Purple Monster

The dream was on her, the smell of burning, of pain crashing through her, lering faces in a circle of confussion. A shrill alarm cut through it the Punk sat up in her bed glared at the lumnious numbers hit the clock and rolled over she really needed to get a better clock that could track what day it was then it wouldn’t matter that she forgot to reset the alarm for weekdays.

But she didn’t have any spare credit and was basically working this curcuit for free – she owed the Company a lot of money but the sky bike was worth it even if it was well out moded. It was bueatiful – a lunaire 6 with real metal bits unlike the newer models who were all some fort of plastic or fibre glass. Light tough materials which generally comprised of a lot of empty space – thats what gave them strength the absence of stuff made what was there cling to itself in shear fear of the surrounding vaccum.

Her bike had been on of the first flying models released on the general market – the manufacturers hadn’t quiet got the hang of the fact they were no longer making for the military! It was a warhorse and ontop of that it had been owned by a trans-cyber-goth – it looked like someone had put Maroline Manson and Sitting Bull two great historical figures onto New Synth and let them fight it out – traditional Goth verses traditional native ammerican in rainbow technicolour. It was perfect. Just needed a bit more highlighting in her current colour of fade – Pink.

Grottily she sat up on her bunk and rubbed her eyes – there was no way she’d get back to sleep now so she might as well catch a shower before the water got too recycled to not stink of chemicals.

Of course it was just after lunch time, the lull in the day as everyone was out next to the pool or on one of the maintaned beaches pretending that the world still had such expanses of glittery white sand and that the efforts to stem global warmings effect hadn’t seen every such low laying area build ugly great flood defensis. She sighed at the thought – she’d tried to tell them, tried to explain what would happen if that managed the enivornment like that – had pointed out the devistation of New Orleans early last century but they had ignored her. As always she had been powerless to stop the destruction and then they had cuaght up with her and self preservation kicked in. sod the biosphere sod the multitude who would starve things where still much better than people realised.

They didn’t know couldn’t really what luxary they lived in, even their poor lived in a way that would have been considered bliss not many centuries before.

She showered quickly not becuase she wanted too but becuase she couldn’t afford the fine of exceeding her 15 minutes, the water was high pressure and airaited to make it more effecient at cleaning – she relished it as it prickeled her skin. She had the setting on high heat – most people couldn’t take it that hot but she loved the scalding heat. Hair washed and pits scrubbed she got out of the shower and stood looking at her reflection in the mirror – the nanotube covered glass repelled water and had begun apparing in as a luxary last century it was now as common place as chewing gum had once been. It didn’t mist up, it didn’t get dirty, the layer on it was charged and everything basically bounced off of it.

She missed chewing gum but the plasticizer and sweetners turned out to be carconogens – but everything was a carconogen so why did it matter? Cigerettes where still legal though – thats what truelly got to her. Sighing she begian to spike the magenta hair , shoulder length where it lay after the shower from a central ribbon of hair – the rest having been shaved. She slide a transparent tube down the center of her scalp, it grew little invisible spins and gripped there. She pushed the hair still damp up next to it. A tingling sensation passed through her and the hair stood on end. She smoothed it into a crest 1 and half feet tall. She looked at her Moheccan and smiled – what she would have given for one of these gizmos a centry and a half ago.

She dried herself off she looked like a teenager – the sort of non-descript sort that gets asked for Id even though their 26 or let into bars at 13 but then she’d looked like that for a long time. She put her piercings back in, lifting them from the decontam unit that had soniced them whilst she showered. She was tanned olive but could be darker she also knew from expereince she could be as pale as the rising moon. But she loved the sun, though she loved the night more.

She atatched the chain of anodised metal to her nose and ear and grinned with big full lips – she sugar glossed them and added glitter to her eyelids. Glam meets Punk she grimaced at the remebrance of some of the music and Pulled and pushed herself into a skin tight suit perlised pink to look like snake skin covered in butterfly dust. It zipped up molding itself to her form giving it a ridged shape she liked. Somehow hard femanine curves made her look like she was once more in armour. A round cheeky face with high cheek bones smiled out at her – she’d nock them dead at the club tonight.

The suit was a science fiction fact like so much of the world she inhabited. It was marketed as a still suit and was lifted straight from a scifi classic of the mid 20th century. She liked it – it looked sheek and was emenatly practical recycling her body fluids – very useful in the stiffling environment of a club.

Back in her appartment she munched some kelp crackers and stared out of her window. The resort island had no rooms without a view. Med blue waters stared up at her and she tried not to think on the fact she was on a floating construct made by morons who couldn’t remember to take into account the weight of water in a swimming pool when laying foundations. It was supposed to be hurrican proof – she hoped she wouldn’t still be here to find out when one eventually hit. It was one of the reasons the pay was so damn good.

She’d calculated that she had a few years before the weather patterns shifted again but the presance of the islands alone was enough to much those up so who knew. She jammed her feet into knee high boots, platforms chunky with springs in the heels and pink glitter flames up the sides. They looked like pale pink leather but wear a veg product impregnated with antifungals to stop her feet reaking.

It took an age to lace herself into them, they had zips at the ankle to allow a tighter fit and once the lacing was finished she laid the stupidly long tongue over them and did up the dozen or so buckels humming why she did it.

She stood, a head taller than she had been. She grabbed her acid pink bomber jacket, shiny material with tight ribbed cuffs and matching coiler checked that her must haves where still all in place and left the depressing white cube with its smell of ozone.

In the corrador she stopped to activate the lock and stomped off down the hall – for some reason she was in a bad mood. She was heading to the bar area ignoreing the holidaying tourists in bikinis that begged skin cancer swung into the dark cool room. Of course it was closed, not due to open for another five hours but she knew the early shift would already be out back preparing.

Alexi the walrus-esk barsteward was shouting his normal orders and his skinny wife was using her claw like fingers to type out orders and the like. Why the woman didn’t use a cord keyboard was beyound the Punk but people as always felt things should look a certian way – her sugar glossed mouth quirked at the realisation she was wearing enough pink to sink the original suffroget movement.

The Barsteward cuaght sight of her and beamed, ‘Ah my little DJ what will it be?’ the Punk tilted her head to the fridge units. The sound of the heat exchanges was audible at this time of day. They were full of synth beer – spat out by bacteria in vats – some people still shunned it but the Punk reasoned that beer was made by fungus anyway and at least this was a trained micro-organism.

Alexi paced her two bottles.

She moved through the kitchen delidding one as she went. She sat on the steps that lead down to patch of white gleaming pavement – she took out a pair of wrap around shades. The light was harsh this close to the equator as it was – mid day and relected off of white paving slabs was enough to blind you if you weren’t careful.

As she sat there contemplating her green tinged vista her mind turned to the vastness of the ocean beyound her, it had once seemed so large but now it was so annoyingly small. she tilted her head to the sky, there were the new day stars glinting in the sky – she knew what they were but they still gave her a scense of disquiet. They were like omens of old that the priests would hunt out a sacrific for, glinting gleaming in the skies. The Orbitals – the great minning endevour that had saved humanity for a derf of raw matterials. The early 21st century had laid the seeds of the project as the astronomers hunted the skies for near earth objects – fear had driven them. Theories of mass exctinction by fire from the sky.

She hadn’t made it up to the orbitals yet but she was sure she’d end up there at some point. The asteroids where netted due to some fantastic feat of engeerneering where they were then mined heaveily to run Earth’s industries. The resulting caverns where low G areas just rip for a population to relieve Earths own press. There was now alomst a ring around the entire planet – the doom sayers had predicted the end of the world – the Punk had been listening to prophetic apocoliptica for a long time, she’d done the calculations she knew it could work. She had been sad that she’d had to run out on the scientific community just as things were truelly becoming interesting.

With those types of thought buzzing around in her brain her fingures begain to get twitchy – she desperatly wanted to go and tinker with her new bike – but that had to be reserved for evenings off as once she got into it she was likely to be there for hours. She closed her eyes and supped her beer and sunk into a daydream of engine compartments and moving parts. She sighed happily.

The world was a much nicer place than it had been – most people she knew would disagree with her but they hadn’t seen what she’d seen. Sure there where The Ant-Space league blowing the Atmo-Gliders up full of passangers and there were still boarder conflicts in the ex-USA as terrortories where scratched out but they were isolated places, most people had food, had cloth were clean, knew at least what reading and writing was.

She felt the presance next to her, smelt the cheap aftershave and smiled, ‘Sit down idiot.’ There was a creak of synthetic leather and a gruff exhalation of breath.

Snake sat down next to her She looked at him, neon blue leatherette glared at her with lank green hair that some how clashed. He had uneaven stumble in his natural ginger covering his iemasiated face, he looked like he would imbibbed anything legal or illigal – he was in fact t-total. Brought up by a druggy mother who was obsessed with the apocolypse.

‘You drinking that foul stuff?’ he inquired.

The Punk is settled down as a drummer and singer in a neo-punk band

Things start happening which suggest the band is being observed – they think its a corp record lable but its really a crack class of vatican assisines

They attack one of the venues

The Punk and some of the band escape

The Punk organises them into a bit of a team and they hunt down one of her caches

It’s been looted and they start trying to follow a trail

Plots, counter plots and more plots

The Punk gets the onyx ocelot back but looses it again – thinks it is destroyed but the chunks turn out to be sugar

Chases it and gets it back

Hides out in the gypsy caves

Meets up with one remaining band member who is keen on tech

Discover the hidden computer component

I haven’t quiet decided weather an Elf is going to appear or not! And I need to work out some underground conspiracy theory type stuff too! Any ideas let me know 🙂 Thanks

Inside the ruin sparks still flared and flew into the air giving it an obsenly cheerfulness. She heard a moan and followed it, there at the back of the cathedral in a little sideroom no doubt the vestery a Middle aged man lay prone bleeding profusly from a gash on his head. She jingerlly made her way over to him. He was black and blue with other injuries and spluttering from smoke inhalation.

‘Father?’ She spoke gently lapsing into Latin without even thinking on it.

The priest head jurked in her direction as she kneeled next to him.

‘They burnt it all! Maria!’ His voice cracked with tears, he’d recognised her as female, this disturbed her but she layed a hand on his forehead, a fever slicked him.

‘We need to move you,’ she said gently.

‘They stole the candle sticks, the cross! the vile of St Peters Blood, they took it all, the chalice, they took the chalice.’ His hand gripped her tight at that, she made soothing noises and felt the disquiet, the smell of burning in her nostrils reminding her of another set of flames. That had all been for the Chalice and she knew that here was not the home of the sacred goblet – she had hidden that in volcanic hills across the channel. However she knew that many monstery’s claimed and some actually belived they had the the cup of christ the same as some genually believed they had magic viles of saints blood – often the majority of the holy brothers never knew of the deceptions that lay at the base of the mircles they offered the masses of desperate parishoners.

She dragged the priest out into the clearing and into the woods. Concern over making his injuries worse stayed her other wise she’d have kept moving until sunset. Instead she found herself once again setting up a hovel to spend the night in but this time her food would have to stretch between two mouths. She wasn’t even sure why she had decided to help the monk but if anything was a failing in her personality it was a soft spot for those unable to fend for thereselves.

Spring chill seeped through the banches and leaves she had crudly formed into a shelter but the night was a lot more pleasant for anothers body heat even if he did keep murmering in his sleep.

From what she gleaned from his fevered ramblings she understood that the King had decided to destroy anyone who would not come over to the ‘new’ faith. She sighed this old war, this old reason for blood shed and it looked like it was just becuase the king couldn’t keep his desieased dick in one woman. He had already retired the ‘real’ Queen, married and beheaded a witch who had born him a daughter and a few still borns, the same crime the ‘real’ Queen had commented. She’d heard rumours of all this in France of course but somehow it hadn’t sunk in as something that would affect her.

Of course he hadn’t taken to torching the monstries at that point. She shuddered.

He rambleed about vengence from on high, against himself, his order but she didn’t quiet understand why he thought the destruction of his Cathedral wwas just and put it down to fever. He muttered about plots and counter plots and she begain to wonder if he was a safe person to keep alive and if he might not sigh her death sentence.

Was she harbouring a crown traitor after all? She had no alliliation to England really but it never was sensible to hang around with traitors in that traitors own country. She wondered who Henry Fitzroy was though – it ment son of the King but she was sure there wasn’t yet a Prince of the realm. She shrugged adn slept through the rest of his mutterings.

The next morning saw her rumaging through the ruins trying to find something – anything that could be useful. What she found was some waxed cheese and a couple of casks of wine. They had been in a monks dorm and not in the larder kitchen which was swarming with the shodowy figures from the woods. They were stuffing the spoiled food stuffs into their clothing, she loathed their desperation but only becuase if they hand’t out numbered her she would have been doing exactly the same.

She did find remnants of a garden – trampled by the horses of the soldiers but still full of spring greens and the like, she harvested them and carried her load back to the monk.

She was cooking a late breakfast/lunch when he awoke with a start. He start at her from one blood shot eye the other wouldn’t open, purple bruising held it shut – she wouldn’t be suprised if it was perminatly damaged.

She helped him sit up and then paced him some food.

He ate slowely as if fearing her and what her reaction to him would be, he seemed to expect her to be either afriad of him or angry or both. She for her part gobbled the leaf vegitables as if they were the best the world had to offer, the cheese also filled a nutritional whole that she hadn’t even known existed. For the first time for a couple of years she felt full and saticified.

‘Father what happened?’ She asked in Latin.

He looked at her oddly, ‘You speak in an educated manor?’ he enquired. She nodded.

‘Which faith are you child?’ he asked wearily.

She looked at him hard, but he had no breathren her to help trap her and if it was the Kings men that had done that to the Cathedral then this might be one of the few times she could be truelly honest and not risk death.

‘I am of none sir’ His eyes bulged and he looked angry with feverant zelostnest but he collapse in on himself with a sort of defeat.

‘Probably safest’ he said.

‘What happened?’ she asked again.

‘The King has broken convenent with the Holy Empire declairing all those who owe felility with Rome to be heathens and enemies of the state. He says corruption paws at the Catholics and that we have departed from the True Faith…’ he paused and looked at her with a blue blood shot eye, ‘and he is right.’ He said the last part so quietly that she almost didn’t hear it.

The eye was disconcerting to her and it appeared to be weeping. ‘When killed him – of the divine line and we killed him in the name of faith. Killed a young man bearly out of youth.’ She looked at him perplexed he was admitting to murder but she didn’t have a clue who’s murder he was talking about.

‘I was his teacher, he trusted me and I stood by.’ Fat tears now rolled down his cheek. She watched him wearily why had she saved him if he’d done what he said killed some kid she wanted to smash his face in – the old rage begain to boil within her.

‘I asked them not too, I said he was malluble I said he’d be ours and the old faith restored but they would not listen.’

‘Who is this Father?’

He looked at her as if he’d only just remembered she was there, ‘Henry Fitzroy.’ She stared at him blankly.

‘The Kings Bastard who would have become King instead of his sister the King had put laws in place to garentee it.’ His misery resonated in his voice. He was not the killer he thought he was but nor was he safe to be around – she wanted to drop him like a hot brick but wasn’t sure it was going to be that easy.

She got up suddenly full of energy, ‘where are you going child?’ he asked her.

‘To check my snars and see if we’ll be eating meat tonight.’ He frowned at her and she remembered that today was not an allowed meat day. She waited for the surmon but it didn’t come. She left the hovel – it suddenly felt far far too small.

After checking the snares she headed back to the cathedral with the idea that maybe she could exchange meat with some of the people there for some of their stolen food but they were all too scared of her. Running when she approached – they must have all been from one community – all known each other becuase she looked more like them than a solder or someone from the upper crust or even the pie filling.

She was just stashing a few shriveled carrots when a patrol entered the ruins and now she saw why the poeple where so scared. The solders wher viscous and merciless. She hide very still in an alcove – they weren’t really looking, just ambling through even so she had to crouch for an unpleasant amount of time and with her resent physical punishments it was enough to course a nasty cramp in her calf.

Eventually they went and she returned to the hovel wondering if her charge would still be there – he was. She figured she was in for the long hual.

It was two weeks before he was in any sort of state to walk and then they could only move short distances – he tended to complain about the food she found and prepared but she ignore him mostly when he started. He was quiet frankly an officous bastard but for some reason she found it endearing.

About a month later they decided to move out from the hovel and leave the area – the Priest wanted to go back to teh cathedral for some reason. She followed him. The ruins were cold now and to her suprise populated by the shadowy figures, ‘why do they stay here?’ she asked him.

He looked sad, ‘they are bonded to the land. They believe they cannot leave it without permission.’ She made a disgusted clicking sound in her thoat.

‘Slaves.’ she said with venhem.

‘The vestagies of, yes. There aren’t mainy such people left in this country but those that do remain are mostly beholden to the monestries. But we looked after them. This Cathedral at least let people leave if they asked.’

‘Did they know they could ask?’

He shrugged and she turned away from the sight – the peseants had seen the preist and where heading over to him. the pure glee on their tired faces made her want to scream.

When she looked back he was talking to each cluster of people who were weeping but nodding their heads. Fear clouded half there features, hungry about a quarter and resignation on the remainder.

He returned to her looking older and sicker than he had for a few weeks.

‘What did you say to them?’

‘I released them from their bonds – they are now free to move from the soil,’ he looked at her with those icy eyes. ‘Most of them would have stayed here and died if I had not, I dread to think of the other churches and their lands, all those people.’ They walked away in silence the shadowy figures behind them teamed with uncertainty but they were moving away from the ruins.

…

It was about a week later that she left the old priest at a cross roads and headed into a local town in the search for food. She still had no money and wasn’t entirely sure what her plan was going to be. It was a cattle town and smelt of an over crowded barn, the flag stones where covered in foul smelling mud, she refused to think of it as anything else.

She was is luck it was a market day, the streets thronged with people from all walks of life. She planned to try and get employement but her stomache grumbled and there was a stall of fresh pies, her mouth watered and the Lady in pink and white who was the server had her back turned getting a fresh batch from her portable clay oven. She lifted a pie. And headed out of the crowd to eat it in peice.

She’d just taken the first bite when a solder eask looking man appeared in front of her – confident that she hadn’t been seen she tried to ignore him but he spoke to her roughly in the gutteral English. She could still bearly understand it spoken slow, she looked up at him, he knocked her pie out of her hand, hunger for it almost made her cry and anger flared. She stood up to her full height which was equivelent to his. Glaring she shouted at him in French.

He hit her.

The Punk stops at a monestry dressed as a young boy

Befriends young Henry, Catherine and Elizabeth

Saves them from a Catholic plot

Elizabeth dies

Nobles want young Henry to pretend to be the princess to get him potentially on the thrown

The Punk swaps places with him

Comes to power and moves Henry and Catherine and the Nurse maid into court

Start the explores on the hunt for New World goodies – mainly pirating Spanish ships

A few of the bits are what the Punk is looking for – artifacts that could help tell her more about her own origin

Plots – counter plots and more plots

She finds the onyx ocelot

Decieds its time to die as Elizabeth

Escape plan put into effect

New King to make UK more resillent to Europe – united with Scotland

Punk goes to live with the Gypsies she outlawed as Queen

……

Normal slightly in the future stuff

News that the ocelot is gone

Attempted assination

Well I have just realised I’ve got the Elizabethan part of my story sussed and the over all concept but the actual cyber punk bit is still a bit fuzzy :/ So must go and do some thinking on this! My main aim is to have equal amounts of future and past and have them alternate culminating in something that pulls both time periods together! Sigh that’s starting to sound hard 🙁

The Series is split into three parts – the Elf Civialisations, The Chimera’s existance within human history and lastly the expantion of the Earths higher primates into space.

The ‘Whole’ story documents the evolution of the Elves and Humans and how hate and intolerance almost destroys all higher life from our planet only to find that genetic purity is deadly and an evolutionary dead end. The merging of the races occures in the future but always with that under laying bur of extremist destruction.

But as overall homonization can result in a single set of genes too it becomes necassary to ‘geogrpahically’ isolate colonies on different worlds to mantain enough divergance to breed back in.

Overall themes are tolerance and diversity.

The Punk in Pink is in the Middle section of the series – each section is 14 books long making 42 books at 150, 000 words each! As I said this probably will all change as I continue writing! This gives me a structure around which to work.

Ok so what we have is:

Part One:

Elves and other higher primates appear

Fight and Elves are victorious

Build Atlantis and other ocean empires (being aquatic apes) using slave labour from the defeted races which they gene splice etc… to create human slaves

The idea of genetic purity comes in resulting in war

Elves are taken to the point of extinction and have reduced the diversity in their gene pool to dangerous levels

Survivours of elf civil war build Babel and have some working labs to grow their own and human/elf highbrids in

Human civilization builds with Elves as ‘gods’

The fall of the tower is a terrorist attack destroying the labs

The Punk escapes as a child from Bable and appears in human history as several notable characters as do other Chimera’s

The Chimera’s are hunted by the terrorists whilst they seek the truth about their origins

The humans build their own god free civilizations but once both groups of Elves have regrouped they create the underground societies that really run things.

Certain Chimera’s like the Punk spend their time finding out what actually happened and collecting the information relics from Bable

These frequently get stolen and have to be got back – once enough are found the back-up system of the tower of Babel can begin to be constructed!

Once constructed the Babel information matrix has to be explored

Results in technological explosion = the Chimera experiment brought to its conclusion and the elves may breed once more but in the prossess the boundaries between the Elves, Chimera’s and Humans blur.

Colonisation of the stars begins

Terrorist Elves attempt to rein supreme in the universe – but their own ideals ultermatly lead to their destruction.

She stayed the winter, improving her hovel and hunting, collecting what was left of the nuts and berries, hazel mainly for the nuts, blackberries, haws, elderberries and rosehips. She grubbed up some tough root veg and found a stand of juruselum artichokes the only things that were due to be harvested and not over. There were a few crabby apples and pears half withered on their branches but this in trueth ment they were half preserved for the winter all ready.

Her main fear was that her wood pile was going to give her away, the hovel was pretty well camaphlarged though as she had a fire it was a moot point. She stacked the wood around the tree, all wind fall – she didn’t want to blunt her knife hacking wood and she had no saw. She snapped what she could into managable lengths by using her feet and a lever action of a second log on the ground.

And then she came across an injuried deer, gritting her teeth she butchered it, work that had to be done quick as the meat would go off within an hour or two of death if not seen too. She built a smoking hut having no salt to keep the meat in. She kept the squirrel tails and the rabbit skins, curing them to use as clothing, a sling, hide from the deers leg made a good water carrier.

And then the red rust and orange leaves had been covered in white glitter, spiky patterns that picked out the viens on each leaf, they crunched under her feet. The snow was not far off and the snars where turning up less and less but still she set them. The ground became hard to grub in and she had to use her knife. Dissapointment set in as a cluster of mushrooms turned out to have splite gills and be poisonous and not the edible species they looked like.

Before the snow there was torrential down pour, cold, soaking and a threat to the structural integraty of her hovel. She huddled in the still infested blanket not having any hides big enough to make a blanket. Pelt of the smaller animals had mostly gone to fixing her clothes and lining her boots, but she had started amassing them with the idea of a blanket – they smelt bad.

The snow hit – first in gentle flakes here and there that decended into a miserable sleet making the leaves tretcherous. She didn’t go out whilst the cold stuff was falling from the sky, except to use the bog of nature and to fetch fire wood. But when it wasn’t falling she was checking ehr traps and bringing back less and less.

Eventually the snow blanketed the woodland hiding all the golds and brown all the colours of warmth benieth icy white and blue, the tree trunks were stark dark wholes in the monochrome landscape. The sun a hazy white ball if noticable at all. She was hungry all the time but had to ration her supplies, she doubted survivng the winter she was pretty much living off of meat.

The world seemed pretty desolate and gave her too much time to think. The dreams had started again, coming faster and more confused each night, she was sleeping more but somehow getting less refreashed.

Milky opolescance, a floating sensation, fire, screaming, monsters with grey skin and dark liquid eyes, teeth pointed and sharp, lost, searching, small and hungry. It stretched to take the shape of lifetimes. Glittering armour, boxes flickering with light, scratches on bark, all meaning… something. It was there but if she reached towards it it evaporated. And she back on the pyre, back being burnt alive, back in the arms of the young monk in a filthy cell. Pain lanced the dreams obliterating their substance.

She needed a home she decided, once winter had ended she would go in search of one, if she survived. Home… home… were was home? Somewhere in the land of the Crusades she felt it deep within but she was not dark she fitted in most European places but how much of that was her hiding from the sun, not that you had to hide at this accursade time. The sun was weaker than she remembered even for England. There was more snow, deeper thicker, bleaker. The people she had seen looked broken – she had seen that once before in this particular land maybe it was cyclic?

She snuggled down in her blanket – the winter drew on – endless half light.

And she got her clock/blanket of coni just after midwinter and craved vegitables more than anything in the world even above her fish craving. Winter slowely melted and she packed her belongings in her many pouches and filled her new water casket. Spring was muddy but then so would the summer be if they weather remaind like this so she was on the move.

She looked like a filthy bundle of rags, but her face was less streaked with grim and her hair hand been brushed out at least twice in the long winter months. She was contemplating her best course of action she was not sure of the social structure in place – she did not want to end up a slave but how to enter a middle class of some sort? She had no money for clothes nor could she hide the lack of income. Prostitution seemed like an answer but it wasn’t – the deises rate would be high and she wasn’t sure how good her immunity would be after the abuse her body had gone through the last few years. Plus it may well hold the death penulty – it did in many places she had lived.

Maybe she could become an apprentice?

That was almost as bad as slavery but it secured her food and a life time of work – it was worth concidering, of course that would involve her dressing as a boy yet again. She doubted from what she’d seem on the boat that women would be allowed a profession. Of course she could tidy herself up and get herself a husband but that never sat well with her – at the end of the day she was willful and loved her freedom and the men always become resentfull when children didn’t start appearing.

Monstery’s and Nunarys were good solution but that that had started half the trouble in France so she was loathed to go down that route again. But they did tend to have alms for the poor so maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. She had heard rumours on the boat though that somehting strange was happening in England – they had suddenly become godless. She shrugged and kept walking she had her own thoughts on religon and they would get her burnt without a repreive.

She walked for about a week before she came upon a road, she followed it. She had it to herself for two days before soldiers in clanky armour and silly helmets came pounding along. She dived off the road expecting to be ignored but one of them stopped.

Demanded somehting in English she bearly understood, she answered in French, ‘I looking for the cathedral?’

The soldier looked at her suspiciously but some of the agression had gone replaced with a waeriness. ‘French?’ She shook her head she didn’t want to mistaken for a spie and she knew there had been political issues between the two nations. ‘My Lord the Cathedral lies in the direction we ride but go home sire, you are too young to join the fight,’ clicked his tongue and the horse he was riding cantered away.

She stood there perplexed – Lord? Sire? Fight? But he had answered her in French! Had things changed so much? There was she remembered some French King who was English too or something like that – she cursed herself for not having kept up with the news of the courts.

He thought she was a boy that much was evident and of the blood. That thought quarked her. But she could see it happening, some youth hot headed and full of passion for faith and crown angred by his parents refusal to allow him to go with his brothers – but why the cathedral? Where the troops rallying there?

She kept up her monotonous druge as she thought about it.

The road was ripped up by the horses hooves, sticky with the underlaying clay, it clung to her slowing her down. Great pieces of flint with chalky cortex showed benieth giving a sort of sticky cobbled affect. The road was in trueth ill mantained left over from a previous age that she doubted any of the current inhabitates realised had ever been.

That night she made camp and slept fitfully – the forest appeared to be full of nosies, full of shadows. She kept still and quiet and slept the best she could.

The morning was full of the same mist that seemed perminant on this miserable isle but there were buds on the trees and somehow she felt cherria than she had for a long time. But there were figures she kept seeing them out of the corner of her eyes – shodowy figures, the same colour as the land, just sort of drifting aimlessly. After nearly a full day of this she started to try and catch one of them but they were worse than cats who have been kicked one too many times!

Finially she lost it and stalked one, catching it by suprise and felling it, it was a young woman with decayed teeth, she smelt her hair lank with grease, her eyes wide with fear and a resignation that made the heart bleed.

‘Why are you all here?’ The girl looked blankly at her.

She tried again in her old English, but everything seemed so mixed now – so dialected. The girl looked confussed then, a string of something unitelligable except for the words soldiers and fire.

She got up off the girl and looked to the sky line – above the trees there was a pull of smoke, she shuddered. The girl sat frozen on the ground as if fearing to move, she felt bad – these people were so scared so lost she’d seen this sort of behaviour too where resignation was more of a surivial trait than fighting though weather it was a life they had she couldn’t be sure.

Wars existed in abundance but not this displacement of people not for at least a century – the Upper Crust had been too busy with the sport of running each other through to bother with the little people who farmed and provided the food for the nation.

She decided that perhapse the road wasn’t the best place to be after all and set off parralle to it in the woods. There were so many people and they all looked hungry though not like they had been without just enough for long. They would turn on each other soon in a desperate battle to live.

She had to make sure she wasn’t cuaght up in what ever it was.

Another fitful night and the next morning brought her to within the grounds of the catherdral. She stared and the smouldering ruin, at the stone walls so mighty and grand and the smashed debris that surrounded her. A small child sat silently on the steps staring blankly into the beyound.

She approached the little creature, it looked at her suddenly and reach out its scraggly arms, she would have picked it up if a filthy creature hadn’t bowled her over, and scooped the child up. The child clung to the apperition as if for dear life and she heard a soft noise that obviously ment mum and so she let the child be stolen into the woods.

Had the solders done this?

Was their war against the church? If people had seen sense then why the blood and gore? For the more she looked at the ruins the more she saw – Monks strewn about, women children aswell. Scattered like leaves.

She felt sick but kept moving towards the ruins.

The dream was there once more, the heat the flames, it was just one of the dreams but the singed smell was still in her nostrils. She awoke to scratchty cloth in many shades of brown, course and itchy, she was breathing in the straw dust of a stable floor. A weak watery sun was shining through the slates of the barn or stables or what ever it was, she moved her head and felt something go ping in her neck, slipping on the floor never sat well with her and this time she’d crooked her neck.

Coughing out the damp and dust she sent a glob of phlemng into the stray, a disapproving wicker startled her and she looked into warm brown eyes and the smell of horse. A hunting horse she was sure of it. That all they seemed to do in this place, hunt the wildlife, she remembered the isle when it had been wilder, when the world had been wilder, but also when it had been tamer, she coshed the thought before it bloomed into something she could not kill.

She felt grimy but the weather had turned viscous and she could not risk the cold to bath plus that sort of behavour could get you into trouble if you weren’t careful. She wrapped the woollen blanket turged in colour and rank in smell, around her shoulders, it had several wholes in it and it had been infested with nasty biting things when it had been given too her but it was all she had and so was more precouse than a coat of the finest silk from the far east.

But she missed her armour, missed the heavey chain link, but she also missed fabrics that could not be made, thin water proof fabrics that did not smell of fat or pitch, of lights that were not sickly yellow and rank with tallow. She looked at her hand, it was ingrained with grim and the nials flaked and broken, there was a red swelling along the side of one nail that burned and stretched the skin. A hang nail infected – in this age that could kill.

She was infact covered in scabs ranging from insect bites she’d scrathed in her sleep to burns that just had never quiet healed. She had thorn scratches and whip marks and all itched every single last one. Her skin was on fire – she ignored it. She wanted a bath.

Opening the stable door jingerly she looked out at an insiped dawn, watery sunlight in a pearlised sky. The damp had gotten into her bones, the sky above rammed that fact home and she shuddered. Slopping through the mud and feasces mix infront of the doors, she headed out of the clearing where the great estate obviously stood. She hadn’t seen the buildings during the night, had walked straight by them until she had almost collided with the stable. The place was an island clearing surrounded by forest.

She headed for the trees, she didn’t want to be found in guilt of vagrancy, there were laws against that here. Her feet were vagually damp from the puddle the hides she had rapped around them must have supped the fetited liquid up through the different layers, she cursed it was in French, she wondered how much of a problem that was going to course her? And how much the English language had changed since she had last been there.

Looking at the trees she realised she was in a beech wood, dense and thick but with obvious hunting paths, that ment deer, and looking at the broken limbs on some of the trees possibly cattle but they did not concern her overlly it was the thought that there would at least be wild bore lurking in the woods. Hairy, balls of fury the size of a good dog with tusks long and pointed and ready to skewer any fool who thought that ‘piggies’ where harmless, even the farmyard ones would eat you if you couldn’t move – she’d seen them eat their own young if not seperated from them in time.

Plus they were intelegant. She shivered – she hated pigs.

Hunger gripped her belly, keen enough to make her feel sick, like she’d eaten too much! She became awear of a leather sack she her taken subconcously from the barn – the horse feed, oats barley, grains mixed up and slightly mashed. She sighed, she’d stolen horse food and she knew she was going to eat it, but she was going to have it warm, she needed something warm but was she far enough away from the estate? The trees around her where dense but they wouldn’t mask the smell of woodsmoke and this was a mantianed woods, between the beach were copiced hazels. The husks laying squirrel chewed around her feet.

She located a small trickle of water mainly by stepping into a boggy part of the leaf mulch, scrapping the soft rich soil away with her fingers revieled water but it was orange with rotting organics, undrinkable but she tracked its source and begain to make a fire. She still had some of the supplies the monks had given her, monks who were supposed to have killed her but believed that she was some sort of saint.

There was no food left of course that had gone before she had even left france. But there was a wooden bowl and spoon no metal that was too precous and would be stolen, or have her accused of stealing, a flint and oil cloth lay in one of the many festering folds of her clothing. She set the fire and lit it she then gathered enough wood to keep it going a fair while, she was shaking with hunger and exhorstion but if she didn’t push herslef now she would be signing her own death warrent. Using her knife she hacked a few fallen branches in suitable bits to construct a frame for cooking, she then filled the leather satchel with water and hung it over the fire.

Then there were snars to be laid, there would be small animals she could eat scuttling about in these woods and she needed the protien.

She dished the grey, thin looking mixture into her bowl and spooned it into her mouth machanically staring into the middle distance thinking on creamy porrage. It filled her belly and stopped the aching – at least for a while.

She piled leaves into the hollow of a tree trunk and curled up as tight as she could and slept, buried in the damp leaves fearing a consumptive cough that could ensue from suck tacteks. It was late afternoon with fading light when she awoke, more oats filled her belly and she rushed to check the snars, two squirrels hardly worth the cooking and one rabbit that definatly was worth the cooking. She threw the meat in with the remainder of oats, craving fish, and thinking of the sea.

She improoved her shelter and settled down for more sleep. It was deeper this time and less cold. She awoke with a headache and drank some water. The morning was bruised and as insipid as the one before it, she checked the snares collected the bounty and packed it all away carcouses and all into her many crevices. Though she wanted to eat and sleep more it would be stupid to stay that close to habbitation especially when there was frequent hunting – she could be killed as a poacher if nothing else. She broke her shelter, eat a good helping of now cold porrage and meat stew, tied the sopping satchle up the best she could and slung it on her back. Scattering the fire she felt guilty about not putting it out properlly but hiding she’d been there was more important to her than forest fires.

She looked around wishing she had a water flask, decided that it looked a little disturbed but nothing an animal couldn’t have cuased and set off – deeper into the woods and hopefully away from civilization.

The light in the woods was darker than it would have been outside and the sky through the almost barren branches was still a perlised white that hurt her eyes and made her brian feel as though it was wrapped in a heavy blanket. She sneezed.

She didn’t stop for lunch and only stopped when the light started to fad – she hadn’t ment to carry on for so long but had felt a panic pressing at her, fear of being cuaght, she was in no state to run, her feet were in a dreadful state having been trapped in the damp hides. She needed to find somewhere to set up for a while she really did. And then there was the issue of food, the horse feed was becoming very watered down now and though she should be able to catch plentiful meat for a few more weeks before winter truelly hit she had missed most of the autum bounty. The branches were devoid of vittles, it would take alot of hunting to find anything worth eating at all.

She built another fire but no shelter and ate warm broth. Her stomach still felt empty, she had no bread no carbohydrates, delwt with the carcouses in her coat and added them to the mix for a meater breakfast. But see need vegetables and the like she could feel her gums receeding.

The next morning she regretted not having built the shelter as a fine mist had soddened her, she hacked up more phlem, and just about saved the fire so that she could have a warm breakfast. Then she was off again, this time keeping a look out for foodstuffs other than meat. She found a briar patch with mostly yellow leaves the blackberries that were left were mostly furry white or shiveled black but there was maybe a dozen good ones and their sweetness was that of burnt sugar. She licked at the remnants on her fingers and lips greedily.

But there was no other natures bounty and she set the snars again that night.

The next day saw actually rain and she decided that by mid afternoon she would just have to risk being far enough away from the estate and any major roadways other wise she would not last out the autum let alone the winter. She built a shelter in the bowl of a large oak, one of those truelly ancient trees that seemed too wide. Getting the fire alight was – well interesting, damp wood, damp kindling, she sighed and removed a slender cylinder from her pocket. She praised the young novice who had given it back to her thinking it contained a remnant of some saint she held dear.

He had loved her and torn himself apart inside over his faith and how she had tested his relience. She place her finger in little smooth depressions in its oily looking surface and pressed in a sequence, different pressures in a specific order, it thrummed slightly, suddenly alive in her hand. She turned parts of the cylinder into a configuration she had learnt before she had ever known there were others like her.

She pointed it at the pile of damp wood and squeezed, a light errupted from it, red and mottled, like it was made up of dust, she ran it back and forth over the wood. It sizzeled. Eventually a flame sprung up from the mass of wood. She fanned the flames and made the fire good her hovel was still rudimentary and rain trickled in still. The pour was not torrential and the tree shelter her from the worst. With a belly full of warmth she slept knowing she would wake sick.

Shivering she got up to a misty but not raining day, she checked her snars and reset them, collected wood and fixed the shelter, then hunted for some food that wasn’t meet, she collected a few handfulls of hazels but most of them had withered in their husks. Those that were good she devoured with lust. Her priorities where to get food, make a water receptical and improove the shetler for the coming snow. She would also need a huge store of wood and preferably some new clothing and bedding though how to do that without hunting the larger animals and risking injury she didn’t know.

Ok so I’ve decided I need an outline but first of all I’ve discovered that I need to plan the outline – decided whats going to be there as the actual structure of the book and then how many chapters etc… I’m planning on – before I can even begin the outline :/

I have decided that 150, 000 words is the sort of length I am aiming for – but as I believe that stories decide their own length this may change! Now obviously this is 3 times the NaNoWriMo amount so I am looking at continuing the writing after November has finished! I know some people just up their daily word count but as this is my first nano I thought it best to pace myself!

Also obviously this is one novel which is going to be part of a bigger story so this leads to an interesting thing with the outline – am I doing an outline for the series or for novel? Do I need to do both?

The more I plan for this novel the more I find I need to think about and plan – arg!!! I just hope this is all worth it!

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo at midnight after doing spoogy things with my little girl all evening and having done a stint of tidying I realised Nano had started and knew that there was nno way I would get to sleep without doing some writing.

So I wrote 246 words of prologue and then slept.

Then I got up and using my ‘pacing’ method have been writing in 20 minute stints all morning with only a few domestic inturuptions including poppy sales people and my husbands aunt. I managed before lunch to write just over 2000 words of chapter one which I will put up for perusal tomorrow.

I want to write at least another 2000 today mainly becuase I am sad enough to have worked out how long writing this series will take at a rate of 4000 words a day! But my official target is still 2000 a day.

Of course I have discovered that my ridged plans for the chapters is already falling to pieces but I shall put them up on this blog anyway as I think the diviation is just as interesting to be honest!

The girl shivered and turned in her sleep, sweat pricked the skin of her pale forehead, she mummbled and turned as if on fire as if in fever. The dream was back huanting her, one of those real dreams that tugged at her waking mind from the recesses where she hide it.

The dream involved fire, a large fire of flicking flames and a circle of faces, dark hair and tanned skin, a ring of faces learing at her. The fire was large and licked at the wood. The pyre was for her, becuase of the voices in her head, becuase of what she had done. From hero to witch in the blink of an eye. The heat pounded into her head – the throb of pain pulsing within.

It should have ended there, it almost had, but it hadn’t and after her feet had healed, after the monks had helped her and hidden her, after the whole death had been churned over and whiped from the publics eye she had walked out of there. Walked away from another chapter of her life.

She had crossed the channel and time had passed.

She awoke to a dusty stable floor, in itchy woollen clothing, corse and scratchy.

She awoke on linen sheets, in a room smelling of new paint and ozone.

Memories fused together – lifetimes passed the Punk was awake.

She blinked and looked at the clock, 5 in the morning, she turned and drifted into sleep once more.