"Wraith 'o the Riverbank" by Blitz Salamander

(Written for a scary stories event)

In a town in France, around the size and population of this one, everyone knew everyone else. So when a new face arrived in town, everyone fell over themselves to get to know him. Pierre was his name, a handsome man with a charming way with words. He sat at their firesides and sang ballads about the places he had seen and the amazing adventures that had befallen him. He was a very interesing chap.

Naturally, all the local girls were very interested in Pierre. But he had eyes only for Evelda, a buxom lass with curly blonde hair and a raucous sense of humour. He took her out walking every evening and delivered her safely home an hour later, which impressed her parents - in fact, all the local daughters' parents, including the local policeman Guillem, who was himself tired of waiting on the doorstep most evenings, tapping his foot and watching for his own daughter's unmolested return home with her beau George. Pierre, in the opinion of many, was a good example of what a young man should be.

But Pierre and Evelda's happiness was short-lived. One morning her mother went to waken her, only to find her bed was empty, her window off the latch. Of course, Guillem went straight around to the home of Madame Flaubert, where Pierre was renting a room. Pierre went white at the news his sweetheart had gone missing and did not stop Guillem from searching his room. No sign of Evelda.

So, the fathers and brothers of the town began combing the town for her. When she could not be found, they looked beyond the town limits. Some poked and prodded the bushes down Lovers Lane while others trampled through the fields. In the end, however, it was the ones who walked down by the river who found her, face down on the bank with a posey of buttercups clenched in her cold fist, her long curls drawn straight by the river's current as her neck lolled her head over the edge of the bank at a very peculiar angle.

Guillem was called and he heard his men struggling to hold back Evelda's frantic father as he crouched beside the girl. Her nightclothes were dew-damp, her skin felt cold and wet as he felt under her hair for a pulse. Nothing. He beckoned to one of his men and together they very carefully turned her over, supporting her head as best the could.

The entire front of her was a shroud of mud, scattered with crushed, bruised leaves and flowers from the river bank. Evelda's neck was broken. Guillem's deputy tried to align her head with her body but it lolled to the side again, her dark tongue protruding from her pink face where cyanosis had taken place, her eyes staring into the void that lies beyond life.

The poor girl was buried in the town's graveyard by her devastated parents. Footmarks on the river bank had suggested she had slipped, perhaps sleepwalking by herself. Her mother confirmed her daughter had been besotted with Pierre, and though Evelda had never sleepwalked before, there was an assumption she had been going a-walking there with him in her dreams. Pierre laid a small posey of buttercups on her grave, every Sunday, on his way to church.

Several weeks later, Pierre asked after taking another sweetheart walking. Her name was Claire and, after all her was a young man, and had to move on - so her father, a widower, said yes. Pierre took her for a stroll after church on a Sunday, across the fields and towards the river, though not up to it.

They lingered for some moments under the shade of a low-hanging tree, getting to know each other a little better. As they turned to set off back towards town, however, they found a terrible figure blocked their way. With its back to the light, all they could see was a figure in a long gown that clung wetly to its feminine form, its head lolling at an unsual angle on its shoulder and its long hair combed straight out to one side, moving with an invisible current.

They ran.

When the lovers arrived back in town, Claire was still hysterical, screaming and crying, while Pierre was white-faced with terror and silent. It was Claire that told the disturbing story to her parents, and the tale swept around the community as if someone had set tinder-dry kindling beneath it. When he overheard it being told to another, Evelda's father went home and the couple drew their curtains upon their neighbours and one can only imagine what they were feeling to hear that the soul of their daughter was walking the riverbank.

When he finally spoke on the subject, Pierre was not so definite as Claire had been that it had been his dead sweatheart. Prayers were said for the girl next Sunday at church, and Pierre walked with Claire again, but this time walked within the town limits with her, and without incident.

Until that night. Claire and her family were awoken by a loud and incessant banging on their front door. Claire watched from the stairs as her father opened the door. Framed in the opening and lit by moonlight, there stood Evelda, her head on her shoulder, her hair streaming to one side.

"Spectre, be gone!" Claire's father shouted, making the sign of the cross, and slammed the door in her face. There was a muffled thud and the whine of the wood as something leaned against it, then silence.

This happened every Sunday night for a month, and finally Claire's father paid a visit to Guillem, who had always been a good friend to him, and told him what he had told his priest. Evelda had never yet set foot in their home, and the priest had blessed the house and said extra prayers over her grave to try and lay her soul to rest.

"I never knew she had such a jealous heart," said Claire's father, his head in his hands. "Perhaps she would listen to her parents and be at rest."

So far, the family and the priest had kept the Sunday visitations a secret, and Guillem could not imagine trying to explain to Evelda's father what was allegedly happening, and certainly not without seeing it for himself. So the next Sunday night, he sat with Claire's father in their warm kitchen, waiting for the knocks at the door, while Claire spent the night across town in the home of Madame Roget.

However, when the knocks came, they were quick and panicky and accompanied by the voice of Madame Roget. "She has gone! She has gone!"

Claire's father wrenched open the door and the old lady stood there, wringing her hands, saying she had gone to check on Claire but found the bed empty.

As Guillem listened to her story he became aware of a movement in the dark street beyond. He squinted and could see nothing. Then, all of a sudden, Evelda melted from the shadows into the light of the doorway. She looked just as she had when he had turned her over on the river bank, petals and leaves plastered to her with mud, her tongue protruding, her eyes staring and her hair moving as if still combed by the cold fingers of the stream.

He silenced the sudden shrieks of Madame Roget by raising his hand - he often commanded such respect from the townsfolk, even in times of hysteria. Behind him he could hear Claire's father murmuring a prayer in horrified tones. Evelda made no attempt to approach them further. Then from her hand, buttercup petals fell, sprinkling around her bare feet onto the cobbles. Then she turned and began to move away.

They all watched her. Claire's father muttered, "My daughter!" and he and Guillem started after her. They followed her through the dark, silent streets and across the meadow towards the river, moving quickly and quietly - like three spectres, not one. It was not long before Guillem realised she was leading them close to the spot where her body had been found.

Evelda stopped by a tree, within earshot of the river, and did not move further. And above the sound of the river, Guillem heard a voice. He looked into the expressionless face of the dead girl, and stepped past her to the hedgerow. The pale light from the moon sparkled on the moving water beyond, and on the towpath lit two figures.

Claire, clothed in her nightdress, clutched a shawl around her with one hand. In her other she held a small posey of wildflowers. With her stood Pierre, his face raised to the night sky in profile, the moon casting a silvery sheen in his cheek. he said something to Claire and she turned away from him, looking up also. As she did, Pierre's hands moved around her neck, his silvery expression suddenly full of dark intent.

Guillem charged through the hedgerow and knocked the man to the ground with a punch that knocked him to the ground. Then arrested him, and Claire's father took his daughter home to safety.

After Pierre's trial for the murder of Evelda, nobody said anything about the folly of young girls meeting their boys at midnight in remote places. They had all been enamoured with the charming bard who had delighted them with his tales and his manners. But they became more understanding of their daughters' beaus, who might have brought them back a few minutes late from a romantic evening stroll, but always brought them back safely.

Pierre was hung for his crime. Later it emerged that tales of the mysterious deaths of young women had followed him on his journeys through many lands.

As for Evelda, her soul became more peaceful and she did not reappear to those who had known her in life. Buttercups, which grew abundantly in the area, never grew near her grave and were never placed there again.

The end

(c) Blitz Salamander 2009

Jeanie and Angus, by Blitz Salamander

This is a folk tale about the meaning of love, and I wrote it for my wife-to-be, performing it the day before our wedding on the shores of Erie.

When Angus met Jeannie he was the apprentice to Jock the silversmith, a craftsman of enviable repute known far and wide across the glens north of Loch Lomond. The first time he clapped eyes on her, she was knee-deep in the mud trying to drive her father's cows across the ford for milking, her straw hair in her eyes and her skirt looped into her belt.

He said hello and did she need some help, and when she looked at him through her curls, her blue eyes lit the morning, but it was the muck smeared on her nose and her laugh that made him instantly fall in love with her.

Angus walked out with her for two years and in that time his love for her grew and his skills as a silversmsith came on at an inspired rate. He saw a future for them and one afternoon he took her back to the ford across the river, laid his coat down under the boughs of a rowan tree for Jeannie to sit upon, and went down on bended knee to ask her if she'd have him forever. Her laugh coursed like magic down his spine and her reply made his heart feel as if it would burst in his chest. He laid Jeannie down on the coat and made love to her for the first time. As the autumn sun sank in the sky he carved their names into the bark of the tree, then Jeannie linked his arm and took him back to the farm to speak with her father.

Over the winter Angus sweated over his work for Jock, and in his spare time he took to crafting a wedding ring for his wife to be. He drew the design, an intricate weave of celtic knots, and made a mould from wax in which to cast it. The process took as many months as it took Jeannie and her mother to make her dress, but both were finished by the time the new year dawned, and in good time for their Imbolc wedding - though Jeannie's dress had to be let out as bit as her belly grew with child. Angus kept the ring in a small wooden box by his beside and took it out each morning and each night to look upon it proudly, thinking it his finest work, always wondering how he could improve upon it, never knowing how.

The morning of the wedding dawned over the Highlands and as the sun crept higher and burned off the land-lying mists, Angus washed, ate his porridge and took down his new suit from its hanging place. He took the ring and walked to his small window, admiring it as it glinted in the early sunlight, then tucked it safely into his pocket and set off on the short walk down the lane towards the village.

The day was just glorious and he whistled a happy tune as he walked, careful not to get his borrowed shoes muddy. Birds sang in the trees and he saluted them, especially the magpie that watched him with beady interest, not wanting to attract any bad luck that day. The bird clacked its greeting to him and circled around him once before flapping away, a blade of glass in its beak.
As Angus approached the village he patted the ring in his pocket - and came to a sudden halt, feeling the blood drain from his face. It was not there. He delved his hand inside - nothing. He checked his other pocket - nothing. A lump rising in his throat, he quickly retraced his footsteps back to the smithy, eyes moving left and right - nothing. Futiley, he opened the small box he had kept it in for weeks: empty.

Ring or no ring, he wanted to marry Jeannie more than anything so he ran back to the village and was still in good time. Jeannie had still not arrived but the guests had. While Angus was a human man, the Highlands were a wild place and many of his friends were, shall I say, a little different to your usual wedding guest - vampires, wolves, felines, faes, demons and - oh my word, even some that could almost pass for human.

They could see his state of panic. His best friend helped him mop his brow and straighten his clothes, and the pagan priestess listened to his anguished tale of losing the ring with a crease in her brow. As some of the assembled guests had very keen hearing indeed, Angus's plight was sweeping its way around the village green in no time at all. Many offered him their own rings to borrow, but none were as pretty and he was more than reluctant to use a second-hand item that belonged to someone else - and that was certainly not the beautiful ring he had worked on for weeks.

Then a fae he did not know approached him, her hand palm-up, offering something to him that he could not see. As he stepped over to her, through the murmuring, milling crowd, he realised it was a small and delicate ring, woven from - what he realised when he drew close -was a blade of grass.

In his pride he almost laughed - how could anyone expect him to slide a ring made from common grass onto his bride's finger? But the look in the eyes of the fae was compelling ... more in the fact that her eyes were like mirrors, and as he felt himself drawn closer to their amethyst depths, he saw the reflection of his beloved as she arrived in the square on her father's arm. His heart thudded powerfully within his chest as he turned and looked upon her - and only then did he realise his guests had formed a circle, a ring even, within which he stood, awaiting her.

The priestess laid down a broom and he waited beside it as her mother and father brought her to the circle of their friends and released her from their care into his. She walked towards him, smiling, her cheeks rosey with love and impending motherhood, and he was breathless to watch her as she came to stand beside him. So humbled was he that he forgot about his disappointment over the ring he had made, and barely noticed that the ring he slipped onto her finger was made from grass. As they stepped over the broom, and their circle of friends applauded them, he felt himself the happiest fellow in the world.

Walking Jeannie home later, bathed in their mutual happiness, they fell silent, holding hands and listening to the birds singing. Then came the cocky clacking of a magpie again, and he looked up as the bird swooped. The sun glinted off something shiny in its mouth and his eyes followed the sparkle as it fell from the bird's beak and landed in the hard dirt at his feet. Stooping, he saw it was the ring he had made for Jeannie.

Amazed, he picked it up and looked at it, then turned and held it up for his bride to see. The happy expression on her face turned to slight confusion and she looked at the grass band on her hand. "I hadn't realised it was made from grass," she said, softly, as he slid his silver homage to his love onto her fourth finger. "How lovely, Angus."

Angus looked up and saw the magpie had alighted upon a branch nearby. As the sun lowed in the sky, its rays diffused across the landscape and dazzled him, but still he was certain he saw the bird shift into the form of the fae he had met at the wedding. She seemed to smile upon him, then her form disolved into the gold of the sunset. And Angus realised then the meaning of love, which did not lie in material things, but which resided permanently in the seemingly fleeting - but always reborn - hues of the universe.

The couple went back to the house, which they made into their home. Angus worked even harder at his job, though this time with a more humble heart, and he always made time for the things that were important. And when Jeannie gave birth to the baby a few months later, they called her Maggie.

The End

(c) Blitz Salamander

sophi de Ville and DNA

I got busy in town one morning last week before anyone else had woken up. Not only with posters, either. Guess it's only a matter of time before the mayor gets the DNA results back on the puddle she found by the leg of her pompous throne.

I just hope someone crushes this leash law before she gets her hands on me ... with the full moon on the Erie weres, it leaves us vulnerable. I took a job at the Seer newspaper as a part-time reporter - they are doing their best to highlight the issue.

If she gets a leash on me and I change back to human form ... I'm soooo busted. Any man in Erie who has seen that glint in her eye knows it isn't just a trick of the light.

STORY: Jemal & Kadriye by Blitz Salamander

((This story was first told around the Nomad campfire at Christmas 2008, on the day I was accepted into the familia))

The Anatolian Plateau, lying between the Mediterranian and the Black seas in what we now know as Turkey, is a place of extremes. Life is hard and people eak out an existence from farming livestock and doing their best to survive in an inhospitable envrionment, where love and loyalty go hand in hand with bravery and survival.

With lives dependant on their animals, potential predators are crushed as soon as they arise. But one the villagers of Komare in feared, proving a mighty force indeed, was a pack of wolves. Not only did they kill the animals, they took the best hunters, pregnant women and small children alike.

Our hero Jemal had lost his father to the wolves and had grown up watching his mother grieve, until she too was taken. Now a man himself, long nights he spent in the lowlands of the Taurus Mountains, crouched in waiting with his axe and his knives and a spear his father had crafted.

Listening to the howling of the pack from one side of the wastes to the other, he tracked their patterns for months, memorising their individual calls, giving them names, noting when new ones joined and others vanished - hopefully, he thought, killed by hunters like himself. He was certain his time would come.

Komare was safe in the deep winters endured by the Plateau, the snow so deep it languished at chest height for weeks at the peak of mid-winter. During this time Jemal forwent his lonely nocturnal vigils and spent more time with his community - and one girl in particular, in fact.

Kadriye reflected light and joy onto his dark brooding - her amber eyes held the deep-buried heat of the Earth in them, warming his heart. Her laugh vibrated on the strings of his heart long after they had said goodnight. But he knew, come the thaw, he would have to tear himself from her arms and the comfort they gave him, with the purpose of going after the pack that terrorised his people.

But this year, the thaw came early. In his sleep, Jamal heard the sound of water dripping, trickling, of ice sliding ... then at the howl of the wolves his eyes snapped open and his hand was on his axe. It was only then he realised Kadriye was not beside him.

Naked, he leapt from the bed and to the slightly open door. The sharp, clear nights of the previous weeks had given themselves over to fog, but the light from the full moon revealed strange forms seen in the erie white. Then someone screamed.

Jemal grabbed his spear from a nook by the door and charged into the night, but it was no good. By the time he had taken three paces the rest of the men were rushing from their homes too, armed and shouting, their rage all but drowning out the scrambling four-legged footfalls in the icy slush and the savage snuffles, growls and howls as the pack left with their screaming prize.

Panicking he was - but a hand as cold as the melting snow clutched at his heart and brought him back to reason. He returned to his home to dress hurriedly and collect his weapons. Just as he was leaving he paused and lifted up the dress Kadriye had worn the night before, when they had danced together, made their promises and jumped over the broom handle before their people. He lifted to to his face and breathed deep of her scent, then dropped it, picked up his warmest coat, and turned into the murderous night.

At the perimeter of the village stood the men and the older boys, weapons still in hand, frowning out into the night. Jemal stopped to say, "Which way?" and they pointed where they stared, some of the older men with tears on their cheeks, one of the teenagers openly weeping. Jemal set off into the night.

After only a few paces the moolight picked up the dark splash of blood in the sodden snow, which turned into a trail. Picking up speed he followed it, noting the skidding pawprints, hearing the distant sound of mass panting. Then a single scream and a snarl that echoed across the lowlands and into the valleys, enough to make the milk curdle and the old maids' hair go grey.

He found her blood-soaked nightdress just before the dawn broke across the Plateau. Until mid-morning he knelt in the wet ground, watching the blood melt into the earth, occasionally raising the garmet to his face. But the blood scent was too strong, he could not smell her sweetness here. So home he went.

The months that followed found him again sitting out long nights in the lowlands, listening to the wolves baying and calling to one another, watching the stars move like a clock across the sky, until the spring came.

Where Kadriye's blood had soaked the ground, a plant with green leaves grew, sprouting pinks buds and that promised to be crimson posies when they reached full bloom. Every day at dusk, when he walked into the wilderness, he stooped to run his fingers through its verdant fronds, then walked on.

Night after night he heard them, predicting where they roamed, knowing them now to be creatures of habit, wandering from village to village across the vista of the Plateau. There were new voices among them, one in particular with a keening ring to it that he learned to listen for. He gave this one the name of his lost love and imagined in the cruel, stark desolation of his spirit that she was mourning him.

Jemal used his knowledge of the pack for the first time on the evening of the birth of spring. And he was correct in predicting where they would strike - a nearby village. He had warned the community elders first and they had been ready, scaring the pack away with fire and noise.

Jemal lay in wait for them and as the last leggy beast tore past him in retreat, he let his spear fly. The animal squealed and came down, and Jemal was upon it in an instant, his gutting knife in his hand, ready to plunge it into the animal's throat.

The wolf was not like any he had seen before, and the shock stayed his arm as he poised above it. It was female, pinned to the ground by the flesh in its side by his father's weapon. As he watched the flesh seemed to ripple, the hair receded ... grubby flesh plumped out of the canine form and its limbs began to twist. It groaned, its jaw cracking, teeth bared, and a small voice he recognised spoke his name. He blinked and found himself looking at Kadriye.

As he raised his hand to plunge the blade in deep, she begged him to stop, and he did. Convinced it was an apparition, a trick of his grieving mind, still he could not kill it. He stood and wrenched the spear from her side - it was not a mortal wound. She wept real tears at the pain, and murmured that she loved him, and begged him to leave before she changed back and bit him, for she was a werewolf.

He knelt beside her and leaned in, sniffing her hair, and closed his eyes to the pain and the joy of knowing it was true. But she pushed him away. "We have no future like this," she whispered, and tried to crawl away, taking away his reason for being, his reason for vengeance, his love, with every movement.

"No, we don't, my love," he whispered, drawing her close to him. He kissed her lips then braced himself and dug his hand into the wound in her side until she howled and revealed the beast within her - then thrust his arm into her jaw and pressed her teeth into his flesh.

The following morning he stood at the perimeter of his village and watched the glow of the sun as it prepared to give the Plateau another day.

As the first rays appeared over the tips of the Taurus Mountains, he heard the soft footfalls of his new family as they arrived to claim him, and lifted his wounded love into his arms to carry her with them.

THE END

(c) Blitz Salamander 2009