. It was a slow night in the back alley office. Forget nights. Nights were always slow. It was a slow month in that back alley and Brutus needed the fresh air. Days on end he’d spent listening for the knock. Not that it mattered much anymore. The nights were growing shorter and in a couple more weeks, he’d be out on his ass, picking old banana peels from the trash with the rats.

No, Brutus was more than just hungry for a bite of clean air, not something he’d find in the smoky confines of the city’s darkest trenches. He wanted a bite of something juicy, anything really. Boredom had stolen over him with the kind of determination he come to expect from despair and the raw thirst for whisky that hit around moonrise each night. He wanted a bit of action and if it wouldn’t come to him, he may as well find it himself.

Not that that would pay the bills though. Brutus Weaver had moved into the back alley room only a year ago. It was a cozy little bungalow, if you fancied the smell of moth balls and urine and didn’t mind a bed made of sewn together burlap sacks. It wasn’t the worst place he’d ever stayed though and he wouldn’t entirely loath the idea of having a few more months there.

The minutes passed and Brutus Weaver finished his cigar; there was only one left now, a final goodbye from an old friend. An old friend that hadn’t been around in a good long time. He snuffed it out and kicked the stub towards a pile of hungry rats, hoping they’d scatter. Pouncing on the smoldering cigar end, they moved closer. Couldn’t even scare the rats in this part of town these days.

The inside of his office/home was fit for a King if you considered the conditions just on the other side of the door. Fortunately, Brutus was about as much of a King as he was a detective these days and the room was workable. Compared to previous locales, it was downright cozy if you discounted the nest of ants living behind the woodstove.

Everything was carved in the cheapest wood the building’s owner could find, quickly fit together with tiny wood nails and unmeasured cuts. His meager bookshelf, ten books wide at best and two shelves high sat crookedly above his tiny, one armed desk. Currently, two editions of the City Guard Manual and three volumes of his youngest daughter’s favorite nursery rhymes sat sideways on the top shelf, hanging precariously over the edge, threatening to fall at any moment. The desk was built for a Scribner, one single slab of wood set atop four feeble legs, barely wide enough to hold a bottle of ink and three sheets of paper. It had a bottle of whiskey and two dead lizard-like creatures on it at the moment.

The latrine was no better than a hole in the ground, carved behind the wall beside his bed. The plumbing in the city had always been a proud addition, trumpeted by the King as a heralding achievement of “civilization”. It worked one in three days and when it did, the room smelled of death. Collapsing backward on the burlap bed, a loose collection of dirty feathers padded into the dirty old sack, Brutus stared at the ceiling, wondering why it was he had not poured the whiskey yet.

The room was almost claustrophobically small when he was sober and the effect was draining much of the ambition he had until recently felt coursing through his veins, telling him to seek danger. The night was dead and his room was trying to crush him and add to the living corpse of the Lower City.

For how long he laid there, staring at the smattered gunk-lined patterns on the ceiling, Brutus wasn’t quite sure, but he was sure of was that in the last thirty seconds or so, he had just heard the most beautiful sound in the world, the dull rapping of a human fist on the outside of his door.

I did not have the good fortune of having created this blog just yet last year when NaNoWriMo took place. Ironically, I discovered my eager desire to read all about the trials and tribulations of my fellow writers through NaNoWriMo and thus started writing the now famous (you know they are) blog posts about three weeks after I finished my novel.

For those that haven’t signed up yet, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and that particular month is November. Basically, a few thousand people from around the world get together online in November every year to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It’s a personal challenge of sorts as “winning” does nothing more than give you the right to tell your friends and family that you wrote a novel in a month.

This year is my third time participating and as is the annual custom, October is the month in which we all start brainstorming our characters, plots, and devices - all the better to see what comes of our endeavors at least. I have yet to even begin, but I’m skewing towards something mostly mindless and wholly entertaining this year so I can actually finish a full story within 50,000-70,000 words (last year’s hit the magically 50K mark, but needs another 50K before it’s actually done…ironic, no?).

I’m trying to find a good plugin to post on the blog to keep track of my progress, so hopefully that will be up and running shortly. However, plugin or no, I’m going to drop posts on a regular basis about how things are going. What I’m basically saying is that you should start getting invested in NaNo now because 85% of my posts will be updates on my novel (and the process of writing it)

Many years ago, in a land long forgotten, or properly misplaced for those that choose not to remember, there worked a kitchen maid; the most beautiful, hard working kitchen maid in the entire kingdom, but a kitchen maid, no less. The daughter of a kitchen maid and a cook, granddaughter to yet another kitchen maid, our fair kitchen maid knew no other life, nor did she ever dream it possible for more. She woke each morning, stole no open glances out of her tiny space between the broth pots and the bread oven and scoured away to thoughts of a clean place to sleep and a man to love. She never faltered in her duties, never questioned her superiors, and never failed to be the first from her quarters each morning, stirring lard into a boiling pot.

In a flash, on a day like any other, the sun in the sky, the royals in their beds, our fair kitchen maid in the bowels of the castle toiling over her pots, a man appeared; a stunning, chiseled vision of a man in blue, the very image she saw in her dreams each night. The kindness of his eyes betrayed nothing of his courtesies, nor the demeanor of his character, but no more was needed for her to fall completely and utterly in love. She never thought to ask the mysterious stranger who he was, or where he was going. Instead she fluttered anxiously as he heaped beautiful words upon her and swept her from her from her feet.

For a week she faltered, failing at her duties, disappearing from meals, missing sometimes hours of her day in the arms of the rogue in blue.

At the twilight of the summer’s solstice, the two were married in a simple ceremony, overseen by the baker’s son and castle’s third ranking priest, of the three in residence. For weeks, the two were in perfect union, happier than any of the royal so and sos living above them.

Yet as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared. A simple declaration of his love and a token of their time, and he was gone. For days she cried, forgotten in the bowels of a home she had never left. In fact, leaving never crossed her mind; such was her isolation. She returned to her work, chastised and frowned upon for her delinquencies, but was soon ignored the same as before.

Her memories took on life of their own and in a few months there was a child. And for whatever reason, be it the swarm of visitors, or the torrent of rumors circulating, the Queen herself soon descended upon her with a proposition, a jealously twisted proposition that none so heartbroken as our fair kitchen maid could turn down.

And so it was that Catalina was born into a world of opposing ideals; of catcalls and sneers, of tea parties and ball dresses. Of ham hock stew and stale bread, goose liver and imported figs. Catalina arrived in Terrafloria both innocent of the divisions, of the night’s sky and the perfect orb of summer, but already jaded of it all. Her mother, a kitchen maid, her kidnapper a queen, her father a rogue, and her betrothed a prince. Catalina’s birth guaranteed her no freedoms, nor health, nor prosperity. Her mother’s beauty garnered her fame and the jealous love of a barren matriarch, who would love her as her own. For Catalina there was never a single answer to a problem, but a whole host of possibilities, of roads for her travel. Every one was open to her until the dawn of her sixteenth birthday, a dreary autumn day in the coast side room the same, dressed the same; greeted her maids, smiled to her cousins, and tripped over her mother’s family the same as she had every day since she was old enough to walk freely through the castle.

And yet, upon entering the queen’s royal chambers, her first and most important stop each day, so that her supposed mother might gaze upon her and see in her anew a purpose for the terrible crime committed so many years before, she felt that something was amiss. The air was not stale and heavy as most mornings. The rooms had been opened and aired, cleaned and flushed. Someone else had been here before her, and the absence of the queen from the sitting room only confirmed Catalina’s growing suspicions. And so she glided on, feather light feet picking their way lightly over the satiny carpets into the next room, and on again into the next. The queen’s receiving room was not empty, not in the least, for there in front of young Catalina were a host of beautiful people, many who rivaled her own golden hair and pearly white skin. One in particular, a young man, no more than two years her elder looked up and smiled so perfectly and so wonderfully that she had no choice but to smile back for him, but who was this stranger? His attire, simple in concept, was not so in its elegance. The cut of his tabard, obviously an avid horseman and the sharp, sure angles of his jaw above the green and blue layers of his shoulders drew her in immediately.

Her foster mother called to her and spoke as only a queen might in company, “My beautiful daughter, fair Catalina. I wish for you to sit and honor our guests; this is Prince Melhieu of Trepid.” The Queen gestured to the man already trapped by Catalina’s own beautiful blue eyes. He smiled and gestured courteously, waving for her to sit. And so she did, not taking those eyes from his.

The sheer blue dress she donned that morning, the waist length bouquet of flaxen hair, nestled gently above her shoulders, tied by fine silken threads, he stared through it all to her eyes, to the pools of blue and smiled just for her.

In this at least she agreed with the Queen, whose speech simply and adequately announced to the realm the betrothal of her dear “daughter”, Princess Catalina to Prince Melhieu of Trepid. The two beautiful youths would be wed on the morn of Princess Catalina’s seventeenth birthday in the Royal Palace of King Fergus in Trepid. Catalina’s smile never faltered, but a piece of her heart fell that morning as her fortune was told and she found it wanting.

And in that palace, on the banks of a river, far, far to the south, beyond the deepest woods and through the passes of a tremendous mountain range, an ex-kitchen maid passing from the fairest days of her youth into maturity, the mother of three, but the keeper of only two, wife to the world famous Thadeus Braxton, cocked her head in interest as she heard the news; the famed princess of Terrafloria would wed Trepid’s very own prince. Would that she could only dream that her daughter might return to her.

The forced remembrance of her daughter, a precious flower long lost to the will of royalty, brought her to tears, and so with the tortured heart of a mother separated from her child, she sent urgent notice to Thadeus in the east, on assignment for the king.

At the same time, as Braxton received notice from his wife in the east, Catalina packed for her trip in the North, and Melhieu returned to his Palace in the west, a certain young man, born free and forgotten by the world at large, driving his flocks by day, and dreaming thoughts pure and noble under starlight, woke and stared out over the crystal waters of the Mediterranean in the south. Something flickered in his heart, something heavy and important; the thud of a question asked of immense importance but never answered. The pull of something important woke him and so into the smooth, perfect waters of the north, young Horatio stared pondering what…or possibly why.

His family long since having left him to his own devices, Horatio was a young man of the world already at the age of eighteen. His flocks knew the best and the worst of Iberia’s grasslands, from Terrafloria to Trepid. Each night spent under the open skies, counting stars, arranging constellations and wondering, was a night of increasing freedom in the world. Horatio felt no responsibility except to his sheep, a nomadic Shepherd yet to truly discover what his lot in life would be.

As a boy, raised in the highlands of the south, he had enjoyed an array of privileges many shepherds might consider only in their dreams. His father, a merchant, had him educated as best as could be afforded by the missionaries, and so in that education Horatio had found two of his greatest friends and closest confidants – Father Bacchus and the written word.

On this particular sunny day, haven’t yet risen to round up his four legged children, nor even fed or cleaned himself completely, Horatio knew it was time to return to Bacchus, for the latter of the two no longer kept him content in the lonely nights. The question, the why he searched for over those perfect waters; try as he might, he could not decipher any clearer than he could wonder what it was or how to solve it. His scattered thoughts, musings, and ponderances lay strewn about his camp each night, folds of skins and papers he bartered for each year pulled from his packs.

As far as impetuous youths go though, Horatio had only recently discovered his thirst for discovery. But, to the chagrin of his father, and the pleadings of his mother, left with a flock no smaller than their own, and waving goodbye to a son only recently returned, his wanderings were aimless almost entirely. No one knew where the elderly monk had gone to, nor where Horatio might find him. He searched and questioned, yet found no answers, and increasingly he felt the anxiety of his plight; the abandonment of his flock, the stale emptiness of his writing. Soon, he was not sure that the monk was who he sought anymore, and yet still he searched. His only solace; the only time he found peace was at night staring into the sky, into the stars once more. During the day, his mind raged on and plagued him with questions, but at night, there were only the stars.

Some say the stars spoke to him, that they woke him up on a midsummer night and passed to him a dream of a woman in a far off city. Some say he read in the sky a message, the scattered thoughts of a magic older than civilization, that of true love. No one knows for sure what happened that night under the stars in a field so close to the sky, but I can tell you that magic descended upon Horatio, the kind from the stories told you by your mothers while you sat in their laps. Under the spell of a certain magnetism, of true love from afar, Horatio saw something in the stars and set out in search of it.

And so it was that at the time before Catalina’s wedding, a ragged stranger, alone on the back of a weathered grey mare, traipsed into the city of Trepid wide eyed and penniless.  He wandered that great city alone and for hours absorbing the beautiful things before him. The markets, vast and populated by denizens of every civilization one could imagine echoed and rang with the calls from merchants of papaya and mango, of silks and pastas, gems as brilliant as the sun and mirrors as vast and absorbing as the night. Wandering the streets and shaking off the stray hands of hungry children and hurried businessmen, Horatio didn’t realize until the last of the many foreign merchants began to pull stake and close their stalls for the night that he was without lodging and afire with hunger no less.

Hoping to quickly find and remedy the situation, he stopped the first kindly looking gentleman he could find to inquire of him. The man, dressed in loose clothing, and dark of skin, his face covered by hair, but neatly trimmed, smiled at Horatio at first. But, as though noticing the strips of dirty cloth he wore, slowly frowned and turned away. The empty streets, only half an hour before swarmed with people, looked less and less like the thriving metropolis Horatio had stumbled in upon and more a ghost town, and by the looks of this man, Horatio played the part of the lonely ghost. “Take your begging elsewhere young man. I’m a respectable man. No less.” And with that, he turned and left.

Horatio, at first struck by the man’s rudeness quickly advanced. For; despite his humiliation, his hunger and exhaustion spoke to him and told him to persist. And so he did, asking each stranger he could find in the streets for help in finding a place for the evening. Some called him a beggar, some a scoundrel; more still wailed of their own hunger. And so he persisted until he was incapable of going on. He panned the street once more in desperation but the hours had dwindled and the night settled in. He was alone under the stars he loved so well, but despite being surrounded by thousands of his fellow humanity, he felt more alone than he ever had with his flocks in the south.

Having given up his pursuit, he curled into a tight ball and decided to sleep in the awning of a particularly warm home in front of him. If any had seen or cared to inform him, they might have informed him that a beggar is easily arrested sleeping in the streets. And from the rooftops, many a young urchin watched and waited for the whistle of the guard to arrest poor young Horatio.

And so they as well as our young Shepherd were equally shocked when a strong, dark haired man dressed in blue, with piercing eyes and a kindly smile stopped and woke him, then invited him inside his home for a meal. For Horatio had collapsed at none other than the door of Thadeus Braxton and his wife, the mother of our fair Princess Catalina.

The door to the Braxton household was held wide open for the poor young man, for they saw in him a kindness and honesty that few if any in the vast city of Trepid possessed. Both Thadeus and his family fell in love with the young man’s intrepid manner and earnest desire to make good on their hospitality. And so they allowed for the young man to stay under their roof for a time and work at the chores that Thadeus found tedious to achieve despite his travels, and played with the couple’s two younger children Rachel and Mercado. Horatio found happiness in the Braxton household and soon the seeming urgency of his quest faded. The weeks before the great wedding passed and soon the announcement of Catalina’s imminent arrival became actuality.

Horatio noticed in the household an anxiety that surpassed the excitement in the rest of the city. The hurried whispers of Thadeus and his wife and the excited titters of Rachel and Mercado grew louder and louder until he accidentally (but not so much that he might have walked away) overheard a conversation.

“I must see her. We absolutely must gain entry.”

”I’ll do what I can my love. I’ve done as much as I dare. My influence in court is minimal. I work rarely with the king’s men anymore.”

”Call in every favor. Do what you must. I must see her.” She began to cry and Thadeus rose to hold her.

With that Horatio left the adjoining room and returned to his own, the loft above, almost the roof but not quite. He had taken to writing again in the recent weeks. The chores the Braxton’s offered him were minimal and one so accustomed to tending a flock of sheep from sunrise to sunfall became easily bored in the interim. His youth, under the care of his father a local vicar, was one of education and humility. And so he began to write. And write he did. Of the stars he witnessed, but more. The stars took on a life all their own. The Ancient Greeks put Orion in the sky, but young Horatio brought him back from it, the young hunter, lost to his one true love, hanging in eternity waiting. The backs of great monsters, roiling throughout the vast emptiness of night. Horatio took what he needed from the stillness he witnessed each night before he slept and crafted such beautiful verse. He yearned for a soul to share it with, for a purpose to writing of the wonders above.

Arriving in Trepid the next day was a beautiful princess, the kind fairy tales were written for, the kind princes and kings fought for in violent battle. The Braxton’s yearned to see her so badly they cried. What wonders must this young woman hold that she would incite such emotion. Horatio decided he must see her as well. He must see her and bestow upon her a verse of rivaling beauty to her own.

And so on the morrow, riding under the banners of a nation, surrounded by throngs that would be her subjects, Catalina rode through the streets of Trepid, showered with praises, gifts and adoration. And somewhere in that crowd, above the heads of shouting children, and behind the throngs of clamoring merchants, under the awnings of a rooftop garden, and behind the eager faces of the Braxton family, Horatio looked on in wonder, absolutely transfixed by the perfect face of a princess.

He spent the night pondering what he would say; how he would woo a princess betrothed to a man who would be king. At no time did he question that he would do so, that his words would strike to the heart of Catalina and leave her in wonder. He only questioned how it might happen.

He worried the question in his head for the night, and shortly before the sun rose, when his inspiration was within a moment’s grasp of disappearing for another day, he struck the perfect chord and penned his words for the future queen. These words he inked carefully and with precision to what he felt when he witnessed the majesty in the heavens above him each and every evening, of that vision in the markets, of her on her horse, on her way to the palace. A spark of inspiration born of the stars glittered across the page, his pen dancing with the magic of true love.

When Catalina’s mother, accompanied by Thadeus, her father, departed the next day on an errant attempt to behold a long lost daughter, Horatio, deprived of sleep as he was took to them a neatly folded parchment, addressed and inked carefully to be delivered to her Highness the Princess Catalina. eHe

 

The two failed in their attempt to enter the palace, let alone the parade grounds. Looking upon the princess was disallowed by all, such was Melhieu’s jealousy. She fell to the ground in tears wailing and throwing things beyond the gates. Among them, a handful of rocks, a piece of bread from the gutter, and a certain folded parchment left to her by a lovesick lodger from the south.

And so into the grounds flew his declaration of love, one crafted blindly, free of outside influence, a marker from the heavens, the very stirring reason with which he abandoned his flocks in the south to his brother, traveled north penniless and alone and wandered the streets. The reason he began to write, the manifestation of a special vision he had under the stars, of a beautiful princess, hair flowering in the sun, the vision of loveliness that he knew the moment he saw her in the stars would be his; must be his.

But, the Braxtons, they fled. Under the eyes of guards besieged by rocks and baked goods, they had no choice but to flee, and so the unsigned verse, thrown into the grounds, addressed to the young girl and soon to become the object of much speculation until it arrived in that very girl’s hands, read repeatedly, looked upon longingly and the very tool with which doubt first entered her mind.

Word soon spread throughout the city, throughout the land. The days passed, and her seventeenth birthday passed, and so it was said that she had wavered, and yet the prince kept her within. Secluded and waiting, our fairest of all princess Catalina read and reread Horatio’s brilliant words, breathless at each cycle through. Who wrote such gorgeous descriptions, of what, and for what reason? She knew at once it wasn’t her Melhieu. Looking upon him, she knew it wasn’t in him to be as such. And so it was no more the words written in that letter, so much as the vibrancy and life behind them. Everywhere around her, royals went through the motions of love, and of art and intellect, all in the pursuit of something more, something much more shallow than any of that. Melhieu was a beautiful man and never had she spent a poor moment with him, but the emotion she felt was unrequited; for him, she was a trophy, a signifier of rank, of power. And the longer she had spent since first meeting him, the more this had become apparent, and the more that Horatio’s natural brilliance, and untainted love shone through in the letter.

And yet the prince claimed he loved her still, and held her close, patiently waiting for her word to wed. She took that time and waited, and soon he grew less and less patient. And, so the letter invaded his thoughts. The poorly bleached parchment at her bedside, each time he visited, he must know from whence it came, and so he sent to the city a troop of servants, searching for the penmanship of a lovelorn poet. The words of a man who would interrupt the wedding of royals.

Horatio feared for his safety, and for the family with which he was staying. He didn’t want to bring upon them the wrath of a royal family beyond their means. Little did he know the standing of his caretakers, of their relation to the royals, of his courting the daughter of the very woman who cooked him gruel each morning. He didn’t know and so he didn’t understand when they begged for him to come forward, to announce himself and bring her to him.

The young shepherd, the artist in simple clothes was confused and unable to comply. And so it was that he packed and chose a night on which he would leave. For the trouble he had engendered in the city, the derision in the leaders of nations, and those that would feed him in his worst moments. Each night he had stared into the sky and each night the vision he wrote of that evening had grown more and more clear, vivid, and brilliant, the perfect manifestation of everything he knew he ever wanted. Yet it was destroying a world around him. He couldn’t allow that to happen. He feared what might happen if he were to receive that which he dreamed of.      

The Braxtons cared little for his reservations though and on the evening on which he had planned to leave, brought to him a servant, a simple man in green, born a servant to the prince and thus unwavering in his loyalty. The man was small and insignificant, but the three large men at his side, dressed in vests and leather were not so small and were much more significant.

The city, in an uproar at the discovery of the young man who would disrupt the prince’s wedding, pushed him along, waving it him, cursing him, throwing things to him, both rocks and roses as he approached the palace. The Princess awaited anxiously and the prince angrily. The time was coming that young Horatio must decide his destiny. And by his side, the parents of his stellar lover were of pure excitement.

The queen, that woman who stole and took Catalina from her mother so many years before had arrived to help her daughter decide. The queen, hearing of this young man whose words could sway a princess decided it was in her best interest to await him in style, in all of her royal anger.

And so she did, but the sight of the kitchen maid whose daughter she took, and the man she had sold to her in exchange for her daughter shocked her out of her demeanor. And so yet one more obstacle fell before Horatio, his steps more and more emboldened as he entered the palace, past the dumbstruck queen and into the chambers in which he would meet the girl he saw in the stars.

When they met, she was of a perfectly calm manner, her eyes brilliant and vivid cerulean orbs, shining out at him, waiting for him, perfectly in love with him. He, already in love with her, with her body, with the perfect image of her in the sky every night, was without breath.

Into those chambers, lined with silver and gold, alight with the fiery breath of nature, the reds and oranges of a Prince in love lavishing his future queen with the world. Into those chambers they strode confidently, quickly and unerringly. But; for all their confidence and strength, everything wavered at the sight of that vision of youthful beauty sitting calmly waiting. And so it was that she saw him – her Shepherd poet - and so it was that he beheld her perfection, sweet and innocent, born of two gentle souls, and the two were immediately in love.

A thousand and one words of the sweetest fragrance wafted through Horatio’s head in an instant; he yearned to write them down for her, to speak them into her ivory ears, swiping those golden locks from her neck and whispering as softly as possible everything he saw in her. And she yearned for her part as much to hear his words, to know this simple man before her whose silver pen could pierce and stall her heart.

Both youths, dumbstruck by the other sat in wonderment and waited; for what neither of them knew. And yet soon enough, the room erupted in activity, the flurried motions of a few too many jilted royals. A Queen regained of her composure, a prince brandishing a flurry of growing jealousy, and the combined forces of two country’s royal courts, descended upon the newly discovered lovers. And all the while, the Braxtons could only stand by and stare in wonderment at the whole situation, wanting more than anything to rush to their daughter, but seeing in the eyes of two nations how little they mattered.

And yet, to a Queen who did recognize them, they mattered immensely. The shock of their presence subsiding, anger overcame her and she immediately set upon them, “How dare you! You bring this boy here to interrupt my daughter’s wedding?! We had an arrangement, kitchen maid.”

That very kitchen maid looked shocked, unaware almost that she’d been spoken to. And all of a sudden the realization of her situation descended upon her. The deal she’d struck so many years ago with the Queen of Terrafloria. How she sold her first child for her freedom and the man who’d sired that child. How, should she breach the terms she would lose that freedom. How right then she was standing in front of that queen again and her daughter only a few feet from her. And so it was that she collapsed, feinting under the pressure of it all.

Into a hazy, fabric gauzed mess she awoke some two hours later, having been laid to rest in the princess’s own chambers. And the confusion of our fair kitchen maid at her surroundings could only hope to achieve the chaotic mess that was the marriage plans of young Princess Catalina. For; upon a certain long lost mother’s collapse many questions were asked – questions of birth, of nobility, and of morality. The first two were of prime concern for Prince Melhieu, whose “love” for the beautiful princess turned out to be no more than a mere amalgamation of lust for her beauty and greed for her position. The Princess’s “mother” was left to explain to her stolen daughter exactly how it was that they were of no relation, while Thadeus Braxton was left in a quiet room to tend to his unconscious wife.

And through it all, poor simple Horatio sat and pondered. He didn’t think much of royal politics, nor of who sired whom. Rather he wished he was under his stars, staring into an empty space full of life and energy and that he had with him a pen and parchment with which to escape. Rather, the lovestruck Shepherd sat and pondered what he might do next. What could he do next? She wasn’t a princess? Or was she? Would Melhieu still want her for his bride?

The answers to these questions arrived quickly and more or less clumped together. Called before the queen and her erstwhile daughter, Horatio stood and listened to a long list of explanations and excuses, words heaped upon words upon words; so many words that meant so little to him. His mind was stuck squarely on a woman in a white gown, whose golden hair hung loosely and frayed, the stress of her situation obvious on her face. He thought to himself right then that he would be alright if he didn’t travel any farther in the world. That if he stopped and stayed with this princess all would be well.

“Boy. Do you love my daughter?”

The bluntness of the Queen’s question struck him and forced from him his attention. “Y-yes, your highness.”

”How. You know her not. Is it true you wrote this poem she’s kept with her for so many nights. That you’ve never seen her before today.”

“Yes, your highness. I mean, no. I’ve always seen her, in the stars. I know it’s her. Such beauty is unforgettable.”

The queen’s sigh of exasperation was almost drowned out by the princess’s sigh of longing. The two looked at each other warily and then both to Horatio.

“We must leave this place soon. It seems our host, the honorable prince Melhieu does not approve of my actions or the princess’s birth.”

“Yes, your highness?”

And in an inexplicable reversal of so many things she’d tried to build up over the course of seventeen years, a reaction to the deep and heart wrenching guilt she felt, the Queen of Terrafloria decided to make right by her kidnapped daughter. “She will never be wed to a prince now. Nor should she. A commoner princess is still a princess, but never will she be a queen.”

“Your highness?”

“Which nation are you of, Horatio?”

“None, your highness. I am born of the cliffs. I was a Shepherd until recently.”

”A nomad no less. A fine mess you’ve gotten your self into, Shepherd.”    

Horatio remained silent, staring directly into the queen’s eyes, unwavering. He’d do whatever it took.

“Well, you must be a respected member of my council if you are to wed my daughter. You shall enlist in my forces. And of course you shall need to be sent on campaign for the course of a year. It is the lot of all men in Terrafloria. Do you accept?”

Would that he could be surprised, but Horatio had known the outcome ahead of time. He had known from the moment he wrote his poem for the fair Catalina that she would be his, and now, fear or no, he would not turn aside. “Yes, your highness.”

“Good, we shall leave on the morrow from here. I leave it in your care to see to the Braxtons. They may return with us if they wish.”

And through this all, you must be wondering what of the Princess herself. Surely she is not of the vapid, empty headed stock variety princess, the kind that would sit patiently aside and await the words of a mother that is not even her own. Surely not.

Of course not. Princess Catalina, as powerfully and irreversibly as she falls in love, also falls out of courtesies just as easily, and for the Queen at the moment, she felt no love. Seeing her anew for the first time, she saw a vile captor, a liar and a thief and had no intention of returning to her castle. Never had the Queen had Catalina’s best interest at heart, but her own, and that of the nation. This young man, Horatio was a beautiful poet, a kind soul and soon to be a valiant soldier.

And so it was that she stole into his rooms that night, wrapped in a great black cloak, stripped of her royal garments, and carrying with her a pack and a purse of coin. From his bed she snatched him, undressed and confused and in her newly discovered mother’s room she left a note, but for the queen she left nothing.

And into the dark, into the vast emptiness of the East the two disappeared, strangers and lovers running from that which attempted more than anything to define them. Assuredly they lived happily ever after. And live they did. Their travels are legendary, their stories true. But those are for another time, another evening, another meal. And what of young Horatio’s mentor, the licentiously absent Bacchus? Why, who else to record the poet’s deeds than the man who taught him to write. Do no worry reader, we would meet again. And again still. The stars in the night sky are bountiful. Their brilliance unending. And in that brilliance, in those thousand and one perfect spots of light, a pair of newly discovered lovers jettison to their destiny. How could I not sight them again and again.

 

I didn’t get any posts for the April prompt, nor did I really get around to writing my own post, so honestly I don’t hold it against anyone. It was a relatively lame cue anyways, so who can blame the prompt. No, I didn’t take it seriously enough, so now I feel like I should come up with something good that doesn’t rely on lame holidays in the here and now. Anyways, here’s the prompt for May which I don’t necessarily expect anyone else to pick up, but I will definitely give a shot before next week is out:

Pick any member of your family or life and slap them into one of the following genres; Detective Noir, Deep Space Science Fiction, or Victorian Romance. Now pick two other characters (real life or not) from the other two genres and mix it up. Do whatever you want from there. Make a poem, a story, a long essay; do whatever you want, just make it a mash-up of genre fiction (or non).

Enjoy.

I’ve been a part of the usual November grind of NaNoWriMo for a few years now, and my first time out in 2005 produced about 60% of a novel that hasn’t been touched since. For your perusal; the first few hundred words of chapter 1. Enjoy:

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Alonso Quijano toed the clod of dirt at his feet repeatedly, the bits of grass still attached pealing off to reveal a solid mass; a rock most likely. He kicked it away, annoyed and multitudinously bored. The days were long, the harvest not yet begun, and the quotidian reminders of his father echoed in his ears each morning before, during, and after breaking fast. When the final leaf fell from the cork tree, he was to be considered an adult, an entrant to the vast and wonderful boredoms of adulthood, marriage, and land ownership.

Adulthood bothered him no more than the pithy sarcasm he received for the complaints to his father. The second and third aspects bore a greater burden, one that a “youth’s shortsighted laziness” (as the old boar described him) could not help but be wary of.

Alonso more and more frequently recalled the words of his mother, now long gone, lost to the cults of the north. “You are born, you live a simple, innocent, and chaste life. A wave of despair shall descend upon you and burry your innocence; you will die. Rebirth will find you simple and sated of your youthful lusts, a tool to your spouse, children, and community. Then you will die again. Rebirth is questionable.” Shortly after beginning to spout such idyllic nonsense, Alonso’s father had her bagged up and shipped out of the village. Craziness does not mesh with the routines of a simple farmer. Boredom and unhappiness however seemed to fit quite well.

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, Alonso craned his neck to the sky, watching for signs of the late summer rains, of the harbingers of his ensnaring to his second life. The sun shone down upon him in reply though; full, bright, and alone in the cerulean heavens. The cork tree behind the cottage remained full and vivacious. Its foliage would know at least another two or three months of sunlight.

            What should have sated his fear, and prolonged the happy moments of childhood acted only as a reminder of the Fate that awaited him. In two months time – three if the season held late, which it very well may, the unseasonable lack of late rains pointed to a long summer – he must move from his father’s home. His marriage had been arranged, likely not favorable for either youth, yet necessary regardless. He had not met her as of yet, as she resided many miles away, in one of the southern villages nearest the wood. His father told him she would travel north upon the break of the season’s first storm, most likely in a month’s time. Her beauty, lauded by those lucky enough to meet her concerned Alonso not. Rather, he found himself asking constantly of her humors, her bearing, what intellect God bestowed upon her simple village mind. A bland, stupid wife scared him more than an ugly one. Ugliness dissipated in time. He would spend the rest of his life in conversation with the woman, and together they would raise children. How awful it would be to have dull, dim-witted children!

            These thoughts and more plagued young Alonso, occupying the entirety of his considerations for much of the day (and many days before as well). The sun already sank past its high point, marking the latter half of the day beginning, and he had yet to accomplish any thing of note, not something his father would fail to find great fault in. He may have another two or three months until his freedom (of a miserable sort) from his father, but for those months it would not due to neglect his duties entirely. Sulking had no effect on the gruff sensibilities of a middle-aged olive farmer. He forced himself away from his revelries and made to retreat back into the cottage, hoping to find his sister at work preparing the mid-day meal, or better yet finishing it. Food might help to at least calm his physical restlessness. For that matter, it might brighten his spirits if of a high enough quality.

            The cottage sat beneath the boughs of two enormous firs, nearly as high as the eye could readily see while standing beneath, offering cool shade for the ill ventilated home. The grounds around the home were mostly clear, with the exception of one gorgeous, billowing juniper stand flanking the cottage’s far side. In front was a simple path, no less quaint and plain than the paths of most every other home in the squat, sprawling village. It stretched to the main road (if one dared name it as such – only wide enough to bear the girth of a single horse and cart, mind you a cart no larger than the horse bearing it) where the other cottage’s entrances snaked together creating a vast web of simple homes for their simple denizens. Behind the small home were a failing wooden shed (one of Alonso’s neglected duties as it stood), home to the family’s single brown steed, a gentle bay named Acemila.  The shed also housed the two carts his father owned for gathering the olives, one reserved for Alonso’s impending departure. Blast if he couldn’t keep from seeing his future in every shingle and farm tool his father owned.

            Fortunately (less so, when he learned later in what capacity) his ruminations cut short as the road leading north erupted with ferocious, angry shouts. Turning abruptly toward the source of the disturbance, Alonso witnessed the rising of a great cloud of dust no less than a 1000 yards from his current position. Rather than waxing idly at its cause he brushed away the occupying thoughts and ran toward the ruckus, curiosity flirting with worry. Some truly angry voices could be heard from within the cloud.

            As he approached, he could make out at least half of the village in the mess. The cloud itself emanated from the frantic circling motions of two horses connected to a wagon – a device much too large for the village’s simple road. Combine the inept conveyance with a crowd of angry men and women waving sharp implements at the horses and a tragedy appeared eager to announce itself to the gathering.

            Alonso slowed his approach, not wishing to become embroiled in the struggle, at least not before knowing its cause. Whatever brought the entirety of a village to arms may very well deserve it, but it was impossible to forget the amplification of previous misunderstandings, most notably the traveling doctor, whose medicines and tinctures failed to mend the mind of a quickly failing goat. The man nearly hung for his ‘flagrant lies and false medicines’.

            As the redeeming angel of that case, Alonso’s father had quickly ended the confrontation, and so Alonso scoured the crowd looking for him, waiting for his approach to the situation before joining in the judgment of the mob.