On Facts, in small chunks

First, just because I have a Doberman, doesn’t mean she is a vicious hellbeast.  I wouldn’t recommend breaking into the house in the middle of the night, but really, once you’ve been let in and approved by the family, Del is more likely to sneak into your bed at night than corner you.  We have kids over all the time, and we haven’t had a single incident except for her offering a chewed up and soggy toy by placing it on guests’ feet

I really don’t understand the prejudice against Dobermans.  They’re extremely smart dogs, very, very sweet.  To automatically disqualify the owner as a prospective renter because of the Doberman is shortsighted.  Because you know, I would drop a couple of grand on the pet deposit, if not more.

Don’t get me started on Luka either.  Tub-o’-love weighs over 100 lbs, closer to 120.  One, rather surly, rental agent told me yesterday that since the only dos they allow are under 45 pounds, Luka is three dogs by himself.

Dear Oregon, I hope you know this means war.  If I have to stay in the house and have the carpet put in, I will do it.  And then I’ll go out there and buy a damn house.  I wasn’t that serious before, but I am now, by God. I’ll rent a stupid POD, load nonessential furniture into it, pair everyone down to one week’s worth of clothes, and we’ll get the new carpet in here pronto. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.

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Did you know Jeaniene Frost’s fans call themselves “frosties”?  :snickers:  The question is how much fun-making mileage can I get out of this when I call her later.  And the best thing is – Magic books’  fans don’t have any cute names so she can’t get me back.

Cool and frosty.  That’s just how J rolls.

Teeeheee.

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I have a lot of doubts about my ability as a writer.  So occasionally I go back and look over the finished manuscripts written under duress to reassure myself that even if it’s not flowing when written, it still flows when read.

So here is a snippet from BAYOU MOON.  I remember having a really hard time with the scene and just forcing the words out.  Doesn’t read that way though.

I might be a touch scarce the next few days as I try to get the words done before the move, so this is my bribe.    Warning: this was written in a hurry so it’s not that clean.

Context: William is hiding that he is a changeling.  The Mire, where Cerise lives, is heavily influenced by Louisiana and the Edgers there think of the changelings as monsters.  William thinks nobody knows.  But Cerise just figured it out in the previous scene.

William padded through the night, following Cerise’s scent trail.  He’d always paid close attention to female scents.  Some were smothered with perfume, some were tinted with whatever the woman had eaten last,  Some fragrances tantalized, others shouted, and a few cringed and proclaimed, “Easy prey.”

Cerise smelled the way he imagined his woman would smell.  Clean, with a slight trace of shampoo from her hair, a touch of sweat, and a hint of something he couldn’t quite describe, something healthy, dangerous, and exciting that primed his nerves.

Mmmm, Cerise.

He chased her scent down the balcony, around the house, separating it from Murid’s trail.  The two women stopped here for a while, the Murid left, but Cerise remained, resting her hands on the rail and looking at something…  He leaned over the rail.  Down below him Mire pines scratched at the night sky.  Pale blossoms of maiden-bells bloomed between the roots, delicate like cups made of frosted glass.  Cerise stood here looking at the flowers.   Maybe if he brought her some, she’d talk to him.

He leaped over the balcony’s rail, landing into soft dirt.  Five minutes later, he climbed back up, with a handful of flowers in his hand, and followed Cerise’s trail.  It led him to the back of the house.  He turned the corner and ran into Kaldar, carrying a bottle of green wine and two glasses.

Kaldar looked at his flowers.  “Nice touch.  Here.”  He thrust the bottle and glasses at him.  William took it on reflex.  Kaldar pointed behind him.  “Now you’re all set.  Small door, up the staircase.”

He turned the corner and went off the way William came.

William looked at the bottle.  Why the hell not?

The door led him to a narrow staircase.  He jogged up the steps into a large room.  The floor was wood.  Bare rafters crossed over his head – the room must’ve been sectioned off from the rest of the attic.  To the left, the wall opened into a narrow balcony.  Two soft chairs waited on the right.  Cerise curled in the left one, by a floor lamp.

I found you.

She blinked, startled.

He knocked on the stair rail with the bottle and looked at her.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“It’s me.  Can I come in?”

“It depends.  If I don’t let you in, will you huff and puff and blow my house down?”

She had no idea.  “I’m more of a kick the door open and cut everyone inside to ribbons kind of wolf.”

“I better let you in then,” she said.  “Is that wine for me?”

“Yes.”

He crossed the floor and handed her the thick bottle.  The light of the lamp caught the wine inside and it sparkled with deep emerald green.

“Greenberry.”  Cerise checked the label.  “My favorite year, too.  How did you know?”

He decided not to lie.  “Kaldar gave it to me.”

She smiled and he had to hold himself back to keep from kissing her.  “My cousin is trying so hard.  It’s not his fault – he’s been trying to marry me off for years.”

“Why?”

“It’s his job.  He arranges the marriages for the family: haggles over the dowry, makes preparations for the weddings, that sort of thing.”  Cerise looked at the flowers in his hand.  “Are those from Kaldar, too?”

“No.  I picked those.”

Her eyes shone.  “For me?”

“For you.”  He offered her the flowers.

She reached for them. He caught her hand in his.  His whole body strummed, like he awoke from a deep sleep because someone fired a gun by his head.

What the hell was he doing?  William let go.

She took the flowers and smelled them.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He watched her pull the stems apart on her lap.  She took three flowers, added a fourth and wrapped its stem around the first three.

Want.  Want the woman.  Want.

“Will you pour us some wine?” she asked.

Yeah, because wine was exactly what he needed right now.  William opened the bottle and poured the shimmering green into the two glasses.  It smelled nice enough.  He sipped it.  Nice, a bit sweet, but nice.  “Good.”

“It’s home made.”  Cerise kept weaving flowers together.  “It’s a family tradition.  Every fall we go to Fisherman’s Tree to pick the berries and then we make wine.”

She sipped her wine, he drank his, and for a while they sat quietly next to each other.  He wanted to reach over and touch her.  She made him feel like a child made to sit on his hands.  What would she do if he just kissed her?  William drank more wine, feeling the warmth spread through him.  She’d try to cut off his head right there.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked.

“Because I thought of something funny.”

Cerise wove the last flower into her tangle.  It looked like a large circle now.  She picked it up and put it on her head.

Oh yeah.

He’d have to stalk her, he decided.  Carefully and patiently.  He would bring her flowers and wine and whatever else she liked, until he was sure that when he pounced, she wouldn’t want to run away.

“Is this your place?” he asked to say something.

“Yes.  That’s where I hide, when I have a fight with someone.”

He didn’t remember her fighting with anyone.  She sat at the table for a while and then just left.

“Who are you fighting with now?”

Cerise got up and walked over to the wall. He followed her.  Pictures hung on the wall behind the glass.  Cerise touched one of the frames.  A man and a woman stood by the pond, both young, almost kids.  The man was a Mar: lean, dark, tan.  The woman was blonde, soft, and slender.  Fragile.  If she was his, William thought, he’d be worried about breaking her every time they touched.

“My parents,” Cerise murmured.  “Gustave and Genevieve.”

“Your mother looks like a blueblood.”

She glanced at him.  “What makes you say that?”

“Her hair is curled and her eyebrows are plucked down to nothing.”

Cerise laughed softly.  “I pluck my eyebrows.  Does that make me look like a blueblood?”

“”Yours still looks natural.  Hers look odd.” He grimaced.  “She looks very well taken care off.  Like she never saw the sun.”

“It’s their wedding.  My dad was eighteen, my mother was sixteen.  She’d only been in the Mire for a year.  Here look at this one.  You’ll like this one better.”

He looked at the next picture.  In it a young woman about Cerise’s age sat on top of a huge dead croc, leaning on its head with her elbow.  Her grin cut through the mud caked on her face.

He nodded.  “I do like this one better.”

“She caused my grandmother no end of misery.  That’s her over there.  Grandma Ive and Grandpa Vernard.”

She reached to a fist-sized glass box with a small crystal at the bottom and pushed a button.  A tiny spark ignited within the crystal and a three-dimensional portrait of a couple sprung into life above the box.  One of the Weird’s keepsakes and not a cheap one either, since it survived the trip to the Edge and lasted all these years.

William scrutinized the couple.  The woman resembled Genevieve in her wedding picture.  Same brittle quality, like a she was made with fine crystal.  A man sat in the chair next to her, leaning back and looking awkward.  Long skinny legs, long skinny arms.  Even sitting, he was very tall.

They were bluebloods, no question, and the ones with long pedigrees.  And money.  The clothes looked expensive and the emeralds on the woman’s neck had to have cost a small fortune.

“My Grandpa and I were very close.  He was brilliant.  So, so smart.  He always made time for me.  We used to garden together.  And tomorrow we’ll have to go and cut the Sheeriles out of his house.”

Cerise’s shoulders went rigid.  “My grandparents were from an old Weird family.  My grandfather did medical research.  He was famous, actually.  They had status and money.  My mother used to tell me about their castle.  It was somewhere north.  They had dogwood trees and they would bloom white in the spring.  She said they would host balls, and people would gather from all over and dance…  Have you ever been to a ball, William?”

He’d been to too many of them.  Casshorn, Declan’s uncle, had adopted him to get him out of jail in hopes that he and Declan would kill each other.  The adoption came with etiquette lessons.  “I have.”

Cerise glanced at him.  “Is it fun?”

“I was bored.  Too many people, too many colors.  Everything is too bright and too vivid.  Everyone is talking, but nobody is listening, because they’re too concerned with being seen.  After a while it all just blends.”

“I’d like to go to one,” she said.  “It might not be my thing even, but I’d like to go at least once to say I’ve done it.  Sometimes I feel cheated.  I know it’s selfish, but sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if my Grandfather didn’t get himself exiled.  Who knows, I might have been a lady.”

He didn’t have much use for ladies.  A lady was someone else’s wife, or daughter, or sister.  They were not real, almost like trophies forever out of his reach.  She was real.  And strong.

She looked about to cry.

“Would you like to dance?”

Her eyes opened wide.  “Are you serious?”

Once he learned something, he never forgot it.  William took a step forward and executed a perfect deep bow, his left arm out.  “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me, Lady Cerise?”

She cleared her throat and curtsied, holding imaginary skirts. “Certainly, Lord Bill.  But we have no music.”

“That’s fine.”  He stepped to her, sliding one arm around her waist.  She put her hand on his shoulder.  Her body touched his and he spun with her around the attic, light on his feet, leading her.  It took her a moment and then she caught his rhythm and followed him.  She was flexible and quick and he kept picturing her naked.

“You dance really well, Lord Bill.”

“Especially if I have a knife.”

She laughed.  They circled the attic, once, twice, and he brought them to the center of the room, shifting from a quick dance to a smooth swaying.

“Why are we slowing down?” she asked.

“It’s a slow song.”

“Ah.”

She leaned against him.  They were almost hugging.

“What’s bothering you?” he asked.

“I’m scared to death.”  Her voice was barely above whisper.  “And mad.  I’m so mad, I can’t even breathe. I have to save my parents.  I love them so much, William.  I miss them so bad, it hurts.  I have to rescue them, even if they were horrible people, because if I don’t, our reputation will plummet.  People will think we’re weak, and they will peck us apart little by little.  But to save my parents, I have to sacrifice some of my family.  Tomorrow they will die, their seats at the table will be empty, and for what?  So we can keep living in this mud and squabbling over it.  Gods, there has to be something more to life than this…”

She closed her eyes.

He held her close.  “You’ll do fine.  You’re a natural.”

“A natural what?” she asked.

“A killer.  I’ve known people who were better swordsmen than me, but they didn’t have that thing that made them kill.  They hesitated, they thought about it, and I killed them.  You have it.  You’re good and you’re fast.  I’ll be there to keep you safe.”

“I don’t want to be a killer, William.”

“You don’t get to pick.”

She pulled away from him.  He didn’t want to let her go, but he did.

Cerise hugged herself.  “On the wall to your left.”

He turned.  Two photographs waited at eye level.  The first showed three men standing close.  The middle one was Peva Sheerile.  He had one arm around an adolescent kid with the  face of a spoiled child and the other around a tall blond man with mournful grey eyes.

“The Sheeriles.  That’s who we’re killing tomorrow.” Cerise sounded bitter.

He looked at the second photo and stopped.  Cerise and Lagar danced silhouetted against a bonfire.

She was dancing with her enemy.

Why? Was he better than me?  Did she like him? Did she want to dance with him again? “Did you think of him while we were dancing?”

“What?”

He wanted to rip Lagar’s head off his shoulders.  Instead he turned and went down the stairs.