LORD ESCHIN: Part 7

Now the fear became a cold stone in his chest, seeming to reach up and snatch back the air from his throat. 'I cannot sir, you are my tutor, may fathers friend and a friend to the house Eschin' but before he could continue with his protest, Galaan had closed the gap between them. Now he struck the young boy lightly across the face before grasping him by his thin shoulders.
' Enough of that child. You are my student and here to learn so first learn this; when your swordmaster bids you do something you will do it. Immediately and without thought or question. The tools and exercises that you will encounter here all carry risk. Some will even endanger your life. I must know from you now, at the very begining, whether you are able to follow my instructions without hesitation or doubt.If you cannot do this then I cannot protect you from the many dangers that we will face together. You must learn first to trust that I know what I am about, otherwise we are finished here and I will inform your family that I was wrong about your aptitude for the sword. Do I make myself clear?'
Sozo had nodded meekly; 'yes sir, I understand'. Galaan meerely nodded before resuming his previous position of quiet contemplation ten paces distant from the young boy.
He closed his eyes once more. 'Attack me when you are ready'.

Sozo tried to clear his mind. The light sabre in his hand suddenly felt very heavy and he was acutely aware of his sweating palms and wiped them on his jerkin in an attempt to gain a better purchase on the weapon's hilt. His mind swam as he tried to recall all of his lessons with the master of arms. Nothing that he had so far been taught pertained to assaulting an unarmed man with a deadly blade however and so he hesitated.
He seemed to stand there opposite the peaceful elf for an eternity of moments, debating with himself the best course of action and imagining the conversation that he would have to engage in to explain to his parents why one of their closest friends lay dead in his guest house.
All this time, Galaan appeared to be unmoving, barely breathing. His eyes barely flickered, surely he was aware of the great conflict in his newest pupil, but if so, his behavior betrayed nothing but calm detachment.
Eventually the young boy steeled himself for the unavoidable and drew a deep breath in the hope that it might calm his madly beating heart. He lifted the Sabre as the master of arms had taught him and distributed his weight well as he covered the distance between them in a heartbeat before thrusting the point of the sword forward with all the strength that he could find, seeking to sheathe it in the soft flesh of his tutors heart.
But the elf was faster and seemed to blur in front of his eyes.
Sozo felt a great impact on his shoulders, knocking him to the floor and taking the breath from his lungs. A pained groan escaped his lips and he was acutely aware of the taste of sand and sawdust in his mouth. Galaan was standing over him with one foot planted in the small of his back and the tip of Sozo's weapon resting against the back of his neck with a firmness that suggested the skin might break at any moment.

' This is your first lesson young one' came Galaans voice. 'a weapon should always be feared most by the protagonist who least understands it's use. It matters not one whit to the swordmaster whether it is he or his opponent who holds the sword. He is master of the situation and that sword is more a danger to his opponent than to him'

Sozo was aware of the preassure of the blade being removed from his neck and the foot from his back. Now Galaan gently helped him to his feet and smiled his reassurance.
'Calm yourself, todays test is ended. Now come and eat a little with me, I have had some light breakfast prepared for us. It is not a good idea to train on an empty stomach. Breath easily for a moment and you will find that your appetite will return to you'.

And so had begun the long years of his training. Galaans endless excersises to strengthen his limbs and develop flexibility and acrobatic skill at first and all the while the constant permutations of attact and defence, advance and retreat.
The meditation that helped him to visualize his entire being as a weapon, as part of the larger symphony of combat. a bird flying through deadly storm yet avoiding danger and remaining detached and graceful
There were long months of practice outside of Galaans hall as well during the first few years. Sozo slowly developing skill in both sides of his body at once so that he could become truly ambidextrous, fluid and adaptable in battle.

The Pig Who Wasn't

Once upon a time there was a pig who did not like being a pig.
Every day he would walk down to a still pond and study his reflection in the muddy water before the other animals spoiled the smooth surface with their drinking.
“ I look like a big fat pig!” he would say to himself. And he would turn away from the water disgusted and stump back up the little hill to the farmyard where he lived.

All day long he would avoid spending time with his brothers. “Let them root and grunt and grow fat” he said to himself. “I am not going to become a fat pig like them”!
Instead, the unhappy pig would avoid the company of other animals of his kind. He took to walking alone for hours in the woods that adjoined the farm.
Instead of rolling in the mud, he found a small secluded stream where he would wash each day, and bracken where he would roll until he was dry and clean.
Instead of rooting for food and truffles, he made cologne for himself and
wore it on his clean pink skin. He purchased wax and somehow managed to remove all of his course piggy hair with it.
Instead of the rich swill enjoyed by his brothers, the pig kept to a strict diet of leaves and berries and ate as little as he could bear.
But every day when he went to look at himself in the water, he still saw a pig staring back at him.
The pig became more and more despondent until, one day, as he was walking in the wood and thinking about how very hungry he felt; he came upon the wizards cottage.

Now the pig knew very well that it never does any good to talk to wizards. No matter what they promise; it always turns out badly in the end. The pig recalled that his mother had always been very firm on the subject of wizards.
Nevertheless, the pig was so tired and hungry that before he knew it he found that he was already at the edge of the wizard’s garden and peering over his fence.
The wizard was outside tending to his vegetable garden and appeared not to have noticed the pig. Like all wizards he looked a little frightening with a shock of brown hair that he had formed into great spikes using goose fat. His face was painted with thick white clay and his eyes appeared a little too large for it which always made people feel uncomfortable when they spoke to him.
He straightened up and regarded the pig. “ What do you want little pig, and what are you doing in my vegetable garden?” he asked. The pig noticed that the wizard had sharpened his teeth to points and he stepped back a little way out of fear. Eventually he found his tongue and answered the wizard.
“ Please sir; I came because I don’t want to be this big fat pig anymore”.
“ Oh really,” said the wizard, “and what will you give to me if I agree to turn you into a man?”.
“ Oh, I would give you anything, anything you asked” cried the pig as hopeless tears brimmed and fell from his eyes.
“ Very well then,” said the wizard, “ I will require your two front legs for my dinner tonight”.

The pig was afraid, but he had already agreed to the bargain and told the wizard that he would give whatever was asked. In the end, he allowed the wizard to cut off his two front legs and to cook and eat them for his tea.
When finally the wizard had finished eating the meal he sat back at his dining table, threw down his knife and fork with a crash and cried “very well then, let us get to work”!

The wizard drew a chalk circle around the unhappy pig and lit smoking braziers that made the pig cough and feel ill. He uttered strange enchantments in foreign languages that made the pig’s ears buzz and ache and caused his skin to tingle and burn.
By the time the wizard had finished with him, the pig was very tired and so the wizard led him to a small bed and bade him lie down whilst he went to get two fresh willow branches from the garden.
The wizard took the branches and put them in the empty places where the pigs front legs had been. He bound them in place with a fresh cloth and spoke a last spell over him.
“Sleep now pig, and when you wake, these willow wands new arms will make. Your skin will bubble, melt and flow; until into a man you grow.
And that was the last thing that the pig heard; for he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

When he awoke, the pig was all alone. The wizard had gone. The house and garden, the bed and covers. Everything had disappeared. The pig was lying naked in some bracken and night was closing in.
But this was not what frightened the pig and made him cry out in alarm.
It was when he tried to stand up and found legs and toes and arms and hands and feet where before there had been only trotters and pork and willow wands.

The pig ran and ran through the darkening woods. His new soft human skin was little defence against branches and thorns and soon he was bleeding from a dozen cuts and welts.
Finally he arrived at the little pond near the farm where he lived and peered anxiously into the water.
A very ugly human face peered back at him.
The pig was exhausted from his long ordeal. He finally collapsed by the side of the pond and wept.
“ Oh, Oh, what have I done to myself? I was a perfectly beautiful pig and now I’ve changed myself into a terribly ugly man. Whatever shall I do?”.

And so the man set about looking for the wizard so that he might ask to be made back into a pig again. He searched from place to place and from year to year. To pay for food he would work at local farms as a labourer and became known as an excellent pigs herd. He asked again and again about the wizard and gave his description to everyone he met. But as the years passed he was no nearer to finding him and found that he did not really fit into the human world.
For all I know, he is searching still to this day. Moving from farm to farm and having few friends because of his ugliness.
And at night. When the farms are silent and still and all eyes are closed, he will often creep back down to the pig sty and snuggle warmly in amongst the swine. For you see, inside himself he never really stopped being a pig.
He was the pig who wasn’t

SHORT STORY The Golden Bird

Once upon a time there was a bird made of gold.
And wherever the bird drank; the water would turn into perfume once she had flown away.
In time, people began to discover this perfume as they travelled. It became very sought after as it was the purest and most delicious perfume anyone had ever seen or heard of.

Eventually, people came to realise the connection between the golden bird and the beautiful perfume. And so it came to pass that a group of rich merchants got together and engaged the services of an explorer in the hope that he might catch the golden bird for them.

With the golden bird, they believed that they could create and control the supply of perfume, and in so doing become even richer.

It took the explorer a long time to catch the bird. Always it seemed that he was about to net it when, ‘whoosh’, it would flit away to safety in a blur of wings leaving only perfume in it’s’ wake.

For around a year he tracked it. In jungles and forests, on mountains and through desert roads.
Until, finally one day he was successful and he netted the golden bird.
It fluttered about in the net as any bird might have done.
Looking anxious and forlorn it seemed to plead with the explorer to let it go.
But the explorer told himself that a contract was a contract and carefully forced the golden bird into a wicker cage. He began the long journey back to the city and the group or merchants to collect his reward.

The group of merchants were delighted after having waited so long and they lost no time in paying the explorer his money and taking possession of the fabulous golden bird.
The explorer gladly took his reward and went to pay his debts. His last sight of the bird was as the merchants took it into a great grey room filled from floor to ceiling with glass phials full of water.
As the door closed the bird looked back at the explorer and he felt again the urge to set it free. But it was no longer within his gift.

The merchants lost no time in putting their scheme to work. Each day the golden birds cage would be opened in the great windowless grey room. Each day, she would emerge quickly and would fly and fly around the room; seeking and searching for a way to escape.
Eventually the golden bird would return exhausted to it’s perch and drink water prepared by the merchants in order to refresh itself before flying again.
The merchants would carefully store the water. Stockpiling it against the day that it would transform into the wonderful perfume.
Day after day. Week after week the process was repeated. The bird would fly and rest and drink. The merchants would catalogue and store the phials of water, waiting for the moment that it would turn into perfume.
But after three months, the water had turned brackish and stank, whilst the birds plumage had lost its gold and become instead grey and tired.
The merchants agreed that they had been given the wrong bird. In disgust, they gathered all of the stinking water and the shabby bird and went to find the explorer; demanding that he return their money.

Despite all his protestations, the explorer was made to pay back the reward in full. As he had already spent a good portion of it; he was forced to sell most of his possessions in order to make good on the debt.

At the end, he sat in his empty rooms with the bird regarding him from it’s wicker cage across the floor.
There was no furniture in the house. All of his pictures and treasures had been sold to pay his debts and all that he owned was the water. Hundreds of phials filled with brackish, stinking water filled the house. Clinking and rolling on the bare floor.
The explorer looked at the bird and the bird stared back at the explorer.
Again he felt the impulse to let her go and, with a grunt of resignation, undid the catch on the little wicker door and opened the cage.

The bird tottered out onto the floor. It looked unwell. It’s feathers had lost their golden lustre and hung from it like a tattered cloak. As it stumbled over to stand in the ray of sunlight coming in from the window, it left a trail of downy grey feathers.

“Well it’s a fine favour you’ve done me,” said the explorer to the bird. “ I’ve lost all my money and furniture. I can’t even afford to live in this house anymore. Tomorrow I will have to move out”.
The bird only eyed him as it pecked at the cracks in the bare floorboards. It hopped and fluttered up onto the windowsill and tapped it’s beak against the glass sadly.

“ Oh very well,” said the explorer, “ there’s no more point in your staying here with me any longer”.
He opened the window for the bird and gently pushed it towards the roof outside.
The bird looked back at him one last time, before tentatively walking onto the roof overlooking the street below.
Then, with a flutter of wings, it launched itself into the open sky and away.

The explorer watched sadly as the bird grew smaller and smaller and finally disappeared from view.
There was a moment, as the rays of the sun caught it’; when it looked again like the fabulous golden creature that he had pursued for so long. But then it was gone.

The explorer closed the window with a sigh and turned back to his empty room with it’ s hundreds and hundreds of glass phials. He regarded the empty birdcage. Suddenly he grasped it from the floor and , with a grunt, threw it across the room. It crashed into a pile of glass phials, breaking some and scattering others.
But instead of stinking water, the room was filled with the smell of sweet perfume. The explorer ran to the broken glass. Dipped his finger into the liquid and lifted it to his nose.
Perfume.
He checked the other phials. Piling them up in their hundreds and laughing and laughing as he realised the truth.

They were all filled with perfume.

SHORT STORY Super Slow

“ Your phone is RUBBISH Thompson!”,
Leroy Potts held the white plastic phone aloft like a trophy before throwing it down the school corridor to the cheers of his friends.
The phone clattered to a halt by the swing doors and Leroy and his fans moved away (presumably they had caught the scent of someone even less popular than Danny Thompson).

Danny sighed and went to retrieve his phone from the dusty spot where it had come to rest.
Sadly, the little phone appeared quite undamaged despite it’s ordeal. The white plastic didn’t have so much as a scratch on it.
Danny dusted it off and returned it to his blazer pocket. He was going to be late for class again.
‘If only Leroy had broken it’ , he mused, ‘then I might have convinced dad to buy me another terrible phone’.

The mobile had been a typical dad gift. Danny’s father seemed to lack the sense of self preservation required to survive from day to day at Levenhorts School.
Whilst other dads worked in jobs that had pronounceable names like ‘plumber’ or website designer’, Danny’s father worked as a ‘Fizzy Cyst’.
Danny had once asked his father what a ‘Fizzy Cyst’ did, and the resulting answer had taken over an hour and had left him none the wiser. He never asked again.
For sure, there must be worse parents out there. Danny had to admit that, since mum had left, things had been pretty rough at home but his father was at least always around when Danny needed him.

But there was always this problem of ‘the gifts’.
‘The gifts’, were always potentially quite useful, but always turned out to have some major flaw.
There had been the tennis racquet made by a company that no one had ever heard of.
Then there had been the games console that was not compatible with any decent games. The only game Danny had been able to get for it was called ‘Hedgehog’ and involved waddling around very slowly and trying not to be eaten alive by tics.
But now there was ‘the phone’.
‘The phone’ was made by some company called ‘Relatell’. Some offshoot of dad’s work that had never performed properly and so the prototype had been passed to Danny.
“I have something for you”, his father had announced two weeks ago during dinner.
Danny had tried his best to appear expectant and excited so as not to upset his dad, but his heart sank as he removed the wrapping to reveal the reject phone beneath.
“Wow dad, thanks. It’s really er…it’s really white isn’t it’.
His father had bustled off, seemingly fooled by Danny’s reaction; but the phone soon turned out to be as rubbish as all the other ‘gifts’.
It did very little despite taking thirty six hours to charge. There was only room for fifteen numbers, there were no apps or emoticons and only one ring tone that sounded like a cow going to the toilet through a sewn up bum.
No, all in all, Leroy Potts would only have done him a favour by breaking the phone.
It was time to stop trusting Leroy and take matters into his own hands.

Upon returning home from school, that day, Danny let himself in as usual and said ‘hello’ to his father, who was busy with something or other in the kitchen.
Rather than ‘crashing out’ in front of the TV though, he snuck into the garage and found his father’s pocket knife.
Then, feeling a bit like a criminal, he stuffed the knife into his blazer and quickly made his way upstairs to his bedroom.
There was no lock on the bedroom door, but Danny found a door stop and wedged it under his side of the door. It wasn’t perfect but it should slow things down long enough for him to hide any incriminating evidence.
With this done, he tipped both knife and phone onto his desk and switched on the lamp in order to better investigate how the phone might ‘meet with an accident’.
Turning it around in his fingers, he noticed a slight depression in the otherwise featureless plastic.
He opened the knife with a fat ‘click’ and probed the area in the hopes of splitting the casing.
Sure enough, something was moved inside by the knife’s questing point and the phone slid smoothly open.

Danny swore and flung the phone onto his bed. Why were useless things always so indestructible whilst expensive toys seemed to break the moment you so much as dropped them?
He snatched it up to try again and noticed that the newly opened phone appeared to have just one extra button inside.
All alone in the middle of the featureless casing. A square, postage stamp sized button bearing the symbols ‘E=mc2’.

Now, Danny was a boy much like you or I; and when confronted with a strange button, he did exactly what you or I would have done.
He pressed it.
Immediately the phone became quite hot in Danny’s hands. It started to vibrate and hum louder and louder so that Danny became quite afraid that his father would come up to see what all the fuss was about.
He was just about to stuff it under a pillow to muffle the sound when, ‘click’; the phone snapped shut again and went back to normal.
Danny studied it hoping to find some new function but other than a rather boring count down timer, there was nothing.
Danny let the timer count all the way down from ten minutes to zero, hoping that something might happen but, other than a beep to indicate the end of the countdown, nothing did.
He re opened the phone and repeated the whole noisy process to see if he had missed anything. But again, nothing happened.
He was halfway through the third countdown when he got bored and stuffed the phone back into his pocket.
Going back downstairs he slumped in front of the TV and turned it on.
News. But there appeared to be something wrong with the reception.
The newscasters face was moving very slowly. Almost frozen. Danny could see his cheeks quivering in mid sentence but no real sound was coming out. He tried another channel and another but they all had the same problem.
‘Dad, there’s something wrong with the TV’ he called through to the kitchen. But there was no answer.
He got up and went through to the kitchen to see where his father had got to.
The sight that met his eyes made his legs wobble. He gasped for breath and grabbed the breakfast bar for support.
This is what he saw:
Danny’s father was standing at the cooker, obviously in the middle of making pancakes. He had just tossed a beautifully round pancake into the air.
But the thing that scared Danny was this; the pancake was hardly moving at all. It was slowly, very slowly turning in mid air above the waiting pan. Danny could see his dad’s eyes slowly tracking it’s progress.

‘Beep’, went the phone in his pocket, and the whole scene in the kitchen suddenly returned to normal speed.
The pancake fell down and landed ‘plop’ in the frying pan, and as it did, Danny was aware that sound had returned to the world. He hadn’t really noticed that it was missing before. If he had, then he might have guessed what was going on.
I wonder if you have already guessed?
But now there was of the sound of lemon and butter sizzling in the pan and the delicious aroma of pancakes.
“What was that you said Danny?” his father asked.
“Er…nothing dad, nothing”.
Danny went straight back into the living room and switched on the TV. All the channels were fine now. He took the phone out from his pocket and studied it.
‘What and earth is this thing?’ he wondered. ‘Does dad even know about the button? He can’t know can he?’.
Dinner that night was pancakes. Danny finished his off quickly and returned to his room to further experiment with the phone.

Over the next few weeks, Danny spent a lot of time pressing the button and living in that strange, silent world of super slow time.
He pressed it during class at school, and found that he was able to get around the classroom at least once before anyone could even see that he’d left his seat.
He pressed it out by the motorway near his house and found that he could ‘zig zag’ safely in and out of the traffic without ever getting hit.
He even tried it during a day out to the amusement park, but that turned out to be pretty boring as there really is no fun in riding a super slow roller coaster!
Nevertheless, Danny was sure that he could think of some very interesting ways to make use of the phone if he just put his mind to it.

Over the next three school terms, Danny went from being very unpopular at school to being very popular indeed.
He joined the ‘cross country running’ team and became the number one runner in the school and then in the county and then in the whole country. He won lots of medals and everyone who watched the races spoke of how Danny must be ‘super fit’ because he never looked more than a little bit out of breath when crossing the finish line.
Danny was never late for another lesson or appointment ever again. He always got schoolwork in on time (even though his friends noticed that he seemed to leave it until the very last minute).

The trouble was that Danny started to feel like a bit of a fraud with all of this attention. Also, he was starting to get a bit creeped out about spending so long in the silent world of ‘super slow time’.
He began to think of ways in which he might safely get rid of the phone, or destroy it.
Finally he hit upon the idea of anonymously passing it on to someone else.
In the end, it was Leroy Potts who gave him the answer.
Leroy had long ago stopped bullying Danny due to his new found popularity. This gave him more time to bully other students however.
Danny made a decision that he would find the most bullied student in the school, and secretly pass the phone to them.

Virginia Creeper in the year below was Leroy Potts’ new number one form of entertainment. She had long ginger hair which was always ‘scragged’ back in a ponytail, huge glasses that were probably descended from a welder’s mask, and a tendency to stutter when she was anxious.
Finally, one day, Danny’s opportunity came.
He had rounded a corridor to discover a familiar scene. Leroy and his cronies had cornered Virginia and had stolen her massive bag.
“Creepy Creeper, your schoolbag is rubbish!” shouted Potts as he slung it down the corridor.
Danny pressed the button for the last time, and everything slowed down.
Walking over to Virginia’s bag, he put the phone inside along with a carefully written note about it’s use.
Then he gently placed the bag into Virginia’s hand and was starting to walk away when an idea struck him.
Going over to the ‘super slowed’ Leroy Potts, Danny pulled down his trousers. He tied Leroy’s laces together and drew a big moustache and glasses on his face. Then he did the same to Leroy’s mates.
This done, he walked off and smiled when, just a few moments later, he heard a lot of crashing and swearing coming from the direction of Leroy Potts.

Danny has since resigned from the running team but he doesn’t mind not competing anymore. Levenhorts school has found a new champion athlete in the year below and this leaves Danny free to think about his future.
He is seriously considering a career as a Fizzy Cyst!