excerpt

Author's Note: See if you can guess them all! I know many of you will get the second one.

Part I:

She nodded. "Well, there's some sort of camp at the university there this summer, and they actually let girls play. One of ours is going to be there in July.
Zachary stopped. "One of yours? Who?"
"Samantha Golton. The forward. Know her? She's almost as fast as you."
Zee's eyes popped open. "Samantha?"
"I see you do know her," Nicki grinned. "Shall I put in a good word for you?"
"Yes. No... I don't know!" Zee grabbed her shoulder. "What should I do?"
"Sam's cool. Why don't I, you know, lay the groundwork?"
"No! No! don't!"
"Okay, okay. Why not?"

It was remarkable how quickly the garrulous Dame took to palace life. Between her myriad shifts and duties, when she was at last allowed to rest those heavy, tired feet, she turned her eyes, her hands upon every trimming and decoration. “What wonder, what magic!” she exclaimed, with feeling. Iris tramped around after her grandmother, or sat with immense patience, multitudinous solemnity at her infirm mother’s bedside, or ran herself ragged on the grounds with riotous little Anais, who embraced the child, if out of more convenience than sorority. Aurore was consistently impressed at the girl’s mettle, that she could tolerate with such compassion what degree of upheaval, of privation, had constantly attended her young life. Aurore was no daughter of her mother, she understood with palefaced shame. Maternity bound her to Anais, and she loved her with a protector’s fierceness and might, but she saw herself drawn inexorably toward the somber Iris.

More than anything, she wanted to entreat her father, to challenge him, duel to the death for a smidgen of truth, but, for reasons undisclosed, her mighty avenging nature curled upon itself and slowly died.

For once in Aurore’s life, she hadn’t the courage.

I would punish them all.

I just finished reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it really inspired me -Victor Hugo has such a lovely prose style. So I tried to approximate it in my own work, and this is the result. (It's part of a much longer short story; this was the only bit I felt like sharing.)

* * *

Again, this is not necessarily connected to my novel -I like to reuse names.

Etienne is away appeasing the Portuguese delegation, which is all the better; I can’t have him finding out about this. I knew that woman would return to plague him; yet pestilence in this form seems a horror undue even him. This is an intimate plight, one to remain cloistered among women.

My breath rushes, and my lips tremble. Adia Scarborough was a common whore; a false beauty, emboldened with passions not hers to claim; no doubt rotting in a syphilitic grave in some impoverished district. And here is my daughter, my beautiful, impressionable girl, practically lusting over her, finding her image in the holiest of places!

I can’t look Aurore in the face, I can’t notice her beauties without the Adia's harsh countenance spoiling them! I leave her under the eye of Evanna, the palest, youngest maid, and take to my bed for the morning.

This is not necessarily connected to my novel -I like to reuse names.

* * *

That night, I find Aurore, who has stationed herself in the corridor en route to the chapel. Mass has been ended for several hours, and the rows lay placid, empty beneath the fractioned windows.

“Aurore?” I display my lantern, throw my countenance into illumination. “Cherie? What takes you here, my love?” I lay my solid hands upon her shoulder blades, setting the lantern at my feet.

She does not raise her head. Her eyes are trained, predatory, on a fierce and sprawling tapestry. One in a series of telltale panelings, it spells the story of a woman, knee-high in flames, facing damnation for her especial sins.

“Maman,” says Aurore, “where am I?”

I peer at her over my dressing-table. My daughter, my Aurore, one month shy of her twelfth birthday, spindle-limbed, coltish. When she still allows my presence in the bath -more and more rarely, these days- I can see her soapy front whittling, her nipples round and shiny. My child, always, but not a child any longer. Tonight, her skin glows, muted pink, exposed at the lace edges of her nightdress, and her loose curls frame her countenance. I am proud of the beauty she wears so effortlessly, proud and jealous both, and at the same time I love her for it, too. Contradiction, thy name is motherhood.

The pain and force soon rattle my jaw; my heart, shrouded within its dainty cage, gives a momentous leap, alive for once, and open. I fall to my elbows; Stephan shouts and jeers, his dignity forgotten, and the midwife lands her on my chest: A mottled, white-on-pink body, too minuscule to be sentient yet completely so; a little girl, perfect, in all her naked glory. Dear reader, I can scarcely put it to the page, conscript it into coherence -for it was real, real and bloody and whole, and my hands tremble to recount it. All thoughts of dangers, real or imaginary, left me as my daughter gave her first suck.

Even Stephan is moved, in his own taciturn way. Once the girl has exhausted my breast, he offers his smallest finger, with more care than I’d thought him capable of. He pets her yellow, caul-drenched head, and my worst fear relaxes. He loves her.

Here's a passage from my story that I just finished typing that I really like. I hope you like it too. Sorry for the length, but the beginning was important for the end to make any sense.

“Zachary, pull over.” I said again, calm.