As I mentioned previously, the Merry Fates are taking the next three weeks off.

However, to tide you over until December, here are our favorite stories from the past year:


Brenna Yovanoff:

Glass

and

Blue as God


Tessa Gratton:

Ash-Tree Spell to Break Your Heart

and

The Cold that Flays the Skin


Maggie Stiefvater:

A Murder of Gods

and

The Last Day of Spring


Enjoy!

Okay, so according to our theme this week, we are each posting humiliating pieces of our early writing for our readers' amusement and enlightenment. Unfortunately, as I wrote (but didn't always finish) 34 novels before I was published, and started writing when I was but a tiny maggot, I had much material to choose from. There were many forms of badness to choose from, from the very subtle to the roaringly hilarious, but finally I put my writing faults into a few major categories:

1. The relentless melodrama of a teen with a cause. I wrote a lot of IRA thrillers when I was 14-17, usually about disenfranchised Irish men who wanted to make a difference and got sucked into a bad crowd, or Irish-Americans being forced to pay for the crimes of their fathers, or former IRA terrorists who now had realized that they found the wet work unappealing and were trying to get out despite blackmail and hilariously bad sworn threats. They all have different names, plots, etc., but one thing is the same: the melodrama.

Example A typifies this:


( Find out my other faults under the cut. )

Note: this is the first chapter of part two of the first novel I ever finished. It was 1998 and I was a senior in high school. I read a LOT of high fantasy. Which is no excuse. The novel was called SHADOW KIN and after revising a little, I actually inflicted it upon some editors. Two of whom were unbelievably kind enough to write back personal rejections. Now, I suspect it's because I gave them something awesome to pass around the office and giggle about.

My annotations are in bold. I seriously restrained myself, too. There's just so much wrong here, if I pointed out all the horrendously purple prose, everything would be marked. *shame*



She sat hunched over the worktable, staring intently at the book in front of her. (because usually staring isn't intent.)The woman was lithe, with rose-gold hair that was chopped off at her chin and pushed behind her ears. Voluptuous gray robes enveloped her slight form and she bit her lip in concentration, making her seem younger than she was. The eyes that stared so intensely at the bizarre pictographs on the cracked pages of the ancient book were dark golden, with tiny flecks of red. (How many adjectives was that in ONE SENTENCE?)

Her brows creased with irritation and she muttered soft curses under her breath, then abruptly slammed the book shut, blowing dust into her face. She sneezed violently and shook her head in disgust, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. She looked grim as she stalked to the far wall where row upon row of shelves sat. They were covered with all kinds of arcane items, from bags of powder and colored stones, dried flowers and parchment paper, to ink and quills, daggers, sheaths, leather workings… and jars of preserved eyes. The eyes were of every shape, size, and color; green, yellow, slit-pupil and round, giant horse eyes and tiny squirrel eyes, human and elvish eyes. (But not any marmoset eyes.)

The woman took an empty glass jar and went to the window where a small tin plate held a round object that glowed muddy red.

“Disgusting, Me’Riah!”

Me’Riah jumped back and just barely stopped herself from impaling the red gargoyle-like creature who popped his head into the window. (Too bad, that would put us out of our misery, too.) She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Slowly, she put the dagger back in its hidden sheath beneath her sleeve. “Haven’t you learned not to startle me like that, you silly imp?” He crawled in the window and sat next to the plate, swinging his legs playfully. He grinned up at her, revealing a full set of sharp, white teeth.

She tried to stay angry, but the picture of the bright red devil poking at the eye on the sill with childlike curiosity was too much even for her. And it had been so long since she’d had a visit by this particular fiend. She shook her finger at him and said mock sternly, “I would have thought that after being ground-bound for three months when I sent a blade through your wing membrane, you would not sneak up on me anymore.”

( He stuck his bottom lip out. )



One last note before I chicken out and post something that isn't so embarrassing. I took my LJ username from this book. Eriel Everflame is a character in it, and I named myself after him for these reasons: I wanted to remember my first completed novel forever, I wanted to keep myself honest about my fantasy background, and Eriel was strong, brave, and passionate, which are things I also want to be.


picture by tylluan, via flickr creative commons

In keeping with Tess's rundown, this is the first section of what was clearly going to be a Very Awesome Novel. It had everything I liked—precognition, accidental death, morbid, overly-dramatic narrative, and you can't really tell yet, but it was going to feature a Love Story From Beyond the Grave. Except (as with all my projects at that age and for the next four years), I got bored after three more sections, and abandoned it.

Dear Miranda,

Frank is dead. They told me today, with their eyes red, their hands holding twisted handkerchiefs, they told me. Then they cried. I didn't.

Don't you see? I've been expecting this. He told me all about it in the letter. He even told me the date. Well, he was right, Miranda. It doesn't seem fair.

They say he died quickly. When he swerved, he hit the wall, that wall next to the cemetery out on Route 25. The other driver is still alive. It doesn't seem fair at all.

They're crying a lot. I haven't. The only thing that's different is that vase, the one in our living room with the roses on it, it's broken now.

It felt good to smash something, something I've always hated. My mother cried when I did it, but I don't think it was because of the vase, since she's always hated it too.

Frank left me his leather jacket. When my mother told me is when I threw the vase.

She said, “Cheryl, calm down.” And started to cry. Cheryl is her cousin, who she hasn't seen in years. I still haven't cried yet.

Love,
[Character who was apparently not important enough to warrant a name]

Okay, so this excerpt is revealing in a lot of ways, showcasing both my unrepentant pantster plotting style and my love of the run-on sentence. As I recall, when I was writing this, I had absolutely no plan whatsoever. Each line materialized out of thin air, with no forethought, and very little to do with the line before it. Also, it didn't really occur to me that if I knew no fourteen-year-olds named Frank, there probably weren't many sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds named Frank, either.

Despite his evident precognition, I was not actually very interested in Frank. I can't tell if I designated him as uninteresting by giving him the leather jacket, or if the leather jacket is only a symptom of how undeveloped he was in my head.

“Why epistolary,” you might ask? And if you did, I might say, “I have no idea.” Perhaps because I had recently learned that it was, in fact, a novel-writing style.

Inspired by m_stiefvater recently amusing herself (and us) by looking through some of her oldest manuscripts, we, the Merry Sisters of Fate, have decided to use our common prompt week to celebrate something very, very special.

HOW MUCH OUR WRITING USED TO SUCK

Check us out! Brenna looking all alien and gorgeous, Maggie with that awesome 16 year old angst and totally geeky bagpipes, and me doing what I do best: wearing weird clothes (before a drama performance of Midsummer Night's Dream. I was Helena).




Writing is a learning process. Every time you write you get better... which means if you're doing it right, you're always improving. I don't think any of us can be considered master's of writing, but we've definitely moved into the journeyman phase of our careers. To keep us humble (ok, to keep Maggie and I humble) we're going to reveal stories or novel-excerpts that we wrote when we were in high school (or at least that age, for those of us who were home-schooled*), at the very beginnings of our apprenticeships.

Monday, Brenna will post, Wednesday me, and Friday Maggie, as is usual. Feel free to make fun of us, and take heart that we really worked hard to get where we are now. :D

And the following week, (Nov. 16-20) we'll be taking off completely in order to work on a Sekrit Projekt*** as well as various NaNo novels and editing and marketing and pr and raking our back yards (that might just be me).

STAY TUNED!


*That would be both of my fellow sisters. No wonder they're so weird.**

** I'm totally kidding. We all know Brenna's weird because she's a changeling and is still trying to figure out how to pretend she's human.

*** No I'm not going to tell you.

PADGE: I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or a bad one that I can see her before the surgery. Right now, it feels too much like shopping. Disrespectful, I suppose, to be looking at her face while she’s behind it. She is sitting in a pleather chair, her hands laying politely in her lap, and she looks as if it’s uncomfortable, but she doesn’t move. She’s is a weedy, blonde creature, far more breakable-looking than I am -- well, than I used to look, before I got sick -- and she’s only sort of pretty, which disappoints me.

I immediately feel bad about this last thought.

What I need, and what my mother says I don’t have enough of, is gratitude. The truth is that I am plenty grateful for lots of things, but I don’t always show it. Do I always need to have thank you spilling from my lips? Because there’s enough that’s happened in my favor that I’d never say anything else.

I am sort of eating a chocolate bar while I wait. I peel down the wrapper. I wish this was over with.

I don’t know if she can see me, too, or if this glass I’m behind is a mirror for her. I do know her name, however, because they warned me that people might recognize her for a long time afterward, and call me her name.

The whole thing makes me feel a little sick, actually. My stomach’s turning over and over like someone’s mixing a cake batter in there. Nerves. Or maybe just more of me dying. So hard to tell the difference now.


( Read more under the cut )

Hey all! Remember this contest we're helping m_stiefvater run? With the awesome prizes like:

- One chapter critique by all three Merry Sisters of Fate (who all officially have book deals now)!

- A swank MF messenger bag stuffed with ALL MAGGIE'S BOOKS signed!

- A stack of awesome supernatural YA fiction books!

- A signed audiobook of SHIVER!

Here's how you enter:

Take a picture with a copy of the beautiful BALLAD! Feel free to rub your face on it.

Drag other people into your picture and make them excited about BALLAD! The more people who pose with you, the more entries you get! The purpose is to spread the BALLAD love! Tell them why you're making them take weird photos for our crazy blog! THAT IS YOUR MISSION!

See? This entry would get me two extra entries. Those are my fellow administrative peeps here in the office. Wave to Kim and Teri!

Then what we need you to do is take the photos and post them somewhere online -- we don't care if it's your facebook, livejournal, photobucket, mom's website, whatever, that's not important. The only thing that's important is that you link them here. You can embed them directly in the comment if you have the voodoo to do that. Or you can just send us a link. Make sure it's someplace we can see it and do a headcount.

You can post your link here, at the original announcement, or over at Maggie's journal.

Remember, THE CONTEST ENDS ON HALLOWEEN!!!

On the first night, we slaughter animals for the winter.

I walk behind my father carrying a shallow bowl of blood. Mother and I drained it from one of the chickens moments ago and it’s still warm.

We are a chain of people weaving through the field. Father first, then me, then my mother and sisters with black veils over their faces. The rest of the town comes behind, trailing back to the edge of the trees. We are a snake, a serpent of frost, of death, searching out the oldest of the cows, the ill hogs, the troublemaking goats. When Father chooses a beast for death, he turns to me and dips his fingers into the cooling blood. I murmur, “Blood to mark,” and he replies, “God protect us.” He smears a widdershins circle onto every forehead; enough to feed us throughout the long dark of the year.

Oldest sons lead the animals away to the shambles, and there they wait for us.

It is the first night of Samhain, and the grass is dead. Trees spit scarlet and orange leaves to the earth, turning the fields to fire. There will be no more free grazing, no more evenings laying out among the sheep, staring at the stars with my sisters and whispering predictions for each other’s husbands. Nights will be spent huddled by the hearth fire at home, wrapped in my sisters’ arms beneath blankets rubbed with evergreen needles and dried rosemary to keep bad dreams away.

Blood to mark I say again and again. We kill many this season, for the cunning man in Rose Spring says it will be a rough winter. My mother looked to the crows this morning and agreed.

Children at the end of the line gather handfuls of dry grass and their favorite leaves to toss onto the fires tomorrow, and I hear their laughter and nervous giggling. Tonight it is safe, but soon the spirits will come, the devils and goblins hungry for our winter harvest.

Last, we come to the horse pasture. Here we do not go to the dying or troubled. Father pushes through the herd for Fourth Wind, a stallion in his prime. Gray as a ghost and proud, Wind’s nostrils flare at the scent of the blood in my bowl. I hate this, the feeling of loss twisting my stomach. Wind has sired beautiful horses and I’ve raced over the hills on his back, thrilled and terrified.

Two men step forward to restrain him. One is Rhun, my neighbor’s oldest son. He has dark eyes and a slow smile that makes me glance away. He holds one hand out to me, shaking his head to keep me back. Wind rears and my father’s shoulder knocks me so that my blood bowl sloshes.

Ropes wind around the horse’s neck and Father quickly marks a dark red circle over the slash of white starring Wind’s brow.

My face hurts from holding back the ache. But a horse must be slaughtered. The dead must eat this winter, too. Rhun leans forward and wipes his thumb down my cheek. “You have blood on your face,” he says with a frown.

***

( The second night we burn their bones. )

I should have been in love with Imbie Logan, but I wasn’t, even though I sometimes tried to be.

Her brother Ivan had very dark hair. When we were younger, I hadn’t paid attention. It hadn’t meant anything. Ivan and his dark hair, and when he stood outside in the afternoon, his skin seemed almost transparent. Sometimes I thought about it when no one was around. Ivan standing in the garden, hair so black his skin looked like nothing at all, like you could see all the way inside him.

Imbie was a scrawny thing, with a sharp nose and cheekbones like razorblades. She wasn’t charming. That was Ivan, the charming one. Imbie was more like a pet, small and serious. I should have loved her anyway. I should have loved her secretly, because it’s how these things go, open windows, the boy in the story sees the girl next-door changing her shirt behind the curtains. It wasn’t like that.

Ivan was the charming one. The charmed one. He always made it look like you could know everything about him. Transparent Ivan. But then, that was his best trick.

*****
When Ivan died, Imbie just fell down. She was standing in the back garden, holding the cordless telephone against her ear with both hands.

Watching over the fence, I couldn't hear what she was saying. But I saw the look on her face, the way she wandered barefoot over the flowerbeds and the borders like they weren’t even there.

She walked into the rose bushes, stumbled onto the path again. There was a juicy smear on the back of one heel where the violets had bled their color out onto her skin, bruised-looking. The shape of her mouth looked like Ivan. ( . . . )

Readers: this is a total cop out because I'm am currently on my UK book tour for SHIVER, and I've been going wall to wall with UK events for a week. I have had spotty internet access and rare laptop access and basically, for the first time ever, I've not written a story on time for Merry Sisters of Fate.

So instead, I am going to give to you the short story that inspired SHIVER, unedited, and probably quite bad (I haven't read it since I wrote it, right after waking up from a vivid dream about wolves in a snowy wood). So, without further ado, here is "Still Wolf Watching."

ETA: I just read it and it's positively weird to see how I changed the mythology and characters and language from this original imagining, but preserved a few of the lines of prose.



_______________________________


I remember laying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, and they were licking me. Or eating me. I couldn’t tell which. I just knew that the huddled bodies of the wolves, ice glistening in their ruffs, blocked what little heat the sun offered. I was lost to a sea of cold, and then I was reborn into a world of warmth.


( Read more after the cut )

They say the Queen of Lirsee need only smile and all disputes are resolved. They say her husband the King turns water into liquid gold with which he can paint the walls of the castle.

And they say the Prince is so brave dragons would lay down at the feet of his charger.

My mother tells me what is said of me: that I am charming enough to escape any trouble, but that I don't bother because I enjoy wrapping trouble around me like a blanket.

When we receive word that the Prince of Lirsee wishes my hand, Mother glances at Father. He shrugs and glances to me.

"I don't know," I protest, flinging up my hands. I knock the silver coronet from my head and it smacks into the corner of the dining table before rolling across the rug to where Mother's dogs gnaw on a plate of ribs. At the tittering laughter from the lower table, I press my lips together and force a merry smile.

Lord Donovan calls, "Things are so perfect in Lirsee, Highness, that the Prince decided he needs - "

I stand, raising my eyebrows all the way to my browline, lifting a meat pie off the platter.

" - needs a calming, lovely influence," Donovan finishes with a grin and I resist lobbing the pie in his direction.

***

I go. The Royal family of Lirsee has called me, and so I must. I pack two trunks of my best riding habits and dancing gowns, my paints and thick paper, my minimal jewels and at least two gold-embroidered robes: one for my introductions and one for my wedding.

Mother kisses my forehead and whispers that I must not look for trouble in the Queen's court. She promises to send pups from the next litter. Father embraces me and the rims of his eyes are tight and red. He opens his mouth to speak, but in the end only shakes his head and hugs me again.

We travel along the coast and as we approach Lirsee City I hear more stories of the Royal family's greatness. Even the beggars in the street smile when they hear the Prince's name, and they kiss the Queen's face on the coins I toss them.

How will I ever live to be loved so much? How will they think of my slight stature and boyish way of walking? My inability to hold in a laugh? I cannot be demur and when I dance it is with joy, not skill.

My woman, Therese, touches my elbow as the tall golden walls of Lirsee City loom overhead. "He chose you for a reason, my lady. Hold that in your heart and lift your head high. He asked for you."

***

( The official robe is so heavy with embroidery and pearls that I must walk slowly. )

I've only ever been good at one thing.

No heart-wrenching displays of honor or heroism, no rousing sport victories. But I can tell people what to do and where to stand. And if I do my job right, see the potential in their expressions and their movements, what I'm really telling them is how to charm the audience. How to make someone cry.

When I came to LA, it was to see if I could hack it as a screenwriter, but nobody would even look at my scripts. I was a nonentity, a complete unknown, so I started production on one of my own stories. It was a heist drama, shot in a warehouse on a shipping lot, with no big names and no budget.

None of us really thought it would take off, no one expected it to be the next big thing. Except, that's not quite true. Maybe no one else knew, but Elizabeth always kind of did.

“You're going to leave me,” she says now on the phone, her voice buzzing with bourbon and panic. “You're going to hook up with some hot little starlet and that's it. I'll be history.”

It's two a.m. Three, where she is.

“Come on,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose. “You know that's not true.”

The raw sore on the inside of my elbow is oozing a little, leaking yellow droplets. Pus, maybe? Hard to say. It itches.( . . . )

*As our common prompt this week, the lovely nataliesee has drawn us three tarot cards at random. They are the Devil, the King of Pentacles, and the Queen of Cups, all of whom make (rather loosely interpreted) appearances in this story.

I know this is not technically a day to post stories, but I need to announce this. The last of the three Merry Sister of Fate has a book deal that went official today!!

From Publisher's Marketplace:


I've read it, critiqued it, it's awesome, tight, bloody, eerie, and sexy. I'm so excited for her. Now all three of us Sisters are published and all is right with the world.

I remember when we first met and the project she was working on then. Started in a motel room with a spray of arterial blood . . . aww, makes me nostalgic.

GIANT CONGRATS TO TESSA!!!! I'm so proud to know her!

The idea that you could have a school for enchanters is just ridiculous. Hundreds of small students who can levitate pots and become invisible and enlarge frogs? Dozens of classrooms that, according to a clockwork academic calendar, regularly disgorge a number of people exceptionally endowed with magical prowess? Just patently absurd.

My opinion -- and really mine is the only opinion that matters in this case, as you know absolutely nothing about this, like most people -- is that the only thing worth talking about in this case is apprenticeships. Do art schools turn out mountains of Van Goghs and Rembrandts? The fact is -- and it’s not a popular fact -- you can train a magician, but enchanters are born. You’ve got to have aptitude to be a great enchanter, and aptitude is best served in an apprenticeship, not in a sticky desk previously occupied by some snot-nosed, no-talent wizard wannabe.

“Which is why I won’t take the position,” I told Eric Singer. Singer was a scrawny thing, even now -- a fact he tried to hide with an unfortunate beard. He always looked extremely hungry and extremely hungover to me. I had already told him my decision on the phone but he had materialized in my kitchen just before noon, apparently because he found rejection a dish better eaten with company.

“I went through enchanters school,” Singer said. “I’m a product of standardized testing.”

“Thank you for proving my point,” I replied. “Coffee?”

( read more under the cut )

____________________________________

Author's Note: Just a general commentary on standardized schooling, with some identity crisis thrown in for good measure.

Image from: eggman

My fingers were numb and tight in the cold night air, but I held the rope and leaned back with all my weight. Up at the top of the stone wall, Cy and Jude crouched to drop down into the cemetery. Augie was already scouting inside, to make sure the stiff's family hadn't bought night watchers. They do that sometimes, if they can afford it, for the first few nights after burial when the flesh is best and most useful to the likes of us.

Good news is they usually can't afford it.

Not around hear, least ways. Around here's where they put the plagued and poor, the homeless and the free colored. Lucky for us, the doctors and their students don't give a crap what kind of body we bring them so long at it's fresh. Jude heard yesterday some Irish lady bled all over her kids after cutting her own throat. I said that takes balls and we should leave her in peace, but since Nathaniel got himself arrested and Jude took over I should be keeping my jaw shut because Cy liked nothin' better than to see blood on my face. Besides, Jude said, when they go to grave without blood, they last longer and she'll be in such condition maybe we'll get extra coin from the physicks.

I heard Jude hit the ground on the other side, barely crackling the fallen leaves. Then Cy slammed with a thud and muffled grunt. I clenched my jaw against a snort. The bastard. Just because he was bigger and meaner he thought he got to enforce his own set of rules. A couple of months and twenty more pounds and I'd be able to hit back and mean it.

Wind gusted at my back, throwing dead leaves to slap against me and scatter against the cemetery wall. I dug in my feet and gripped the rope. My palms itched and burned. I grimaced at the strain stretching across my back and shoulders. Then the weight was suddenly gone as one of them lowered the bundle to the ground. Three tugs, and I let go of the rope. It snaked up and over the edge of the wall with a rough hiss.

I scrambled up and over, dropping as quietly as Jude had. Cy slammed a shovel into my shoulder, hard enough that I staggered.

"Quiet," hissed Jude from the bush where he was hiding our ropes and the burlap we'd wrapped the tools in.

Inside the cemetery walls sounds were muffled, as if the sticky smell from inside coffins seeped up through the ground and held all noises down, like the real gravity of death or something. I could feel it press against my face, pricking over my cheeks to my ears, and down the back of my neck. I shivered.

"Scared, Philly?" Cy sneered, pushing at me again. I jammed the end of my shovel handle into his stomach, but he dodged in time that it barely brushed the torn leather of his vest.

( My mouth exploded in pain as a blow from nowhere knocked me to the cold earth. )

In honor of m_stiefvater's new release, BALLAD, we're helping her hold a massive contest. She concocted it herself and wrangled brennayovanoff and I into helping her out, which we were thrilled to do! (If I'm totally honest, BALLAD is my favorite of Maggie's three released books. I <3 it and you will too!)

FIRST, the prizes.

The absolute grand prize about which we're enormously excited is:

1 chapter (or 15 double-spaced pages, whichever comes first) critique by all three of the Merry Sisters of Fate:
Maggie Stiefvater (LAMENT, SHIVER, and now BALLAD!), Brenna Yovanoff (author of forthcoming FE in '10) and Tessa Gratton (possessor of secret news we wish we could share). We're all critique partners, and read every manuscript each other writes before it goes out to editors or agents. We rip and tear the manuscripts apart and put them back together like nobody's business. None of us would not be who we are without each other, and we're thrilled to be turning our attention to YOU, dear readers. :D


The first prize is this swank messenger bag. Not just a swank messenger bag, but a swank messenger bag stuffed with a signed Ballad, a signed Lament, a signed Shiver, and a signed Shiver audio book.




And the second prize is stack of books all involving the paranormal and teens and death and good stuff:

a signed copy of BALLAD
NEED by Carrie Jones
GRACELING by Kristin Cashore
IMPOSSIBLE by Nancy Werlin
THIRSTY by M. T. Anderson

And the third prize is

a signed audiobook of Shiver (what? Maggie has a lot of them)


And here are the rules:

To enter, you must find a copy of Ballad in the wild -- that is, in a bookstore of any ilk. You do not have to buy said copy of Ballad. All you have to do is whip out your camera or your cell phone and have someone take a picture of you holding it. That's one entry. That's it. You want another chance to win? Have your sister pose next to you. She doesn't have to buy the book either. Or even hold a copy. She does need to be looking at the camera though. Want another chance to win? Have that random woman browsing the Sarah Dessen books stand next to your sister. Again, she doesn't have to hold the book. Or even know you. Just be willing to smile into the camera in proximity to someone holding the book. Want visual examples? Of course you do.

FOUR ENTRIES. None of them know the king of the dead, but he's looking at the camera (I think. His eyes are shadowed.) He doesn't have to hold that book, but he is anyway because he's so darn thrilled to be in it.

Then what we need you to do is take the photos and post them somewhere online -- we don't care if it's your facebook, livejournal, photobucket, mom's website, whatever, that's not important. The only thing that's important is that you link them here. You can embed them directly in the comment if you have the voodoo to do that. Or you can just send us a link. Make sure it's someplace we can see it and do a headcount. Bonus prize to someone who gets more than 20 people in a photo. ;) We'll think of something good . . .

Got the idea? Okay, to give you plenty of time to find it in the wild, we're running this baby through October 10th, which is the second Saturday in October. Pleeeeeennnnny of time to find it.

You can post your links here, or over at Maggie's journal. Good luck! And God speed! ;)

I wake up in the dark.

I wake up, and I don’t know where I am. The bed is not my bed and the air smells wrong, like disinfectant and industrial carpet.

Close by, someone is crying, a soft, damp sound that goes on and on. It kind of makes me feel like crying too. But I don’t. Instead, I wrap my arms around the pillow, pull the blanket over my head. I should get up, see what's wrong, find a door or a window or a light switch, but my arms and legs feel heavy and I’m beginning to shake. The crying goes on forever.

I wait, heavy and shaking, for the dull sleep that I’ve been sleeping. I wait not to dream.

Around me, the dark is like water and I find it hard to breathe. It is a dark as dark as being underground.

*****
“Do they ever tell you to do things?”

The doctor. Doctor Gloria Marquette. And the answer is yes. They do.

I look at the floor. It seems like most of my life, I've been looking at the floor. The sun comes in at a slant. Shards of light go spilling across the carpet. It must be afternoon.

I want to answer, but the words are stuck in my throat, so I close my eyes and pretend it's a game.

A disappearing game. Not like the ones I played at home, but a new one, strange and scarier, like I am winding myself in and out of the slashes of sunlight on the floor, too dizzy to keep my head up. There are bruises down my arms, pinpricks weeping from the times I couldn’t keep still, times where the skin tore on the needle. I never made a sound.( . . . )

This was all the hounds really were: a smear of mud, a bit of spit, a handful of ash. And my words. The demons animated them with a laying on of hands, but there was nothing to make them what they were until I called them hounds.

It’s all about intention.

It was foul work, and I didn’t like it. Demons aren’t good company -- the worst, actually, no matter who you ask -- and I was helping create an instrument of torment. And I had never really liked getting my hands dirty. But I’d always loved dogs. So I made the very best dogs I could.

Hound I breathed into the shapeless ear of one of the demonic forms, rolling the ear flap out long. Stretch. I patted the mud into haunches, smoothed my hands over ashen legs, pressed my thumbs to form hocks. Wag I told the tail as I pulled it long and straight.

That was the most important part. If a dog couldn’t show that it was happy, it stopped being happy. And if there was one thing I’d learned about hell hounds, it was that when they were unhappy, they killed a lot of people.

A lot.

I had made many hounds by the time the demons brought me an assistant. He was older than I was -- well, he looked older -- and he had a square, cocky shoulders that looked used to holding up a suit. His expression said clearly that he was not sorry, that he did not know why he was here, he would not be beaten down by these godforsaken demons and when would he get to speak to the manager around here?

I didn’t know exactly why he was here, but I could guess the general principle.

“Hello,” I said as he joined me, pacing around the room, looking for escape. I don’t know why he bothered. I could never find any walls, much less doors. We were contained by darkness, and how could you argue with that? “I’m Anna.”

He didn’t answer. He patted his pockets as if searching for a cellphone and continued to pace restlessly. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to make him help me, or even if he would know how. I didn’t trust him to get the wag right, though, so I didn’t press the issue. I just kept about my work, cross-legged in the middle of the floor, scooping up a handful of slime and a toss of ash and spitting into it. I was about four dogs away from a hunt.

( Read more under the cut )

It is the sound of thunder in a cloudless sky that stops me.

I know it: the dry echoing rumble that hides their howling and the ferocious clatter of the horses. But it is not Yule or Midsummer, and there is no reason for them to be so near to my city.

Unless they've come for me.

***

I am in one of the south suburbs, surrounded by stone and plaster, wood and glass. If only the steel cages of downtown were nearer. Here, there is nowhere to hide. They will sniff me out no matter how mismatched my clothes, how many red ribbons I tie around my wrists and ankles, no matter the bells in my hair or the iron rings in my pockets.

The asphalt stretches ahead, silent as a frozen river. All the people sleep. It is early in the morning and lights are off. Dark porches, dark windows, dark yards with swing-sets and gardens heavy with shadows. Cars sit like beetles, paint gleaming in the cold moonlight. I crane my head up at the stars. They burn crystal-clear through the light pollution of the city.

The thunder roars again. Coming from the south-east. As they near, the growls will quiet as the hounds put their noses down and hiss their breath out through their sharp teeth.

One last glance around: no, none of the cars are old enough or big enough to be enough iron to protect me.

I must meet them. But they will not take me back Underhill. I would rather die, be torn to pieces and slammed beneath hooves.

***

( The most open ground for battle is the football field behind the high school. )

You get to know the people who come in. If you spend long enough behind a counter, you get an idea of what they like, not just in their coffee, but of what makes them happy. You can look at someone once, and see all the commonplace joys and the tiny miseries that make up the fabric of their lives. You learn to see these things, even when you don't want to.

I was 19, working at Thatchman's in the Village. Vietnam had ended, and there was still a giddy sense that we'd won—not Nixon, or the US Army, but we, the people. We had called for peace and they had heard us.

I'd done nothing. Oh, I'd marched and shouted with everyone else, but I hadn't prevailed in any real sense. I was at Columbia, studying comparative literature and 18th Century French poetry. If I'd done something remarkable, actually done something, I was certain that my life would have been fundamentally altered. It would be there on my skin and in my voice and my eyes. People would see my unflinching commitment to progress and idealism.

Instead, I was just a girl in a cafe, pouring coffee and distributing sandwiches, while outside, the world just went on and on in one long, greasy smear.( . . . )