The Thorn-Turn

THE THORN TURN

Copyright 2009 by Lee Morgan and Robin Artisson

* * *

The path seemed to give way suddenly, tilt, and lose all solidity. Michael’s hand closed around the fence paling and it seemed he just caught himself. Behind his closed eyes the red veins of his eyelids pulsated, and he felt sweat breaking out on his brow. And with almost eerie, infinitesimal detail he felt every splinter of the fence in his hand, the cold press of the bent nail, the patch of moss… It seemed he would lose consciousness but he didn’t. Trying desperately to word to himself in his own mind this unaccountable dread, this sudden hyper-sensitivity to every color and sound all he could think was: this has happened before…

It was of course a way he’d never taken before, a village that he was not accustomed to and as a traveler he had a very keen sense and memory for where he had passed through in actuality. This was not a path he had walked before, at least not in his waking hours. The path wound away through the woodlands turning sharply after the thorn tree, and became obscure. Michael was no longer in any condition to follow it. He lowered himself slowly, when the ground began to seem more reliable. And when he felt the reassuring, though still disturbingly vivid, sensation of the dew damp grass and the wet-mouthed earth beneath it, he surrendered more fully and lay down flat. It didn’t matter if anyone passed that way or thought him strange. What mattered was to find his equilibrium in this experience, in this place.

Michael had been to strange places before, places with supernatural reputations and scary stories attached to them. And this was not the first time he’d felt altered in them, but nothing of this intensity had occurred before. He had taken to chronicling his journeys, particularly anything that touched on the arcane, the unexplained, the ineffable. As he lay there, his breath shuddering in and out of his slight but wiry frame, and the earth implacable beneath, he looked up at the sky and felt his resistance slipping. It was as though the shapes in the clouds were beginning to take on the shape of his imaginings, as if the space between sleeping and wakefulness was condensing somehow. Let go, a voice seemed to say and something close behind Michael’s breast bone tugged urgently. It would be hard to put a word to that tug, that ache, it was something better expressed by music than by words. But if we had to we’d call it ‘longing.’ We would speak of an empty ‘something’, always there in that space behind his breast-bone always pining and searching for something half remembered. Always moving on, always looking, it might be the next town over. Or over the next hill, he’d tell himself. But when he got there it was always another hill, another patch of land that was not the terrain of the imagination, but mere grass.

He exhaled heavily and the tension seemed to go out of his muscles. For a moment it seemed that the life of the thorn hedge beside him, the shapes in the clouds and the cold earth that bit at his bones were not separate, but part of a dream he’d been having. But then it stopped and receded. Michael wanted to cry out in pain and reach his arms out towards the retreating vision, tension crept back into his muscles. He sat up.

“You shouldn’t sleep by that tree you know,” the girl said, without looking up from the daisy chain that she was quietly weaving. Michael startled and found himself checking that she was indeed a ‘real girl’. She appeared real enough, down to the dirt under her finger nails and some out-of-place hair. Quickly he composed himself, meaning to make some small talk that would make him appear less eccentric. But as soon as he met the girl’s slate grey eyes he knew there was no need. She regarded him as though she had expected nothing less from her day than to encounter a strange man lying next to a hedgerow, his backpack and bedroll laying about him on the grass.

“Are you the sort of wanderer that collects stories?” The girl asked lightly. “I can tell you a story of this place.” Her voice trailed away for a moment, as she fiddled with the stem of a daisy and inserted another through the hole she had made. She looked back up at Michael then and he looked down himself to cover his surprise.
“Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I am.”
She nodded as though it was clear and obvious to her.
“You have the look of a man looking for a story.” She looked him over then, so clearly appraising him that it made Michael feel nervous. “Mmm, I think I like you well enough, you may have my story if you wish.” It seemed a strange remark but Michael still replied quickly.
“I would like that very much.” The girl didn’t pause from her occupation with the flowers but began immediately without looking up. And when she spoke her tone became that of someone for whom story-telling is as natural as breathing.

“In the time of the people who are no longer here, there was a great king who ruled this stretch of woods, with his wife and twin daughters. You can’t see it now, but his fine-timbered round hall was only a half a mile from where you now stand. Or at least not unless you know where to look. The king was getting old, and he had neither a son nor an eldest daughter- for by his people’s reckoning, neither girl was older than the other, not even the one whose head had emerged from the womb first.

“The kings whose lands surrounded him envied his lands and two of them particularly had courted his daughters- one young and good man, and the other older, and more greedy. Neither of these contending kings would have a greater claim on the old king’s lands for simply marrying one of his daughters, so a struggle and bloodshed seemed inevitable.

The wicked king had a sorcerer in his court, who was every bit as wicked as the king himself. The dark king asked him to bring his power to bear on the situation- and do away with the daughter who was intended to marry his rival. This the sorcerer could do: using a glamour, he made himself to look like the young king and went to the court of his intended’s father- why, just a short walk from here.” As she said this she indicated with her head the direction of the turn in the path and the hidden wood beyond.

“He led her out for a ride in the countryside, and when the time was right, the two men escorting them were driven away by bandits he had paid to lie in wait. The daughter of our king fled into the woods with the man she believed was her noble love- but she was gravely misled by the glamour. He asked her to dismount, and handed her his thorn-blasting rod, and asked her to drive it into the ground. She did, and it became a thorn tree- and she became part of that tree.

The seers of her grieving father could not find her, but they could tell that she still lived, and was nearby. When it was discovered that her betrothed had not visited her that day, the court was in an uproar at the foul sorcery that had stolen her from them. Her intended was inconsolable, and he wandered the forest, always seeking her, feeling her nearby, but never able to find her. His rival did become king, married to the sister who wasn’t turned into a tree, when the old king died. Our young king never left these woods, and his kingdom passed into dust and memory.” As the girls words died away she slowly let fall a handful of earth that she had been collecting in her fingers, as though illustrating the inevitable passage of time and passing of all things into the mists of memory.

“That is a wonderful story,” Michael said, “where did you come by it?” The girl shrugged, as though the answer was not at all straightforward.
“At my Grandmother’s hearth, and perhaps embellished from the local story-teller, and then again maybe a little from the trees.” She looked directly at Michael again then. “My names Anna, what’s yours?”
“Michael,” he replied, “umm… pleased to make your acquaintance,” he added, remembering his manners. Anna giggled as though this formality amused her.
“We’ve already story-shared, it’s too far in for standing on ceremony,” she informed him. “Where are you heading Wandering-Storyteller?” He smiled then, for the first time in the conversation and allowed himself to come down a little from his earlier state of hyper-sensitivity and nerves.
“Ahh… I was meaning to head… that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Thorn Turn. Anna followed the direction of his finger with her eyes.

“That way,” she said, as though turning the notion over in her mind for a while, “that way is no-way. Where are you going really Wanderer?” Michael frowned now. He didn’t quite know how to reply.
“I suppose I don’t altogether know. I was just going to get from here to there and decide when I see there.” He tried to grin but the girl didn’t grin in reply, she just shook her head obstinately.
“You’ll never get to there.”
Her words seemed to serious they chilled him, as though she were a sibyl who had suddenly offered him unexpected prophecy. And of course he was a collector of tales; and it is well understood by all collectors of stories that the stranger you meet by the roadside could well be a sibyl, or a fairy-godmother, or even a witch.

“And why is that?” he asked nervously. Unexpectedly she laughed then, and her laugh had a merry unrestrained quality, as though she had never sat at table with any proper folk who might find a full-throated belly laugh on a woman unbecoming.
“Well ‘there’ is always becoming ‘here’ isn’t it? When you get there?”
“Yes it is rather,” he murmured to himself, feeling oddly humiliated, as though she had somehow blithely stumbled over the very essence of his life’s dilemma.
“Well I suggest you don’t go down there yet. You should tarry a while at ‘here’. See, if you go now you’ll see the Princesses Thorn, right after you pass the turn.”
“And what would be wrong with that?”
She grinned at him, and her elfish features which he might have described as ‘cute’ suddenly had something secretive and womanly about them, that made him change his estimate of her age. Getting up and brushing the fallen petals from her apron and hung the daisy chain upon the hedge as though in offering. She replied finally:
“Well if you go at the right time you might see the Princess. If you walk down that way now all you’ll see is trees and bracken. Trust me, I meet with a lot of seekers like you, who turn up here looking for the story and looking for apparitions who come out of trees.” She pushed her arm through his and led him on to follow her, an intention she carried out with great efficiency given her petite size and the fact that Michael was a good deal taller than her. “None of them ever find them. Come Wanderer, have some tea.”

She led him along a short, winding path in almost the other direction, until they came to a previously invisible cottage behind a tangled hedge.
“You live here?” he asked her, as she opened the rasp-voiced gate.
“I do. Once with my aged Grandmother. But I buried her last fall.”
“How old are you?” he asked abruptly, as she fastened the gate, and then realized he’d spoken out of turn. “I mean. Forgive me. I was just…”
“Curious,” she finished for him, “no harm done. I am a woman, if that’s what you ask. Of three Summers past or so. I’m well able to do for myself.” With this she beckoned him under a low hanging lintel, it was festooned with patches of lichen and appeared to have seen its better days somewhere about the time of Cromwell. Michael had to bend a good deal to get inside. “I hope you are not offended by simplicity. My only wealth is in stories I’m afraid.” Michael stood still for a good while allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness.
“Well that is all the better; that is the only kind of wealth I’m interested in.”
Anna lit a candle then from the low coals in the grate that her breath taunted into flame. The sudden flash of illumination gave him a glimpse of a strange place and a strange girl, lit for a moment and then falling into shadow. In that space of shadow and uncertain light it seem possible to Michael for a moment that ‘here’ could become ‘there.’
“Perhaps I shall like you,” she said, turning to him and bringing with her the stream of candlelight, “I don’t normally like them.”
“Who?” Michael asked.
She smiled, but only faintly. “The people who come here. They seldom understand the true power of stories.”

As the sky grew dim outside, Anna placed a cup of steaming tea into Michael’s hands. He spooned sugar into it, politely refusing the milk she offered, and took a cautious sip. The taste was sweet and full of life. “This is jasmine!” he said, with a full smile. “It’s wonderful.”
“Thank you” she replied, stirring milk into her own cup. The candlelight in the room created a warm aura which became more and more golden as the day faded without. In this light, Michael found himself staring at Anna more and more; she was a pretty girl to his sight already, but in this light, an antique beauty began to emerge in her face. Michael found himself dreaming of nights long ago, in ages past, when people sat nightly around the sort of fire, looking into one another’s faces as the snow-storms outside raged.

He fancied he could hear the stories they told one another, as they sipped at horns and earthen cups, drinking earthy ales and broths of nettle and lard…
“The best part of tea is the ending” Anna said smoothly, bringing Michael out of his twilight dream. Michael had finished with his tea and was caught unawares. “What do you mean?” he inquired, trying to hide the fact that he had drifted away from their conversation.
“The leaves. They tell stories also.” Anna said, sliding over to sit next to him, and showing him the inside of her empty cup.
“You mean tea-leaf reading?”
She shrugged.
“Something like that. I can’t read, so whether it’s like reading or not I couldn’t tell you. But I know when a person drinks from my tea, stories start to form there, in the cup.” The dark wet leaves and dregs made a cobweb of shapes and clumps against the white porcelain. “You see there? That bit that looks like a man with a stick is a traveling man- you, my visitor. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen him; I’ve been seeing him for a week.”
Michael smiled broadly. “Grandma teach you to read the leaves, I take it?”
“Among other things” Anna said. “Look to your own hand, my good lad- what’s that I see in your cup?”
Michael looked down, and quite to his surprise, the piles of remnant tea-leaves had formed themselves into what was undeniably a tree, very crooked, with a familiar fork in the center of the trunk. “Well I’ll be damned- it looks like…”
“Like the Princess Thorn that you saw today” she finished for him. “Maybe she’ll come to looking for you as you have arrived here with me.”
Michael regarded her for a moment, she seemed quite serious.
“So you… you really believe in that story then? That a woman was changed into a tree?”

She looked at him with no change in her expression for some time, nor did she answer. After a while she placed her cup down on its saucer, and the chink of porcelain sounded loud in the sudden silence. Outside a wind got up and clawed a little at the low hanging trees and vines that clung to the house, making swishing noises and reminding the occupants of the close presence of the green world.
“You must understand I’ve lived out here all my life, traveler, and it seems to me in looking around myself I see things turn into other things all the time. Leaf loam turns into fresh shoots, animals are killed and turned into living animals.”
“But have you ever seen a tree turn into a woman?” he found himself asking. Anna only smiled.

Michael lay awake in the bed that Anna had turned down for him. It was a simple collection of pillows and blankets near the hearth, but Michael had certainly slept many a worse place in his time and on this blustery night he was grateful for her hospitality. It was not, therefore, discomfort or the wind outside that stole his rest, keeping his eyes wide against the semi-dark. Michael’s imagination raced as he watched the patterns that the shadows made in the firelight, it seemed that maybe he was finally having the adventure he’d been looking for.

At length he slept, and in his sleep he found himself retaking the steps of his journey that day. When he reached the fence just before the turn in the road he was found himself clutching the railing again, struck by the same sense of unaccountable strangeness. Once again he was spiraling down, lowering himself toward the reliable earth and then before he woke, for a moment, there was a flash of a woman’s face above him. There for a second, and then gone. And he was left with that same sense of skin-tingling familiarity. He wanted to see more but something else was breaking into his awareness.

“You need to wake up,” he heard a voice say, and slowly, confused, he opened his eyes. But there was no one there with him. Sitting up he looked around him, reminding himself of where he was, as he had to do each morning. And yet it was not morning. The front door lay open on its hinges and dead leaves were scattered across the floor. Michael shivered with cold, rubbing his arms vigorously as he stood up. The fire in the grate seemed to have gone out.
“Anna?” Michael asked cautiously, pushing open slightly the only other door in the room. All he saw was a small empty bed with the covers pushed back. “Anna?” There was no answer. Grabbing his coat Michael pulled it on quickly and went out the front door. “Anna?” he said to the cold night air.

But no answer was returned to him. Instinctually he picked out the path that they had taken to arrive there earlier in the day, the cold night dew on the bracken fern wetting his trousers. He was about to say her name again when faint moonlight emerged from between the clouds and the trees and illuminated a white shape ahead along the path. The urge to call out ‘Anna’ died away in his throat and he shivered. Was that her? The light was too dim, and she had walked on into the shadows of the next patch of trees. And she was heading towards the thorn turn.

Michael hesitated for a moment before plunging on into the shadows ahead. He pushed strange tendrils of fear away, odd doubts that were creeping into his mind. This is the real world, he thought firmly. It was just dark, and shadows play tricks on the mind. Magical stories and myths always had some grain of mundane truth beneath them. Michael never doubted the beauty of stories, and the charm of folklore- these things could help create happiness and good character in a person. But to be afraid of the dark and ghosts, in this day and age? It was not becoming a man like him.

After pushing along through the murk of night and the sudden rushing winds, he stopped, daunted for a moment by the shift of presence in this place. It was quieter suddenly, and the great jagged outline of the Princess Thorn stood above him in the moonlight. The very air here seemed suspended in tension. Anna was nowhere to be seen. Good enough for me, he thought.

As he turned to leave, he unexpectedly pitched forward into the dirt, landing hard. He hadn’t been pushed, but he felt as though he had been thrown forward. Nor did his attempts to get up seem to matter- his legs felt as solid and unyielding as stone. In shock he cried out once, and then again. The echo from his voice seemed to get absorbed quickly by the trees around him. His arms were still in his command, and he scratched and pushed at the ground, trying to heave himself up and over. The fear began to burn in him now- had he been shot? Was he paralyzed and unable to feel the pain of the wound? His fantasies became more and more lurid, feeding his panic. He let out a hoarse scream, more desperate this time, and then heard the snapping of wood breaking across the clearing from him.

He craned his neck to look, and another ghostly feminine shape had come into the presence of the Princess Thorn. This one was Anna- looking just as pale as the phantom woman he had pursued here. Anna wasn’t looking at him; her eyes were fixed on the thorn tree.

“Let me tell you a story, Princess” she said, as though talking to someone invisible. “It’s about a girl who got lost in a deep hedge, and pushed her way through the thorns inside for what seemed like days, before she emerged from the enchanted bush, into another world. She didn’t want to be in this strange new world; she wanted to go back to her father, who was a king, and her fiancé, who was a prince- but she had been exiled from her world by the sorcery of her wicked stepmother, who wanted her own daughter to marry the prince and inherit great lands.

In the strange otherworld of perpetual twilight, she came upon a great apple tree, surrounded by the tents and pavilions of many green-cloaked and green-dressed lords and ladies. The apple tree had a great wooden throne carved in it, and on that throne sat the ageless Queen of the Apple Court. Her dark hair was braided with roses and her emerald colored gown was dotted all over with May blossoms, as though they grew out from the fabric, as from the grass itself. The girl was frightened but she managed to find her voice, dropping the beautiful vision on the throne a low curtsey she said:

“Merciful Lady, I beg you, show me the way back through that deep hedge which has swallowed me, allow me to go back to my lands and be with my beloved.” The Queen appeared to consider her request, though her expression changed little. About her feet a shadowy feline creature swept back and forth, brushing her gown, first in one direction and then the other, it’s bright eyes on the girl.
“You are in my lands now, you have disturbed the natural flow of things. You would disturb it yet again to reverse it a second time. What will you give me for your passage?” The Queen asked. The girl looked down at her hands, she had rings on them, but somehow she knew better than to suggest the giving of mere gold for her passage.
“Tell me a price you would accept Lady,” the girl said.
“Go back through the hedge and live your life my girl. You will return here at the end of your life and serve as one of my hand-maidens. A not disagreeable task. But mark me well, when your time comes to return again into the land of the living, you will live as a guardian of this place, right beside the deep hedge here and only you will protect the gateway here from further intrusions.”
And so of course the girl accepted and returned. She lived to be a very old lady, a good happy life where she had many children and grandchildren. When her time came to draw her final breath she found herself back in that deep hedge, pushing, pushing until the forest cleared. And there she was joyfully ushered back into the court of the Apple Queen.”

Here Anna’s voice paused, and Michael held his breath. He wanted her to go on, both because the sense of wrath and unrest about him had settled while she spoke and because he anticipated some great revelation. While she paused Anna gently caressed the outlying branches of the thorn. “But of course her happy estate in the court was not to be forever either and her time came again to take rebirth as a human child, in a small rundown cottage not far from the deep hedge she had once wandered into. She was orphaned quickly in life but her Grandmother was there for her, the right woman to set her on her path to remembering her destiny. For there was one other piece of information that the Queen of the Apple Court had told her during her time as her handmaiden: she would be called on to perform that duty at that place until she could right a certain wrong that had torn open that place and made the hedge bottomless and dark, many years ago.” Slowly Anna turned slightly from the tree, as though acknowledging that she were now speaking to two people; the tree and Michael. Looking down at Michael for a moment, she made a quick and subtle gesture to him to stand. Shakily he did as she bid him.

“Once, so long ago that all but the Queen of the Apple Court had forgotten even the lore of it, another princess, very much in love was denied her wedding night with the man she loved. And the girl in question, well she understood and sympathized, remembering what it had been to herself be trapped beyond the hedge. And every day in her new form she would wander down past the thorn-turn and promise the Princess that she would find him for her and right the wrong. She solemnly promised that tree, for such she had been made, that she would use all of the arts her grandmother taught her to set them both free of their curse and their burden.” She turned then to the Princess-thorn, took three steps toward the trunk and placed two pale open hands on the gnarled bark. “I give you Princess, the fruit of that promise, my greatest magic that will be the cause of both our freedoms. You needn’t be angry anymore Princess, come out from the bark, out from the leaves and stems.”

For a moment she turned her head toward Michael and he thought he saw her lips mouth the words ‘goodbye Michael.’ And then she had turned back and laid her head against the tree. She began muttering some kind of incantation, some repetitive words that he could neither catch nor understand and gradually as she did so it appeared that her body was slumping down. It was hard for him to see exactly what happened, as the wind had risen and was beginning to create confusing sounds and whip around the branches above Anna. It also seemed to Michael as though the same ghostly pale glow he had seen on the woman figure who had led him there, glowed about Anna now, and about the tree. Anna’s body trembled violently so that he feared for her.

“Anna!” he cried, telling himself to move forward, to do something. But Anna’s body crumpled to her knees then, and finally slid to earth. At this Michael finally managed to move, overcoming his fear of the tree and the sick feeling his fall had left him with, he made it to Anna’s side. The wind was starting to subside now, it seemed as if whatever haunted that place and caused him such inexplicable feelings had withdraw. Pulling her small and light frame into his arms Michael turned Anna over. Her eyes were closed but as soon as he saw her face he knew it wasn’t Anna. When her new eyes opened though the feeling of growing dread that had been crawling coldly through his intestines suddenly faded. He found himself thinking: I’ve been here before. The beautiful lady smiled and Michael smiled too. And he knew for the first time he’d finally found his way from ‘here’ to ‘there.’

“Thank you Anna,” he whispered, looking out into the darkness to the hedge beyond. And then the lady, who had once been a thorn, who had once been a lady, tried out her newly warmed human lips on her long-lost prince, and the disturbed thicket began to settled all around them.

Story Seed: The Account of Dr. Theophilus Pirard, Concerning the Vulkolak, 1893

The Account of Dr. Theophilus Pirard, Concerning the Vulkolak, 1893

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"Peradventure it will come to pass that an unprejudiced person shall read the account I make here, an account of the true history of the curse which came to haunt the distant Ciuluc hills in the troubled year of our Lord 1893; of the manner in which that curse consumed the lives of Christian men and women, destroying their purest and most innocent, and of the divine providence that established me capable of bringing this terror to an end, consigning it to the awful hell which was its origin.

I write this account for one who can speak no longer- a memorial and eulogy of truth to sweet Mariya Mozgovoy, whose life I could not save, though by my righteous vengeance, her tormentor and murderer troubles this world no longer. I further write this account so that posterity will be schooled in the strange science which brings this curse to ceasing, should it break loose once again.

I, Theophilus Pirard, native to Brugge, have spent the greater part of my life and career as an alienist studying and researching strange and exotic superstitions and the allied supernaturalism of primitive peoples. I have fathomed the secret doctrines of spirit-worship, discernable in the mythologies of Europe and abroad, and in the rude dances and chants of foreign peoples still untouched by civilization's light. In Europe, the eastern peoples of Roumania, Bessarabia, and the Bulgarian hinterlands still maintain something of their dark past of spiritism, as do the Hindoos yet further east.

I had taken it upon myself to travel in these lands, and collected many volumes of lore and accounts of preternatural phenomenon, some witnessed only briefly by myself, but the larger bulk second and third-hand accounts of others. Before my recent soujourn into Bessarabia's dense forests, and the curious sequence of events which brought me into the house of the distressed Mozgovoy family and further into soul-imperiling conflict with the curse of the Vulkolak- the beast which emerges from a man- I had been skeptical of the claims of savage peoples.

I had been skeptical as a man of science, owing to the irrational and oftentimes morbid states of fascination with animals, heathen gods, and magical tales of wonder held by these children of the world. But no longer; the subject and true events of my present account passes beyond all reason. What I have seen, I cannot un-see."

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This story is now being co-created by Robin Artisson and Lisa Dalton. It will be coming soon! Be on the lookout!

The Glamour of the Sacred Sybarite

THE GLAMOUR OF THE SACRED SYBARITE

Copyright © 2009

By Robin Artisson and Lee Morgan

* * *

Years ago, John Talcott discovered the key to a gate which led to another world. He discovered it through a chain of events most unexpected: a distant, grizzled relative unknown to him had passed away, leaving him the sole inheritor of a decrepit estate perched on overgrown acres near the ancient village of Black Brook. A few days travel through the long-shadowed countryside brought Talcott to his estate, to stir in the dust-choked halls and rooms of the manor, and rummage through trunks and armoires that had not been opened for a century or more.

There, in the high-windowed attic of the house, in a massive chest of cedar, he discovered a leather-encased tome, all yellowed and brittle of page, titled by the unknown hand that penned it "The Glamour of the Sacred Sybarite." A celebration of the divine womanly, the book purported to summon forth a familiar or guide, a helper towards the “Grand Illumination” sought by the wise of every era- though when it came, it came in the form of a phantasmal bride, who would mingle her guidance with libidinous pleasures that could surpass the imaginings of mortal men. The book's writing was all of a curious poetry, and it enchanted Talcott's senses.

He moved into the old manor-house, and kept no company but his own, spending his nights reading and dreaming through the intoxication of bitter liqueurs. As his grimoire schooled him, he slept nearly all day, and by night watched the moon come and go through her baleful cycles for a measured space of time betwixt the red-leafed equinox and the darkest solstice. To his keen frustration, he kept himself from all carnal activities, as to better preserve his essence and make himself more desirable to the Familiar who was to come for him when he assayed the spell-working of the book. He ate the raw hearts of pullets and doves, washing them down with sweet cordials, a lonely love-feast for his spectral intended.

The fields and forests became thickly snowed, and a time finally arrived sympathetic to the mystical operations of the Glamour. Amid flickering candles and smoldering herbs of India and Araby, Talcott ran his hands over the lines and curves of the strange sigils and signs. Sometimes it was as though the symbols raised themselves from the yellow pages- as if the essence of her strained through the parchment, arching into his fingertips as he caressed the pages. The poetry of the conjuration was as intoxicating as the dark green absinthe in his glass, and as maddening as his long self-denial.

As night after night of the work drifted by, Talcott’s usually strong appetites heightened until he no longer perceived the difference between the keen edge of unsatisfied desire, the gradually rising buzz and hum in the living air around him and the way his brain swam with the strange power of the preparations. All mingled together as one growing fire.

Fear had not seemed possible when first he read those aged words, still enshrined in dust. But dust was gone now, replaced by the urgency of new endeavor; now, the all-pervading scent of musk, ambergris and roses censed the air. Moving in the thickness of the atmosphere at night was the gathering of a presence, a presence which loomed unseen over the working even before the words and rituals actions were consummated. The presence was so alien that the hairs stood on the backs of Talcott’s arms, as if in response to a cold blade-edge pressed against his throat. Yet it was familiar, too- as familiar as his own manhood which jerked to attention against the constriction of his trousers. His daily sleep became a thing of restless misery.

Deep in his work one night, Talcott pulled at his collar, and wiped a sudden sheen of perspiration from his brow. The conjuration he was about to recite- the words that were now as though inscribed in his bones- had tendered a warning; it spoke of fear, of mortal terror. It was not fear of the unknown spirit that gathered itself in the billow of his thurible and in the dark ceiling beams of his working-chamber; nay, this fear went much deeper. For in one moment Talcott knew, with something like certainty, that the entity his work would conjure would be his death.

He hesitated, and then gathered his lust-enflamed courage, finishing the mighty invocation of the Sybarite. He shattered an intricate glass of planetary condenser within the confines of a large iron pot. He cast burning coals and herbs into it and snuffed out his shuddering candle-flames as the mixture hissed and snapped angrily in the dark. The great presence that had gathered for days in his house suddenly lifted and vanished, as if it had never descended. The house seemed as light and quiet as the drifting snow outside the windowpanes.

Talcott was exhausted, so he took to his bed. His dreams that night were of burning celestial bodies surrounding the world, and of a great shapeless monstrosity moving through the deep void towards the earth- a great power that pushed its way through the cold ether and filled the sub-lunar sphere, slowly taking the form of a dark horse-like beast among the stars. How strange and disturbing it appeared to Talcott’s dreaming eyes: its black, muscular legs were joined by a patagia-like webbing of veinous skin; its eyes were orbs of white mucous. It flew through the snow-filled skies and always towards his darkened house, moving on the winds with meteoric speed.

Talcott jerked awake suddenly, the clear light of day streaming through the threadbare curtains of his bed. A morning frost etched the windows, but his skin felt awash with warmth. A stirring in the bed next to him drew his eyes, and there, a young woman was lying, the bare skin of her leg touching his, her black and wavy hair spilling generously over the pillow upon which she rested in tranquil sleep. Her azure eyes slowly opened, and she gazed deeply into Talcott’s fearful expression. “What, my love” she inquired in a silken voice “has been keeping you from your bed so long on these cold nights?”

He opened his mouth to say something but no sound emerged from his suddenly constricted throat. The lady only frowned, as though his response puzzled her. “You called me did you not?” she added, raising one eyebrow slightly and appearing to study his face quite closely.

“You’ve been calling longer than you realize” she said, her voice now unnaturally low for her willowy frame. Talcott was not in any state to formulate a reply, or consider her meaning, for he was looking past the woman-shaped thing in his bed to the room around him. There was something wrong, something dreadfully and subtly wrong.

Talcott realized that this was not his room. Sitting up he looked frantically around him. It appeared to be his room; the bed clothes were his and the damask upholstered chair that sat beside his books. However, the slightest features were awry; the roses in the vase beside his bed were fresh as they had been nights ago, whereas the flowers of the night before had been long wilted, neglected during his long vigil. And the garish light… the light that streamed through the icy panes was not the dull light of his gloomy demesne on a frost-encrusted morning. “Where are we?” was all that Talcott could rasp out in his dry-throated daze.

The woman who had appeared in his bed only shrugged in answer, as she sat up and allowed the sheets to slide down her naked torso, unveiling her hidden beauty. Talcott’s erstwhile heated urgency threatened to burst into flame and burn out his disquiet and his caution. Was this not exactly what he had been working to achieve? Talcott’s gaze lingered over her pert, dark- pink nipples and the inviting heaviness of the underside of her breasts that seemed to beg him to cup them in his hands.

“You must give up this attachment to times and places if you are to learn anything,” she said. Her tone, now restored to its feminine lightness, was flippant as though she had stated something of little import. Meanwhile she fixed him with a gaze that seem to brook no argument and simultaneously promised all possibilities. “Perhaps it is not the room that has changed but you.” She let the sheet fall down the rest of the way, which it seemed to do lazily, as though the fabric itself wished to meander its way over her smooth flesh. “Or perhaps the room has changed,” She shrugged.

His gaze followed the path of the retreating sheet. He was close enough to smell her skin, which seemed to give off the scent of roses and musk, as though she had taken into her all of the perfumes he had burned in former days of ritual. Seeming to sense his lulling compliance she reached out her hand then and touched his cheek lightly with her fingertips. That touch was something Talcott would never forget, it seemed to leave a burn in its wake, and yet a chill also. Her fingers trailed along his cheek and lingered briefly on his lips, and when they did they seemed to steal the air from his lungs.

He fell upon her then, not waiting for further instruction or invitation. The initial sense of sick disquiet now gave way to the hot amnesia of desire. The beast in him emerged with wanton vigor- he mounted the woman-shaped thing without restraint and his ardor was met with no resistance. She remained languid and passive in his grasp; but for a glimmering expression in her eyes that seemed to goad him on, both invite and challenge him. It was not until he joined with her did he fully understand both the lures of unimaginable pleasures and the warnings the Glamour had contained, but by then it was far too late. For what is seen cannot be unseen.

Talcott felt a terrible rending in his flesh and a burst of fire where his spine snaked into his skull, and was hurled away from his bed. He felt neither harshness nor solidity; he landed with silent ease and could see the form of a man that appeared to be himself coupling in the bed with the woman-shaped phantom. Over the sweaty shoulder of the simulacrum of himself, she was watching as he stood ghostly and distant across the room- her shocking blue eyes were gone now, replaced with white and milky orbs- and she was smiling with unholy satisfaction.

Talcott fled from the room, gliding with noiseless tread down the massive sloping stairs of his manor and towards the ornate front doors, which were flooded with a bright white radiance from the outside. He threw them open and was immediately overwhelmed in every sense- he fell silently to the ground, and though his consciousness seemed dim, he continued to move, tumbling towards grass and fallen-tree branches outside on the unkempt lawn.

When he regained his senses again he stood, a ghost of his former self, and gazed with thunderstruck awe and terrible fear around him. The entire world had become crystalline- his manor was as though carved from a mountain of rock crystal- down to its every detail. The massive light that hung over the world came from nowhere and everywhere; the trees and their leaves were gems, dark brown and rough, delicately cut emerald; the entire world was a glowing rainbow of fine hues. Talcott’s own body was translucent and light; it was insubstantial and yet flowing like the finest liquid. One of the lines of the preliminary incantation of the Daimon of the Rose, chanted so many times by him in the delirious days before, drifted through Talcott’s head: Eros has led psyche to the heavens and there enthron’d her deathless…

Before Talcott’s eyes, the woman suddenly appeared in the lawn. Her naked flesh looked quite solid and flushed crimson, draped in a long white, bloodstained cloth. Her fleshy appearance, so beautiful before, looked shocking and ugly compared to the gemlike quality of Talcott’s body and the entire crystalline world that he now inhabited. She no longer needed to speak to him, for he had no earthy ears; they shared instantaneous understanding in their thoughts.

He knew that she was Katrikore, the spirit of his flesh, the mare-maiden of the elemental body that he inherited from his parents and the earth- that great earth which was itself a nightmare creature like unto a great mare, a devouring goddess-entity of unimaginable magnitude. The Glamour had bestowed consciousness upon the feminine spirit of his flesh, using his own lust to grant it life-force, so that it could eject him from the prison of the corpse. He was exiled into the spirit-form that he now wandered bewildered within. His own bodily flesh had cast him away!

Look to the future, John. Katrikore was bidding him to realize his new estate, his new condition of life- he saw his mortal coil living on without him, now empowered by Her new consciousness, living to be an old, senile madman- not unlike the distant uncle who had left him this forlorn inheritance. He saw himself wandering the crystalline fields and hills and halls of the deathless world, where others like him also gathered- those free from the constraints of mortality. He would never die here. Katrikore would re-write the Glamour, making it into a new book, and see that it fell into the hands of some other man, so that his flesh would be awakened and his spirit exiled to eternity.

Look above you, John- look and see: the Empyrean. We spirits of the flesh, slumbering in matter, are not evil; we are the gateways to eternity. See! The light undying! The light infinite and timeless- the undying men and women of the diamond-body like yourself can begin the walk to the greatest of realizations. Your passion gave me life. This is my gift to you.

Talcott saw it well. In the broad, white expanse above him, there was an indistinct but vast deep of light- it cast a stainless radiance throughout the multiverse, which the dim eyes of water and salt that he once used could not capture. There was something beyond conception, amazement and a wonder without limit, awaiting him in this new life. Deep within, there was a great sadness, too. This was the end of the human and the beginning of something else: the mortal child had become an immortal adult. He began to see beyond time, to live a million lives in an instant. A simple change of focus brought him back to himself. This was it, then: the blade-edge of eternity.

Talcott remembered the time when he had left behind his childhood to take on the roles of a man. For most, the child melts slowly into the grown man, and the transition is not experienced with any consciousness. For some, like Talcott, there was memory; he remembered the very day it was that he bid farewell to his youth.

He remembered the fading of the imaginary companions and creatures he had delighted with as he grew; he remembered when the forests had gone from faery-haunted kingdoms to collections of trunks and rotting leaves. He remembered seeing them, finally, as the instruments of his own imagination, and how they lost their animation, becoming just dreams. The faery-folk had told him they would always be with him if he should have need of them, but after that day, he never found them again. His heartbreak had become the bitterness of adulthood, a bitterness he had taken out on lovers and friends alike.

The melancholy of it all began to fill him, and he stared back at Katrikore with sadness in his eyes of light. She was a creature of earth and lust; he was her superior. Whatever wisdom she could claim to have, he had surpassed it within a few seconds of knowing the crystal-form. He was trading one anguish for another, forever receding towards abstract infinity, when all he wanted to do was return and know simple joys. Was there an illumination greater than that? Talcott cared not to know of it. His searching, deathless mind, ever sharper than his dull mortal brain, could not discover one- even the divine light above him seemed strangely uncaring.

No sadness is greater than the loss of youth’s simple magic. He emanated the message into Katrikore and the entire world around him. Her eyes grew narrow and confused. When I was a child, my flesh was no slumbering mare of the night- it was a simple mouse, with sleek white hairs, and simple dark eyes. I was innocent then, heir to all the wonder of the world. Like a mouse, I saw no further than my whiskers, but I truly knew more in those days of innocence than now I do, as a crystal-bodied immortal.

Katrikore began to move her mouth and wave her arms at him, threatening, but there was fear in her eyes now. Flesh-lover, summoned from the void, your gift is majestic, but the child has no need to seek for grand illuminations from the deathless heavens above. The fullness they feel naturally is enough, amid simple things. Receive now the forms of the stars.

From far above, a rumbling came, as great as the resounding universe- and that same rumble shook in the crystalline structures all around Talcott and Katrikore. The stars above began to move; a billion more points of light began to appear from the void beyond and grow larger. Katrikore stared at the heavens, her eyes grown milky white again, and her mouth opened to shriek. A horse’s plaintive scream is all that emerged, as a rainstorm of countless white forms came pouring down around her and the transformed manor and woods all about. Each of the forms was that of a tiny mouse, but billions upon billions fell, and soon, they consumed Katrikore and Talcott’s gem-hued body, and all else that could be seen or dimensioned. Even the deathless glass was taken up into the simple bodies of mice.

* * *

Talcott slumbered in his bed for three days, unable to move, a fever eating at his brain. When he opened his eyes again, he was parched and voiceless, and weak unto death. By enormous exertion of will, he dragged himself back into life and health. For months he did not leave his estate, and sat watching the sunrise daily- it rose earlier and earlier as the year grew light. Talcott’s true youth had been restored to him, for over the years, while his hair thinned and wrinkles came to his face, he could never forget the timeless and glittering diamond-body of all things: a body he still had, invisible yet consubstantial with his mortal frame. He spent his days in peace with the holy white mouse that lived and moved in his flesh.

The night-mare was gone. She would not be returning. However, it was she- beautiful Katrikore, devourer of children- who had been the mount that rode him to the Grand Illumination, and many more like her would rise in the bodies of others. All blind riders in the stormy night, Talcott often mused; riding darkness into darkness. May the lamp-light of sacred lust give life and breath to them all. May they all know the light of the Empyrean as only a child can.

Talcott placed the Glamour of the Sacred Sybarite back into its cedar chest and locked it away in the attic, just as he had found it. He passed away in the night, many years later, a happy man.

Introduction: The Art of Literary Co-Creation

"We eat only to survive: Imagination is our true sustenance."
-Lord Byron

Greetings, Friends:

Welcome to the blog of the Literary Co-Creation Company for Wayward Romantic and Gothic Writers. "Literary Co-Creation" is a name for the process of two persons joining creative imaginations to "co-create" a work of fiction. It is a basic, organic process which begins when the story's Master- the first writer- creates a story seed, or the first three or four paragraphs of a story. He or she is joined by a co-writer, who supplies the next three or four paragraphs, and then back and forth, until the story is done. This is the basic notion.

The Not-So-Basic Notion

The process of co-creation cannot be purely mathematical. That defeats the spirit of what we are trying to do. Here are the rules and guidelines, in more detail, that govern the process:

One person- the Master of the Story- begins, by writing 3-4 paragraphs of a story- called the "story seed". The co-creator responds with 3-4 paragraphs, always striving to remain in the same style as the story seed. The master takes that response and edits it to conform with the story. The editing can be simple changes of word or arrangement of words, but cannot remove essential details, nor ignore the way the co-creator's addition has altered the story's flow.

Details may be added in, but no essential details can be removed. If the addition contains events, those events cannot be ignored; they must affect the outflow and development of the story. Editing can and must change the form of the addition, somewhat; the co-creator must take a care not to be offended. The Master of the Story has final say in this, and it is never anything personal, only a matter of linking together story-parts in a harmonious way.

After the master has integrated the addition, he or she adds three or four more paragraphs, and sends it back, for another addition from the co-creator- another addition of 3-4 paragraphs. By the time the second addition has arrived back in the master's hands, the story has four parts: the original beginning, the integrated first addition, the third contribution of the master, and the fourth addition, which must then be edited/integrated before the master adds another portion. Only the master ever edits the story. The Master cannot reject an addition, but can call a halt to the entire collaboration. This should be done very rarely if at all.

This process continues until the master of the story has given three parts, and the co-creator has given three parts. The seventh part, written by the master, is the ending- which should be 3-4 paragraphs, but can be slightly longer if needs be. Then, a final edit later, the story is done.

The Master of the Story and Co-Creator should speak/correspond during the process- share thoughts and ideas, but at no time should the Master make demands or give instructions on how the Co-creator should make additions, or in what direction the story should go. This process demands the alchemical mixture of two people's creativity. It is unpredictable and challenging. It is a true learning experience and exercise for two people- especially if those two already have very different writing styles. There is an amazing exchange of creativity and emotion inherent to this process- much can be learned about another through this process. Great creations arise, if it is done properly. Or at least we think so.

Two things will be posted to this Literary Co-Creation Company blog: story seeds, which are like orphaned, incomplete stories, waiting for someone to read them and decide to join with their Master as Co-Creator and advance them to full stories, and completed stories or "full-length stories."

Your Intentions

If you are here to read completed stories, that is fine and well. Enjoy yourself and comment for the authors. If you are here to join in the process of co-creation, find a story seed and email the author with the first addition of 3-4 paragraphs (all masters post their email with any story seed they leave here.) If the master/author likes the sound of your first addition, they will join with you in private email correspondence while the story is bounced back and forth between you and created, and afterwords the story will be posted in full here, copyrighted and credit given to both authors. There are no single-parent children here.

Care to join, as one of our Contributors or "Story Masters?" The process is simple- find a story seed, and co-create a story with one of our resident masters, and then, once you're published- and either respected or reviled- you will be invited to join in, if that's really what you want. You can add story seeds to the blog then, and wait for some poor soul to come along and try to co-create with you. You can endure the scorn of the public and abuse alcohol, too, whining about the muse and other shite.

We hope that you enjoy your time at the company blog. Read. Comment. Join Us. Co-create stories. The worst that can happen is failure and shame.