The Last New School

It was Graham’s first day at his new school and he was determined to make this time different. It wasn’t just because he liked the new campus, which featured peaceful courtyards, classrooms with skylights, and a historical mural that decorated the entry hall from the main office all the way to the cafeteria. Even if this hadn’t been a place he wanted to stay, the truth was that he was tired.

Living up to expectations was too much work. He had to figure out a way to do just enough to qualify for staying here without excelling enough for his mother to be able to move him to a more “challenging” school. Since he excelled without intending to do so, this was going to be the most difficult project he had tackled, and he didn’t want to cheat. How does one manage to be above average without being so spectacular that nothing seems beyond his abilities? Graham wasn’t sure, but he was going to try to find out.

He had a plan, of course. On the first day, he would just observe. He wouldn’t talk or volunteer or even look too interested. Looking interested encouraged teachers to ask questions, and answering questions is where Graham always sabotaged himself. Even when he was trying to be dull, he accidentally bungled into being profound. Words he thought were just a papercut observation on the surface of the topic made his teachers stare at him in awe. So today, he would be silent.

Graham knew there was an easy way to do this. He could completely screw up, go silent and uncooperative like his sister Drew had done. But going silent and uncooperative hadn’t gotten Drew the life she had wanted. She hadn’t been allowed to study what she wanted where she wanted at the pace she wanted. No, she had been turned over to experimental psychologists who plied her with drugs, read her diaries(until she stopped writing them), and videotaped her every move in order to crack the mystery of her intellectual demise. Now she spent all of her time in a hospital gown just because she had longed to attend a school that had a prom.

Graham wasn’t as ambitious as Drew. He only wanted to slow down and stop being his mother’s pet monkey. He didn’t care if he couldn’t be “normal”, but he wanted to stop feeling abnormal. He found it so ironic that adults hung on his every word, but somehow never managed to hear what he was actually saying to him. It made him feel like he was losing his mind. Yes, it was definitely going to be a challenge to figure out how to fail while still succeeding, but there was no other choice.

The Specimen

 

The assistant George knew as soon as he identified that the deer was not Pudu puda OR Pudu mephistopheles that Dr. Buckland was going to take credit for the discovery.  It had been that way for years: George did the field work and Dr. Buckland would fearlessly display the specimen to the Royal Academy as his own work. 

Even though it probably meant the end of his partnership with one of Britain’s premier naturalists, George couldn’t feel an ounce of regret for replacing the exhibit animal with an entirely different specimen.

The Ruin of AX520

The Ruin of AX520

She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, but at the Academy she was called “The Beast.”  You’d think a name like that would be tacked on to someone with a nasty temper, but that’s not how it started at all.  It started when she discovered that the AX520 was dangerous.

The AX520 was the big money maker.  The University had been receiving substantial grants for the mutated gene for two decades.  While the geneticists were always a bit vague on what AX520 was supposed to do, Dr. Kern was very good at convincing donors that it was going to do something spectacular.  It wouldn’t cure cancer, but it might just end world hunger…or something like that.  His brilliance was so reknowned that anyone who accused his data of being nebulous and poorly documented was scathingly dismissed as either too dense or too jealous to acknowledge the great man’s success.  He was untouchable for two decades.

The Beast(she doesn’t get called by her real name anymore because everyone refuses to see her as human now) was the one who broke the rules.  She ran the tests that Dr. Kern had stalled.  He was constantly claiming that the gene was still being studied and wasn’t ready yet.  What was being studied wasn’t clearly stated.  The University left him be because the man could charm 6 million dollars out of his marks in just a few clandestine luncheons.  The University didn’t want to know what went on in those meetings. No one questioned the man who got the Kern Laboratory Complex built.

 The Beast didn’t care about that, and apparently she didn’t care about ruining her career either.  She created a shadow identity for her study until she was sure. When it was clear that AX520 was a monster, she released her data in the one journal that would run it.  Only a few geneticists were willing to stand by her until competitors from the Academy smelled blood. Within a year, the University was facing a lawsuit.  Dr. Kern talked his way through the scandal, but AX520 and its grants were finished.  The Beast had ruined it all.

Kern’s supporters couldn’t keep her from talking, and the University couldn’t outright dismiss her, so they did the next best thing: they made her into the Beast, a bumbling, ugly-minded creature who callously destroyed the best thing the University had going for it.  She was the traitor in the lab, and no one would work with her.  They cut off her access to the labs and invented classes like Scientific Inventory Practices for her to teach.  Students took her class simply to harass her for trying to bring down the great man.

When I was writing my doctorate, I stumbled across her study.  It was more than science.  It was art. It was sublime and perfect and honest.  She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  Everyone else deliberately blinded themselves to avoid looking at her.

A-Z BOOK SURVEY

Author you’ve read the most books from:
L.M. Montomery; I probably read everything she wrote when I was a teenager.

Best Sequel Ever:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain took Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a beloved children's book, and converted his audience's favorite characters into a scathing criticism of American society. It was probably one of the most subversive acts in American literature

Currently Reading:

Under the Sea-Wind by Rachel Carson and Glen Cook's Black Company series



Drink of Choice While Reading:

Diet cola

E-reader or Physical Book?

I prefer physical books, but recently I've caved to the convenience of e-books.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

I don't think I thought much about which characters I wanted to date. I've always been more focused on which ones I wanted to be. In high school, I wanted to be Emily of New Moon, but in reality I probably was more like Judy Blume's Sheila the Great.


Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

Moby-Dick When you major in American Literature, you're supposed to pretend to be excited to read this massive book about whaling, but the reality is that many students freak out and try to skim their way through it. I did that the first time it was assigned to me, but the second time I made myself seriously read it, and it is one of the most profound, beautiful books ever written, and yes, the whaling chapters do have a purpose.




Hidden Gem Book:

The Family Nobody Wanted by Helen Doss; this was the autobiography of a woman who adopted 12 children



Important Moment in your Reading Life:

When I realized that The Giving Tree was not an insult to my reading skills. Someone gave it to me when I was 11 and I initially refused to read it because I thought it was a baby book. That book taught me that simplicity in writing does not mean simplicity in writing skill.



Just Finished:

She Is the Darkness by Glen Cook



Kinds of Books You Won’t Read: There isn't much I won't at least try to read, but I try to stay away from political propaganda books.



Longest Book You’ve Read: Since it depends on the edition and I don't want to spend six hours trying to figure this out, I'm going to say that I'm pretty sure it was probably Atlas Shrugged.





Major book hangover because of: I'm not sure I understand this question. Team of Rivals had me pretty muddled.



Number of Bookcases You Own: Eight, but most of the books are in boxes right now.


One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck; maybe I should have called this my hidden gem. It's my favorite of Steinbeck's books, and yet it doesn't get discussed nearly as much as GoW or OM&M.


Preferred Place To Read:
In bed.


Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

"He who troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." from the play, "Inherit the Wind" (and also the bible, I guess)



Reading Regret:

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski There are descriptions in there that still give me shudders, and I read the book twenty years ago.

Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):

The Black Company



Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

Other than books I've already mentioned, three of my favorite books are The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, O Pioneers by Willa Cather, and Beloved by Morrison.


Unapologetic Fangirl For:

Mark Twain, Zora Neal Hurston and American literature from 1835-1950 in general



Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Dan Swenson's Orision I've been waiting years for this book to come out. Literally. And yes, I am using literally the way it's supposed to be used.

Worst Bookish Habit:
Overanalyzing the books to the point were I ruin them for other readers.


X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention

Your latest book purchase:

Waiting for the Barbarians and Water Sleeps

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

She Is Darkness

The Haunting of Anna

Leaf cannot let Anna catch her watching. The room in which Anna performs is above street level, but Anna stops if she feels eyes on her, and then she quietly moves into the private space of the house.

Anna’s porch has long windows that act as walls. It is clearly an addition; one small window on the main frame of the house still remains and Anna does not pull down the shade when she stands at the sink. Leaf could easily see all the details of Anna’s house, but she only looks into the kitchen and the porch room. There are limits to how much one can invade another’s privacy, even if the object of one’s interest is an exhibitionist with some anti-social tendencies.

Anna’s performances are many and varied. Sometimes at night, she dances on the porch in the dark. If the weather is nice, she leaves the windows open and her music wafts across the street into Leaf’s sitting room. The street lamps provide enough illumination for Leaf to see Anna gliding around in the exposed space. Anna also paces in the dark if she is restless, her feet rumbling on the floor as she performs her precise square over and over again in the early hours of the morning. This is how Leaf knows that Anna is an insomniac.

The only night activities that Anna performs in light are reading and writing. Leaf especially likes how Anna presses her finger over certain passages as she reads, as if she is trying to absorb the ideas through her skin and let them travel up her bloodstream to the brain.

Leaf is Anna’s friend, but Anna is not Leaf’s friend. They never speak to one another. Leaf leaves presents on Anna’s top step: an old book, a slice of cake, a piece of beach glass. Anna takes these presents inside, but Leaf never sees what happens to them. Leaf worries that Anna throws away these things: the book was never read and the kitchen did not light up when Anna took the cake from stoop.

Leaf doesn’t know everything about Anna, and she’s constantly surprised by the things she learns. At each window, Anna has hung little bottles upside down. Most of them are rubbed hard with age and have a pale green. Some are cobalt or purple. Leaf did not realize one detail of the bottles until she overheard a conversation between Anna and a passerby.

A woman stood outside Anna’s house and stared up at the bottles twirling violently in the breeze. The stranger’s back said that something bothered her about the bottles. When Anna came out to watch the approaching storm, the woman called up to her.

“Those look a bit like spirit bottles. My grandmother used to hang them in a tree,” the woman said without introducing herself or properly greeting Anna.

Anna’s face lit up. “Yes, that’s the idea I had when I hung them.” She leaned over the rail to talk to the stranger. The woman turned and Leaf could see her disapproving face.

“Spirit bottles don’t have their bottoms cut off. They lure the evil spirits through the necks and trap them there,” the woman said smugly.

Anna smiled the falsely apologetic smile of someone who does not wish to validate criticism.
“Yes, I know. I don’t want to trap spirits. Who wants bottles of nastiness hanging where they live? Letting spirits know that I can trap them if I want to is enough to make them respect me.” The woman glanced sharply at Anna and shuddered before clipping off down the street as if escaping an insane person.

Anna adjusted the bottles that had become entangled in the wind before going into the house and out of Leaf’s sight.

On her darkest days, when Leaf struggles the most with being without being, she remembers that the bottles in Anna’s window are a warning to spirits. Leaf uses this to anchor herself to the land of the living: Anna is relatively tolerant of her still-human audiences. Leaf holds on to this life even though her passing is long overdue. She cannot bear to lose this last thing that she has without having.

A Fairy Garden Wedding

Anna Meade of Yearning for Wonderland fame just got married, and it seems only appropriate that a self-proclaimed dark fairy deserves a fairy garden to celebrate her wedding. After all, every dark fairy needs a realm to rule over.  This realm is lacking any truly fearsome creatures: one of the advantages of making your own fairy world is you don't have to include any unwelcome guests.  Choosing a bride and groom, however, is nearly as challenging in fairy garden design as it is in mundane life.  I eventually ended up with Cicely Mary Barker's Bluebell fairy as the groom and the CMB Poppy fairy as the bride. (She's not wearing a white dress, but fairies often break rules that humans are loathe to discard.)

                            
                               The Fairy Bride and Groom were sheltered by a white double impatien
                                and stood on a carpet of Irish moss while a robin oversaw their vows.


Obviously no fairy wedding is complete with a fairy party, and fairy guests tend to get huffy if you don't feed them.  Guests who preferred a little more peace and quiet were placed on the second tier of a three tier planter so that they weren't in danger of getting trampled or overwhelmed by the more raucous party taking place on the bottom tier.

                                       A talking fish and a snail stay out of harm's way at
                                    a small table for two made from an antique doorknob
                                                 set on a cushion of corsican mint.

 

                               The Larch Fairy would probably rather be downstairs dancing;
                               he's waving his arms to the beat.  The Marigold Fairy, however,
                                  is more interested in watching the bride and groom above her.
                              She's perfectly content with the brass button fern beneath her feet,
                            a mound of Blue Star Creeper beside her and a fountain of  delicate
                                          Diamond Frost Euphorbia graminea behind her.

 

                                    Attending this kind of event is always awkward for mermaids. 
                             She's like a fish out of water. Fortunately the Frog Prince, a Wise Owl,
                             and one of the more serious gnomes are all willing to keep her company.
                                  She can breathe in the sweet alyssum and rest on her comfortable seat
                                                            of sphagnum sheet moss.


Far below the bride and groom, the dancing has already started.  Even in fairyland, getting a band can be a challenge.  The horn player dropped out at the last minute, but luckily one of the trumpeters from Wonderland was able to step in and help out the band. 

                         
                                A bit of Dichondra argentea 'Silver Falls' swirls around the band's
                   mushroom stage while a mound of Grape-O-Licious torenia serves as their backdrop.

 

                         Three fairies, one determined gnome, two butterflies, and a merry little bee
                    dance in a fairy ring of mushrooms with a dance floor of light green reindeer moss
                                                          to keep them light on their feet.

                             Next to the dancers, three charming guests crafted by Etsy's Songandbranch
                                enjoy the music while they have a bit of strong tea at a tree stump bar.
                         The rupturewort grows wild here, but these creatures prefer the cover it provides,
                            and the 'Blue Zephyr' swan river daisy is close enough for them to scurry  
                                                       into if the dancers get too rowdy.


From high atop their perch, the fairy wedding king and queen can see their entire realm blessing their union. Soon they will come down to join the festivities, but for now they are taking a moment to smile upon all of their loved ones.

 

                   A pear tree above the realm has scattered small petals over the wedding party;
                              the silvery fronds of a lotus vine dangle down from the top tier.

                                      May can be a challenging month for growing things.
                                   While the fairy queen can make her whole realm bloom,
                                    a few artificial flowers were needed to pretty up the land
                                                             just beyond her borders.

Every fairy wedding comes with signs of an auspicious beginning to let the realm know that peace and happiness shall bless the marriage of their king and queen. 

 

                       A suspended moon and a white flower float above the wedding couple
                                             to show the magical strength of their love.

 

                        Two true blue butterflies take flight as the king and queen finalize their vows.


I'm pleased enough with how this came out that I'm entering it in The Magic Onions Fairy Garden Contest. http://www.themagiconions.com/2013/04/fairy-garden-contest-2013.html

When the Fairy King Lost his Tongue

When the Fairy King Lost his Tongue-Beth Avery
ebook-yes

In the fairy king’s final days, he stopped speaking human.  None of the fairies noticed.  Why would they? I was the only one shut out by my single human language.  I sat and held his hand when he gestured for me, and I smiled encouragingly as he struggled to give his last sweet messages to me.  I tried to be a good daughter-in-law, but the sorrow I felt at not hearing what he was saying was twofold.  It had never occurred to me before that fairies could lose a whole language.  I watched my almost-husband gently rest his fingers on his father’s failing pulse, and worried that someday he might also forget his human words.

It was so long ago that the fairy king had heard our petition to stay together and yet not marry.  He had not warned us that there would be a price.  Instead, he had praised us for forging a new path.  If we married, one of us would have to give up who we were.  There were no part human/part fairy marriages.  The magic didn’t work that way.  Every fairy and human couple had to choose whether one partner became wholly human or one partner became wholly fairy. 

My almost-husband had been the child of a no longer human mother who often went blank with her longing for lost places, lost people, lost selves.  It had wounded him when she could not see or hear him because she was wandering a home she could no longer touch.  Eventually his fairy father gave up on her, unable to love the distant fairy wife who had replaced his vivacious human lover.  “We are in love with who we are now,” my almost-husband explained when he said he would not marry me, and I agreed that I did not want to risk becoming blank or watching him become blank. 

There is always a part of us that is separate from the other, and we appreciate that.  We know that humans and fairies do not usually stay together like this, but we navigate each other’s worlds with great grace and fluidity.  All the fairies are kind to me.  All the humans love my almost-husband.  There are no problems.

Except I don’t speak fairy.  I don’t speak blue heron or spring peeper or red squirrel.  I only speak one human language.  Although I speak very well in that human language, I sometimes get tired of politely waiting for my almost-husband to remember that I can’t understand the robin’s wonderful news or the brownie’s hilarious joke or the troll’s grumbled warning.  He always smiles and apologizes and carefully reconstructs the conversation for my pitiful one language brain.  It’s not reasonable to blame him for the parts of his world that I have chosen not to share.  Just as he patiently waits while I do some completely incomprehensible human activity like shop for garden plants or program the microwave for dinner, I must patiently wait when fairy life dominates his attention.  That is the agreement we made.

Still, I cannot help but ask my almost-husband if he’ll age and lose his human tongue.  He smiles reassuringly.  “No, no.  I don’t even think in fairy any more.  I only think in human since we’ve been together.”  I nod, but it isn’t true.  I know at night he dreams in fairy, because his whispers are never in human.