OH HEY! I DID IT TWO YEARS IN A ROW!!! =D

NANOWRIMO 2011

Creature Comforts

Excerpt from Chapter One





Melvin Albright's first memory of Weatherworn house was from standing in his mother's gardens.

Though he would be hard pressed to tell you why these days his mother had gone racing up that hill holding his father's best green tie, he did remember her flash of red hair as she darted, surefooted, up the craggy hillside. From his vantage point, he could see when his mother arrived, and pounded on the old well-worn wood of the door, and when it opened, from where he was standing, no one was there.

His mother had looked down, and he assumed that she was talking to someone, and then an old, bitter looking woman filled the doorway. She was thin as a rail and looked twice as sharp, and from the few times a year that Old Lady Weatherworn came in to town, he knew that those piercing grey eyes could see right through you. More than once, his mother had crossed herself when they passed each other in town, so he wasn't sure why she was talking to the old woman now, but she must have said something to the old woman to be invited in to the house, as the old woman stepped aside and invited his mother in to her home. Then, the woman had rapped her cane against the door, and Melvin had realized who had answered the door in the first place - a little girl.

Though he had lived in Winter Springs his whole life, he had never seen a child in the Weatherworn house before. Some of his school mates said that the old woman ate small children, and Melvin did not have a hard time believing it, so to see a pale, dark haired girl slip out of the house and on to the hill side was more than a little odd to him. Melvin stared, and stared.

The girl must have felt his gaze on her, because she lifted her hand and waved to him. Her mouth opened wise and Melvin was sure that the girl was screaming hello, but the winds from the hills stole her voice before it could reach him. Melvin raised a shy, timid hand back, and soon the little girl was darting barefoot down the hill through the grass.

"Wow!" Melvin whispered breathlessly as the fearless child raced on bare arches down the grass knolls, hopping over sticks and snake holes, until, breahtless, she arrived at his back garden gate, panting for breath. "You're crazy!" Melvin screeched, staring wide eyed at the insane little girl. "You could have been killed!"

"What are you talking about?" Her foreign, lilting voice held disdain and her nose wrinkled. "I wasn't going to be killed."

Melvin assured her it was quiet dangerous. "Mother says that there are snakes on that hill, and dangerous ones at that. You cant see them, because the grass is so high. Mother says to play on that hill is very very dangerous, and look at you! Running barefoot like you were... they are sure to gobble you up whole!"

The girl snorted. "Hardly. Do you know how big a snake would have to be to be able to swallow me up?" She stretched her arms out as big as she could, fingers reaching away from her torso. "This big! And besides, the only snake I've seen is Medusa, and Grandma keeps her in the basement with the rats."

Melvin gulped. "Rats?" he asked. Then he blinked hard. "Medusa?"

The girl nodded. "Yeah hunh. Grandma's serpent. Medusa is a reticulated python. She's grandma's familiar."

"Familiar?" He hadn't ever heard of a familiar before.

"Uh hunh. Her familiar. Grandma says that I need to get one too, but... I dont like snakes." The girl danced back and forth between her two feet easily. "Medusa scares me. I keep asking grandma if I can get something else, but grandma says that if I get a cat she'll let Medusa have it."

The door to the Weatherworn house opened again, and though he hadn't been able to hear the girl's voice when she called down, the old woman's voice carried loudly down the hill and up his spine. "Get back up here!" The old woman commanded, and the girl nodded.

"I have to go," she said by way of apology to Melvin, and before she could turn and run away, Melvin grabbed her foreman. "Wait." he bid her. "What's you name?"

“Aubrey Weatherworn, you get up here this instant!" The old woman called again.

"Your name is Weatherworn?" Melvin asked, wide eyed and confused. “Are you a witch too?”

The dark haired girl nodded. "It is now; grandma says that names have power, and so she gave me a new one when mommy sent me away." She looked up the hill at her grandmother, and then grabbed Melvin's hand. "I like you though, and I want you to know my name." She leaned in close, and...

...Melvin always wakes up, drenched in sweat, shaking from a dream thats only half remembered.


Only this time it wasn’t the cold sweats or the shakes that he got from the dream that woke him up. It was the sound of his cell phone, playing the ring tone to cops, loudly and just a bit off key. The song, he had to admit, did not transfer well to thirty two bit.

“Hello?” He answered in to the phone, blinking hard as he reached around his bedside table for his glasses. What he heard on the other line, though, had him bolting up in bed, the bleariness gone from his eyes in nearly an instant. “Ill be right there.”


Excerpt from Chapter Five

"What's this door over here?" Sarah asked, "pantry?"

Aubrey looked over and her heart nearly stopped. "That's the basement." The basement. How she could have ever forgotten about the basement was beyond her. for one heart stopping moment, Aubrey was a six year old girl child again, her heart racing as she wrapped her hand around that door knob for the first time and made her way down in to the snake pit...

Her grand mother had taught her the art of potion making in the basement, where it was cool and damp and could keep the climate controlled Unfortunately, the room served a dual purpose - it was also that habitat for Medusa, her grand mother's familiar, a reticulated python. The thirty foot snake could have easily swallowed her as a small child... it could have easily swallowed her as an adult. And her grand mother had sent her down there to face her fears of the glistening snake alone time and again, assuring her each and every time that the snake would never harm her.

And for her credit, the snake never did. Medusa was a frightening creature of snakes and coils and flicking tongues, but Aubrey knew in her heart that her grand mother's familiar was a creature of great power and greater protection. Why, even in the most basic sense of symbolism, the snake was one of the strongest warriors against evil. Striking fear into most people, the snake was an excellent demonstrator on how you shed the past and move on into the future, much in the way they shed their old skin. A snake uses camouflage and speed to subdue its prey and can work as a personal spy for its witch... some thing that Aubrey knew Medusa had done on a regular basis for her grand mother, warning her if danger will soon present itself. The snake was a sign of changes to come some for the better and others for the worse. The circling of a snakes coils also protects us from curses. Aubrey knew all of this, and knew that they snake would never have done anything to harm her personally... as her grand mother had said, Medusa, for all her appearances, was an instrument of good, not evil, and Medusa would be able to sense that Aubrey was her grand mother's progeny, and as a Weatherworn witch, she would be extended nearly the same allowances that her grand mother was. Not all... but definitely most. She would certainly never be turned in to a meal.

Still, walking around in the darkness of the basement, listening to that hiss, tripping over coils and coils of snake... to this day, it still made her heart quicken quite uncomfortably.

"Has any one been down there yet?" Aubrey asked as she put her self between the deputy and the door.

"No... not that I am aware of. We didn't have a warrant, and so it really wasn't our job to search the place... especially since the woman was so fond of her privacy. We figured that she would have appreciated the privacy." Sarah gave her the answers she required readily.

Aubrey knew that Medusa was a long lived beast... could she possibly be down there still, impossibly longer, starving? "When was..." she didn't want to ask the uncomfortable question, but she knew that she had to. "How long has it been since my grand mother died?"

Sarah seemed to sense Aubrey's discomfort, and had a pleasing tone when she answered. "We cant be sure until the coroner gets back to us, but from the looks of it, a week, maybe two."

Long enough for Medusa to be starving, especially if she hadn't eaten the week before her grand mother died. Regardless of whether or not Medusa saw her as an ally, the snake was still just that... a snake.

Given the opportunity for a meal for the first time in up to a month... the snake would strike. Aubrey would be foolish to go in to the python's lair alone, and armed though Sarah was, she doubted that she would be much help with a striking, suffocating python. No, Sarah, being as tiny as she was, would make little more than a side dish for the great snake.

"My grand mother had a pet..." Aubrey began, cautiously. "A snake."

"I know! We asked for her assistance with this snake that got loose a few weeks ago... actually, it was the reason that the Sheriff even came out here and found the body, but obviously she couldn't be of any assistance. Still, we think that the kids who said that they saw the snake may have been just exaggerating; they said it ate a dog whole. Claimed the thing was two hundred feet. Kids, right?"

Aubrey had stopped listening when the woman said that the snake was not loose. Tackling her fear she cracked the door to the basement and turned on a light.

The terrarium was just as she remembered it. Dark, damp, humid… and horrifying. If she had thought that the house has smelled bad, she had been terribly mistaken. The upper part of the house smelled like death, but it was an old death – the kind of death that took its time, savoring each dying cell and devouring a person bit by bit until there was nothing left. The basement, though, reeked of a different kind of death all together. It reeked of the death the was merciless and swift, bloody and agonizing. The death in the basement was sharp teeth and jagged knives; the death in the basement could nearly suffocated her from the evil in the air.

Her hand over her mouth and nose did nothing to cover the smell, but it did help to soothe her a she walked down in to the dark room, Sarah behind her.

"My grand mother owned snake… I'm not even sure that she still had it to be honest. But it was a big snake."

"How big are we talking about?" Sarah asked, the fear showing in the timbre of her voice even though she did not allow it to show in her posture or body language.

"When I lived here, the snake was a little over thirty feet long… it's been almost fifteen years, I can imagine that it's quite a bit longer now."

"Snake live that long?" Sarah asked, and Aubrey nodded without speaking. She was having a hard time keeping her voice steady as well. "Where is its enclosure?"

Aubrey turned to look at Sarah, arms extended as she spun in a half circle. She gave her a plaintive look and Sarah's eyes widened in realization. Still, Aubrey wanted to be sure that Sarah understood exactly what they were getting themselves in to. "We're in it."

Something cracked in the room.

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2010 Nanowrimo

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/664746

Coleraine's Daughter
An Excerpt from Chapter Ten



A light smile played on Penny's lips as she buried and locked her fingers in the thick, warm coat of the dog that lay with it's head at her thighs, her nose buried in a book. A tree grew slowly and strong behind her back, its leaves and flowers reaching towards the sky, longing to touch the white, fluffy clouds.

She didn't know the dog's name that she stroked, nor its temperament. It was a stranger to her. To the man that approached her on the hillside, though, it was an act that nearly stopped him in his tracks. The dog was a guardian of Hell, and there it was, letting her scratch its ears as though it was some sort of lap beast!

Six eyes turned to him, and then, the eyes of the girl, and Donn understood how his beast could be so easily assuaged.

The sun's rays hit and refracted on her long, copper locks, blessedly free from their bindings for once. Even Penny, in her drugged, dazed state, was able to appreciate the feel of her tresses that flowed past her shoulders and down to the soft, airy cotton that covered her dress. Her eyes were bright and green as a new sapling, and he feel to his knees before her when she reached out and beckoned to him to come closer.

"Penelope," He began, grasping her around her thin wrist and holding her cupped hand to his cheek, reveling in the feel of her smooth, uncalloused palms against his cheek. Her skin was light itself, and he was afraid for a moment - truly afraid - that the touch of her flesh against his would leave blistering, red burns.

It didn't though.

The feel of her skin on his sent heat of an entirely different nature shooting through his veins. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, but that hardly concerned him. She filled him with warmth, and though she left no mark on his flesh, when he finally released her and allowed her to pull away, he could still feel that warmth lingering on his cheek.

What would it be like, he wondered, if she were to touch him of her own accord? What would it be like if she were to kiss him? To hold him? To love him?

"Who are you?"

The illusion is broken, and he remembered that she wasn't his lover, this woman who has been declared his life mate. She wasn't his wife, or his mistress. She was his siren, his temptress, his vixen. She knew nothing of the power she had over him, and misused him so poorly. Instead of him catering to her every wish, she was fighting him, fighting destiny itself, all for the sake of a silly muscle she had no need for any way.

"You know me," Donn told her, drawing back in on himself. Composing himself. He stared at her quietly, his hands spread inches from her bare thighs on the cool evening dew on the grass on the fairy hill. It was one of the few places he was able to control her entirely, and he was not going to allow her to escape from him with out a fight.

This was not the way he wanted her. It was never the way he wanted her. Useless and broken, the fire in her eyes extinguished by his power over her. But he would have her, even if it was only to be that shell of a woman. That lovely, empty shell for the vibrant soul that was smothered within.

"Pretty Penny," He leaned in to taste her mouth, to sample the soul of the girl that was still in there, somewhere. He opened his eyes briefly when their lips connect, and he saw that she hadn't closed her eyes to the press of his lips. She was staring off in to the distance, beyond the meadows, to something far behind him. She was not looking at him.

He wondered what words she would call him if she could. Dark man. Kidnapper. Her fingers pause on the hound's fur, and though her eyes are absent and distant, he can sense her underneath her own skin, fighting for control. Fighting to get a grip on herself, and what she perceived as reality.

The edge of her cotton dress was beginning to decay, the fabric fraying and coming undone. It was darkness at the edge of her dress, he knew. His darkness. Someday it would consume her in her entirety, swallow her up like the tasty little mortal morsel she was, and in her place an ethereal immortal Goddess would stand, birthed from her death. It would consume her, someday. But as for today, the darkness has not consumed her. Not yet.

He knew she was losing her mind, her beautiful, intelligent mind. He found though, that if it meant she would be by his side, he didn't particularly care. He was lonely, and tired of the aching nothingness that his existence had become. He wanted her, however he could get her.

Which didn't explain why her stillness displeased him so. He stood, and began to pace on the fairy mound around her. What other words was she dying to call him, if only she could use her tongue for her own purposes? Evil? Wicked? Twisted? He can almost hear her mind whispering curses and wishing his death.

"Damn me?" He asked her, laughing. He was unfazed and jaded. "Damn me? I am damnation, Penelope. I am the name from which damnation was born! I am the darkness in the corner of your room at night that you can not take your eyes off of. I am the unexplainable crack of a branch from deep in the woods behind you!"

His voice was coarse, and angry, but still, Penny made no movement.

"I drag souls down to my kingdom, Penelope! The souls of the wicked! The innocent! The immortal! They all belong to me! Do you think I am not aware of the words that are spoken about me? The bastardization of my name? Do you think that a simple damnation was going to make me feel anything other than amusement?"

Still, Penny would not look at him.

"I am your husband, dammit, and you will. Look. At. Me!"

Something in him broke, and in turn, it broke her too. She stared at him then, and the hatred in her eyes shone threw clearly. He took a step backwards, awed by her ability to break through the trance he had put her under. The trance designed to tie her to that hill to wait for him. To wait until he could come to claim her as his own.

She looked as though she wanted to speak, but was unable to do so. It made very little difference, though. Her eyes said it all.

"I thought you were strong, Penelope," he taunted her, kneeling back down to his haunches. "Such a strong little warrior girl. Ha!" He gripped her chin and leaned her forward. The dog at her feet, uncomfortable with being so crowded, crawled backwards to give the pair of them their space. Donn immediately took it and began to crowd her even more.

"You're barely more than a child! Hardly a woman, let alone a warrior."

Penny hears him speaking, but is unable to respond. She thought to herself though, if I am such a child, then why the obsession? She hoped beyond hope that the message read true in her eyes.

Uninterrupted, Donn continued. "You could hardly be expected to understand the ways between men and women. Too young. Too innocent." The anger bleeds out of his tone, and his bruising grip on her chin becomes a lovers embrace, gentle and kind. He stares deep in to her eyes, and she can see the boundless oceans of loneliness that lie there, deep and still. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to comfort him, but he had placed her in a status, and in doing so, he had not only prevented her from being able to, but from making her wonder if it would have ever been her own judgment that had led her to her... what? Pity? Mercy? Penny was unable to identify her own feelings, but decided that in this particular situation, labels would probably only do to confuse her even more.

"I can smell Spring on your flesh," Donn leaned in and inhaled the scent of her neck, and sighed. Though they didn't touch, the act was innately sensual and it left Penny feeling violated. "You're so beautiful," he whispered adoringly, "it hurts to even be able to smell you. The sun has kissed your face, and branches have brushed your hair. The sky has wept on your cheek. You lovely, lively thing..."

She wondered if she reminded him of what he couldn't have.

"You curse me, but that it nothing new," he told her, sitting back against the tree and pulling her to his chest. They were facing the Bann River then, and she struggled to move her neck, to face him, to push him away, to pull him closer, anything. Her body was heavy though, as though she had been asleep for a thousand years and was just now waking up, and as such, it would not comply. "I know all about curses. But you, Penelope. You are teaching me something so new. Light. Oh, your light. It burns me, Penny. You could burn me with a touch."

She thought to herself that he should have probably attempted to woe her with poetry instead of stealing her away, but she had no way of telling him so, so instead she held her tongue.

"My dark Queen," his breath fanned her ear and blows tiny strays hairs of copper as he whispered the endearment to her. "Your skin is light itself. Pure. Unbreakable. Unbending light. Penelope," his lips graze the lobe of her ear, and he whispers her name like a spell, "I've been in the dark for so long, Penelope. Beautiful child, Pretty Penny. Burn me with your light." He gripped her wrist painfully and spoke with an intensity of a command.

"Touch me."