Author's Torment Read online

  Author’s Torment

  A Genre Roulette Anthology

  Compiled by Thomas G. Atwood

  Edited by Angel Blackwood

  Copyright © 2016 Thomas G. Atwood

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under the international and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by Angel Blackwood

  Cover Art by Angel Blackwood

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1537069306

  ISBN-13:978-1537069302

  CONTENTS

  Forward

  Sir Jacob the Coward

  Christopher Brummet

  Forest of Bones

  Angel Blackwood

  Dear You

  Kim Fry

  A Second Life for Lady Jane

  J.E. Feldman

  The Tiger of Jiang Liao

  Thomas G. Atwood

  A Greedy Gamble

  Dana Villa-Smith

  The Witching Hour

  Emily R. Saunders

  About the Authors

  Forward

  One of the hardest things for any artist to do is experiment creatively. The same applies to authors. Our preferred genres, themes, and stories are like a warm security blanket. We wrap them around ourselves and perfect them with tireless effort. In many ways, that’s a good thing. It creates large, expansive worlds and allows us to master the techniques and tropes of our favorite stories. Sometimes we need to step out of our comfort zone, however. By experimenting with other genres, we can figure out other techniques, storylines, and plots that can help us in future stories.

  So I came up with an idea: I’d gather up a group of authors, take their preferred genres, and assign them to someone else. This would allow us to experiment with other genres and expose us to stories we may never have experienced. I gathered the best authors I know, and we plunged headfirst into the project. It was challenging, to say the least. While I can’t speak for the others, I spent many days banging my head against the wall trying to find a story idea I liked.

  The results, however, were spectacular. The authors in this story not only met these challenges but vastly exceeded them. We’ve gathered everything from Noir to High Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction, and Romance. The stories within are immersive, polished, and thrilling. I hope you’ll enjoy this collection and will appreciate it more for the torment we’ve suffered.

  Thomas G. Atwood

  Sir Jacob the Coward

  Christopher Brummet

  Purveyor of fine inappropriate optimisms & grandiose caffeinated manifests. Webmaster and byte wrangler over at www.studioshinnyo.com.

  I normally dabble in much happier endings, but every once in a while, one has to break off a square of the deep, rich, bitter chocolate and let it melt on the tongue. This is my take on "Dark Fantasy," without letting it get too grimy. Enjoy!

  To my Lord, my Love and my Lungs

  The path was hidden by equal measures of shadow and magic, but the rules of entrance and the tolls required were well known even in the village. Sir Jacob slumped against his sheathed sword and sighed as he peered into the misty woods ahead.

  "Is there any other way in?" he asked his mule by the road, not really expecting an answer.

  "So soon defeated, Coward?" came a mocking voice from within the animal's saddle bags.

  A brief flash of rage crossed the old knight’s eyes, but it faded as quickly as it came. Instead of striking the bag and the source of the voice, his fist came up and rubbed across the afternoon's stubble on his chin. "Why must you Woodfolk be so bloody difficult?"

  "I can see into your heart, foolish man-giant. You have no songs! Even the widows and truffle-pigs your village sends our way have music in their hearts."

  "Indeed," Sir Jacob muttered, taking a moment to pat the neck of his increasingly jittery mule.

  "No joy. No music." The voice turned from mocking to an almost pitying tone. "No wonder you are so cowardly. How sad your life must be without song."

  Jacob reached into the mule's pack and pulled out a small, intricately made iron cage. It had once been used to carry gas-birds for the miners, but it had been re-purposed to house a small, red frog hanging from a loop of string in the middle. The frog glared at him with an unnatural intelligence and hatred.

  "Then you. You sing for me," the old knight said.

  "Would you trade me my freedom if I sang?” the frog asked, its tiny mouth moving unnaturally like a child’s lips.

  "No."

  "Then you already have your answer, Coward."

  Sir Jacob pulled off his thick leather gloves and set to work re-tying his scabbard to his side. Inspiration struck and with a smile he tried to fill the uneasy silence of the forest with the tunes he had learned from the army. The frog looked unimpressed as the old knight began humming.

  First was a marching tune from the frontier, one of the only that still lived within memory. Its notes did nothing to dispel the supernatural darkness cloaking the way forward. Another he tried was affectionately known as the Lonely Soldier's Lament. While he never remembered the words, they focused upon the joy of returning home to a waiting, warm bosom after the killing and cold mornings of the war.

  "How hopeless you are, Coward," the frog chimed in.

  The old knight peered down at the iron cage and focused on the blood-red skin of the tiny animal. He closed his eyes, letting the colour and the image of blood stay fresh in his mind. "Then I'll borrow a song from someone else, you little demon."

  This time, in a soft voice not befit of a man who had trekked across a dozen battlefields still wet with blood nor hiding behind the emboldened bravado of his fellows, Sir Jacob began to sing a lullaby:

  "Come all, come all, to the woods of the king.

  Where the creek glitters of silver and of gold.

  Fairly with the words you've learned to sing.

  I'll trade you my treasures should you be so bold."

  "Blasphemy! Treason!" the little frog howled into the sky as the song echoed down through the roots of the trees. "How dare you -"

  "Hush!" Sir Jacob said as the shadows shifted and parted. Before he could change his mind, he grabbed the frog's cage, loosed the rope around the mule's reins, and attempted to pull the animal inside the new opening.

  The mule's eyes went wide with terror and brayed, refusing to be coaxed more than a foot closer. "Stubborn old -" Jacob growled, and unfastened the reins. "Go, then! Be free, you worthless animal!"

  It hesitated until a rustling of leaves filled the air. Jacob turned to see the newly revealed path closing and the mule was already bounding off in the opposite direction, braying wildly and kicking at imagined foes. "Bloody Woodfolk!" he roared, holding tight to his sword and the frog's cage before charging into the path, eyes tightly closed.

  Branches tore at his face and bare hands as he stumbled through blindly at first, but after a few dizzying moments of speed, tripping and tumbling over a fallen log, he caught his breath and opened his eyes. Though he couldn't have travelled more than a few steps within the treeline, it seemed an entirely different world. A curious trail of mushrooms coaxed him deeper into the woods, and the trees no longer seemed
dense and unassailable. Even the midday sun was allowed to shine through the treetops here, giving the path an almost golden hue.

  "Charging in blind!?" The frog let out a laugh as his cage was picked up. "Is that how you've managed to live so long, Coward?"

  Sir Jacob cleared his throat, stood, and wiped a line of beaded blood from his cheek with a wince. "Seems to have worked for me so far."

  For a dozen miles or more, the woods maintained their surreal, enchanting haze. Berry bushes of all sorts offered their branches shamelessly, plump with every kind of sweet treat. At the foot of every tree lay delicate truffles, acorns, and nuts beyond even the greediest of mortal stomachs. Tame squirrels and hares bounded back and forth across the path, nibbling on the treasures and casting only the briefest, unconcerned glances at the man tromping through the leaves with a broadsword and dusty leather armour. It was no wonder the village had treasured the Woodfolk's friendship for so long with such a banquet ready to be picked at.

  Even the frog seemed tempted by the docile flight of a moth daring to get close enough to eat. As it lashed out its tongue, though, it slapped against the iron bars of the cage and it howled in pain.

  "I warned you this was coal-iron," Jacob said, raising the cage to eye level. "Don't touch the bars."

  A sooty smoke seemed to emanate from the frog's mouth as it spoke next. "Filthy mortal metal. If you wish to kill me, just do so! Are you that much of a coward that you can't fell a toad?"

  Jacob laughed at last and found a stump to sit down on. "You seem to think calling me a coward is an insult. I've been called much worse by men and monster far greater than you, little demon."

  "Then it must be a deeper insult in my realm than the lands of the mortals," the frog muttered.

  Sir Jacob's eyes narrowed, though the grin on his face remained. "Do you know why they called me The Cowardly Knight? I mean, that must be what you've heard, right? What you've heard from your time among us? From your time as Her?"

  The frog said nothing but shifted uncomfortably in the tiny confines of the cage.

  "They call me the Cowardly Knight because my hand shakes when I pick up a sword in anger," he said, tapping the hilt of his blade still strung up on his hip. "As I returned from the last war, I swore I'd never see my steel part flesh or crush bone again. Swore to all the gods I knew of and even a few I had heard existed in the frontier. Maybe they listened because when I had to try to strike at a fox to protect the Oris family's chickens, I dropped my spear and trembled for a week afterwards."

  "So you blame your man-gods for your cowardice?" the frog croaked.

  "I blame them for nothing!" Jacob shouted, startling the woods into silence. "No, little demon. I don't blame them for my shaking hands. If anything, I blame them for honouring my oath so well. Word for word, I will never see my blade harm another living thing as long as I live."

  After a long silence, the woods seemed to give up their shock and return to the usual whispering branches, buzzing insects, and distant chirps of birds overhead. Sir Jacob got back up to his feet, checked his sword and then lifted the birdcage back up and tucked it under his left arm

  "Then how will you pay the Third Toll?" the frog asked.

  "Show me the way deeper and you'll find out," the knight said.

  Indignant, the frog pointed a padded toe onward, a little north of the path presented. “Forget the Third...The Second Toll is not to be taken lightly, Coward. You may have stolen a Song, but it is not so easy to steal a Story.”

  "I could make up a dozen as I walk with you,” Sir Jacob said, though it was without pride. “And if truth is required, I have witnessed wars, protected towns, and sown fields...I am not short of stories, demon."

  At this, the frog began to laugh. “Do you think stories of war, of towns and of the spreading of seed have not been shared by a hundred thousand lips?”

  Sir Jacob the Cowardly Knight glared down at the frog as it made a great show to fall on the floor of his iron cage, laughing deeply.

  "Curse your stolen song," the frog laughed, wiping away imaginary tears of laughter for effect. "But each story must be a new story. Not imagined, but acted upon. Any fool can imagine a story of talking twigs or fat queens!"

  As they walked, the illusion of a golden glade full of ripe treasures began to fade, and the darker, deeper wood enveloped them. Along with the change in atmosphere was the growing feeling of being watched. The shadows became long and hungry, drawing each glance and gaze into unfathomable depths, letting the imagination run rampant with each tiny flick of light within.

  "You are outmatched here, Coward," the frog whispered forbiddingly. "Turn back now and you may escape with your sanity. Set me free, and I will set forth a kind word of mercy before the visions of the wood spirits haunt your every step."

  But when the tiny frog looked up, expecting to see a nervous, even frightened knight, he only saw contempt.

  "Mercy?" Jacob said, barely beyond a whisper. "I am not scared of what your kind can twist the shadows into," he muttered, reaching down to pull a strip of cloth from his pocket. "I've already seen the extent of your trickery and my heart has been injured as much as it can be. The gods cursed me to never see me harm another again, but in doing so, I have not needed my sight for a long time."

  He raised the cloth to his eyes and tied it around as a blindfold. Shadow gave up its secrets to calm, calculated darkness, and the knight drew his sword.

  "Let me tell you the story," Sir Jacob announced to the wood, "of Little Sally Kino. Listen well, Woodfolk, for it will be the last one you hear!"

  The tiny frog swallowed back a nervous ribbit as the shadows began to ooze the hidden army of the forest. "Coward! I know you mistrust me and I you, but I trust less that you will survive with my skin intact. Run, I beg you, run!"

  "Her name was Sally. A bright girl with hair like a bird, wild and untamed except for a yellow ribbon she wore every day. Always the ribbon, be it cleaning a pigsty or setting out the good plates and tea. She would go through each day like a tiny sunrise, and when the people of the village were downtrodden, all burdens and cares seemed a little easier to carry after she paid you a visit."

  The old sword came down in time to sever the first attacker's head from its body. It had come in the form of a nightmarish snake as thick and long as a tree-trunk, but as the blade swung through the illusion evaporated and the tiny sprite fell, bloody and still against the grey-green underbrush. It looked like a naked child, impossibly small and thin, with a pair of cellophane wings and war-paint zigzagging its skin into angry, pollen-coloured patterns. This one bled orange. The next, as the sword completed its circuit into the approaching shadowy lynx, bled a bright pink as it was impaled from nose to thigh. The sword's very width was enough to make the cut against the tiny soldier's form.

  "Save me!" the frog declared as three vicious eagle-like birds screamed their attack and dove from the treetops.

  Again, the blade swung true, this time in a wide arc into the sky, ignoring the misty false shapes and instead cleaving the three tiny bodies within. Their tiny, silver swords were no larger than sewing needles but fortified with magic and venom alien to mortal lands. Regardless of the magic making them shimmer in the unseen light, they fell useless to the leafy ground along with the bisected bodies of their owners.

  "Sally would spend her days with anyone who needed her help: playing with the new babes as their mothers earned an hour of rest when they could, or cheering up old veterans of the frontier like myself with tea and sweetbread. I admit, her mother was still fair, and I wondered out loud to her if one day I might become Sally's father." The old knight sighed, twisting his blade around effortlessly through the fading illusion of a wild boar, fragmenting the little sprite within and leaving nothing but a crimson smear in the mud as he stepped forward.

  The cage bounded around on Sir Jacob's belt as he narrowly danced around the strike of another snake, letting its fangs instead find the cold iron pommel of his sword. Ribbiting frantical
ly, the frog held itself to the tiny loop of rope given to it in the centre of the bars, lest it be thrown against them. "You are mad! Absolutely mad!"

  With a laugh, Jacob nodded. "I suppose I am. Over the three years of living back at the village, I became more in love with the idea of being a father than I ever did at being lost in her mother's kind eyes and warm breast. I became a father by accident, leaving youthful desires in the frontier, along with my blood-lust."

  His smile and laugh faded, replaced with a flurry of stabbing strikes, impaling six sprites who had arranged themselves in a kind of hydra-like beast.

  "But I'm getting sidetracked," the knight said. "My story is not about Bethany Kino. Sally, with her big heart and trusting nature, she naturally became the target of much trouble. The day she met a travelling salesman who was more enamoured with her bright smile and less discerning about her tender age...well...I think the entire village realized how much trouble she would be."