“When I was a child,” the Knight began, “that is—I used to live on an island, by the shore. Whenever a storm came, the ocean would churn and crash against the seawall, and from my tower, I would stare out the window and watch the waves come in. I remember—there was this old man, a crabber, who lived alone by the sea. Whenever a storm rolled in, which was often, he would go out to greet it.
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Afterword
And so our tale comes to an end, in so far as stories ever end.
SECRETS was originally written for the 2012 National Novel Writing Month. It then spent several years in editing, and then several more years languishing on my hard drive. After the modest success of Nin the Seeker (available to read on this very site), I thought it was about time to release SECRETS into the wild.
Continue readingChapter Eighteen: Happily Ever After
The Knight felt sick; his stomach quaked, his head swam—he blinked and blinked again but could not clear his eyes. He leaned against the trunk of a naked tree and waited. His mind was a war, filled with seemingly innumerable thoughts and feelings, all conflicting.
Continue readingChapter Seventeen: Fire in the Heavens
He raised his lantern to the night air. The forest was empty—only the bare skeletons of branch and bough remained, naked to the wind. Dead leaves littered the ground, paper thin and limp. The color had gone out of them, victims of the damp.
Continue readingChapter Sixteen: Thunderhorse
He had taken the little red table from the summer house—the one with the folding legs—and had set it up by the shore. The lake was calm, so he placed the table in the shallows, working the legs into the sand for support. Here they sat, the water lapping at their feet, lilac petals drifting by their heels like tiny, fragile boats.
Continue readingChapter Fifteen: Penthesilea
The sound of leaves echoed in his ear. With every step and stride they crunched beneath his heel, with every gust of wind they rustled, shaken from their trees.
Continue readingChapter Fourteen: Two Short Conversations
She sat under the sacred fig tree. The clouds drifted lazily above, the butterflies danced, a solitary ant crept across the lacquer face of the Princess’s birdhouse.
Continue readingChapter Thirteen: The Waif and Her Brother
She took his hand in hers and led him up the garden path.
“I had persuaded the Prince to give up the fight, if but for a day,” the Knight said to her, “but a Prince is a tenacious thing, and I knew his wish for a Princess-bride had not diminished.”
Continue readingChapter Twelve: Ahimsa and Ataraxia
It was more than a week before she saw the Knight again, although she had no doubt of his inevitable return.
Continue readingChapter Eleven: The Smithies Three
He’d kept watch for the past three days, but there had been no sign of the Prince or his woeful sister. The forest of the world was empty once again. Had they abandoned their quest?
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Crosstown Gate 