One Monkey

and one typewriter

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Goal: 1304 words | Total: 1482 words
Continuity: Wilmark

I had finally sunk into the beginnings of a sound sleep when the bell beside my bed rang and woke me straight back up. It was designed to sound like a thousand angry children with pots and spoons, in order to wake up even the soundest sleepers, and I bemoaned that it had done its job so well. I contemplated ignoring it, but finally decided it was probably a bad idea; pulled on a padded tunic and then a chain shirt, and tossed my robe over my shoulders to make the point. The uncarpeted stone was cold under my bare feet, but I ignored it as I tramped up to the western parapets.

The guards on duty were already at stiff attention when I came through the narrow doorway, and I waved them to ease as I strode to the edge of the walkway. The Western Marches, against which my duchy and keep were meant to defend, were dark and murky even in daylight; at night they were nearly impassable without the best lanterns, and even then I wouldn’t send soldiers through, even in groups, unless I knew myself the stuff they were made of. Tonight was an even worse night than usual, as the moon was low and the stars unreliable thanks to a smattering of cloud across the sky.

Nonetheless, someone was forging toward us through the swamp.

I turned to the guards, who’d ignored my at-ease gesture. “Oh, come on,” I said, “and good work spotting that.” Deep in the swamp there was a glow with which I was intimately familiar – eerie and sickly green, wavering back and forth as it wove through the swamp. The Doldans on the other side of the Marches used magic lanterns that cast such light, to mimic the native will-o’-wisps, or display their lack of fear of the magic, or perhaps, as my tutor had forwarded, because they simply saw better in green light than we did. Nonetheless, the Doldan lanterns were well-known to those of us who’d patrolled the Marches during the last border battle some dozen years prior. What I couldn’t figure out is what they were doing out here now, in the middle of the night.

“A new weapon? Striking while they figure we’re asleep, so that they can more easily overtake the keep? Or is this a lost patrol on the wrong side of the swamp?”

One of the guards looked at me with an eyebrow cocked. “Bit many of them to be a patrol, don’t you think, sir?”
I’d turned away from the Marches, expecting the guards to keep watch, but my eyes leapt back to the swamp with his words. Sure enough, now dozens – maybe hundreds of the green lamps illuminated the swamp. They were bullseyes – illuminating the ground in front of them but not the faces of their bearers – but thinking that we’d spot them, they might have given multiple lanterns to each patroller, to give us the idea of greater numbers than they actually had.

“Light the signal,” I said, and the guard who hadn’t spoken ran to another staircase, up to the highest point on the walls. Atop that point was a brazier with fresh kindling; I could see as he stepped out that he’d grabbed the torch from the stairway. As I watched, he lowered the torch to the brazier, which leapt into flame nearly a yard high and growing. I blinked a few times to get the fire from my eyes, then looked into the darkness to the south. Another fire at a smaller keep went up as well, then another. I turned and the northern posts had done the same. In the distance I heard the clanging of bells similar to my own.

“Good work,” I said again, and turned back to the swamp. The lanterns were undeterred by the signal fires – in fact, they seemed to be coming faster. Thankfully, I heard the patter and jingle of boots and chain now, hastening to shore up the defense of the keep. “Your bow, guardsman,” I said, and the guard obligingly handed me his strung bow and an arrow from the quiver at his hip. I plucked the bow, found it taut but not quite to my strength, and nocked the arrow. I raised my voice, projected as my father had taught: “Doldans, stand ye down!” I bellowed, and let fly the arrow.

In the dim moonlight I could not track the arrow for more than a few yards, but the lanterns stopped nonetheless. None fell, but a hush fell over the swamp and the keep. Then, just when I was about to nock another arrow, the sound of a horn played from the swamp. It was a sequence of sour and filthy notes, from a horn long battered and longer uncleaned, but nonetheless I recognized the bar, even more clearly than the glow of the lanterns – it was the horn call I myself had been taught as a base footman. It was old – the call changed every five years or so to avoid the enemy learning it and taking advantage – but it was a native soldier’s horn call nonetheless.

“Your Grace,” said Guardsman Liane, from whom I’d borrowed the bow, “how do we know it’s not an impostor, who’s captured one of ours and forced the calls out of him?”

“We don’t.” I bit my knuckle. “Assemble the finest soldiers you know and meet me at the north gate in ten minutes.”

The guard followed me down the stairs, and then we parted ways, he further down to the barracks and I to my chambers to dress more appropriately. In five minutes I’d replaced my silk trousers with linen plated with hardened, studded leather, and found the boots I’d so ingloriously kicked next to the wardrobe. Stout falconer’s gloves – the best I had on short notice – and the symbol of my duchy, a half-submerged shield to represent our defense against the swampy Marches, pinned to my chain shirt, and I was ready; I headed downstairs to the north gate.

Liane had brought together five others; I recognized them all, and nodded my approval. “Let’s go, then. On foot; slower, but it’s harder for them to shoot us off our horses if we’re not riding them.”

Liane shrugged. “There’s enough of them, your Grace, that I don’t think it’ll matter, but as you say.”

I grunted and headed out the gate, the guards winching the portcullis back down as the last of our group passed through. As one, we marched westward until we came to the edge of the swamp. The Doldan lanterns were still visible, but barely; the lower vantage also lowered our visibility, and I gestured for Aarder, one of the men Liane had selected, to hand over his horn. I wet my lips and blew, sour at first but then clear and sharp, the old call I’d heard them sound. After a moment, their horner returned the call. I paused, then began a four-call recognition sequence. Each wing of the King’s army had one sequence to challenge and one to respond; at least with this, if the Doldans were impersonating our soldiers with the horn calls, at least I’d know which wing they were pretending to serve.

The horner from the swamp replied to my challenge with the response of the 27th wing. Infantry lost in the Marches in the war a dozen years ago. I challenged again, and received the correct second response. I lowered the horn and glanced at Liane and Aarder. “Could it be the 27th?” I asked, under my breath, and Liane shook her head. “Why not?”

“A dozen years in the Marches or Dolda? Not even we could survive, your Grace.”

“Still. I must know.” I raised the horn to my lips, then dropped it again and bellowed, “Commander, come to face us!”

There was a moment of silence as we waited. My knuckles, at least, were white around the horn. Then we heard the sound of sloshing, and three lanterns coming directly for us. We could see nothing of the bearers, only their vague silhouettes against the other lanterns, now in the background.

A voice called from the group of lanterns. “Commander Hirstmann reporting, sir! The 27th requests sanctuary!”
I glanced to Liane. “If they’re Doldan, they don’t have the hiss.” I turned back to the lanterns. “Come closer and douse your lamps!” I shouted.

“Oh, hell,” said the voice of Commander Hirstmann, and the lanterns went out one by one. When my vision had adjusted again I found a woman and two men standing before me, holding clearly Doldan lanterns but just as clearly not Doldan themselves. “Commander Adina Hirstmann of the 27th wing reporting, sir. And frankly, we could use some food and rest. Do you have room for us to put our feet up?”

Goal: 686 words | Total: 700 words
Continuity: Wilmark

No duke had a proper throne room – that was a privilege reserved for princes and kings – but I did have a receiving chamber, round and perhaps twenty feet across. I sat in a simple wooden chair on a dais to the back of the chamber, which elevated me enough to see over the hearth display in the center of the room – a constant bonfire in winter, harvested crops and produced goods in warmer months, to display the sufficiency of the duchy. At the moment, the hearth was filled with leather goods from the tanners, a knife and sickle from the blacksmith, and the first of the summer corn. The chill of the morning made me wish for the fire of winter, and I drew my cloak more closely around my throat.

At length, the magistrate tapped his staff outside the public door to the receiving chamber, and two guards, one with an obvious limp – Gareth, he’d taken a bad fall when one of the horses slipped on a patrol, and was limited to keep duty – brought in a tall, quite thin man with a long beard and hair that showed little sign of recent care. “Morthin of Yarishire,” said Gareth. He and the other guard, Matias by name, released the petitioner and took posts by the sides of the door. Morthin fell to the floor when the guards let him go, but he quickly recovered himself and stood at his full height.

“Speak, Morthin of Yarishire.” I gestured with my hand, and he nodded.

“Your Grace,” he began, as if he’d prepared this speech, “I have been arrested and imprisoned by your Grace’s guards for loosing an arrow that pierced your shoulder.” I was at least gratified that imprisonment in my bailiwick had not left him malnourished. He glanced away for a moment, and I waited for the lie that was about to come. “I have been told to tell you that it was an accident, that I was hunting stag and was so surprised by the sight of your caravan coming through my forest that I slipped and shot my arrow without intent. That is not true. I shot you on purpose, your Grace.” His lips puckered when he used that honorific. It was a look I was used to seeing on revolutionaries.

“Why is it that you shot me, Morthin?” I glanced at the guards, who were watching the petitioner – and the knife and sickle – carefully.

“Because the woman you are to marry is a witch, and you’ve been tainted, your Grace. I could not stand to see our land governed by a warlock.”

I bit my knuckle. “Morthin of Yarishire,” I said, after a long pause, “you have been misinformed. Further, you have been underinformed. The woman’s father died at my dining table a fortnight ago, and she took her own life in grief after he was interred. It was his body we were transporting to the king’s palace for burial at the Astral Garden. At the moment, Morthin, I am to marry no one, and in fact that was what put me in a position to be shot by you.”

Morthin paled. “Your Grace, I-”

Gareth interrupted the petitioner. “You should return to your cell, I think. Next time think before acting.”

I waved my hand. “Hold, Gareth of Hoshennet.” Gareth paused, his gauntlet still clasped on Morthin’s upper arm. “There is a certain nobility in following one’s beliefs over one’s laws. You were trying to save my soul by killing my body. You had good intentions.” I paused, while hope gleamed in Morthin’s eyes and disappointment in Gareth’s. “However, I cannot allow even good intentions to excuse an attempt on my life. I will provide for your family for one month, and during that time you will stay in a cell in the dungeon here, fed and clothed but not allowed to see the sun. When that time is up you will return to your family unmolested.”

Gareth nodded, but Morthin was shaking his head. “Your Grace, you don’t understand!”

“There are a great many things that I don’t understand, Morthin of Yarishire,” I said, with a smile. “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Goal: 361 words | Total: 417 words
Continuity: Cairenn

Cairenn, thought, as she always did when she entered her apartment, of divesting the place of her parents’ trinkets and mementos. Their presence was comforting, in a way, but also a reminder of things she didn’t particularly want to remember, and vaguely morbid. The thought of getting rid of them, though, made her feel like she was violating their trust and memory. For the moment, therefore, the trinkets remained, on shelves and tables and walls, where they reminded her that she was still her parents’ daughter even five years after she didn’t have parents anymore.

The answerphone flashed at her in cheery amber, part of the “Autumn Wilds” theme she’d selected for the apartment’s appliances. She gestured at the answerphone’s panel, and it began reeling off a date and time. “Ms. Houghth,” said a warm female voice, managing the double ligature deftly, “I am Amenthe Uto of the Feitana Symphonic Choir. I’m calling to inquire whether you will be attending this year’s fund-raiser, on the 23rd.” An auspicious day, three weeks away. Perhaps. “Would you please return my call? I look forward to hearing from you.” The voice rattled off a number that the phone recorded, and the message ended with the answerphone’s “No further messages.”

Like the trinkets, the FSC was a relic of Cairenn’s parents; unlike the trinkets, Cairenn wholeheartedly supported its inclusion in her life. The annual winter concert had been one of her yearly pleasures when she was a child, and she still made a point of attending every year. The fundraiser – perhaps she was less enthusiastic about that, being as it was a thousand refu for each plate and most of her company at the dinners were at least forty years too old for her to have any real connection with, barring family Cairenn was certain she didn’t have anymore.

She considered for a moment the idea of taking Paetr to an FSC fundraiser, realized that she would have to deal with him lecturing the wait-staff on how properly to face the knives and fold the napkins, and discarded the idea as funny but ultimately impractical. Another gesture to the panel sent the phone scrambling to dial the number that the other woman had left, and within moments her voice filled the room again. “Amenthe Uto, Feitana Symphonic Choir.”

“Ms. Uto, this is Cairenn Houghth. I would like to attend your fundraiser.”

“Ah, good. How many will be attending?”

She paused, smiled to herself. “Just one, Ms. Uto. Thank you.”

Goal: 318 words | Total: 378 words
Continuity: Wilmark

The air was thick and humid as I opened my eyes. I still couldn’t see – the coffin was still closed – but it wasn’t moving or shaking. I heard Yorck’s voice again, low but distinctive, and cleared my throat enough to call out his name.

I heard the thumping of feet and then the clatter of a key in a lock, and then the lid opened and I reached up and covered my eyes against the brightest candles I’d ever seen. “Yorck, what happened?”

The chancellor broke out in a grin as he reached down to help me up. “You were shot, your Grace. An arrow to the shoulder. The guards took out the archer, but we had to bury Duke Scaethlig by the side of the road and give you his coffin to transport you safely. Could have been someone else watching in the trees that we didn’t catch, and we-”

I interrupted. “Had to give the impression that they’d done worse than they actually had. No, good work, Yorck. What of Scaethlig, then?”

“Guardswoman Taerith rode back with a carriage just before we reached the border, your Grace. She’ll put Duke Scaethlig in the carriage and bring him through, claiming he’s you. It’s a pity to deceive the border guards, your Grace, but it had to be done.”

I waved my free hand dismissively. “Nonsense, Yorck, I approve of the plan. So what – I’m to hide until Taerith and Scaethlig arrive? How will you make the switch?”

Yorck swallowed. “There is a small chamber set up for your use by the stables – I told them it was for me, so that I could greet you as you arrived. We’ll arrange the switch, your Grace. Royal staff are still human, and, begging your Grace’s pardon, pliable by the right volume of coin. Duke Scaethlig will inhabit his coffin before two days are out.”

My clothes were pinching at my right shoulder, and I absently brushed them away, realizing only when the shaft sent searing pain up my arm that the arrow was still there. “Very well, Yorck. Fetch me something to drink and eat, and a physician. I can’t go about the rest of my life with a stick in my shirt.”

“Quite so, your Grace,” said Yorck.

Goal: 279 words | Total: 380 words
Continuity: Wilmark

I woke again, and this time I knew I was still dreaming, because the figure of Death stood before me, a slender person in long, concealing silver robes. I was already walking down the Silver Road, featureless amid a thick forest filled with mist. Death walked backward as I moved forward; I couldn’t tell why I was walking, but I couldn’t stop. “Why am I walking your road?” I asked.

Death sighed. “All who live walk my road.”

“But why now? Surely a single arrow wouldn’t be that grievous?”

“Any arrow can be deadly. That is what they are meant to do. An arrow strikes the heart and a man dies. In the shoulder, and he might bleed, or take gangrene, or simply not be able to raise his arm at the right moment. In the leg, and he might stumble on the staircase.” Death turned unmoving eyes on me. “And yet – you may live.”

“Then why am I walking your road?” I repeated, and Death sighed again.

“You misunderstand. All who live walk my road, Wilmark of Haerissbourg. When they are dying, they see only the very end of the road.”

I turned my head and looked over my shoulder. The Silver Road stretched behind me as far as I could see, and farther – the distance seemed somehow greater than the road remaining in front of me, although I couldn’t see either end. Laid out behind me on cleared ground were landmarks I remembered, some well and others faintly, and some of the farthest back not at all. I returned my gaze to Death, who continued to walk backward.

“So you see what we have done – but not where we are going?”

Death shrugged. “While I am present in every part of life, I am neither an oracle nor a reader of minds, Wilmark. I watch the road behind you because it is all that is there to be seen. Even you cannot see what lies ahead, even though you must face forward and can only glance backward.”

“The forest is too thick,” I agreed. The mist began to thicken around me, obscuring my view even of Death. “When-?”

“Not today, Wilmark of Haerissbourg,” said Death, and the white fog became a black curtain, and I was gone again.

Goal: 246 words | Total: 289 words
Continuity: Wilmark

I woke up some time later in a warm, dark chamber that was being shaken as though the entire building were under attack. I reached my good hand out; the walls and altogether-too-close ceiling were velvet to my fingertips. Abruptly I realized that I was in a coffin, just like Duke Scaethlig. I tried to convince myself that I was dreaming, but the pinching in my arm – the broken arrow shaft still protruding – gave away my wakefulness. I tried to shout and came away with a cough; I pushed against the lid of the coffin with the back of my hand and it didn’t move. In my terror, that I had been buried alive or – worse – risen from death, I began knocking with my hand and forehead, but the padding proved too much to overcome, and eventually I slept again.

The next time I woke up, the shaking had stopped, but the coffin was still sealed. I could barely hear Yorck’s voice outside: “The Duke was indisposed when we departed, but if his claims are any indication he is behind us on horseback, making up in speed what he lost in time. Meanwhile I’m afraid we must pass through with all haste.” To whom was he speaking? I didn’t recognize the voice that responded, nor could I much make out the words, but Yorck’s tenor returned after a moment. “Thank you for your patience. We’ll commend you when we reach the palace.” A border guard – so why had Yorck perjured himself before a royal lanceman? Or was there something else afoot? My mind clouded; I made one more attempt to shout to my chancellor, which invited the blackness back into me, and I lost consciousness once more.

I have been burdened lately with two knowledges:

• I have not been writing, like, at all; and
• I would like to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.

It seemed to me foolish to jump into 1700 words a day when I haven’t been writing at all, so for the month of October I’ve been participating in an experiment I’m calling Accelewrite. The idea is simple: start with a small goal and increase very gradually. I chose 100 words as my starting point, and 13.7% a day as my gradual increase. It doesn’t sound like very much – on day 2, my goal was 114 words; on day 3, it was 129, and so on. However, like grains of rice on a chessboard, the increase snowballs after a while. On 10/4, my goal was 100 words. Tomorrow, 10/11, my goal will be 246 words. A week from tomorrow, I’ll be aiming for 600 words written that day; a week after that, 1,482; and on the 31st, when Accelewrite concludes, I’ll be going for 3,203 words, nearly twice what NaNo requires.

All just by aiming for 13.7% more each day than I did the previous. Notice I do not say “writing more”; I don’t intend to limit myself to my goal, and if tomorrow I happen to splurge on artistic inspiration and write thousands of words, on Monday I’ll still only hold myself to 279 words. Further, extra words I write today don’t count toward tomorrow; even though I wrote 278 today and only needed 216, I still need the full 246 tomorrow.

Please feel free to leave comments and friendly critique on anything I post this month (and in general!) – I welcome the feedback, and I’m eager to hear what you think about what I’m writing.

Goal: 216 words | Total: 278 words
Continuity: Cairenn

Cairenn silently handed the cabbie twenty refu, nearly twice the fare but worth it to not have to wait for change. The driver nodded and pulled away, and Cairenn stared up at her apartment complex. It soared, a monument in various carbons to the upward-not-outward philosophy that the city’s founders had espoused. Miles of coniferous forest separated Feitana from its nearest neighbor – Paetr’s city, Keëlan, Cairenn reminded herself. Paetr’s thoughtless arrogance and desire to impress mirrored his home city, which sprawled in a valley between two of the tallest mountains on the continent and which was known for conspicuous consumption.

She caught the doorman glancing at her, wanting to appear to be in perfect clockwork synchronicity with anyone who entered or left the building. Conspicuous consumption indeed. Her parents had left her this apartment, and since she happened to like the neighborhood and her neighbors, she hadn’t bothered to sell it yet. Surely there would be someone who would appreciate an apartment in the tallest building in Feitana. Mentally, she struck “surely”; of course there would be. She lived with several hundred of them. Her parents had been two.

The doorman, to his credit, had the door fully open by the time she reached him, and she smiled as she always did and bowed her head, and he tipped his hat as she passed, and their dance ended as cordially as it had begun. The elevators – there were banks upon banks, to ease congestion – hummed quietly all around her; at this time of night, most of the queues were empty, and it was only a matter of moments before she was headed to the thirtieth floor.

Goal: 190 words | Total: 272 words
Continuity: Falling

The earth shakes and Michael reaches down for me, his fingers inches from my own, but I shake my head. “Too late,” I whisper, exaggerated so he can read my lips, and then my fingers slip and I fall. I see shock on his face before gravity tears me too far away to see anything but the brightness of the gap above.

The falling becomes pleasant after a while. I am on my back, so to speak, staring at the tiny sliver of ceiling above me, making no effort to find handholds to save me now – at best I’d hurt my arms and fingers. The fifteen seconds it took me to reach terminal velocity are long past, and now I feel almost like I’m floating over a fan; I can barely see the sides that rush past me at more than a hundred miles an hour.

Those sides grow no closer, and after a few minutes it occurs to me to wonder exactly how deep this pit is.

After a few more minutes, the fan I’ve been imagining picks up speed and, impossibly, I begin to slow. The walls’ blurring lessens and finally resolves into clarity, and at the same time I find myself set on a surprisingly warm ground. I am surrounded by toadstool mushrooms of a size and color unknown to me or the world’s greatest mycologists – nearly my height and luminous blue and violet. They light the chamber as well as candles, and after I take a moment to catch my breath and decide that I am not hallucinating, I stand and use their light to begin to explore.

Goal: 167 words | Total: 189 words
Continuity: Wilmark

I turned abruptly from the force of the blow, and my thigh screamed along with my shoulder as I fell off the horse. Midair I could see the shock on the face of my chancellor as he looked down at me; when I hit the muddy trail, the arrow twisted and snapped, and the edges of the world went black and grey. I fought the fog, gritting my teeth and trying to catch my breath. I could see the arrowhead – somehow, I hadn’t expected to be able to – and my shoulder ground in unpleasant ways when I tried to move my arm. I pushed off the other, raising my back off the ground. “Yorck,” I said, and my chancellor was at my side with a knife.

“This is likely to hurt, your Grace,” he said, and grabbed the arrow in his left hand. The knife in his right came down before I could wince, and the arrowhead was gone; I could barely see the remains of the shaft. “We’ll keep the arrow in you until we can get you to a chirurgeon. Winston, bring some clean cloth and water!”