I
got the idea for The Last Minstrel from an ongoing character about whom
I had written and published twenty-eight stories. Sossity Chandler was a
musician who had struggled to make it in the music world then hit it big and
became a superstar. I published stories on her in many other
journals and anthologies. When I wanted to feature her in a story that included
magic and a pre-technical society, I ran into problems. It could be a
time-travel story, but that would not fit the backstory of her life. It then
occurred to that she would have ancestors. Maybe the tendency to do well at
music is somewhat inherited. This brought about the character of Brendályn, an
ancestor of Sossity from way back, and the plot of the novella The Last
Minstrel. Hemingway once said,
“Write one story about each thing you know.” I know a lot about music (I’m a
musician) and a lot about the Celtic world (I teach World Mythology). I decided
to write about a character who was Sossity’s ancestor from many generations
back and also a musician. When the basic idea for a story occurs, I have
found the pieces of it fall into place quickly.
Brendályn
lives in a kingdom that is, from time to time, oppressed by the evil goddess
Morrigan—the Goddess of Battle, Death, and Disorder. She abducts people. They disappear.
No one knows where she takes them or what she does with them. When Brendályn’s
mother is kidnapped by the evil goddess, she determines to find her.
 |
| The Goddess Morrigan |
She is training to be a minstrel. She has no magic to fight Morrigan,
but she determines that, somehow, she will. When she goes for her weekly lesson
with the Bard she is studying with, she is astonished to find the Goddess
Ardwinna there. Ardwinna tells her she can face Morrigan, gives her a magic
charm, and sends her on her way. Brendályn does not know where she is going but
trusts the Goddess, says good-bye to her family, and sets out on a road, hoping
the Goddess Ardwinna will direct her path.
The
Goddess Morrigan, it seems, knows her plan and harasses her as she journeys. She
finds, however, that the goddess cannot bear hearing music and that music seems to
nullify her magic. Eventually, however, Morrigan carries Brendályn to her dark
kingdom. There she sees her mother and is broken when Morrigan causes her pain.
She agrees to become her slave if Morrigan will agree not to torture her mother
any longer. She is sent off with another slave—sent off with the understanding that she will be a slave in the brothel that services Morrigan’s ghoulish
soldiers. As she is walking, she discovers that the woman guiding her is blind.
In fact, all the women who work in the brothel have been blinded. Discovering
this, she runs and finds a horse she had earlier showed kindness to. It allows
her to ride it. She escapes Morrigan’s kingdom. The horse takes her to the
house of Caelen, the priestess who betrayed Ardwinna and
opened the door for Morrigan to invade Brendályn’s kingdom. The horse kills Caelen’s
lover—one of Morrigan’s ogre-like soldiers. She sees him for the first time as
he really is and realizes how Morrigan has deceived her. She repents, says
she will undo the spell to which she agreed. Despite Brendályn’s assurance that
Ardwinna will forgive and restore her, Caelen takes her own life.
She has
given Brendályn instructions on how to reverse the spell. She does this. Her mother
and all the others Morrigan has abducted are freed and returned. Morrigan will
never be able to enter their kingdom again.
The
novel is available in paperback or electronic format. Get a copy here.
Happy reading.
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