Flash Fic Challenge: Beneath the Marshes

 Beneath the Marshes

 

Nobody was supposed to go near the marsh. The elders said that there was a monster imprisoned under it, and when he writhed in his chains, poison dripped into the waters.

If there had been a monster, which Gwen had no doubt about, the prison had been abandoned long ago, and the part of the marsh that made you sick could easily be avoided if you were careful. She wasn’t foolish enough to go near it when anyone could see, but she had no parents left and two younger siblings to feed, and the good parts of the marsh were full of fish and edible plants.

So she went quietly. She tickled fish, and dived for cattail roots, and stood firm when the will’o’wisps swept around her. They wanted her to follow, she knew. To lure her into a bad part of the marsh where she would (if they were lucky) die or drown and they (or the monster) could devour her.

From a distance it might have worked. From a distance the will’o’wisps looked like flickering lanterns.

This close, however, they looked like someone had spilled a whole bagful of tiny white balls and left them bobbing around in the air.

So no, she wasn’t going to follow them again. Not today. Not until her sibs were grown.

Once was enough.

She had seen the monster - if he was a monster and not the man he looked - looking back at her from one of the poison pools. Eyes as blue as marshfire, skin as pale as a will’o’wisp. His name, he said, was Arthur.

He called her sometimes to come back. To sleep beside him in this marsh as his queen.

But Gwen had promises to keep, and miles to go before she'll sleep.

Flash Fic Challenge: Still Here

 Still Here

Samuel handed his spare gragger to a small child that didn't have one yet and squashed himself onto the horsehair sofa next to Ben. “Ready to raise some noise?”

Ben laughed and flung an arm over Samuel's shoulders. “Always. You know me so well.”

Samuel grinned back. “It wouldn't be the same without you.”

In the quieter parts of the reading, you could hear the faint rattle of hansom cabs passing outside, and the clatter of hooves from the horses that pulled them. In the louder parts, by tradition, you couldn't hear anything but the swinging of the gragger noisemakers, the booing and stamping, and banging of hands against tables.

It could have been a thousand years ago, or a thousand years hence, Samuel thought, looking round the men's side. Greybeard elders and sturdy fathers, young men and boys, all as loud and enthusiastic, coming together as ever for Purim, drowing out the name of a small, petty, vindictive man who wanted them all dead because they wouldn't bow to him.

In a world where they had always been hated and perhaps always would be, defiance sounded like laughter, like joy, like celebration. We are still here, we are still here, we will not go away.

Hate us, hunt us, blame us, despise us, we still make time to BE us.

Samuel stamped his feet and swung his gragger and leaned into Ben's warm shoulder, looking forward to the hamantaschen later, because as the old saying went:

They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat.

Flash Fic Challenge: Deposited Dreams

 Deposited Dreams

Daisy filled her bucket with water, then hauled it into the first of the carriages, along with her mop, and her satchel full of cleaning rags. It was her job to get the carriages clean again overnight, before they took the next load of passengers in the morning.

It wasn't the best paying job in the world, but it was steady, reliable work. It gave her enough to keep a rented roof over her head and put food on the table most days, even if that food was only bread. Besides, it was the only way the likes of her would ever see the inside of a first class carriage.

So she scrubbed soot off the windows, and wiped spilled food and drink off the tables, and brushed down the chairs and polished the wood trim, and checked all the cracks and crevices for lost coins. Any coins she found went in her own pocket, of course. Checking under the seats, she found a fallen glass cola bottle in among the grit and crumbs and crumpled wrappers and discarded newspaper (she kept the paper for lighting fires). She grinned. Empty cola bottles could be returned to the shop for the deposit, as long as she kept it whole, and the deposit was enough to buy any one of a dozen small treats. She wrapped it in newspapers, and slid it gently into her satchel, then set about mopping the floor, now that the debris was cleared away.

One carriage finished, she moved on to the next, and the next, squirelling away anything that might be of use. She went home at dawn, early enough to just catch the new bread at the baker's as it came out of the oven. She bought her usual loaf, slipped a few shops along to drop off the cola bottle and trade some of the deposit for a twist of cheap tea. She spent the rest at the street barrows, buying herself a jellied eel, and a bunch of fresh watercress.

Oh, she would have a feast today.

Flash Fic Challenge: Sing Me a Song

 Sing Me a Song

"Tell me a story, Granny!"

The old woman looked at the small girl dancing around the tiny room and smiled. "Very well, if you come and help me shape the bread, I'll tell you about a strange sighting I had when I was your age."

The girl bounced over, her protective pendant swinging across the neckline of her cut-down tunic, and plopped herself down beside her Granny. "I'm here!"

Granny split the bread dough, giving the girl a smaller piece. "It was late at night, down where the marsh meets the Nile," she began, her strong old hands kneading the dough into shape in time to her words. "Where we cut the papyrus for the scribes to use. I was sleeping up on the roof in the Dry season, and I could see without being tempted out to where they could get me..."

"Who, Granny?"

"The singers, sweetie. There were two of them, singing sweetly together, and they sounded so very sad, and yet so very loving."

"What were they like?"

"Let me think..." There was a twinkle in Granny's dark eyes. "One was wrapped in something as dark as the night sky, singing a plaintive song with the sort of soft huskiness that speaks of disuse, yet with silvery undertones lacing through it. It sounded as if the stars themselves were singing, if stars could sing. The other was draped in the palest white-gold of ripe barley, singing a warmer, richer harmony to the first one's. A deeper voice, earthier, well-used, catching the plaintive tones and turning them back into a love of all the earth and everything on it. Maybe they were gods - Nut and Geb, Gods of the sky and the earth, once beloved lovers, now forced apart, ever close and never to touch again. Maybe they were ghosts, missing those family members yet living, and calling them to join them. There's no way for us to tell - we leave that to the priests. And that," she finished, dabbing the pendent with a floury finger, "is why we all wear protective pendents. It means the ghosts can't lure us away..."

 

Flash Fic Challenge: Mudlark

Even the aristocratic members of parliament couldn't deny the Great Stink now. With the sewer-choked Thames running almost directly under the windows, the smell had overpowered all the precautions and preventatives they had taken to keep it out.

As a result of several members being knocked out by the Stink, Parliament had called a recess, and the rich had left to pass the heights of summer in the country.

For Ant, that just meant fewer people buying pomanders to block out the smell, and therefore less income, even though the same rent had to be paid to those now absent landlords. Which was why he'd turned to mudlarking along the edge of the river to make a few extra coins.

A ragged scarf wrapped around his face did little more for the Stink than a lifetime of becoming used to it. The summer sun baked his stooping back, and turned the tidal mud splattering up his legs to dry, itchy, dirt, as he dug his bare toes and fingers into the mud, sifting through it for anything that might be remotely saleable. Scraps of cloth, or metal, or wood, or pure dog-dirt that hadn't blended into the general muck yet (the tanners paid a premium for good dog-dirt). His questing fingers hit something smooth, and oddly cool, and he froze for a moment to get a better sense of its location.

Once found, he scrabbled deeper, scooping a hollow in the mud, and found a small bottle of the sort apothecaries used. Ant grinned. Often there was a deposit on these bottles, and if he handed it back to the right apothecary, he'd be the one to get the coin deposit back in his hands.

The bottle itself was stoppered, but empty, just a bit misty on the inside with condensation. Ant tucked it carefully into a pocket, out of sight, and completely missed the moment when the mist sealed inside the bottle took on the shape of a face crying "Let me out!"