Back of the Envelope

I was just going to skip a week and not participate in the Storyblogging Carnival, but then I took a look at some of the material which I hadn't yet submitted, and decided that "A Stranger in the Library" would make a worthy entry. "Stranger" is a story I wrote for a creative writing class, set in the world of Fire. It is a prequel, chronologically coming before any of the other stories in that world on this website. I was nearly done with Fire when I wrote it, and it's the first story which I named "Something in something," a naming scheme which I've begun to realize that I use a lot. I've got to get away from that!

Anyway, since it's pretty long, I'm splitting it into two parts.

---

A Stranger in the Library
Part I

The black-robed alien stalked through the Library, leaving the quiet chaos of frightened scholars in his wake. Philosophers scurried out of his way, clutching books and papers to their chests, then stared at his back as he went by. Some left to work in other sections of the Library. Others tried to ignore him, focusing on their work and pretending not to see him. Time rewarded their perseverance, as he seldom stayed in one place for long.

He walked with purposeful strides, crossing pools of light and of darkness with little regard for either. His hooded robe hid every feature except for the pale hands which appeared when he picked up one of the older books and leafed through its pages, only to put it back and move on. Marjori watched with open curiosity as this dark shadow drifted into her view for the third time. Few of the secretive Domini visited the Library. When they did, it just proved what she had believed all along: no one sought knowledge as vigorously as the Philosophers. Whatever dark secrets the Domini kept, they still came to the Philosophers’ Library when they found themselves ignorant.

Though this Dominus showed no uncertainty, Marjori could see no pattern to his search, and it occurred to her that he might be lost. The idea of this mysterious stranger bewildered and frustrated yet trying to appear in full control was so... A giggle escaped her lips before she could suppress it, and her attempt to control further laughter nearly strangled her.

Looking up from the shelf where he had been perusing yet more bindings, the Dominus gazed in her direction. Only a fool called the attention of a Dominus to herself, yet she refused to look away as he turned his determined stride toward her. The black robe rustled as he came to a stop right in front of Marjori, close enough that she should have seen the face inside his hood. It unnerved her to see nothing more than indistinct shadows there. Mystery allowed him to loom although he had little height on the tall woman, but she resisted the urge to fall back a step.

“You are a Philosopher of Books?” he asked. Though soft, his voice broke the Library’s stillness like a thunderclap.

Marjori straightened her back, doing her best to stare into the eyes she could not see. “Yes, I am,” she said. Her gray robe with its double border of light blue clearly proclaimed her School and rank. Philosophers knew better than to question her standing, but strangers saw her young age and doubted. Since her parents had been Philosophers as well, she had begun her education earlier than most students.

“I require your help,” he said.

“Why should I give it?”

Marjori imagined the unseen eyes blinking in response to that. His head tilted as he studied her. “You are a Philosopher of Books. This is the Library.” He waited after each statement to see if she would deny it. “That is your duty, is it not? To aid all researchers who ask for help?”

“That’s what I do. Aid those researchers who ask for help.” She let that sink in. He didn’t say a word. “I didn’t hear you ask.”

The short bark of a laugh that sprang from beneath that hood was so out-of-place that Marjori took a step back this time. “Very well,” he said, as he bowed into the space she had just vacated. “Kind lady, would you deign to aid me in my research?”

Once she had overcome her alarm, she chuckled as well, a fuller sound than her earlier giggling outburst. She stifled it and dropped her voice to the usual Library whisper, “That’s better. Now, tell me what you’re looking for.”

The largest complex at the University of the Philosophers, made up of five interconnected buildings of anywhere from two to six levels, the Library daunted most visitors. Marjori had practically grown up here, however, first visiting as soon as her parents thought her old enough to keep quiet. She knew the Library as well as she knew her own home, and could find a book on any topic without needing to confer with the massive volumes of the Catalogue. She immediately deduced the most likely location of what Dominus wanted, although she didn’t know what he expected to find. Marjori wasted no time guiding him to his subject, taking in the Library’s comforting ambience as she did so. She loved the smell of the alchemical preservative of the old books, of the fresh leather and parchment of the new ones, of the lamps’ scented oil. The naive called the library quiet, but they only understood the sound of voices. Shuffling feet muffled by the thin carpet, rifling parchment, and scratching pens were the comforting noises without which Marjori could not concentrate. Men and women sat around simple tables, reading their books and taking notes, holding whis¬pered conversations over their work. Moving from a dark building lit by few lamps, Marjori and the Dominus entered a more open one, awash in light from its many windows facing west. They left both light and people behind as they descended to the lower levels.

Two floors beneath the largest building of the Library was a room as dark and cold as a tomb. Thick dust buried the books scattered across metal shelves and blanketed the ground as well, puffing into the air at their footsteps. Old rugs spotted the floor like scabs, brought to this level more to get them out of the way than to cover the cold stone. The alchemical preservative that was tart but not unpleasant above overwhelmed here. This was where the Library kept its oldest, nearly forgotten books. Compared to the clean, orderly, lovingly cared-for regions above, this area suffocated in palpable neglect. As no one bothered to keep lights burning down here, they had each brought a lamp of their own. Marjori could see only one set of footprints through the dust, and she thought they were hers from several months ago.

The Dominus turned in a circle, trying to make sense out of the jumble. “These are the oldest records you have?”

“Some of them date back to the founding of the Philosophy. Some might even predate it. If what you are searching for is in the Library, it is here.” He had told her only that he was seeking the earliest records the Philosophers had.

“Where should I start, Philosopher?”

“My name is Marjori, not Philosopher.”

“Very well, then. Where should I start, Marjori?”

She just shook her head at that. “These aren’t catalogued like the ones upstairs. They are sorted by age, though, and the oldest would be in that corner.” She pointed to the furthest, darkest corner.

The Dominus cleared some dust from one of the tables with a voluminous sleeve, where he set his lamp down. Then he headed over to the stack she had indicated, Marjori following with her lamp in hand.

He looked over the books carefully before taking one down and flipping through its treated pages. The preservative gave the pages a greenish cast. “Do you want help?” Marjori asked. “You’d have to tell me what you’re looking for.” His search had piqued her curiosity, and subtlety was not her strong suit.

“I think this might have something,” he said, heading over to the table and its small island of light with a single volume in hand. “If you want to help, look for any records of events prior to the founding of Novaro. The older the source, the better.”

Marjori watched him head back to the table, wondering. As far as she knew, no reliable record existed for the founding of the Novar Empire’s capital, which had happened almost a thousand years ago. All the written accounts they had were transcriptions of oral legends about the First Legion and the demons, mixed with even older myths. And if Marjori didn’t know of anything older, then there wasn’t much hope, as her superb education had included enough history to rival any non-Philosopher historian, and more about the keeping of records than anyone outside the Philosophy. She had known since ten that she would become a Philosopher like her parents, so she took the Oath dedicating herself to Knowledge at fourteen and began her formal education. The teaching she had received ingrained in her the skepticism and objectivity of the Philosophy, but neither ever matched her love for her chosen school. With a domain covering the collection, the organization, and the distribution of information, the School of Books embodied the purest form of the love of knowledge.

The Philosophy included many other Schools, ranging from Alchemy to Zoology, which all had their home at the University, a small city of rambling structures where the Philosophers and their students lived and worked. Although Marjori had lived at the University all her life, she thought she might like to travel someday, offering her services as a librarian or perhaps a tutor. Anyone with enough money could request the services of a Philosopher and gain the assistance of an alchemist, engineer, tutor, or physician. The University taxed the Philosophers to fund the upkeep of its facilities and to support its resident scholars. For now, Marjori lived off that support as one of the Library’s many caretakers and researchers. Since her job description included assisting those who came to the Library seeking information, she spent the next several hours searching through the oldest histories and bringing likely ones to the Dominus, until a large stack of them weighed down the table.

As he studied the books she studied him. Aside from his dark robe, he looked like any Philosopher scholar at work, scratching down notes on a sheaf of parchment he had produced from his robe. It did not seem possible that he possessed the strange powers that rumors insisted the Domini had. As a Philosopher, Marjori didn’t believe in magic any more than she believed in gods, so she had never trusted those stories. She did not so casually disregard the claims that the Domini were a separate species like the vanished Amaranthine or the implacable Kawyr, but the hands, the voice, and the form seemed human enough. She hoped that the cowl hid a human face. He went out of his way to seem mysterious, but some¬times he acted very human, muttering to himself when reading an unreliable text, or shaking his head in irritation as he scratched out some mistake in his notes. Even without those, their initial encounter made her want to believe he was more human than not.

He was a Dominus, however; that had to make him different. The Domini always hid their faces and they rarely spoke. They stayed only in the towers they kept in every city, never traveling yet always appearing in unexpected places. No government in the world tried to hold them accountable for their actions. And no one knew where they came from or what purpose they had. The most persistent story disturbed her more than all the others combined: everyone said that they stole children. The Domini examined every boy among the Philosophers when he reached the age of Choosing, when he had to make the adult choice either to become a Philosopher or leave the University. Regardless of the decision made by these boys, some of them vanished, and although no one had ever seen them taken, no one doubted that it was the Domini who took them. Not a soul knew why. Marjori should have been terrified of him, but her curiosity had always overpowered her fear. Besides, those stories seemed less real than the man she watched pace back and forth as he worked through a worrisome problem.

The lamps were beginning to burn low. Since she had not thought to bring more oil with her, Marjori spoke a quick word to the Dominus, then took one of the lamps and headed up the stairs. When she reached the ground floor, she could see her reflection against the darkness outside the windows. Dust streaked the clothes, face, and hair of the tall, slender woman who peered back at her. She spent a moment or two brushing at the dust on her clothes, until her fingers came against the parchment she kept tucked in the pocket near her waist. She lost interest in her grooming and instead drew out Ranius’s note, heading for the pool of lamp light near the supply closet. She hadn’t thought of Ranius in days, even with the note on her person all the time. Turning it towards the light, she read it again:

Dear Marjori,

As we expected, my grandfather's illness was terminal. He died last night. Since he was the patriarch, there will be a redistribution of the family's property, so it will take a few days to settle affairs. I expect to be home in three months from the time I write this letter.

I am sorry for the delay this has put on our wedding plans. I wish you could have come with me, or that I could have stayed, but we each had our respective duties. I intend to keep the promise I made before we parted: we will be married within days of my return. Since we want a small ceremony, with only our families and a few friends in attendance, this should be simple to arrange.

I miss you, Marjori.

Love,

Ranius

Looking at the date, Marjori calculated the remaining time, coming up with only half a month more before they were married. She felt more scared than eager, and neither emotion made much sense. She knew him better than he knew himself, so what surprises, good or ill, did she have to anticipate? Marjori liked that their relationship did not hold the least bit of mystery.

Marjori refilled her own lamp and relit it, then gathered up several flasks of oil and an extra lamp before heading back into the darkness. She hoped that the Dominus’s lamp hadn’t gone out while she was away. Reaching the lower floor, she saw bright light flowing from the spot where she had left him, a brilliant white glow which could not come from one of the Library’s lamps. She hurried over, footsteps echoing in the large chamber, but the light vanished as she came close, and only a guttering lamp illuminated the Domi¬nus when she could see him. What she saw almost caused her to drop the items she carried.

The Dominus had thrown back his hood as he squinted at his notes, the dying light just enough to read by. When he realized she was watching him, he looked up and she saw his face for the first time. It was remarkable for a number of reasons, but entirely human. The dust had affected him as badly as it had Marjori, spotting his prominent nose and strong cheekbones, his high forehead and his dark, curly hair. He appeared to be a young man, not much older than Marjori. When he saw her reaction, his hand shot to his hood, but he simply fingered it before letting it drop. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms as he considered her with a tilted head and a raised eyebrow. “It was hard enough to read in the dark without hiding my face too. I got careless.” He shook his head in disgust. “They won’t be happy if they find out about this.”

“You mean the other Domini? Would they punish you just for letting someone see your face?”

“Probably. Not too severely, I hope. Showing your face isn’t Forbidden, and it’s understood that there are occasional lapses. Don’t worry, they wouldn’t do anything to you though.”

Marjori had not even thought to be frightened for herself, and she suppressed the sudden jolt of belated fear. “Why do you hide your faces then?”

“To maintain a sense of awe and mystery, of course,” he said with a slight sneer at the idea. “Obviously, I’m not doing such a good job with you. How about a bargain? If you don’t tell anyone about this little slip, I won’t bother trying to impress you with my arcane ways. Is it a deal, or will I have to kill you after all?”

She felt almost certain that the threat had been a joke. “You’re asking which I’d rather learn about firsthand, death or the Domini? Hmm ... I think I’ll choose the Domini.”

His grim smile suggested a sense of humor. “Good. Now, it’s clear that I’m too tired to think properly tonight. I’m sorry to put you through the trouble of getting oil for the lamps and then not use it, but I think I’ll go home and get some sleep. I’ll return here tomorrow, though, if you don’t mind helping me again.”

Marjori assured him that she would assist him the next day. He packed up his notes and headed back to the tower all the Domini dwelt in. Located in the city that provided for the University’s practical needs, the tower was a simple spike rising a hundred feet into the air. The narrow building could not have housed more than a dozen Domini, but rumor had it that on some days as many as fifty went in and out. Marjori doubted that people could tell one Dominus from another, so she considered the count unreliable. When he had left, she spent a few minutes flipping through the books he had been looking at, trying to determine what he sought. Finding no revelations, she decided to go home and get some sleep herself. Only then did she recall the odd light she had seen a few minutes before, but she felt too weary to spend much time wondering about it.

---

This part contains the first 2,987 words of a 5,972 word story.

Blogrolling was slowing down the loading of this page to a crawl, so I took down my blogroll.

I'll put it back up once it's working again.

I'm opposed to the flag burning amendment for several reasons. First, it strikes me as idolatrous to put that much reverence into a symbol. Calling it desecration gives it religious connotations. Second, I believe that the freedom of speech means putting up with much that we find offensive, whether it be marches by the Ku Klux Klan or anti-war zealots burning our flag. Mark Steyn lists some other good reasons to oppose the flag burning amendment:

For my own part, I believe that, if someone wishes to burn a flag, he should be free to do so. In the same way, if Democrat senators want to make speeches comparing the U.S. military to Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, they should be free to do so. It's always useful to know what people really believe.
...
Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.

That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

The bottom line is, if that's how they feel, I want to know about it.

Josh Fielek of Quibbles-n-bits is accepting submissions to the next Storyblogging Carnival. Send your submissions to Josh at jfielek-at-cox.net (replace "-at-" with "@") with the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The deadline for submission is Saturday, July 2nd, at 11:59 pm.

Doc Rampage has had a bunch of good posts up recently. First, he has a post wondering how Leftists can say they love their country when they believe such awful things about it. Plus, he has a look at Durbin's apology, and what can and cannot be expected of such things. Of course, I'm still waiting for him to put up that review of Eyes in the Shadow which he promised. The story's done now, after all.

If you'll excuse the mangled song title, I just wanted to point out that today I celebrate the anniversary of my birth. I won't tell you how old I am, but you should be able to figure it out easily if you visit my Bio page. Speaking of which, I finally got around to updating it so that it includes my most recent moves. In addition, I've updated my Writings page as well, mostly adding a section for novellas so I could give Eyes in the Shadow a place in it.

I've decided to promote the Storyblogging Carnival by buying ad space on some websites I frequent. The first such website I'm advertising on is Schlock Mercenary, a humorous sci-fi webcomic. I chose this website for a couple of reasons, the first being that I decided a long time ago to support Howard Tayler's efforts to become a full-time webcartoonist, and the second being that I wanted to give the Storyblogging Carnival some exposure outside of the normal blogospheric circle. The banner ad I'm using is the full sized version of this:

Now advertising isn't free, and even a small ad buy on a well-trafficked site costs around $30. If any of the Carnival's participants would like to support this effort, I'd appreciate your help in defraying the cost. Click here to support me. In the interest of full disclosure, the link I supply in the ad leads to this blog, to the Storyblogging Carnival category page, which contains the Carnivals I've hosted and links to the ones I haven't.

Mickey Kaus at Slate has linked to my Dave Barry Kerry DYKWIA story in order to support his argument that Democrats should be focusing on social equality rather than financial equality. While I certainly think the Democrats can try that, I believe that the idea of social equality is too deeply seated in the American psyche for one party to really take ownership of it. At least, not without a fight. They've certainly tried, and folks such as Howard Dean are not at all shy of painting Republicans as elitist. Kaus may be right that ceasing to equate financial equality with social equality might make the attempt more effective, but I have a hard time imagining them achieving much success as long as the Limousine Liberal is so iconic of the American Left for working class Americans.

In any case, I'm grateful for the link, as it resulted in over 400 visits yesterday and likely over 500 today. I'd like to know how Mickey found the story, given that he linked to my new blog rather than my old one, which would have been the case if he had followed it from the larger blogs who initially linked to it. I'm wondering if I can once again thank Google's inexplicable love for me.

For once, this should go up on time. Assuming that I don't delete it by accident again. Grr.

Sluggy Freelance — Torg's Playstation Puny isn't a technological match for Riff's iPodling. It's so small that Torg mistakes it for a multivitamin and swallows it, making for days' worth of iSophagus jokes. It sounds kind of stupid--okay, it is kind of stupid--but for some reason, I found it really funny. Meanwhile, Zoe's trying to learn what the creepy cloners are up to.

Day by Day — It's really getting hard to parody the Democrats these days, but Chris is trying his best. My favorite one was Wednesday's, however.

Scary Go Round — Unable to find Shelley, Amy's moving away, which means putting all Shelley's stuff into storage. And it looks like Fallon's had enough of Ryan, and they're breaking up.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Marsha's agreed to marry Mike, which makes him very happy--in a running around naked with his underwear on his head sense. I'd say Dave should zap him as a precautionary measure, but that would require looking at him. This, needless to say, does not make April happy, and she goes back to Paul. Bad move, April. Let's see if Paul can redeem himself by treating April like a friend rather than a client, which is what he should have done in the first place. The reason I was so angry with him last time was not just that he treated her as a client, he did so when she thought he was being a friend.

General Protection Fault — The Brotherhood decides that neither Sharon nor Fooker are the One, but that they're destined to be the parents of him (or her), which to Sharon's mind is even creepier.

Schlock Mercenary — After days of butter and chainsaw jokes, we finally see the two mercenary companies cut their way to safety. When Pranger tells Tagon how much Kevyn's paying, he gets that stunned look of folks knocked across the forehead with a solid gold, diamond studded fencepost.

I booted up my old computer yesterday and went digging around for the first draft of Eyes in the Shadow. As I said when I posted the first chapter, I originally wrote the beginning of the story years ago, but I had forgotten exactly how many years. I'd been thinking I'd written it in 2002, but the timestamp on the file says February 21, 2000. That's over five years ago now! Yikes, that's old. I think I originally wrote it weeks, maybe even months, before that, as that's just the date of the most recent modification to the file. (Yes, I checked the Created Date in the Properties, but that didn't help, as it's actually later than the modification date, which just means that I copied it from another location, probably a Zip disk I was keeping all my personal files on at the time.) Most likely I first wrote it some time in November or December of 1999, as the story is set in the Holiday Season. At that time, I wrote the whole of Chapter 1, and the portion of Chapter 3 which reads:

They shared a hotel room but didn't sleep together. It surprised Ryan that this seemed strange to him. The girl, though she insisted they would one day marry, had no intention of having sex until they were married because of her religious beliefs. She said all this without any prompting from Ryan. She seemed to think every guy was just looking for a chance to bed every girl they met. Ryan had told her, rather acerbically, that he had no intention of sleeping with a woman on the first date, even if they were engaged--he had quickly amended that the last part had been sarcastic and he did not in the least bit believe that they were supposed to marry. And what he didn't say aloud was that while he thought she was attractive enough, he wasn't sure it was wise to even sleep in the same room with this strange woman who saw things and thought she was his fiancee. So if neither of them had the least intention to sleep with the other, why did it seem so odd that they were not doing so? He realized, as he lay in the dark listening to her soft breathing, that it was all a product of his culture. If this had been a movie, he was certain they'd be sleeping together. It made sense: guy saves girl from certain death (or something), they share a hotel room while hiding from the mysterious man chasing them, guy sleeps with girl. That was the natural and logical progression; he could even remember a couple of movies where that exact sequence had happened. And considering his movie-going habits, that must mean it was pretty predominant. Except, in the movies, the plot would normally make more sense.

He was just about to drift to sleep when he remembered that short, doubtful, insincere prayer he'd said just before all this started. God, he decided, had a bizarre sense of humor. Still, the prayer had been answered in a way, so he decided another, more serious one couldn't hurt. "God, help me through this." He glanced in the direction of the girl, breathing softly as she slept. "Help us both through this."

My original inspiration had gotten me to the point where they ran away from Red-eyes, but it gave out when I was trying to figure out how they escaped. I was inspired as to what would happen once they managed to do so, though, which is why I wrote out that scene at the hotel. I particularly liked the line "he wasn't sure it was wise to even sleep in the same room with this strange woman who saw things and thought she was his fiancee." It took me nearly five years to figure out how to get them to that hotel room. You'll notice that I just called her "the girl" in that section. That's because I didn't name her Emily until I wrote Chapter 2, in 2004.

You know, this actually gives me hope. If I can finish a story I started five years ago, then maybe I can do the same for "Galatea" and Fire.

Incidentally, I also found the first rough outline I did on the Maji. That's dated April of 2002.

I noticed that Powerblogs has modified some of the variables on the list page, so I changed the comments link so it takes you directly to the comments now. (They probably did this months ago, but I just noticed it yesterday.) Previously, it took you to the top of the individual post page, and you'd have to scroll to the comments. Yes, yes, it's a very minor change. I have a slightly more significant revision planned for this weekend.

Since I can't seem to stop talking about Eyes in the Shadow (Go read it! Read it now!), I thought now would be an appropriate time to thank my loyal readers, namely Dave Gudeman (aka Doc Rampage) and Sheya Joie. I know that some others have read the story, but those two were the ones who faithfully read Eyes in the Shadow every time a chapter came out, and commented on it nearly as often. I cannot, I fear, say I do the same for their stories. I do read them, but often I fall behind by several weeks and have to read a lot in a single chunk in order to catch up, which makes it difficult to comment on the individual chapters. Doc and Sheya, and their comments, have been a large influence on how the story developed. To explain how requires spoilers, which is why I've waited until now to say so. If you want to know, however, click on show.


Now go visit Sheya's and Doc's blogs, and be sure to read The Child and Scale 7 Artifact, their continuing stories, which are both very good.

I've been looking around the Faith*in*Fiction forums recently, something I've never done much of before. I admit, part of the reason I was doing so was to see whether it'd be a good place to promote Eyes in the Shadow (see the above post). While there, I came across a post by Joe Nassise, a Christian who writes horror, something I've found myself writing with the aforementioned story. He's recently started up a website called Storytellers' Unplugged. To quote the introductory post:

Take 30 authors, editors, booksellers, and readers in the horror and dark fantasy fields. Give them a virtual home with plenty of room to write. Tell them you want informative, interesting posts about the writing life, the publishing business, the horror genre, and their work in general. Turn them loose on the world and what do you get?

www.storytellersunplugged.com

Welcome to our corner of the internet. We hope you will join us daily as some of the best and brightest stars in the genre spent time here each day talking about their trials and tribulations, their dreams and their goals, their agonies and their defeats. We're going to strip the body down to the bone, to look at our genre and our industry through as many different angles and viewpoints as possible. In the process, we hope you'll join us, sharing your thoughts and comments to make this a two-way street.

It looks like an interesting blog, and worth taking a look at.

The latest Christian Carnival, number 75, is now up at In the Spirit of Grace. I entered Eyes in the Shadow, and surprisingly, it was accepted. I knew it wasn't the usual sort of entry, but as anyone who's been to any of the forums I frequent will have noticed, I'm using any venue available to me to promote it now that it's done.

As you've probably heard, the solar sail satellite has been lost:

The world's first solar sail-powered spacecraft failed to reach its planned orbit after the Russian rocket carrying it shut down seconds after launch, Russia's state space agency said on Wednesday.

But it was unclear if the privately-funded Cosmos 1 was in space or had crashed to Earth, with the U.S. backers of the project saying the craft was sending faint signals, possibly from a lower orbit.

"The unique solar sail spacecraft was not delivered to its planned orbit because the engine of the first stage of the "Volna" rocket shut itself down 83 seconds into the flight," Russia's Federal Space Agency said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, this is the second unsuccessful attempt to launch a solar sail craft on a journey through space," it said.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not. As I reported two months ago, the track record of the group trying to get the sail into space has not been the greatest. The problem with trying to do space missions on a shoestring budget is that rocket science is indeed a very hard science. You need to overengineer the problem. Cutting corners greatly decreases the likelihood of success, but it does so more rapidly for space missions. The expense of lifting an item into orbit and the near impossibility of correcting a mistake once it's there means that it has to be done right the first time. Using a converted ballistic missile as your launch vehicle would be the first cut corner I'd worry about, and indeed the main cause of this mission's problems.

I know, I shouldn't be complaining about this. After all, Glenn can link to whomever he wants. But he does link to a lot of carnivals regularly, and the Storyblogging Carnival isn't one of them. He's linked to the Carnival of the Vanities, the Carnival of Education, Grand Rounds, the Carnival of Music, the Carnival of the Liberated, the Carnival of the Capitalists, the Carnival of the Revolutions, the Carnival of the Cats, the Carnival of the Recipes, the Carnival of Cordite, the Carnival of Comedy, and the NBA Carnival, and that's just since this Friday. And he links to these, and others, pretty much every week. Now I know he has a special interest in some of these topics, but all of them? He has linked to the Storyblogging Carnival once, and I'm grateful for that, but before that I was beginning to suspect that I was on his spam filter. I don't try to inform him of every Storyblogging Carnival, but I do try to direct his attention to most of them. Apparently unsuccessfully. Perhaps someone else should try sending that e-mail from now on.

According to most news articles this past week, Terri Schiavo's autopsy has determined that she really was in a persistent vegetative state:

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

It's taken me a week or so to comment on it, but as it took me weeks to comment on the Terri Schiavo case in the first place, I think the delay is fair. The question being asked is whether those of us who opposed ending Terri's life recant our positions now.

Well, the first question is whether Terri has been proved to be in a vegetative state, and Serge at Imago Dei, who has actually read the autopsy report, says no:

Neuropathic examination alone of the decedant's brain - or any brain, for that matter - cannot disprove or prove a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state or minimally conscious state.

The autopsy has confirmed much of what we know and has brought about some new questions. I am personally glad both that Terri did not suffer from an eating disorder and that there is no evidence that Michael Schiavo... [caused] her injury.

For the moment, however, let's say she was in a persistent vegetative state. I still don't regret opposing the removing of her feeding tube, and I think that the best way to demonstrate why is with an analogy.

Let's say that instead of what we are dealing with, we're dealing with a lynching--a man, possibly innocent, being hung by a mob without a trial. Now, suppose I have three reasons to oppose the lynching: first, because the man might be innocent; second, because it is a miscarriage of justice; and third, because I oppose the death penalty in general and don't believe anyone should be put to death no matter what his crime. Now, several months after the lynching, irrefutable proof comes out that the man was guilty of his crimes. I doubt that my liberal friends would now say that I have no reason to oppose the lynching. I might feel some relief that at least an innocent man wasn't killed, but I still have plenty of reasons to believe that the lynching was wrong, to, in fact, support prosecution of those who carried it out. He wasn't innocent, but he was hung before we discovered that. That is still a miscarriage of justice, the crime of murder for those who did it and accessory to murder for all the others who participated. And if I oppose the death penalty in general, then it wouldn't have mattered whether he'd been given a trial or not, I'd still think it was wrong.

Now, I think of the Terri Schiavo case in similar, although not identical, terms. I did not think it had been sufficiently demonstrated that she was in a Persistent Vegetative State, and if it's now been established, that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't demonstrated before she was killed. Which brings me to the second reason, the miscarriage of justice. This is, admittedly, the weakest point of the analogy, as according to the courts, the law was followed to the letter. The problem is that I don't entirely trust the courts. They first overturned and then sidestepped the laws passed by the state and then the federal legislatures. I am one of those who think that the courts in this country are operating outside of their authority, and the fact that they're the ones who define their authority is hardly reassuring. Perhaps the lynch mob analogy isn't precise, but sometimes it feels right. Judges and police often stood aside to let lynch mobs do what they wanted, sometimes they even participated--that didn't make it right or legal. Finally, while I don't oppose the death penalty in principle, I do believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I am very reluctant to say that it's okay to end someone's life unless they are a clear and present danger to others. Terri Schiavo was severely brain damaged, but she was not brain dead, and letting her live hurt no one. I don't know whether she would have preferred to live or die as she was, whether she was able to take some limited joy out of the life that she had, or if she couldn't, whether that was sufficient reason to end her life. In a case like this, I prefer to err on the side of life. Her death cannot be undone.

Now that I've finished Eyes in the Shadow, I'm going to need a new writing project. I'd like to get back to the sequel to Fire, which I haven't touched in a couple of months, but that won't produce anything for the next Storyblogging Carnival. I do have a couple of old stories lying about that I can try revising into something readable, but that always takes more work than I expect. I think that since I'll be out of town anyway for the next Carnival, I'm just going to take a month off from Storyblogging. Not from writing, mind you--I still want to work on Fire's sequel, remember--but for once, I don't think I'll have an entry in the Carnival. I think it'll do fine without me, and I'll be back with something worthwhile in the Carnival after that.

Welcome to the twenty-first Storyblogging Carnival, a bi-weekly collection of fiction from around the blogosphere. Previous carnivals are archived in the Storyblogging Carnival category of this blog. A Carnival collects and organizes entries from numerous participants in a central location, and this Carnival collects examples of Storyblogging. For new visitors, Storyblogging is simply story-telling in blog format, and may range from posting a short story on a blog to posting a long serial story there, from blogging as a fictional persona to collaborative story-telling. We have had all of these storyblogging types appear in this Carnival in the past, though by far the most prevalent are short stories and serial stories.

This week we have eleven stories, three from new participants. There are entries from genres such as horror and hard sci-fi and religious allegory, as well as a few more mainstream stories. There's a good range of sizes this week too, from brief stories to novellas, meaning that you have a wide selection of reading material, in length as well as genre. Enjoy.

---

...an interesting take on things
by Pamela of Atlas Shrugs
A 530 word brief story rated G.

An enlightened fable with a surprise twist. Did God create everything that exists? Does evil exist? Did God create evil?

[This may be an urban legend, but it's a good one. -DSC]

---

Werewolf's Lament
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 691 word brief story rated PG-13.

A werewolf is attacked in human form and reacts as one would expect considering the numbers. As he languishes in West Wales lamenting his plight.

[A curious tale, in a different voice than Andrew's usual Sage stories. -DSC]

---

Two of a Kind
by Kevin Griffith of Wild Bill's Kicker
A 754 word excerpt of a 3,156 word short story rated PG-13.

The story is about a guy who still goes on his honeymoon, despite his fiancee backing out of the wedding. He takes his bestfriend/roommate.

[Not too many authors write in the second person, although this is the second one I recall seeing in the Storyblogging Carnival. The second person voice tends to hit a bit too close to home, although it can be made to work, and I think it does here. -DSC]

---

The Grocer and the Green Gloves
by Jason Pomerantz of Fiddle and Burn
A 1,042 word short story rated G.

A fairy tale about why we should all stop worrying and learn to love Walmart.

[This is a short and clever story. -DSC]

---

Buddha's Bridge
by D.M. Molloy of Passing Trains
A 1,875 word short story rated R.

Disconnected from the rat-race of society, this is the story of a man living a very unusual life.

[An interesting tale filled with interesting characters. -DSC]

---

Part 6 of Scale 7 Artifact (Beginning)
by Dave Gudeman of Doc Rampage
The next 2,956 words of a 9,949 word story in progress rated G.

Daniel Greaves recovers his keyboard but loses the Big Screen. More character development and plot setup. Things'll start blowing up real soon now.

[Doc starts to build some tension in this installment. He credits Sheya and I with our cliffhangers for giving him the idea, but he neglects to mention that it was his complaining about cliffhangers that inspired me to really start ramping up the tension in my story. In any case, he's introduced a fascinating cast of characters and some dark plotting in the background, making for some good reading. -DSC]

---

Chapters 68,69,70, and 71 of The Child (Beginning)
by Sheya Joie of Tales by Sheya
The next 3,871 words of a 56,711 word novel in progress rated PG.

Stone is in trouble - Starr is in trouble. And in the midst of the company needing to come into unity, some things are as fractured as ever - as a new fracture occurs.

[It's always a joy reading The Child. As I said a few days ago, the transition from allegory to interpersonal story really gave it depth and excitement. -DSC]

---

Resolution, Chapter 16 of Eyes in the Shadow (The Whole Story)
by Donald S. Crankshaw of Back of the Envelope
The final 3,997 word chapter of a 50,426 word novella rated PG-13.

Who is Red-eyes? What is he? Is he truly dead? Is the thing that was inside of him gone? In this, the final chapter of Eyes in the Shadow, all the mysteries are revealed, except for those which aren't.

---

Chapters 3 and 4 of The Death of a Blogger (Beginning)
by Eric Ashley of Tales of Tadeusz
A 4,7870 word excerpt of a 67,110 word novel rated PG.

Charlie has been attacked. Sharon collapses, perhaps attacked, and now she has to go home to try to figure out if her husband tried to commit suicide, or what is going on?!? Death of a Blogger, the World's First Mystery Novel focused on the Blogosphere rolls onward with perils and pains increasing.

[An intriguing story. -DSC]

---

Manhunt
by J. Fielek of Quibbles-n-Bits
A 8,627 word short story rated PG-13.

A Western with a twist...

[While not a genre Carnival, we seem to be collecting certain genres. Not that I can really complain, as they're some of my favorites. This is one which is not what it initially appears. -DSC]

---

The Last Worthless Evening
by Josh Cohen of The New D-42
A 17,460 word short story rated NC-17.

This is a short-story (five parts, about 60 typed pages) about a married couple who fights all the time. It contains somewhat-explicit sex and language; however, it is not pornographic. I have rated it "MA" on my site.

[He's not kidding about the mature rating. I wouldn't use the "somewhat" before "explicit," although it's far from the most graphic story you'll read on the Internet, even without really looking. Be forewarned. Although the explicit language threw me, I really did like the core of the story. -DSC]

---

I hope you enjoyed this Carnival. If you'd like to participate in future Storyblogging Carnivals, or just join the e-mail list, please contact me.

Dang, this is probably the latest the WWU's been in a while. Sorry, but I was out-of-town this weekend on not one, but two, trips, and having to get the final chapter of Eyes in the Shadow, Storyblogging Carnival XXI, and the Weekly Webcomic Update done within that time was just a bit beyond my abilities. Something had to be pushed back, and the WWU was it. Well, at least it's done now. I'll redate it back to Saturday in the archives later.

Sluggy Freelance — The guest storyline comes to a spectacular finish, and now Pete's back and his hand's working. Yay! Torg needs to come up with an ad package for Snikey, which makes sports' shoes, while Gwynn's spying on Riff to find out how he's making so much money by babysitting.

Day by Day — Damon and Jan, Zed and Sam spend a night on the town, all the while making fun of the overblown reaction to Guatanamo. Zed and Damon are all for invasion of personal space by a female.

Scary Go Round — John's back too. Fallon and Amy have noticed that Shelley's missing, and they suspect goblins. Well, Shelley does have a history of problems with them. So the two hire a paranormal investigator, but as they're both out of work (Fallon has quit the spy business), they can't afford someone with actual qualifications.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Dave is very reliable. When something good happens to him, you can count on him to screw it up. Now, I actually approved of Dave trying to slow things down with Blue. They were going too fast, their relationship was too sexual, they just needed time to sort things out and do it properly. However, of all the reasons Dave might have to do so--worried that Satan might go after her, fear of the Dragon, wanting to stay on God's good side in case he needed another dry-cleaning, wanting to make sure Mike isn't right and his feelings for her aren't pure lust, even needing to sort out his feelings for Margaret--he just had to go with feeling like too much of a poor loser to date the rich girl. Could he have come up with a reason more likely to drive her off if he had tried? Maybe, but I doubt it. Roger actually gives Dave some good advice afterwards, but it's coded in Roger-speak and delivered with his usual lack of empathy, so I doubt it will do Dave much good.

General Protection Fault — Fooker and Sharon stumble on the Brotherhood's plans. Fooker, at least, is all for helping out, so he and Sharon fix the thePROPH3T's code to find out what the prophecy's really about.

Schlock Mercenary — Past-Kevyn's mini-antimatter bomb goes off, causing a great deal of damage, destroying tanks, damaging ships, turning the Phica reactor into a big, smoking hole in the ground. At least Tagon and Pranger and company are deep enough underground to survive.

The Rest of the Story: Chapter 15 can be found here, or you can read the whole story on one page.

This is it, the final chapter. All the conflicts are resolved and all the mysteries are explained, except for the ones which aren't. Okay, enough chit-chat, here it is. Enjoy!

---

Chapter 16
Resolution

Click.

That was not the sound Ryan had expected to hear. To be honest, he hadn’t expected to hear anything at all. He hadn’t thought that his brain would have a chance to register the sound of the gunshot before the bullet passed through it.

Though he had to cross his eyes to do so, he stared at the gun, astounded that it hadn’t fired. The hand grasping it trembled and shook, then viciously whipped the weapon back and forth as if it could be shaken into working order. The iron sight tore his lower lip as the barrel clattered across his teeth, the pain causing his eyes to blur with tears and his cheeks to twitch. In contrast, his stupid, disobedient arm didn’t feel a thing, unless that was a tickling he felt near the scar. Click. The finger squeezed off another would-be shot. And yes, there was definitely a tickling in his arm. The sensation reached his index finger as it convulsively pulled the trigger again. Click. The hand started to repositionthe gun, but Ryan clamped down on the barrel with his teeth, unwilling to risk Emily’s life in this insane game of Russian roulette. His jaw ached as his hand twisted the gun, trying to pry his mouth open, but his head moved with the weapon, trying to manage some control over it without breaking his teeth. The tickling spread to envelope the whole arm just as it crossed the threshold from ticklish to painful, becoming the familiar prickling that had plagued him for the past day. Click. The prickling grew into full-fledged pins and needles. He felt something crack in his mouth as the hand continued to jerk the pistol around, and he hoped the gun had only chipped a tooth. Click. The pins and needles graduated into stinging, a swarm of bees crawling over every inch of skin from the tips of his fingers to his palms, from the back of his hand to the inside of the elbow, from his bicep to his shoulder, each one taking the opportunity to sting him again and again. Click. The pain ratcheted up in intensity, the stinging becoming blistering heat, as if his arm were being consumed in an inferno. He finally released his aching jaws from their hold on the gun so he could howl in pain. Six… six shots. The gun… it’s emp—empty. The pain washed out further thought. His hand convulsed and the gun fell from twitching fingers. He was vaguely aware that Dominic was no longer trying to restrain him, for his left hand was now free to wrap around his right wrist, pressed against the small cut that was at the center of the pain. It throbbed in agony as if someone were driving a white hot iron spike through it one hammer stroke at a time. He heard someone speaking—Emily, and she was speaking quickly and loudly, the words tripping over one another, not in that sparse, slow, dazed whispering of her trance. She sounded… Angry? Worried? Confused? He couldn’t tell, he couldn’t understand the words. But from somewhere he heard words he could understand, a deep, resonant voice, coming from a great distance, as if echoing up from a deep pit. “Damn you!” As the speaker fell deeper into the pit there was one final word, a familiar one Ryan had heard before, twice now in his dreams, though he’d been unable to remember it. This time, he’d remember. This time… His vision filled with brightness, until everything was hidden by the brilliant white light, and his ears filled with a rushing wind, drowning out the word as he repeated it to himself, shouting it in defiance of forgetfulness and unconsciousness and pain.



“Majus!” Ryan cried. Though his mouth was wide open to yell the word, the sound that came out was no more than a choked whisper. He coughed, then swallowed, and his throat burned as he did so. It was raw and dry, and he desperately needed something to drink. Ryan kept his eyes shut as he tried to remember what had happened after that blazing pain in his arm. Everything was a blank. A dull ache still suffused it, and that was enough to make him sob with relief. His right arm hadn’t felt so much like a part of him since… since… had it really only been a day? Ryan made a fist and opened it, pleased at how readily his hand obeyed him, pleased that he could feel it doing so. He shifted, trying to get comfortable, and realized that he was lying with his back on soft cushions, his head propped up on a pillow, and a blanket covering him. This definitely wasn’t the position he’d been in when he’d lost consciousness, if that was what had happened. His left arm was trapped between his body and a vertical cushion, which meant… he opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Emily’s worried face surrounded by a golden nimbus—the midday sun backlighting her, undaunted by the blinds trying to shut it out. She was sitting on one of the dining room chairs, bending over him, and she smiled when she saw him open his eyes.

“I’m so glad you’re okay. Dom said you would be, but I wasn’t sure, and I wanted to call a doctor, but Dom said a priest would be more appropriate, except that we’re not Catholic, and I thought about calling Pastor Dan, but…” That was where Ryan stopped listening long enough to glance around. As he had expected, he was still lying on the plush green couch, but he’d been placed in a more comfortable position and accoutered with a pillow and blanket.

“What—?” Ryan began, then paused to clear his throat. “What happened? And what the Hell is a Majus?” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

“We were hoping you could tell us what happened.” That was Dominic. Ryan couldn’t see him from where he lay, but judging from the direction of his voice, he was sitting in the easy chair in the corner, next to the gun cabinet. “As for Majus, it sounds like the Latinate singular of Magi.”

Emily handed Ryan a glass a water, and he propped himself up against the couch’s arm so he could sip some of the cool liquid. Once he’d moistened his throat, he said, “You mean, like the guys who brought gifts to Jesus in the manger?”

“There’s more to it than that, and he probably wasn’t in a manger at the time, but yes. Before we discuss that, however, perhaps you should tell us your perspective on what happened. From our perspective, after threatening to shoot me, you tried to shoot Emily, or yourself, or maybe both. The gun didn’t go off, though, and then you started screaming, dropped the gun, and passed out.”

“Dom’s exaggerating,” Emily said. “Well, not about what we saw, but my vision told us what really happened.”

“Your vision? What did you see?” Ryan asked.

“Em, maybe we should wait until he tells us what he thinks happened,” Dominic interjected.

“Don’t be silly, Dom,” Emily said. “It’s over now. The vision said so.” After waiting a moment to see whether her brother would protest, Emily continued. “I saw a dark shadow standing behind you. It was really weird looking, with an ugly bird-like head, and claws, and arms that bent the wrong way. One of its claws was blocking your eyes and it was whispering in your ear.”

“Are you saying I was possessed?” Ryan asked, a chill running down his spine.

“Not possessed,” Dominic inserted. “But you were definitely being influenced: lied to, shown things, maybe more”

Ryan wanted to deny it, but too much of what had happened didn’t make sense unless his perceptions had been altered in some way. “You eyes were red. I was so sure you were possessed,” Ryan said. “Was that just a hallucination?”

“I don’t think it counts as a hallucination if a demon is making you see it,” Emily said.

“And my arm… was he controlling it? Because I wasn’t.” That part he preferred to think of as demonic possession. Otherwise, he was going insane, thinking that he had no control over his arm, and the mad part of his mind which did have control was homicidal.

“Maybe,” Emily said. “I think so. In my vision, you had a gun in your hand, and the demon had one hand—the one that wasn’t blocking your eyes—wrapped around your wrist and it was trying to make you point it at Dominic, then at me, but you were wrestling to turn it around. Finally, you had it pointed towards your head, and that’s when you pulled the trigger and the gun went off. I thought you were dead, I really did, but somehow the bullet went right through you and hit the demon instead. And when it hit him, he vanished. Just poof.”

“Okay, that’s… interesting,” Ryan said. “But it does sound a lot like what happened. I couldn’t stop what my arm was doing—it was as if it were someone else’s. All I could do was block it. I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, though. I’m just glad it wasn’t loaded.”

“Oh, the gun was loaded,” Dominic said.

“What?!” Ryan sat straight up. The motion made him dizzy, but he placed a hand on the couch’s arm and twisted around so he could see Dominic. Emily’s brother was leaning back in the easy chair, wearing his trenchcoat. He held the gun in question in his right hand, resting on the chair’s arm. Obviously he doesn’t trust me now. Well, I can’t really blame him.

“I checked,” Dominic said. “There are bullets in the cylinder.”

“Then why didn’t it go off?” Ryan asked.

“I dunno. They could be duds, but the rest of the bullets from that box were good.”

“I think it’s a miracle,” Emily said.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ryan said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “You’re saying a miracle saved my life?”

“Why not?” Emily replied. “If a demon was out to get us, why couldn’t God come to the rescue?”

“If God could come to the rescue, why didn’t he do it before? Why did we have to go through all this?”

“I… I don’t know,” Emily said. “Dom and I were praying for that, but God works in mysterious ways. Maybe he wanted to teach us something or whatever.”

Dominic cleared his throat. “Why give the demon free rein at all? Why let it possess and kill Richard Majison? Why let it influence you? ‘Why’ questions are notoriously hard to answer.”

“Okay, then what about a different type of question? What drove it off?” Ryan act. “I hardly think it was my suicide attempt.”

“Don’t call it that!” Emily said. “You weren’t trying to kill yourself, you were trying to save me even if it meant dying yourself. There’s a world of difference there. Anyway, I think that selfless act broke its hold on you, and God rewarded you by keeping the bullets from going off.”

“Er, if you say so,” Ryan said, embarrassed. I’m not selfless. I’m as greedy and self-serving as the next guy, and more conceited than most. So… why did I do it? That was the question. What had possessed him to place his life between the gun and Emily? Love? He still barely knew her. Whatever he might feel for her, it had very little of romance. Some sort of honor? That little-used word just didn’t mean a lot to him. “I still don’t understand this,” Ryan said.

Dominic shrugged. “Maybe we’ll never completely understand what went on here, but I think it would help if we knew the whole story.” He looked at Ryan, his brows lowered and a small frown touching his lips. “I want to hear your version of what happened, and anything else that you haven’t told us.”

Ryan bowed his head. He had been holding out on them both, partly because he was worried about what the dreams meant and partly because he hadn’t trusted Dominic. Did he trust him now? Well, Dominic had the gun now and he wasn’t shooting anybody, and that was a good sign. And somehow, the fear and suspicion just didn’t seem as deeply settled in him as before. Maybe Dominic was right and he really had been under the shadow-thing’s influence. The idea that he might have been at least partially controlled by the demon was still horrible, but it was no longer unbelievable.

Ryan decided that whether he trusted Dominic or not, he owed them both this. Anyway, even if Dominic was possessed right now, confiding his experiences to him couldn’t be any more dangerous than letting him hold onto the gun, and there wasn’t much he could do about the latter. “Okay,” Ryan said. “There have been a few things that I haven’t told you two about. The weirdest happened right after the first time we escaped Red-eyes, while we were staying at the hotel. I had a bizarre dream that night…” After telling them about the dream, he described how the shadow-thing in the mirror had reached out and scratched him. He showed them the scratch, which now looked like a normal cut, not an open wound on a corpse. As the throbbing pain he’d woken up with faded, it had begun to feel like a normal scratch, with none of the odd pins and needles he’d been experiencing or the cold, dead skin around it. If the cut’s healing, maybe it really is over. Ryan then told them how he had seen the shadow-thing appear at the gas station, becoming Red-eyes as it came out of the wall. He hesitated before telling them about the red gleam he’d seen in Dominic’s eyes, but Hell, he’d already told Emily. Finally, he explained last night’s dream, and waking up with the gun in his hand. “What I don’t understand is what the dreams meant. Were they true or false?”

“Both,” Dominic said. “I think the first dream was truthful, while the second one lied. The demon was probably trying to manipulate you through your dreams. Lies are more effective if they’re mixed with the truth. But you still haven’t told us what happened today.”

Ryan sighed. “When Emily had her vision, your eyes turned red again, and you were acting strange—your expression, your words and tone of voice, little gestures—I knew you had to be possessed, and that I had to get you away from Emily. So I pulled open the drawer of the gun cabinet and grabbed the gun. It was weird that it was unlocked; I thought I had locked it. And it’s also strange that my arm, which had been practically paralyzed all day, worked fine when I picked up the gun. But when I tried to put the gun down, it was like it was someone else’s arm. I couldn’t control it any more than I could feel it.”

“And that’s when I tried to tackle you,” Dominic said. “But were you trying to shoot me or Emily?”

“I don’t know!” Ryan said. “First it was pointing at you, then Emily, and when I saw that my own damn finger was pulling the trigger, I did the only thing I could and tried to catch the bullet with my skull.” Ryan wiped his hand across his eyes. “I… I’m still not sure why I did that. I’d like to say I did it out of love or something romantic like that, but I just… When I saw that I was pulling the trigger, I had to stop it. If I killed Emily, I’d be a murderer. It wouldn’t matter that some demon made me do it, I’d be evil, and I’d rather be dead than the kind of person who would do that. Does that make sense?”

“It’s all right,” Emily said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Ryan didn’t look at her. He wiped his eyes again, surprised that they were tearing. Damn it, I’m not going to cry! “You’re not disappointed? I like you, Emily, and I didn’t want you to die, but I don’t know that I’d die just for you.”

Emily smiled. “Jesus said that no man had greater love than to lay down his life for his friends, but we’ve known each other for less than two days. We’re still practically strangers, and you’ve already given me more than I have any right to expect. And no matter what you say, you were willing to sacrifice your life for mine, and I’m not going to complain that your motivations weren’t pure enough or whatever.”

Ryan heard motion behind him as Dominic got up, followed by a metallic click. Alarmed, certain that Dominic was about to finish what his own arm had been unable to do, Ryan whipped his head around. Dominic was standing next to the gun cabinet, the revolver in his hand with the cylinder open as he removed the bullets, carefully placing them on top of the cabinet. When he was done, he closed the cylinder and placed the gun in its case and closed the still-open drawer. When he saw Ryan watching him, he said, “I don’t think I’ll be needing the gun. As for the bullets… I think I want to test them. I for one want to know whether or not they are duds.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Ryan said, sniffing. “So I’ve told you everything I remember. Do you understand things better? ’Cause I still don’t.”

“I think that I was right in my earlier assessment that the demon couldn’t hurt us directly, but I was wrong in what I thought he was trying to do. I was expecting a spiritual attack… although I can’t say exactly what that would be like. Something like spiritual rape, I imagine.”

“Damn, that’s what it felt like,” Ryan said very softly. Idiot, do you think you have any idea what rape feels like? No, but was having some… thing alter what he saw and thought, or taking control over a part of his own body, any less of a violation? He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to think about it.

Dominic continued, either not hearing him or pretending not to, “What I didn’t see is that he could use a spiritual attack to cause physical harm. He tried to trick us into hurting one another by making you think that I was possessed. Then, when Emily was vulnerable because of her vision, our desire to protect her and our suspicions of one another created a very dangerous situation.”

“And then he tried to make me shoot you by taking over my arm? How is that any different from having Red-eyes kill us?”

“Hmm, I dunno. Maybe it was desperation. I don’t think the demon was incapable of physically hurting us so much as forbidden, and it tried to break the rules and was stopped. Or maybe it would have worked if you hadn’t resisted the way that you did, as the responsibility would have fallen on you for not fighting it.”

“So who did he want dead? You, Emily, me? At one point or another he tried to shoot each of us.”

“If things had gone exactly as planned, you would have shot and killed me, then probably gone to jail, and Em… well, how do you think you would have reacted, Em?”

“I don’t know what I would have done then,” Emily said. “If you were… gone, and Ryan did it… It doesn’t make sense! What about the vision that I’m supposed to marry him? How could I marry the man who killed my brother? But… could the vision be that wrong?”

“Which may be the point,” Ryan said slowly. “If she begins to doubt her visions...”

Dominic nodded. “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe you’re going one step too far. You two are supposed to be together, like it or not. I think he was trying to prevent that.”

“But could it be prevented?” Ryan asked. “If it’s prophecy, isn’t it inevitable?”

“Obviously, the demon thought it wasn’t,” Dominic said. “He might be right. God isn’t the Delphic oracle, where every attempt to avert the prophecy just brings it closer to fruition. There are examples in the Bible of people convincing God to… change his mind, for lack of a better phrase.”

“Emily said something along those lines, but even if God can be convinced, I doubt that a demon killing the people the prophecy’s about would do it.”

“Good point. I guess that’s why he tried to get you to kill me. After that happened, you two wouldn’t want to marry. You’d be the ones trying to change God’s mind about the prophecy.”

Back to prophecies I don’t really want to believe. “I don’t suppose you have any idea why we’re supposed to marry.”

“Not really. But I wonder if it has something to do with what you said when you first woke up.”

“You mean ‘Majus’? You did say you knew more about the Magi.”

“Just a little, most of it speculation,” Dominic said. “The term, the same one that’s used for the Magi who visited Jesus, refers the priestly caste of the Medes, who were a powerful influence in the Parthian Empire at the time of Jesus’s birth—Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, that area. They were Zoroastrians.”

“But why would Zoroastrians be interested in the Jewish Messiah?”

“Well, there are similarities between Zoroastrianism and Judaism, possibly due to the fact that Zoroastrianism’s rise to prominence roughly corresponded with the Jewish exile in Babylon,” Dominic said. “And as there were still Jews living in that area centuries later, when Jesus was born, it’s likely that the Magi were familiar with the Jewish prophecies.”

“So what happened to them?” Ryan asked.

“I dunno.” Dominic shrugged. “I had assumed they disappeared, not dying out but losing their identity through interbreeding and generational forgetfulness. Now I’m beginning to wonder. You said that the demon called you ‘Majus’? And your last name is Maji-son.” He said the name differently, emphasizing the first two syllables with a long i, rather than the short i Ryan pronounced it with.

“Do you think I could be related to them? I don’t look Middle Eastern.”

Dominic smiled, “That’s at least sixty generations back. You could easily be descended from the priestly caste of the Medes and not look like you’re from that region. The problem is that you probably wouldn’t know. Nobody would. Very few people these days have that much of a sense of history, and I didn’t think anybody had accurate records stretching that far back, but something’s different here. Your name, Red-eyes’ name, the demon calling you Majus… somebody knows. And more importantly, somebody cares. Do you know much about your family’s genealogy?”

“No,” Ryan said. “My father never spoke of it, and he disappeared when I was fourteen.”

“What do you mean, ‘disappeared’?”

“It’s a long story,” Ryan said. It wasn’t that long of a story, but Ryan didn’t want to talk about his father. He never wanted to talk about him. I don’t even want to think about him. “And right now I’m just worried that this might not be over.”

“It is over, Ryan,” Emily said, taking his hand in both of hers. “The demon’s gone. I’m sure of it.”

“I think Em’s right, Ryan,” Dominic said. “The demon is gone.”

“I guess so,” Ryan said. But if someone, or something, is so interested in me, in us, then will the shadow-thing be the only one who comes after us? He looked at Emily, who was smiling at him, and he forced himself to smile back. “Well, if it is over”—for now—“then I’m going back to bed.”

The End

---

This is the final 3,997 word chapter of my 50,426 word novella.

It's done! Eyes in the Shadow has been my main writing project since October, about nine months now. It's not the only thing I worked on during that time, but it is what my focus has been. For most of that time, I didn't have a clue where it was going. I didn't know what Red-eyes was--I suspected that he was a demon, but I didn't know for sure--or what he wanted, or how--or even if--he could be defeated. I didn't know where Ryan and Emily would go, or who they would meet, or what they'd try and whether it would work. I basically made it up as I went along. That's a lot of fun, but it can also be dangerous. When I follow my usual writing process, I write a dozen chapters but don't publish the first until I'm done with the twelfth, so I always have the ability to fix my mistakes. If I get my characters into a situation that they can't get out of, I can go back and change things, preventing that situation from happening or preparing a way out in advance for when they arrive there. The way I wrote this story, publishing each chapter before I was done with the next, if I got my characters into such a situation, I'd either have to pull a deus ex machina or end my adventure with a tragedy. And I was determined not to pull a deus ex machina. There was also the danger of inconsistencies. It really does take me months to write a story of any length, and all sorts of little details that occurred in chapter one can be forgotten by chapter ten. This is usually caught in the first revision, where I read through all the chapters I've written and make corrections, taking advantage of the ability to read it all together in the course of a couple of days so I can see how well it all fits together. I wasn't able to do that either. Finally, sometimes ideas that I have late in the story either aren't compatible with or just don't flow from the previous chapters, but if it's a really cool idea and it doesn't require extensive changes, I can just run with it and smooth out the earlier chapters to make it fit. It frustrated me immensely that I couldn't do that this time. What was already published was all but set in stone. That "but" refers to some small mistakes that I corrected where two parts of the story I had already published disagreed, and one of them had to be changed. That happened once when I had given Ryan two different majors with different research topics, chemical engineering studying zeolites (which a friend of mine had done) and electrical engineering studying semiconductor failure modes (which I did as an undergrad). I don't recall any other times I went back and changed a part of the story.

You may wonder about how I ended things: my hope is that you find it satisfying. I established pretty early on (Chapter 4) that you couldn't get rid of the shadow-thing just by killing Red-eyes. The demon, or evil spirit, or whatever it was, would live on. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to limit the extent of Red-eyes' power. I wanted him to be dangerous, but I did my best to be ambiguous over how superhuman he really was. The most frightening thing about him was that you never knew the full extent of his abilities. I knew that if I left the obvious solution of fighting back open, the characters would eventually find guns and start shooting, and then I'd either have to kill Red-eyes or make bullets bounce off of him, and then so much for ambiguity. So I made it so they could kill Red-eyes but not solve the real problem. The second reason I focused on the shadow-thing is that I find spiritual beings much more terrifying than physical beings. Physical creatures can hurt you, true, but you can either avoid them or hurt them back. Spiritual beings are different. How can you get away from them? How can you hurt them? This of course gave me a new problem. Now that I have a spiritual entity as the enemy, how do I keep him from becoming too powerful? How do my characters get rid of him? Well, presumably God has the power, but I was trying to avoid a deus ex machina. I can't really have God solve the problem while giving my characters nothing to do. It might make a good allegory that way, but not a good story. On the other hand, theologically I believe that there's not really a whole lot human beings can do about demons. They will try to destroy us, and all we can do is resist. So that's what Ryan, who was the central character and the main target of the demon's influence, had to do. He had to resist the demon, and it would flee from him. This was complicated by the fact that Ryan's pretty skeptical about God and demons. Christians can pray for help, and while Ryan's thrown off a prayer or two, he's not a believer, and having him convert just didn't feel right. Committing to God is a profound decision, and not something I could see someone as skeptical and cynical as Ryan doing after a mere two days of really creepy experiences. He would need time to process what had happened, time I didn't give him. Ultimately, there was only one thing he could do to end it, and that was an act of self-sacrifice: interposing his own life between the demon and Emily. By doing that, he'd show real commitment to resisting the demon's influence, and such a commitment could be honored by a bit of subtle divine intervention without seeming cheap or easy.

So now I've wrapped up the story and explained all the mysteries, except for one. What's the deal with the Magi? Or Maji, or however you want to spell it? Well, that part I'm not saying. It's an idea I've been playing with for a little while, and I made the decision to connect Ryan to them pretty late in the story, when I was wondering whether Eyes in the Shadow would have a sequel. (The answer to that question is maybe. If so, I'll definitely explain more about the Maji then.) The late introduction of the Maji connection shows, due to the serial nature of the story and my aforementioned inability to prepare the way for important plot twists that only occured to me around Chapter Eleven. I will eventually do a rewrite of this story, maybe even see if I can get it published, and when I do I'll deal with the complications which cropped up due to the limitations of a serial story.

Update: Cleaned up the commentary at the end of this chapter, since it turned out to be pretty disjointed.

I'm out of town for a quick business trip today, so don't expect much blogging. That's okay, 'cause despite the fact that I'll be gone on another trip tomorrow, the next chapter of Eyes in the Shadow will be going up. See you later.

Dave at Faith in Fiction thinks we writers need to work harder:

I’m trying to figure out where the system is breaking down. Because it’s one thing to receive an unsolicited proposal from a first time novelist through the blog that’s rough and not-ready-for-prim-time. It seems like it’s quite another thing to receive a proposal that’s of virtually similar quality from an agent. That, to me, is a system breakdown.

No offense writers, but we need to be harder on you. YOU need to be harder on you. First drafts shouldn’t cut it. Dialogue manacled in cliché shouldn’t cut it. Inauthentic genre books plotted and detailed from Hollywood movies and not hardcore, intensive research shouldn’t cut it. Voiceless narrative without the punch of imaginative personality shouldn’t cut it.

I agree: I need to work harder. Consider Eyes in the Shadow, for instance. Now I like this story. After nine months, I think it's come together nicely as a story that works. I like the characters, I like the conflict, and I think the plot is plausible and satisfying. However, it's not ready to send to a publisher. At the least, I need to put it aside for two months, then come back to it and do one very thorough revision, followed by another polishing revision. There are some things that don't feel right about the story as it's written, but I need some distance before I can fully judge. The story became very clunky around the middle, wandering around with no real purpose, and that needs to be streamlined. There's a lot of dialogue that goes back and forth without really getting anywhere. Certain things I introduced near the end need better foreshadowing, and I'm certain that there are some contradictions I haven't caught yet. There's also my innate tendency to be sparse with my descriptions. Sometimes I think this is a good thing, as modern novels seem positively dripping with scenery compared to the classics, but often it seems that my characters are acting in a vacuum. Heck, I'm not sure I even have complete physical descriptions of my main characters. Speaking of whom, when I'm not careful, they tend to blur together, the distinctness of their personalities subsumed in my own, as they all start to act, think, and talk like me.

Hopefully, this criticism sounds too harsh to you. If that's the case, then I've at least partially succeeded in correcting my negative tendencies in the initial writing and the revisions, but it'll still take more work before I'm fully satisfied. The Eyes in the Shadow you've been reading is not a rough draft--it's gone through at least one, and in the case of some chapters as many as three, revisions--but it's not the final version yet.

I've added Tales by Sheya to the blogroll. I should have done this ages ago, but I've held off a bit since this is not the usual type of blog. Specifically, it's a storyblog. Now, since I run the Storyblogging Carnival, I've seen a lot of storyblogs recently, but this is the first one I've added to the blogroll. Storyblogs are blogs exclusively for posting fiction. Now I post a good bit of fiction on my own blog, but I also talk about my personal life, politics, religion, science and technology, et cetera. I tend to link to blogs which do the same. In addition, most storyblogs update slowly, with a new post every few weeks if you're lucky. Sheya's storyblog updates at a good clip, however, with several new posts a week. In addition, she often hosts the Storyblogging Carnival. Finally, her stories, especially The Child, contain more Christian philosophy and thought than most blogs which address such matters directly. So I thought her blog would be a worthy addition to the blogroll.

By the way, I highly recommend The Child. Sheya approached writing it much like I approached writing Eyes in the Shadow, making it up as she went along. At first, it read much like straightforward allegory. The problem with allegory is that you tend to read it with an eye for the symbolism rather than just enjoying the story, which tends to be predictable if you're familiar with the worldview the allegory is based on. However, the story became less allegory and more story as the cast increased. The introduction of Stone marked a significant turning point, and as more characters were added the story gained more depth and more of the interpersonal interaction and conflict around which most good storytell