Anyone interested in forming a mutual critique group? I’ve noticed it’s kind of hard to get consistent critique so if a few members agreed to critique any time another members posted (or at least made an effort to do so) that would really increase the amount of feedback.
Anyone interested?
I would really like some notes. I need someone else's eyes on my writing so I can get a different perspective. What's working, what's not. Thank you for your time.
Agate was cursed on the third anniversary of her birth, the same night she spoke her first words. It was not a coincidence. As a babe, she giggled when she reached for the bound stone above her bassinet and cooed in her mother’s arms while she watched the light reflect off the blunted weeding sickle above the nursery door, but nothing more. As a toddler, she clapped and shrieked watching the old stray whom her parents kept by the threshold with gifts of tossed offal, but she paid no mind to their pleas: “Say Mama? Dada? Maaa-Ma. Daaa-Da.”
The night she was cursed Agate was noisier than usual: she’d been feverish since the day before and the matron’s bitterroot tinctures were ebbing. She readied a cry to summon her parents, when she noticed something curious: two yellow lights floating in the corner of the nursery.
Agate watched. The orbs initiated an uncanny acrobatic routine. They darted in a synchronized frenzy back and fourth, floor to the rafters, rustling the dried herbs that hung there. They circled, growing faster and faster, blurring into a frantic cyclone of light. Agate laughed and clapped. At the sound of her laugh, the lights settled. They winked momentarily.
Narrow, vertical slits appeared on the orbs, just like the old stray.
“Eyes,” she said, her voice taking its first leap into the world beyond her lips. The orbs narrowed and the slits dilated.
Just like the old stray before it pounced on something small and tasty.
The crash of the bassinet toppling over roused Agate’s parents. They burst into the small chamber.
On the floor, side-by-side, lay Agate and a small, gnarled log. Astride both, murmuring in cricket chirps and unseen skitters, was a hunched, hairy figure, grasping the log with one clawed hand…and Agate’s pink tongue with the other. Her parents stared as the surface of the log took on the shape of their child’s face, while its branches swelled into chubby toddler limbs.
“Thatha? Wahwah?” said Agate.
Her father broke his paralysis and seized the blunt sickle above the nursery door.
“Get off of her!” he cried, bringing the iron tool down on the creature’s head. The beast shrieked, releasing Agate and the log. Dark bile rained on both from the wound on its head. Agate’s father booted the creature in the ribs, before scooping his sobbing daughter and shielding her against his chest. The beast tumbled over the bassinet before phasing through the nursery wall, staggering into the night. Agate’s mother lifted the abandoned log. It could be mistaken for the work of a master carver: there were Agate’s eyes, her ears and delicate fingers, even two rows of milk teeth peeking from behind the homunculus’s lips.
Agate’s mother set the manikin back on the floor. It looked too much like her daughter to drop. She wrapped her arms around Agate and her husband. She reached for the girl’s tiny hand, only to pull back.
Three fingers with bulbous pads grasped her back where once there’s been four.
Agate’s father ran his hand through Agate’s hair.
Long, pointed ears jutted from the sides of her head. He pulled the girl away from his shoulder.
They gasped.
“Dada? Mama?” she said. Tears traveled down her cheek past dark green blotches where the creature’s bile had soaked into her skin. They dribbled from her lips, which parted to reveal a pair of sharp fangs. “Dada?! Mama?!”
A handful of years later and a world away, Agate was perched on the edge of a flooded swale watching for anything uncanny. The forest had been still that evening: no woodwings, no witchlights. Only the muffled coastal wind and the groan of the trees struggling against it. Before the Priory, during what Matron Egis called “harder days,” being “taken” by the Orchid Swales was not uncommon. Even today, novices spooked one another with candlelight stories of girls enticed by the witchlights. All snuck out past the safety of the Priory walls. None were ever seen again. All that remained were whispers: a veil snagged on a tree, a sandal slowly being consumed by the moss, and were it possible to count such things, one additional witchlight.
It was mostly nonsense.
Agate had snuck out many, many times. She’d never once disappeared, she’d never found a forsaken veil and most disappointingly, she’d never once met a ghost girl.
That didn’t mean the Orchid Swales were free of danger.
The wind was forever remaking the forest, uprooting trees from their sandy moorings with little warning, creating a landscape of upturned roots and ankle-breaking hollows. The wind was the secret architect of the forest: Like the rings on a tree, year after year, storm-whipped waves churned the sand, filling the bay at the foot of Prickleberry Scramble with row upon row of ridges and swales. The deeper you went into the forest, the older it became, and the older it became, the more likely you were to encounter Her.
She prayed the freeze had coaxed the Orchid Mother to sleep. She was the ruler of this domain, and she was why so many during those harder days chose to “wander the swales.” She was a quiet death and a shepherd to the Old Road. Agate had only ever caught glimpses of the great spirit. Each time she’d felt the urge to run. A chance meeting now would be the worst of all.
Tonight, Grandmother Night would ride across the Jeweled Firmament. It was Agate’s best chance to find what she needed. She had to atone. Her spite had drawn the ire of the Prioress and lost her the favor of Matron Egis. Matron Egis, her protector, who believed the Goddess would lift Agate’s affliction once she was worthy.
Agate had never felt worthy.
She felt rotten and wormy, like a forgotten log returning to the dirt. The humus at her core compelled her to sneak over the Priory walls night after night, just as it convinced her to sew Melandris into her bed for nicknaming her “maggot.” She couldn’t say which of her crawlies had suggested stuffing nettles under the girl’s blanket before pulling the last stitch, but the memory made her grin.
Pockets of light filtered through lichen-encrusted branches. Agate sniffed the air and grimaced. Even here, a full forest away from the Priory, the sour odor of the Oraculum’s divine vapors tainted her nostrils. She rubbed her nose with her sleeve and breathed the damp air. Across the swale, Prickleberry Scramble awaited.
She stepped back, then leapt across the narrow moat. Her sandals squelched and slid on the opposite embankment. She gasped and caught herself on a branch, fearful she’d been discovered.
The ripples she’d created spread and rebounded off the opposite bank. She watched until only her undisturbed reflection looked back at her. Agate sneered, and her fanged reflection sneered back. She adjusted her wimple, then stepped beyond the treeline and onto the shambles of Prickleberry Scramble.
The coastal wind hammered her, loud enough to swallow her voice. Cloaked by its gusts, she began to sing.
“I woke up in a rooming house
By a fish market in Spa.
My lip was busted like a peach
My knuckles bruised and raw.”
Sinking below the mountains, the Great Orb reminded Agate of the golden herb biscuits she’d nabbed from the refectory earlier that day. She used the dwindling light to pick her way over the Scramble’s boulders and gravel rivulets.
“I fell onto the filthy floor,
And I cried out like a babe,
Mother, Goddess, won’t you help me?
Or I’m soon for the grave.
Walk the Old Road, sinner.
A pilgrim I’ll make thee.”
An updraft cut through Agate’s wool robes. She shivered and paused on the leeward side of a limestone pinnacle. She opened her pack and retrieved her quilt, the one Matron Egis had sewn for her. Agate swept her arm, unfurling the quilt and cloaking herself in patchwork chimeras and embroidered thickets. Useful wards against troublesome spirits and brisk winds.
The Great Orb departed, revealing the Jeweled Firmament. Agate looked down, prideful of how far she’d come. Pinched between the Scramble and the coast were the rippled Orchid Swales. Past that, stamped onto the wilderness, was the Priory and the polished dome of the Oraculum. It hummed with subtle radiance as wisps of vapor escaped through the oculus. Across the inlet was the causeway to glowing pleasure houses of Bygone Bay, the final stop on the Great Pilgrimage Road.
“That goddess of obedience
And order made manifest,
Appeared in radiant glory,
In my moment of distress.”
Beyond the town, the road began to shimmer like the coils of a racer. From beyond the horizon, a vast, brilliant specter began to rise. The colossal head and neck of the Horse Lord Aretes soared into view, its mane drifting as if underwater. Next, the beast’s towering legs mounted the sky. Finally, astride Aretes, was Grandmother Night herself. Agate looked into her deeply lined face, pleading to be seen, but the goddess’s gaze remained fixed on the horizon. Beneath her, the world shone like cold silver.
“She looked about my shameful flat
There was sorrow on her face
She asked me: ‘Rueful villain,
How came you to this place?’
Walk the Old Road, sinner.
A pilgrim I’ll make thee.”
How can you be worthy of someone who doesn’t even know you exist? she thought. Agate picked up a stone. She hesitated, then hurled it at the Goddess’s unmoving face. Neither the Goddess nor Aretes seemed to notice.
“I felt a lie come to my lips
‘I am blameless!’ I’d inveigh.
But at the sight of her splendor,
I chose raw honesty:”
Agate turned her back on the Goddess and the Priory, resuming her climb to the peak.
‘Before I walked I learned to run,
There’s knavery in my chest.
Since birth it’s been my preferred choice
Like a cuckoo in a nest.’
‘I spit, I lie, I dance with ghosts,
I’ve never turned down a fight.
I sleep away the blessed day,
And revel in the night.’
Agate hoisted herself onto a plateau thick with knob pine and redthorn. She lowered her voice and stepped carefully.
“She produced a simple tunic,
A tin beggar’s pot and rod.
She pointed down that ancient road,
And said ‘Obey your God.’
Walk the Old Road, sinner.
A pilgrim I’ll make thee.”
She snuck through the thickets, taking care not to snag her quilt. She emerged into a clearing dominated by a crude dolmen: a flat stone balanced atop two boulders before the mouth of a cave. Before the monument was a rugged stone courtyard with a shallow depression at its center.
Agate crept, her singing no more than a murmur.
“There’s a great truth within my song,
True for you and true for me.”
The chains of sin may bind us, but
As pilgrims we’re made-”
“Night’s blessings, Hedgegirl,” said Lord Prickleberry.
Just though folks might enjoy it. The title is "The Day that the Sky Met the Sea."
"I awoke with a start, head pounding like my heart,
‘Twas the day of Sky King's Blessing.
Though a shrine bearer I'd spent my evening with rye,
And could spare little time for dressing.
I made haste to the shrine, incense mixing with brine,
Where Old Thunder's palanquin was housed.
Then I took up my place, sweat dripping from my face,
With the lads whom I'd last night caroused.
As we mounted the stair I could scarce take in air,
But we had a mere thousand to go.
We were close to the peak, our legs trembling and weak,
When alas I was caught by the toe.
We swayed and we fought but it all came to naught,
And the Old Man's great icon broke free.
It cracked as it fell then was lost in the swell,
On the day that Sky met the sea!"
Hello. This is the first 3500 words from my first draft (a very brief Prologue, then Chapters 1 & 2). I wanted to get some feedback on what is working and what isn't. I am very much an novice so I know there are craft issues, which I want to know about, but I'm interested in hearing about any and all aspects.
If you do take the time to read, thank you, I really appreciate it.
Agate was cursed on the third anniversary of her birth, the same night she spoke her first words. It was not a coincidence. As a babe, she giggled when she reached for the bound stone above her bassinet and cooed in her mother’s arms while she watched the light reflect off the protective iron shoe above the nursery door, but nothing more. As a toddler, she clapped and shrieked while watching the old stray whom her parents kept by the threshold with gifts of tossed offal, but did not heed their spoken pleas.
That night Agate was noisier than usual: she’d been feverish since the day before and by midnight even the matron’s bitterroot tinctures were ebbing. She readied a cry to summon her parents, when she noticed something curious.
Two yellow lights were floating in the corner of the nursery. As Agate watched, they initiated a beguiling acrobatic routine; darting in a synchronized frenzy from the floor to the rafters, the dried pungent herbs trembling when they came near. They circled one another, growing faster and faster, blurring into a frantic cyclone of light. Agate laughed and clapped, and the orbs settled beside one another. They blinked, only to reappear with narrow, vertical slits.
“Eyes.” she said, her voice taking its first leap into the world beyond her lips. The orbs narrowed and the slits dilated, just like the old stray’s before it pounced on something small and tasty.
The crash of the toppled bassinet roused Agate’s parents. They burst into the small chamber and beheld a nightmare:
On the floor, side-by-side, lay Agate and a small, gnarled log. Astride both, murmuring in cricket chirps and unseen skitters, was a hunched, hairy figure, grasping the log with one clawed hand…and Agate’s pink tongue with the other. Her parents stared as the surface of the log took on the shape of their child’s face, while its branches swelled into chubby toddler limbs.
“Thatha? Wahwah?” said Agate.
Her father broke his paralysis and seized the iron shoe above the nursery door.
“Get off of her!” he cried, bringing the shoe down on the creature’s head. The beast shrieked, releasing Agate and the log. Dark bile rained on both from the wound on its head. Agate’s father booted the creature in the ribs, before scooping his sobbing daughter and shielding her against his chest. The beast tumbled over the bassinet before phasing through the nursery wall, staggering into the night. Agate’s mother lifted the abandoned log. It was the twisted work of a master carver: there were Agate’s eyes, her ears and delicate fingers, even two rows of milk teeth peeking from behind the homunculus’s lips.
Agate’s mother set the manikin back on the floor. It looked too much like her daughter to drop. She wrapped her arms around Agate and her husband, and reached for the girl’s tiny hand, only to pull back when only three fingers with bulbous pads grasped her back. Agate’s father ran his hand through Agate’s hair, only to pause at her long, pointed ears. He pulled the girl away from his shoulder. Agate’s parents gasped.
“Dada? Mama?” she said. Tears traveled down her cheek past dark green blotches where the creature’s bile had soaked into her skin. They dribbled from her lips, which parted to reveal a pair of sharp fangs. “Dada?! Mama?!”
A handful of years later and a world away, Agate was perched on the edge of a flooded swale watching for anything uncanny. The Orchid Mother’s domain had been still that evening: no woodwings, no witchlights. Only the muffled coastal wind and the groan of the trees struggling against it. The Orchid Swales were one of Agate’s favorite places; a succession of slender ridges and marshes squeezed back-to-back like a quilt scrunched on top of a bed. The saturated soil and constant wind meant the forest’s trees were in constant danger of toppling over, creating a dreamlike landscape of upturned roots and mossy hollows. A million hidden worlds concealing millions of hidden eyes.
She prayed the freeze had coaxed the Orchid Mother to sleep. Agate had only ever caught glimpses of the great spirit gliding over the surface of her kingdom. Each time she’d felt the urge to run. A chance meeting now would be the worst of all. Tonight, Grandmother Night would ride across the Jeweled Firmament. It was Agate’s best chance to find what she needed. She could atone for drawing the ire of the Prioress and win back the favor of Matron Egis. Matron Egis, her protector. Matron Egis, who believed with her whole heart that the Goddess would lift Agate’s affliction once she proved herself worthy.
Agate had never felt worthy.
She felt rotten and wormy, like a forgotten log returning to the dirt. The humus at her core compelled her to sneak over the Priory walls night after night, just as it convinced her to sew Melandris into her bed for nicknaming her “maggot.” She couldn’t say which of her crawlies had suggested stuffing nettles under the girl’s blanket before pulling the last stitch, but the memory made her grin.
Pockets of light filtered through lichen-encrusted branches. Agate sniffed the air and grimaced. Even here, a full forest away from the Priory, the sour odor of the Oraculum’s divine vapors tainted her nostrils. She rubbed her nose with her sleeve and breathed the damp air. Across the swale, Prickleberry Scramble awaited.
She stepped back, then leapt across the narrow moat. Her sandals squelched and slid on the opposite embankment. She gasped and caught herself on a branch, fearful she’d been discovered.
The ripples she’d created spread and rebounded off the opposite bank. She watched until only her undisturbed reflection looked back at her. Agate sneered, and her fanged reflection sneered back. She adjusted her wimple, then stepped beyond the treeline and onto the shambles of Prickleberry Scramble.
The coastal wind hammered her, loud enough to swallow her voice. Cloaked by its gusts, she began to sing.
“I woke up in a rooming house
By a fish market in Spa.
My lip was busted like a peach
My knuckles bruised and raw.”
Sinking below the mountains, the Great Orb reminded Agate of the golden herb biscuits she’d nabbed from the refectory earlier that day. She used the dwindling light to pick her way over the Scramble’s boulders and gravel rivulets.
“I fell onto the filthy floor,
And I cried out like a babe,
Mother, Goddess, won’t you help me?
Or I’m soon for the grave.
Walk the Old Road, sinner.
A pilgrim I’ll make thee.”
An updraft cut through Agate’s wool robes. She shivered and paused on the leeward side of a limestone pinnacle. She opened her pack and retrieved her quilt, the one Matron Egis had sewn for her. Agate swept her arm, unfurling the quilt and cloaking herself in patchwork chimeras and embroidered thickets. Useful wards against troublesome spirits and brisk winds.
The Great Orb departed, revealing the Jeweled Firmament. Agate looked down, prideful of how far she’d come. Pinched between the Scramble and the coast were the rippled Orchid Swales. Past that, stamped onto the wilderness, was the Priory and the polished dome of the Oraculum. It hummed with subtle radiance as wisps of vapor escaped through the oculus. Across the inlet was the causeway to glowing pleasure houses of Bygone Bay, the final stop on the Great Pilgrimage Road.
“That goddess of obedience
And order made manifest,
Appeared in radiant glory,
In my moment of distress.”
Beyond the town, the road began to shimmer like the coils of a racer. From beyond the horizon, a vast, brilliant specter began to rise. The colossal head and neck of the Horse Lord Aretes soared into view, its mane drifting as if underwater. Next, the beast’s towering legs mounted the sky. Finally, astride Aretes, was Grandmother Night herself. Agate looked into her deeply lined face, pleading to be seen, but the goddess’s gaze remained fixed on the horizon. Beneath her, the world shone like cold silver.
“She looked about my shameful flat
There was sorrow on her face
She asked me: ‘Rueful villain,
How came you to this place?’
Walk the Old Road, sinner.
A pilgrim I’ll make thee.”
How can you be worthy of someone who doesn’t even know you exist? she thought. Agate picked up a stone. She hesitated, then hurled it at the Goddess’s unmoving face. Neither the Goddess nor Aretes seemed to notice.
“I felt a lie come to my lips
‘I am blameless!’ I’d inveigh.
But at the sight of her splendor,
I chose raw honesty:”
Agate turned her back on the Goddess and the Priory, resuming her climb to the peak.
‘Before I walked I learned to run,
There’s knavery in my chest.
Since birth it’s been my preferred choice
Like a cuckoo in a nest.’
‘I spit, I lie, I dance with ghosts,
I’ve never turned down a fight.
I sleep away the blessed day,
And revel in the night.’
Agate hoisted herself onto a plateau thick with knob pine and redthorn. She lowered her voice and stepped carefully.
“She produced a simple tunic,
A tin beggar’s pot and rod.
She pointed down that ancient road,
And said ‘Obey your God.’
Walk the Old Road, sinner.
A pilgrim I’ll make thee.”
She snuck through the thickets, taking care not to snag her quilt. She emerged into a clearing dominated by a crude dolmen: a flat stone balanced atop two boulders before the mouth of a cave. Before the monument was a rugged stone courtyard with a shallow depression at its center.
Agate crept, her singing no more than a murmur.
“There’s a great truth within my song,
True for you and true for me.”
The chains of sin may bind us, but
As pilgrims we’re made-”
“Night’s blessings, Hedgegirl,” said Lord Prickleberry.
Agate froze. She could feel the spirit’s glowing eyes bearing down on her as she made sure not to look directly into them.
The creature waited.
Without removing her quilt, Agate spread her arms wide and gave a deep bow.
The spirit resembled a large fissure hare sprouting a thicket of redthorns heavy with clusters of berries. A beard of white lichen reached from its chin to just above the talons of its buzzard legs.
“Night’s blessing upon you, Lord Prickleberry. I hope the Silver Night finds you well.”
“Bah,” said Prickleberry. “I haven’t had a moment’s peace since the sable geese arrived two days ago. They’ve been gorging themselves on the berry patches that, by all rights, belong to my children.” Prickleberry dragged his talons through the thick lichen. “Naturally, the useless panther is nowhere to be seen. The beast takes dozens of my subjects each year, yet when invaders stuff themselves with our winter stores, she is off prowling the canyons for swift mutton.” In the distance, a goose honked, and Agate suppressed a chuckle. Prickleberry grimaced. “I am, at any rate, accustomed to such disturbances. You on the other hand…” he eyed Agate, still bowed, “...were a disturbance I was not expecting. Not after the tongue-lashing you received from the Witch-in-White.” Agate looked up.
“You know about that?” she said. Her mind was flooded by the memory of Melandris’s irate vows of retribution, the corporal admonishments of the Prioress, and, most painful, Matron Egis’s downcast eyes.
“It’s been the talk of the Scramble, dear Hedgegirl! From the pucks at the peak to the witchlights of the Orchid Swales, they sing of the novice, the needle and the nettles. There has been much consternation over your capture by the Witch-in-White.” Prickleberry grinned through pointed teeth. “One of the moss imps insisted she’d gobbled you up.” Agate laughed and Prickleberry chuckled, taking a seat atop the rocky hollow. He plucked a broken branch from his hide and tossed it aside. “So, why have you chosen, at great peril, to traverse to my Scramble?” Taking her cue, Agate took a seat on the ground, wrapping her quilt about her. There was no avoiding an audience now.
“I’m on a quest. I’m…searching for a treasure.” she said.
“A treasure?” said Prickleberry.
“A treasure for Matron Egis. Something old…” she trailed off. A plan was formulating in her mind. “...something rare. A cursed mortal such as myself might spend a lifetime in search of such a treasure,” she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, “yet I only have one night.”
“A conundrum,” said Prickleberry.
“That’s not all, my Lord,” said Agate, “Matron Egis is my protector…and yet…” Agate cupped her face in her hands and heaved her shoulders.
“Go on,” said Prickleberry, leaning in. Agate indulged a private smirk, then raised a pitiful face to the great spirit.
“...and yet my clever but ill-timed nettle-ry has greatly displeased her. I fear I have lost her favor. That’s why I’ve come to your domain. Without Matron Egis, I fear the Prioress may indeed gobble me up. I need the treasure to win back her affection that I so foolishly squandered.” she said. Despite her theatrics, real tears pressed against the corners of her eyes. Prickleberry stroked his lichen beard, considering Agate’s words.
“That would be unfortunate. You are the only mortal who brings me offerings, and to have drawn the ire of the Witch-in-White is troubling indeed. Not even spirits willingly antagonize her." he said.
“What do you mean?” said Agate.
“Only to say that she has a…,” Prickleberry considered his words, “...‘talent’ for snuffing the flames of even great spirits like myself.” He paused, looking at the Jeweled Firmament. “Many spirits used to reside inside the walls of the Priory, more still in the Orchid Swales. Even my realm has been diminished…so many pilgrims sent down the Old Road.” Prickleberry trailed off. Agate looked down at her feet. A goose honked.
“I may have a solution to your dilemma.” said Prickleberry. Agate looked up and grinned.
“I can only assume you must, great spirit that you are, but I dared not hope for your aid-” she said.
“And why not?” barked Pricklberry. The spirit’s demeanor turned. Without rising from his seat Prickleberry’s neck extended ten times over, bringing his face a mere hair’s breath from Agate’s. Prickleberry’s lapin features stretched and warped as his head swelled until it was larger than Agate herself. “Am I not as generous as I am magnificent?” he said. Flickers of yellow fire spilled from the spirit’s fanged maw, extinguishing against Agate’s protective quilt. Agate winced at her verbal stumble, but steeled herself. Among the labyrinthine rules and customs that governed interactions between mortals and spirits, one rule reigned supreme: Do not show fear.
Agate took a deep breath.
“Forgive me, Lord Prickleberry, I-I meant only that I, a cursed mortal, dared not ask for your aid. You’re Lord of the Scramble and father of the fissure hare, not a sellsword or a haggling merchant.” Prickleberry stared, his grotesque head lolling like a puppet. A cold wind rustled his briar coat.
“I-I beseech your Grace, grant me leave to make an offering. N-not as payment, of course. Your boons are, um, your boons are given freely, b-but to honor you and your realm, as is right and proper.” said Agate.
“What have you brought me?” said Prickleberry. Spurts of flame rained like spittle. “Are you prepared to ‘pour blood over the stones?’” Agate pulled the pouch from beneath the quilt.
“I have biscuits and sweet porridge, your favorite." she said.
“Crack.”
Like the sound of a pine branch breaking off in the wind, Prickleberry snapped to his former state. He yipped and leapt in the air, before collecting himself and clearing his throat.
“Proceed,” he said. Agate suppressed a reassured laugh, which risked further offense. Prickleberry was a kind spirit, but even kind spirits could be enigmatic and temperamental. If the first rule when dealing with spirits was “do not show fear,” numbers two and three, just above “watch your step,” were “be polite,” and “do not give offense.”
Agate placed the biscuits into the stone depression and ladled out the porridge from a corked vessel. She bowed, touching her head to the ground, then sat back up.
“Lord of thorns and tumbled Scramble,
Most surefooted of the bramble.
A fearsome spirit, wild and free,
Who rules with generosity.
Now I submit to honor thee,
This sweet porridge…and biscuits three.”
Agate clapped. The offering disappeared, and Prickleberry’s stomach distended. He smacked his lips.
“Mmmm…” Prickleberry closed his eyes and patted his belly. “Very well, describe the treasure you seek,” he said. Agate beamed. She hadn’t upset her plan after all.
“It is a creature, but a creature that’s been turned to stone.” she said. Agate placed the tip of her finger into the leaf litter and drew a spiral. “It resembles a cyclone, about the size of my hand.” She scrawled a series of spikes. “It’s covered in thorns. The more complete the thorns and free from the shale, the greater the treasure.” she said. Prickleberry ran a hand through his beard.
“Yes. Yes I’ve seen this stone corpse, although it is no ‘treasure.’” he said. Agate did all she could to suppress her glee. So close, she thought.
“To a spirit like yourself, it is indeed a poor prize, but to Matron Egis…” said Agate, “...few things will compare.” Prickleberry considered Agate’s words, then nodded.
“Very good, Hedgegirl. I know the perfect treasure for you.” he said, then vanished. Agate leapt to her feet and squealed for joy. All would soon be mended.
It won’t be enough, croaked a voice at the back of her mind. She pushed the thought down.
Agate settled and rested her back against the hollow. She looked into the Jeweled Firmament, watching the Goddess, now approaching the sky’s zenith. “I’m still here, if you want to talk,” she said. The Goddess was impassive. The grand specter blurred into an indistinct mass, then disappeared behind Agate’s heavy eyelids.
…
Agate shot straight up. How long had it been? She looked to the mountain pass. The Goddess was beyond the zenith, descending towards the horizon. She looked around the clearing. There was no sign of Prickleberry. “Where is he?”
What if he doesn’t come back? She thought. Prickleberry was a spirit afterall, and spirits were known for fooling mortals. What if he’d used her for her biscuits?
Agate began to pace across the terrace. She’d planned an entire night of searching, and she’d slept much of it away. On the other hand, if Prickleberry did return and she was gone, not only would she lose Matron Egis’ treasure, she’d also insult Prickleberry by breaking faith. Agate felt squeezed between the twin boulders of her own growing desperation and the customs of spirits which pinned her where she stood.
“Please Prickleberry,” she said, “please, I have to make this right.” Panic crept in. If he intended to keep his end of the bargain, he’d have returned by now, she thought. Agate shook her head. There was still time, she could do this. Agate gathered her quilt and turned towards the shale outcrop.
Snap.
A branch cracked behind her. Agate spun. The ground was covered in slippery leaf litter and shale. She stumbled backwards towards the edge of the platform. She pinwheeled, then tipped over the edge. Agate closed her eyes and threw up her arms, bracing for a ruinous impact.
“Hurk,” Agate was yanked violently from behind, arresting her fall.
Cold, sharp, curved talons clenched the back of her robe and hoisted her back above the platform. She opened her eyes, and found herself eye-to-eye with Prickleberry. The monstrous hand that held her aloft bobbed at the end of a thin, undulating limb, like a kite’s tail in a strong wind.
“Breaking faith, Hedgegirl? Do you doubt my word?” said Prickleberry. He glared at her.
“N-not at all,” said Agate, still suspended above the platform, “I was merely startled and lost my footing. I feared the panther might have found me.” Prickleberry regarded Agate, then placed a furry, clawed finger against her forehead.
“You are clever, Hedgegirl, and you are nimble," said Prickleberry. The spirit drew close, his eyes were wide and feral. “The wilds do not make such distinctions. They swallow the clever and the nimble every day. Remember that.” He leaned back and placed Agate flat on the ground. He returned to his throne atop the hollow, and Agate took her seat before him.
“Here,” said Prickleberry, tossing something heavy into Agate’s lap. She fumbled with the object, then examined it:
A barbed cyclonide.
It was twice the size of her hand, pristine and free of any matrix.
“Lord Prickleberry-” was all she could manage.
“As promised, I have returned with your treasure, and what a stubborn thing it is.” Agate cradled the specimen in her hands, afraid it might fall and shatter.
“Thank you for this treasure,” she said. Prickleberry furrowed his brow.
“What treasure? The stone corpse? No, no, no. I found that dusty thing moments after I departed.” Agate returned Prickleberry’s confused expression.
“I beg my lord’s pardon,” she said, “but if you found the stone creature right away, then what occupied the rest of your night?” Prickleberry rolled his illuminated eyes and reached deep into his thicket pelt.
“Obtaining this,” he said.
My son developed an absolutely debilitating fear of bugs at the beginning of Spring. Like, the kind of fear where he had a meltdown about going into kindergarten the day after he saw a bug the day before. Truth be told, I was devastated. Going outside and nature have always been our thing, and the thought of never getting to do that again because even a gnat coming near his face sent him screaming crushed me. I noticed that after that meltdown things were slowly getting better, like he was acclimatizing. I tried really hard to not show him I was disappointed, I only tried to be reassuring and affirming that I understood why he didn’t like them flying at him. Then, yesterday, he asked me to go outside and flip rocks with him to look for bugs, something we’ve done since he was 2. I almost cried I was so relived and happy. He’s a very brave boy, and I need to remind myself that nothing is set in stone.