Dave’s Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #129: Elves are Nasty Creatures: “Straight on Till Morning.”

My last two blogs talked about stories I have written that were odd, strange, weird, bizarre. The one I will talk about today is a little more tame—well, sort of. It was a fantasy story with a paranormal, supernatural element, but at least it followed the usual format and satisfied the standard expectations such a story raises. “Straight on Till Morning” is the story of a woman who is abducted by elves and about her husband, who journeys to elven territory in order to find her and bring her back. 

In Celtic lore, elves are not diminutive creatures with pointed ears who sit around on toadstools and are cute and lovable. They are just the opposite. They are rapacious, nasty, and dangerous—and, they possess magical powers to facilitate their being rapacious, nasty and dangerous. The idea for this story partially came from one of the best horror/supernatural stories I have read, Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale, a novel that presents elves as they are traditionally understood by the ancient peoples of the British isles. They are dangerous. They abduct and enslave humans. To free someone they have abducted you have to be as tricky and ruthless and they are. 

Anisa

Chauncy’s girlfriend, Anisa, a rising star who performs Celtic music, disappears. Shortly after that, he hears a musician he himself has done music with, Sossity Chandler, state her belief in the supernatural. They talk and she suggests Anisa has been abducted by the “fairy folk”—elves. They search the area where she disappeared and find evidence for this. She suggests he sleep in the fairy ring they find (a fairy ring is a ring of grass that can serve as a portal to the world of elves). He does, bringing a guitar and supplies and, when he wakes up, finds himself that world. He immediately sees Anisa. 

She has sensed him (living in eleven land she has already accrued small magical powers) and chides him for coming and tells him the elf who abducted her and now claims to own her and will also sense Chauncey is there. Sure enough, the elven man who abducted he--Sutton--shows up. He and Chauncy argue. He says he will murder Chancey, who calls him a coward to harm an unarmed man. The elf challenges him to a dual. 

O'Carolan

The other elves welcome Chauncey and arrange the duel. While he is there he learns more about the elven culture and meets someone he venerates, Turlough O'Carolan. O’Carolan was an Irish harper from the late fifteenth century whose music has survived and is widely performed today. (I am a musician and have performed many of the tunes he wrote.) Chauncey hears him play and learns he was abducted just before his death and brought to eleven land. He tells O’Carolan about his upcoming duel with Sutton and his plan to win it. The harper is amazed at his plan but tells him it just might succeed; and, he says, when he plays for the Council tomorrow morning, he will put in a good word for Chauncy.

The eleven Council meets to set up the terms of the dual. Chauncey is given choice of weapons. 

The following exchange takes place. As Chauncey is the challenged party, choice of weapon is his. 
            “What weapon do you chose?”

“Guitar,” he said.

The Leader of the Council and everyone else in the room, including Anisa, gaped. The Leader leaned forward.

“I’m not certain I understand you, young man.”

“Guitar is a musical instrument. I am challenging Sutton to a duel of music, not conventional weaponry.”

The Leader’s face showed a mixture of caution, puzzlement, and censure. “This is most unusual,” she said.

“Music is the weapon I chose.”

“This has no precedent, but I am intrigued,” a Council member who wore a funny-looked Renaissance hat said. Chauncey remembered Carolan’s promise to speak to the Council. Perhaps this man was one of Sutton’s enemies. “I can’t recall that such weaponry is forbidden.”

The Leader made to speak, but another Council member—another woman—beat her to the punch.

“Our laws say the weapon be ‘a thing in the use of which a noble is trained.’ All our nobility must learn music of some sort.”

The Council withdraws, debates the lawfulness of music as a weapon but decides Chauncey’s request is valid.

Chauncey is confident of victory, but Anisa tells him not to be too self-assured. The elven nobles, she says, are trained in music from childhood. And the people of the Council like the kind of music Sutton will most likely do.

When the duel begins, Sutton sings and his performance is well-received. Chauncey plays guitar, performing songs by O’Carolan. The judges are stunned by the beauty of his music and declares him winner of the duel.

Sutton is now at his mercy. At the Council’s behest, the demands all of his opponent’s land and money. He also calls upon an elven woman he has come to know in his short stay there that she promised to grant him a “boon.” She says she did and he can have anything he wants. He asks for her slave girl Kelly, who had helped him on different occasions. The woman willingly grants his request. He gives Kelly all of Sutton’s money and then gives her as a bride to Raymond, a human who was kidnapped by the elves and has decided to stay in their land. Sutton, he is told, will be punished for his illegal abduction of Anisa. They depart elven land and find themselves in a theater in New York City where Sossity Chandler is performing. She greets them and promises to arrange for their return to Ireland.

“Straight on Till Morning” appeared in Fiction on the Web. Read it here.

For more good fantasy and paranormal, check out my novella, The Court of the Sovereign King.

Happy Reading.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #26: My First Book, The Gallery.

Your first book is like your first time having sex or your first day in school. You never forget it and it's a landmark event in your life. If you're a writer, you always have a soft spot for it—rather like you do for your first lover or your first-grade teacher. The book I published to begin my career as an author-finally-in-print was a novelette titled The Gallery. Like most people's first day in school or first seduction, it took a lot of doing.

I got an acceptance of it by an indie press up in Canada. Naturally, I was elated. But time passed and nothing happened. My attempts to contact the press did not produce replies. Finally, I got an email that said they had to cut costs and were not going to publish The Gallery. I had a contract, and I suppose I could have made trouble, but I decided to just let it slide. Back to the drawing board; back to the weary, tiresome tasks of submitting the story.

The Gallery is about a musician. In fact, it is one of my ongoing characters, Martin Rollins, who appears in far fewer stories than Sossity Chandler, but is notable for being the narrator of the first short story I published, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake." He has appeared in a couple of others. (Note to self:  write more stories with Rollins as main character.) Martin is doing a concert and meets an artist, Siobhan O'Conner. They fall in together. As their relationship develops, he learns more about her.

She is a skillful artist who is able to live off the sales of her paintings. She is working on a major exhibit. She also suffers from partial amnesia as the result of an automobile accent. She can remember, but large spots of her life—her school days and some of her early adulthood—are blank. As she opens up, and as Martin becomes more involved in her life, he finds out some other things—things that are unsettling.

Most unsettling, she is being stalked. A man named Seamus Keirce—a thin, tall, gangly Irishman—seems to follow her around and warns Martin that he must not let Siobhan sell her art. When asked why, he simply says he has his reasons and he shows up at several events where the young woman is present. Martin feels duty-bound to watch out for her. When he mentions the man's name, Siobhan laughs and says there is a legend about Seamus the Wraith, one of the undead who haunts houses with paintings hanging on their walls and art galleries. An internet search confirms Siobhan's identification of the man. The article Martin reads says that Keirce seems to sustain himself through the power and creativity locked in art. Obviously, Siobhan's art is of particular interest to him.

Tensions mount. Keirce begins to follow Siobhan and also to harass Martin. Siobhan asks him to pick up some paintings she has in a storage area and bring them to her long-awaited art show. When he tries to, he is attacked by Keirce, who admits he is one of the undead and needs the paintings to draw his life energy. He comes at Martin with a knife. Martin is unarmed, but takes a writing pen out of his pocket to use as a weapon. He stabs Keirce in the shoulder with it, hoping to disable him so he cannot use the knife. The pen, a graduation gift from his father, is silver and, once it pierces Seamus the Wraith's skin, destroys him. He vanishes slowly in a flaring of red light. Martin retrieves the pen and takes the paintings to Siobhan's presentation.

All the art has sold out and made her a hundred-thousand of dollars. One is purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Aine, Cletic goddess of poetry and love

They return home that night. Martin dreams. In his dream he sees a goddess. Siobhan has told him about Aine and Cliodna, Celtic goddesses of art, poetry, and fertility. Somehow Martin knows—perhaps the goddess communicates it to him—that the woman in the dream is Aine and that she has inhabited the empty spaces in Siobhan's mind vacated by amnesia; and that she had possessed Siobhan for a mission:  to rid the world of Seamus the Wraith.  In the morning, he sees Aine, in her form as a white gull, fly off.

The story ends on a note of ambiguity. Martin knows Siobhan will not be the same without the goddess possessing her spirit. Still, love can change. 

He lies in bed and contemplates this as a new day begins.

My first book, The Gallery is available through Amazon. It's a great Halloween  read--short enough to finish on that particularly spooky night.

If you want to read a story featuring my ongoing character, Martin Rollins, I suggest "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake" online at Amarillo Bay Magazine; or "The Space Between," which appeared in Scholars and Rogues.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

A brand new book (number nine now) is available as well:  Le Cafe de la Mort offers coffee to die for--and a whole lot more.