Author Archives: Ethelinda Webb

October 6

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Fictober, Prompt 6 – “Yes, I’m aware. Your point?”

Warnings: horror, monster, implied violent death, midwest/north woods gothic.

A loon call echoed over the lake, a single wailing note that might be either loneliness or a warning.

I heard my companion’s stride pause briefly at the sound, then her footsteps hurried across the gravel of the lake shore as she caught up to me. She walked closer than she had before.

“You said you knew that people have been going missing up here, right?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And that it’s been recommended people stay away from this area?”

“Yes.”

“And we didn’t tell anyone we were coming.”

I took a breath, making sure that none of my frustration showed in my voice. “Yes, I’m aware. Your point?”

“Just that for someone who claims to be woods-smart, you aren’t really taking any basic, sensible precautions!”

“You’re the one who wanted to follow me out here,” I pointed out. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I did if I want to get this article written,” she muttered, a bit sullenly, but fell quiet.

It was a gray afternoon, the otherwise vibrant leaves muted by the lack of light, the trees themselves standing dark and tall beneath their autumn foliage. A mild, steady wind blew off the lake, rippling the otherwise calm surface and pushing the already cold temperatures a little bit lower.

I was always careful to dress in what would be sensible clothes for this time of year: thick socks, sturdy shoes, warm pants, a hooded jacket with a scarf, and gloves to cover my hands, which was an additional convenience. A backpack with some supplies in it. My companion (she had given me her name back in town, but I couldn’t remember it) was wearing something similar.

The loon called again, and I sensed the fear in her shiver.

The stories didn’t worry me. There were always stories, and nothing had come of them yet.

I kept walking, keeping to the narrow strip of stony shoreline between the water and the woods. We would have to go into the trees eventually, but my companion was already nervous, and there was no reason not to stay in the open for now.

She stayed quiet for some time. At last she ventured, “Do you really know what’s causing people to disappear up here?”

“I have an idea,” I replied carefully.

“But you know of a safe place to stay while we search?”

“I do. We’ll be there before dark.”

“Oh good. It’s cold out here, and I’m getting a little hungry.” She did not say that she was going to be too scared to be outside after the sun went down, although I knew that was the case. “Could we go a little faster?”

“That might be a good idea,” I agreed, and increased my pace. She matched her steps to mine, and kept a little closer, eyeing the darkening trees with misgiving.

I tilted my head down so that my mouth was covered by the scarf I wore before allowing myself to grin. It wouldn’t do to let her catch a glimpse of my teeth at this point.

After all, I was hungry too.

October 5

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Fictober, Prompt 5 – “I might just kiss you.”

Warnings: None. Fantasy, smidge of romance.

“No, no, no, you cannot—” I cursed as the thick block of ice began to slip, the ice tongs not gripping it tightly enough.

Jumping back, I saved my foot from being smashed. It was only a small consolation as the ice shattered against the cold stone of the floor, and I contemplated the necessity of going back out into the freezing cold night to cut another piece. I was trying to carry pieces that were too big, but I was only going to have the energy to perform this spell once, and the larger the piece of ice, the longer it would last. My group desperately needed the help; we had several wounded and ill among us, and while this place could give us shelter, it was too cold to remain in for long.

Unless I could get this spell, with its thrice-cursed components, working.

Grimacing, I turned around to trudge back up the corridor, passing a handful of other shattered ice blocks along the way. If only I could carry the ice myself, or with magic, then I would be finished already. The touch of anything but metal would contaminate the ice for this particular spell, though, so it had to be with the tongs.

This time was my farthest distance yet, though, and I was close to the room where I wanted to place it. Maybe this time I could make it—

“Need this?”

Lost in my not-too-hopeful contemplations, I jumped at the voice ahead of me. It was Tamás, one of our fighters and certainly the strongest member of our group, and he was carrying…

He was carrying a block of ice even bigger than those I had managed, supported by the metal blade of a shovel underneath, and steadied by another pair of ice tongs on top.

“It’s okay as long as only metal has touched it, right?” he asked, hesitating. “The saw blade was metal, and I thought the shovel would be okay too.”

I spent half a second realizing what an idiot I had been for not thinking of that before the relief got ahead of my brain and I blurted out, “I might just kiss you!”

Tamás blinked, then raised an eyebrow at me.

I felt my face go red, and cleared my throat quickly. “I mean, thank you. I wouldn’t— I know you’re not— It isn’t—”

“It’s fine,” he cut off my increasingly meaningless attempts to explain myself. I was glad he was taking that very unplanned confession so calmly and got my mind back on track.

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October 4

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Fictober, Prompt 4 – “I know you didn’t ask for this.”

Warnings: horror/body horror, parasite, parasite removal, blood.

I sat in the little stand of woods, huddled beneath the biggest tree, knees drawn up to my chin, arms wrapped around my legs, fingers digging into my arms hard. Too hard. I was almost certainly going to bruise myself.

Since the alternative was to start clawing my own skin off, I thought bruises were probably a better option.

I couldn’t feel it. You never could. That was the awful part.

If it hadn’t been for Lydia, I wouldn’t even have known one had attached itself to me, would still be walking around in hideous ignorance.

And they would probably already have come for me.

Rustling from the field next to this stand of trees, and I looked up quickly, watching with wary eyes until the corn and then undergrowth parted to reveal that it was just Lydia, back with (hopefully) everything she would need to get it off me.

If it wasn’t already too deep.

I shuddered even as she came over and quietly dropped the backpack she carried into the leaf litter and crouched down in front of me.

“How are you doing?”

I made myself relax one hand from its death grip on my arm and waggled my fingers in a so-so motion, not wanting to move enough to shrug.

“Well, best not wait any longer,” she said, accepting that with a nod. “Can you get your shirt off yourself?”

Taking a deep breath, I nodded tightly and forced myself to move. It felt uncomfortable, being so undressed out here in the open; it wasn’t something I’d ever done before, but the thing was on my back and I wanted this to be as easy as possible for Lydia.

“Are you sure?” I forced myself to whisper. “I know you didn’t ask for this.”

Lydia regarded me steadily for a long moment, then said, “No, I didn’t. But you asked for help, and I accepted, and I meant it. I’m not going to let them take anyone else…and least of all you.”

Oh. There was an intensity in her eyes that I hadn’t recognized before, and it made me flush. We had known each other for a long time, but not well, not until recently. But now…

Lydia didn’t seem inclined to make anything further of it just now, pulling on a headlamp with business-like motions and digging through the backpack for whatever else she needed.

Okay, I thought. Something else to deal with later. If we got a later.

Please, let us get a later.

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October 3

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Fictober, Prompt 3 – “Now? Now you listen to me?”, Original Fiction

Warnings: none especially. Fantasy, with a stubborn (but smart) raven.

“Would you please just help, for one moment?” I pleaded with the raven.

It was not actually my companion, of course, and was under no obligation to assist me. But it had been hanging around for several weeks now and had offered help on several occasions during that time. I’d thought that we had an understanding at least.

The raven turned its head and began preening a wing, ignoring me.

Taking a deep breath and blowing it out in frustration, I turned back to the rock wall in front of me. I was not skilled enough at rock climbing to make it up on my own, and rock was strangely resistant to magic for reasons I hadn’t been able to pin down. I could use magic to assist myself up…but only if I could get something physical of mine up to the top to use as an anchor for the spell.

Resigned, I re-tied the hook to the end of my rope and resumed my fruitless attempts to toss it up high enough to hook around a thin tree I could just make out at the top of the cliff face.

It was nearly half an hour later when I finally sat down, put my back to the wall, and buried my face in my hands. Tears of frustration welled threateningly in my eyes, and I tried to breathe through the emotion, knowing that it wasn’t helping. I needed to get up that wall, though, so I was stuck here until I could somehow get the rope to the top.

A slight whoosh of displaced air was my only warning before the raven was suddenly on the ground next to me, croaking softly and pecking at the rope where the hook was attached.

“Now?” I asked, lifting my head out of my arms to stare at it disbelievingly. “Now you listen to me?”

My hands were already moving to untie the heavy hook, though, being somewhat ahead of my mind in that moment. If the raven had decided to help after all, I shouldn’t question it.

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October 2

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Fictober19, Prompt 2 – “Just follow me, I know the area.”

Warnings: None really this time. Fantasy, minor spookiness.

“Whoa!”

I backpedaled quickly as the path started to crumble beneath my foot. Well. That was a problem. Eyeing the ledge ahead, it didn’t look too stable either. I chanced a quick glance down at the river roaring a long drop below me, high and white with the early autumn rains.

Definitely didn’t want to go that way.

To my left, up the slope, was a safer bet, though I didn’t really fancy the idea of climbing the steep slope, thick with dirt and damp leaves underneath the clustering trees. I had thought the path I was on was a good one to keep following the river, no signs saying it was unsafe, but obviously that was no longer the case.

“Are you lost?”

My jerk of surprise pulled me left, fortunately, plastering my back to a damp tree trunk as I turned just enough to see who had spoken. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else out here, not this far up from the falls.

The young woman standing on the path several feet back seemed normal enough: brown skin, straight black hair cut in a neat bob, and dark eyes, she was obviously from what had originally been a Nihon family. Her lack of accent told me she had probably grown up around here, though, or at least had been here for some time. Her clothes were unremarkable as well: jeans, sensible hiking boots, and a plain, tough-looking canvas jacket in dark green.

None of which explained why goosebumps had suddenly broken out across my skin.

“Um, a little,” I replied carefully. “I thought this path continued up the river, but it doesn’t seem safe now.”

Where had she come from so suddenly? How had she managed to avoid slipping in all the mud that I had on the way up? And was it coincidence that had brought her here just as I couldn’t go any further…or something more deliberate, and sinister?

A chill down my spine reinforced the goosebumps, and I did not take my back from the tree. I hadn’t paid any heed to the stories, people were always saying they’d seen something weird up in the woods, but now…

“In that case, follow me,” she offered with a small smile, “I know the area.”

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October 1

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From the Fictober prompt list on Tumblr, Prompt 1: “It will be fun, trust me.”

Warnings: Horror, unseen monsters, implied violent death, Midwestern gothic

“You do realize that this is not my idea of how to have a good time on a Friday night?”

“So you’ve said, but you’re still here aren’t you?”

I was forced to grunt in acknowledgement as I followed Kevin up over the chain link fence. It was one thing to hop over the short fence between our yards but the one around the county fairgrounds was at least twice that height.

“Surprised there’s no barbed wire at the top,” I muttered, slinging a leg over.

“It’s the fair, not a prison,” Kevin jeered, already on the ground.

“Says you,” I jeered back, dropping the last few feet. I landed with an unfortunate jolt, but kept my balance.

“I’m the one who practically lives here during fair week,” he pointed out.

“Which, once again, begs the question of what we’re doing here now. You always say you’ve had enough by the time your 4-H events are done.”

“This is different!”

I followed him across the open field, the long grass dry and rustling now in early October. It did feel different, like this, with none of the booths or crowd I was used to from fair week, and only the permanent buildings taking up space. It was more open, yet the buildings seemed to loom somehow taller in the dark. With no lights on, only the dim light of the quarter moon lit our way.

“Seriously, Kev,” I said as we got near the office building. “What got you in such a hurry to do this now?” We both kind of liked sneaking into places we weren’t necessarily supposed to be, but Kevin had insisted that it had to be the fair tonight, even though there wasn’t anything to see here that we hadn’t seen before.

“Well, people said they were hearing weird noises, right?”

“People always say that. And I thought that was out in the fields?”

“Here too, though, I heard my mom saying on the phone. Thought it was time someone came to check it out, right?” He looked back over his shoulder to grin at me. “It will be fun, trust me.”

“I doubt it,” I muttered again, but sighed and resigned myself. If I was going to back out, I should have done it before we hopped the fence.

The office was closed and locked, as was the first exhibition building. We skirted both, avoiding the brighter open areas where someone driving by might notice us. The next big building was latched but not padlocked, so we eased the door open and snuck inside.

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Review: Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe

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A Facebook ad brought this comic to my attention two days ago, and it really pulled me in (as in, I made Poor Life Choices and stayed up until 2am on a work night getting caught up on it).

Lore Olympus is a modern/alternate take on Greek mythology, centered around the story of Hades and Persephone, but including the full cast of Greek gods and goddesses. The basic premise of the comic is that Mount Olympus and the Underworld are modern cities, while the mortal realm is at the time of Classical Greece. Demeter, Persephone’s mother, doesn’t like many of the other gods, and has chosen to live in the mortal realm, and that is where Persephone was born and raised. At nineteen, she has recently come to Olympus to study at the university, to get some freedom from her mother, and to learn about the more high-tech world that is open to the gods and other mythological creatures (nymphs, centaurs, etc.). Persephone is staying with her friend Artemis.

Hades (at 2000-something, as he puts it), is the King of the Underworld, ruling his night-time kingdom alone while his brothers Zeus and Poseidon are long married and have at least superficially happy families. Though he doesn’t necessarily like to admit it, Hades is lonely.

The story opens with Hades being stood up by his date for one of Zeus’ parties, and going anyway only to be very taken by Persephone, who has come to the same party with Artemis. Hades then proceeds to Say Stuff about how beautiful Persephone is within hearing range of Aphrodite, which leads to the Goddess of Love enlisting her son Eros to pull a prank on Hades. The prank ends up giving Hades and Persephone a chance to meet and to talk, and to discover that there is something that clicks between them, though neither is quite willing to acknowledge it.

The story proceeds from there, with Persephone slowly meeting more of the Olympian gods (for good and ill), slowly getting to know Hades, and slowly getting to know herself a bit better, looking for confidence and purpose and struggling against a conviction that her powers are “not very important.”

I like a lot of things about this comic. The art style is bold and fun, both in the drawing and in the use of color to differentiate characters; the artist plays with the idea that as gods, these beings might have very differently colored hair and skin (Persephone is all pink, for example, and Hera all golden) rather than having the usual mortal tones. There are some scenes showing the modern city-scapes of both Olympus and the Underworld that I thought were truly amazing, and there are many more gorgeous moments throughout.

Another thing I like is that the gods and goddesses, while certainly empowered with a certain amount of modern technology and ideas, are still recognizably their characters from the traditional stories, with all the shenanigans, shape-shifting, relationship drama, and sexual escapades that implies.

And, perhaps most of all, I really like Hades and Persephone as characters, and I like the relationship as it is starting to grow between them. There is more to either of them than most of the other gods see or acknowledge; Hades is hated and feared by many as the King of the Underworld, and Persephone is seen as young, naïve, and unimportant. In each other, they find someone who sees them more for who they really are: Hades as a gentleman (wavering often between dignified and dorky), with much greater depth of feeling than most understand, and Persephone as a young goddess who is very intelligent and has not yet begun to tap the depths of her potential. I also personally enjoy stories about relationships with a notable age difference, so that aspect of them is interesting as well.

The story is gripping, and also made me laugh aloud many times as I was reading it. The artist is exploring some darker themes as well as the humor, but Greek gods and consent issues are not new. Although Persephone and Hades are the main characters, we meet and get stories for many of the other gods as well, which fills in the world and pulls in more of the original stories. I would recommend this comic to anyone who likes modern and/or alternate takes on mythology, or who is looking for a good romance.

Review: The Dragonoak Trilogy by Sam Farren

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I believe I came across this trilogy first on Tumblr, and primarily because the author, Sam Farren, keeps ball/royal pythons, and I followed them for posts about their snakes. On seeing that Farren was also a self-published author, however, and being intrigued by the description of the first book, I decided to give it a try, and was glad I did; this is one of the more unique fantasy worlds that I have read in recent years.

(Some spoilers past this point.)

The series follows Rowan Northwood, a young woman from a rural village who has recently failed to hide the fact that she is a necromancer: someone with the power to snatch death away from or push death into other living beings. While her family stand with her and the local villagers are tolerating her presence as long she stays out on her family’s farm, life is not comfortable for Rowan. Taking a chance when one of her country’s famed Knights comes through the village, Rowan goes with her, following her to the neighboring country of Kastelir.

The title of the first book, The Complete History of Kastelir, struck me as a bit ambitious when I first read it, assuming that it was meant to be taken literally. The entire history of a country in a single book?

But the complete history of the country of Kastelir is exactly what I (and Rowan) learned through the course of the book. As a nation, Kastelir is relatively new, formed only a few decades previously out of a land of warring groups. By the end of the book, Rowan has (just barely) survived Kastelir’s fall, and has lost the woman whom she was beginning to love.

The Sky Beneath the Sun finds Rowan far to the south, in a completely different part of the world, along with the handful of friends and allies who escaped Kastelir at the end. Everything is new (and hot), and Rowan finds it mostly a welcome distraction from her grief. Unexpectedly, it also gives her a chance to learn more about herself, to learn that the commonly-used word “necromancer” does not at all begin to encompass the truth of her powers and the kind of being that she is. Through these revelations, a betrayal, and the eventual realization that their work in the land that was once Kastelir is not done, Rowan must decide where she will set the limits on her own power.

The final book in the series, Gall and Wormwood, sees Rowan and her friends returning north across the sea first to what remains of Kastelir, and then eventually back to her birth country of Felheim, where the heart of the conflict truly lies. It takes not just a better grasp of her own powers for Rowan and her allies to unravel the war that has been going on much longer than any of them realized, but also a rediscovery of their world’s more distant past.

The author of the Dragonoak trilogy created a truly unique world, that has breadth and depth enough that it is easy to feel the weight of its history even as the characters do. Farren’s take on what at first seems like a straightforward fantasy element like necromancy, turns into something unlike any other version of necromancy that I’ve seen. There are dragons and phoenixes, though even they are not quite what one might at first assume. This may be the first time that I have read a story in which the main character is dyslexic (though she does not use that particular term for it), and must work around her inability to read, though it is largely something that she just accepts about herself.

I enjoyed the whole trilogy, and would recommend these books to anyone who likes fantasy stories with original worldbuilding, queer characters, or a good story about the heroes fighting for (and winning) the right to live their lives in peace.