DANCING WITH THE STARS ... in AVALON!

DANCING WITH THE STARS … in Avalon!

Hush! Can you hear it? The iron tongue of midnight is tolling in the darkness.

It is Friday … time for another glimpse of my heroes dancing with death …

{from BLACK ROSES IN AVALON where Fallen, the Last Fae, and Blake, son of Adam, have interrupted the Sidhe Ball of Boshet.}



The silence in the great ballroom before us was even more a physical force than the earlier darkness. And the stares we were getting should have thrust out of our backs a foot.

Remembering the words of the Cradle of Tears, I said so loud it was almost a shout,

“I know we’re early. But we didn’t want to be late for the Ball of Boshet.”

It was as if I had uttered a spell that had frozen them to the spot. It gave me time to take in the enormous ballroom which seemed to go on and on forever before us.

It was a chamber of twilight with long three-sided stained glass windows hanging impossibly in mid-air as they slowly turned to reveal all three sides.

They depicted scenes from Fallen’s past. Some I recognized from my mind-link with her. Others I didn’t. Those made me blush.

I saw Fallen go pale. I reached out with my will, focusing images of our shared time together onto them.

Her head in my lap as she was bathed in moonlight. Her standing over me on the frozen slab in the river Sambatyon, daring to fight The Wild Hunt alone to defend me.

Fallen crying over the dead body of Dinselle of the Golden Skin. Her astride a racing Epona, Queen of Unicorns, charging in with both guns blazing, a wild look of a lioness protecting her mate hot in her fae eyes, her wheat-gold hair a flying mane.

Her hugging an embarrassed Epona, the tears filling her green fae eyes. Fallen, her head flung back in impish laughter at one of Deirdre’s tall tales.

And my favorite memory of all :

Fallen sitting side-saddle astride Epona and singing the long lost lullaby of her forgotten youth as gossamer wings of faerie dust glowed from her back.

With a sigh of relief, I saw those images take the place of the other lewd ones on the stained glass windows nearest me. I heard a hush of disbelief ripple through the assembled Sidhe.

Fallen squeezed my hand. “When all else fades from my mind, this will I remember : how you defended me in the midst of enemies.”

Angry, outraged muttering began to buzz through the milling Sidhe. I shivered. Not at them but at the chamber itself.

It was eerie. The air of the place was black fire, and electric white mists slowly rose from the intricate black and scarlet tiled floor. And the partiers seemed to float upon the surface of the mists. They were so elegant, so beautiful, --- so deadly.

They were tall, all dressed in elaborate, colorfully designed costumes. All the colors known to man, and many I had never seen before, blazed from their courtly attire.

Long gowns of richest silk flowed from the bodies of the nightfall creatures with ethereal bodies and predator eyes. They had been dancing some complex interweaving pattern when we had barged in. And from the looks in their arrogant eyes, I would say we were as welcome as a muscle cramp.

Fallen’s green, slanted eyes began to sparkle again. A smile slowly spread across her lips.

“What need have we of parents, Blake? Orphans both are we. We need but each other.”

Her eyes grew larger as she stared at me until they seemed to swallow my world. “Beyond life. Beyond death. Beyond oblivion. We are one -- together and always.”

And then, she started to sing her long lost lullaby. This time it started with such sadness it near tore my heart in two. But it didn’t stay that way long. She flowed up to me, and together, we swept across the dance floor, moving graceful as one.

The long days of practicing with Kirika aboard The Bladeless Samurai paid off. Fallen and I danced smooth and certain across the mists, sending trails of it flaying out around our ankles. We didn’t take our eyes from the face of the other.

Her song rose in waves of love triumphant, in lilts of souls intertwined beyond death throughout eternity, connected though severed by death and darkness. Her voice trembled with so much beauty it snatched me up in such rapture nothing existed but the emerald depths of her eyes, the soft feel of her arms around me.

And as we wheeled and spun through the silent Sidhe, the gossamer wings, sparkling with stardust, made of the energy of sheer love, shimmered and grew from her back. They were beautiful, in radiant colors that took my breath away.

“No!,” sobbed Ogygia, Fallen’s once scornful mother. “She is redeemed. Redeemed! Damn DayStar! He knew. He knew! And I am bound to my accursed pact by my unbreakable word.”

Fallen and I stopped dancing to turn to her as Ogygia balled her fists and hunched over in agony. As if released by a steel spring, her head snapped back, and she screamed.

“DayStar!”

A voice out of my nightmares spoke to my right. “He is delayed, but he sent us to prepare his little rasha.”

I turned.

Nyx. Tall, regal, in a black, skin-tight, breast-revealing leather gown.

And next to her, short, elegant, Maija, looking every inch the Dragon Lady she was.

I forced my throat to work. “W-Well, there goes the neighborhood.”

***

***

DANCING WITH THE STARS ... on TULANE CAMPUS years1932/2005

CONTEST UPDATE!

NEW WINNER!

HEATHER McCORKLE WINS THE GQ magazine AUTOGRAPHED BY ALEXANDER SKARSGARD {ERIC NORTHMAN of TRUE BLOOD}!

Heather send me your address so I can send your prize off as I just did HART JOHNSON who WON THE BRAD PITT (AND CATE BLANCHETT) AUTOGRAPHED PHOTO!

FOLKS, WRITE THOSE REVIEWS SO THAT YOU CAN COMPETE FOR THESE GREAT PRIZES WHILE THE NUMBER OF ENTRANTS IS STILL LOW!!

REMEMBER ONE OF THEM IS THE KINDLE FIRE -- THIS JUST IN :

KINDLE FIRE WILL ALLOW HULU + TV STREAMING!
Adding a major source of TV and movie content to its tablet arsenal.

Now, on to my DANCING WITH THE STARS post --


Lonely midnight calls to me from the empty depths between cold & distant stars.

It is Friday - time for another DANCING WITH THE STARS from the memories of my friends/heroes.


All of us fall in love. Some with danger. Many with lust. Less with romance.

A mad few with death itself. Samuel McCord does it with all of them -- and all with one woman.

Meilori Shinseen, empress of a people exiled from another plane of existence.

Samuel's love for his wife, Meilori Shinseen, is as undying and epic as a Greek tragedy. It is known all throughout the Shadowlands.

As it is also known that his great love for Meilori will be the end of him. And if Sam could hold her just one more time in his arms, he would face that end with a smile.

And here is that ghostly encounter from my novel,FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

It is a speculative Noir thriller. An alternate history, if you would,

of what could have happened after Katrina but didn't -- in a plane of existence where the supernatural exists. And who is to say that it doesn't exist in this one?

CHAPTER TEN

A REMEMBRANCE OF SHADOWS

The week that followed my visits to Bush and Nagin was a blur of too many demands and too few hands. But Renfield and I managed. Swartzkoph, the new head of FEMA, came steamrolling in, busting heads and butts.

He left me alone, and I wisely kept a low profile, keeping to the shadows, trying to make his work easier not harder. But considering the labors of Hercules he was attempting, he was finding the Big Easy anything but easy.

And I went about my work in the shadows.

But now, after a whole week, he had sent for me. He had picked an odd meeting place : the Tulane campus. It was a mess but relatively dry considering Katrina.

Renfield insisted on going with me. He was worried that I was pressing myself too hard and my senses were dulled by fatigue. But in an odd way, it was the exact opposite. Weariness over-rode the unconscious filter I put on what Rind's blood mingled with mine showed me.

With the soft voice of twilight, ghost music sang in my memory. It was accompanied by the chorus of the whispers of the wind from the listening sky. I closed my eyes.

New Orleans was timeless, especially to me with the blood of Death in my veins. My transformed eyes only told me the truth, and the truth was not what I wanted to see. So I closed my eyes, and for a moment the truth was what I wanted it to be.

Meilori was back in my arms, supple and vibrant, the peach velvet of her cheek nestled against mine. She pulled back to murmur "Beloved."

Slanted eyes looked up into mine, seeming like jade quarter moons waiting to rise. Her smile was a promise of wicked delights to come in the evening hours before us. And my heart quickened.

Her hand lightly squeezed my gloved one. Her head bent forward, and soft lips tickled my ear. And we were dancing, dancing as if our bodies were the wind given life. We slipped through the air in an Argentine Tango, her right foot teasingly runing up my left leg.

It had taken me a hundred years, mind you, but I had learned to be a damn fine dancer. The firm body in my arms had been ample incentive.

Some moments lose their way and grope blindly back from the past into the present. Such a moment swept me up now. Meilori and I were dancing across this very grass.

I had paid a prince's ransom to pry King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band out of Tulane's old gymnasium to play out here under the stars. In my mind, I could hear young Louis Armstrong on cornet, see the pleased faces of the other dancers stepping lightly all around us, and hear Meilori's low laughter.

How amused she had been at being flirted with on the front porches of Jelly Roll Morten, Buddy Bolden, and Papa Jack Laine earlier that day. Those same houses had somehow survived Katrina, though not without damage. I made myself a promise I would see those places repaired.

Renfield rasped beside me, "Sam, are you doing this?"

"What?"

I opened my eyes and went very still. The speechless shades of a long-gone night whirled and wheeled all around us. That long-ago evening was replaying itself before our eyes.

Renfield and Magda were laughing as they danced beside Meilori and me. Outraged dowagers bent heads together, their silent tongues wagging at the sight of a priest and nun openly dancing under the watching stars.

Renfield sighed, "I'd forgotten how your face looked happy."

I looked at my ghostly double, envying him the sheer delight in his eyes. "I'd forgotten how it felt."

The sound of my words settled an old score with truth, and the evening shades slowly faded from sight. I shivered.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Renfield look wistfully at the disappearing Magda in his own double's arms. I sighed. Some truths were best seen only by starlight.

Renfield shook his head. "Remember the last dance of the night, Sam?"

I nodded. "Yes, I remember. Don't understand it. But I remember it."

"Why did Meilori shush you off like that to dance by herself -- as if someone invisible was dancing with her?"

I sighed. "Haven't a clue. But it was a sight. She was so graceful, so full of sad love."

Renfield frowned, then nodded. "Sad love? Bloody Hell, you're right. I could never pin down the expression on her face until now. But sad love says it all."

"All. And nothing. I still don't understand the why of it. Just that she was so hauntingly beautiful as she danced."

Renfield made a face. "She could have been washing clothes on a rock, and you would have found her beautiful."

"I may have many sorrows, Padre, but the memory of Meilori is not one of them."

Renfield was about to say something, then looked off to our left. I followed the path of his eyes. I smiled. Swartz. Not that I called him that to his face, mind you.

He was a career soldier, full of discipline and respect for tradition and position. He was striding purposedly and brisk towards us. He smiled grim at me. I smiled back.

He stopped abruptly right in front of us. I smiled even wider at his clothes. No insignia or rank on his uniform of desert combat khaki, but it was starched and pressed as if just out of the cleaner's.

The smile dropped off his face as if too heavy for the moment. "Next time, McCord, you see me about to be killed, let me die. I do not want to go through something like this ever again. Dealing with bureaucrats is like being nibbled to death by ducks."

{Swartzkoph tells Samuel that he will be leaving FEMA and New Orleans in two weeks, not being able to follow orders given him by President Bush. Sam tells him not to worry, that his jazz club will be open by then.}

Swartzkoph raised an eyebrow. “Hardly a priority, McCord, with all the hurting people in this city.”

“You misunderstand, General. I’ll be able to start my pay-per-view internet concert of the jazz greats. The profits from that non-stop concert will funnel into a Katrina Relief Fund.”

Swartzkoph seemed doubtful. “I don’t know how much money that will pull in.”

I smiled wide. “Worldwide? Quite a bit. When you factor in that most of the jazz greats playing will be dead ones.”

I called upon Elu’s and Rind’s blood within me and misty shapes began to form all around us. Young Louis Armstrong, cornet under his arm, slapped my shoulder.

“Be glad to be there, Sam.”

Dizzy Gillespie shimmered beside him, his trumpet sparkling in the starlight, his beret set at a rakish angle. Jelly Roll Morten, his eyes dancing with “Spanish Tinge,” laughed at Swartzkoph’s startled jump. Charlie “Bird” Parker winked at me, holding his saxophone tight.

Cigarette hanging from his lips, Duke Ellington drawled, “You provide the piano. I’ll provide this old body. New Orleans is our mother. And we aim to be good sons.”

Swartzkoph looked a haunted question at me. He wanted to know who these spectral visitors were. And the hell of it was that I didn’t rightly know.

Just because I had summoned them, didn’t mean I knew.

Were they my friends drawn from my heart’s memory when they were young, or could I reach out into the night and bring them to a remembrance of shadows? Think you know the shape of death? I did once. I was wrong.

I thought it a dark tunnel at the end of life, whose end was blazing light. I found it to be a cloud that filled the horizon with flickers of black light and scarlet winds. Thickly it spills over ocean and land, sweeping up all in its billowing path. And even that glimpse is misty, flawed with things my mind cannot contain.

I spoke softly to them. “Give me two weeks, and we’ll put on a show like none has ever seen before.”

Louis mopped at his forehead with a white handkerchief. “Time ain’t what you think, Sam. Nor is the reason we’re here. You open those doors. We be there. Now, you owe someone a last dance.”

He turned to the others. “C'mon, Boys, we’ve got us an empress to play for.”

There was a movement of shadows to my left, and my heart hollowed out as Renfield breathed, “Dear Lord above.”

Meilori’s shade danced open-armed in front of me.

What does love look like? What is its color? A white flash of fright. A billowing wave of warmth, its reach beyond the microscope and further than the length of hope. Is it a jewel sparkling in the night? Or a whisper murmuring within the corridors of the heart?

Once more Meilori danced across the velvet grass, her empty arms beckoning to me. Her soft voice carried like a specter in the dark. Her words brushed by me and into my soul.

“Beloved, one last dance.”

And I finally understood her dancing empty-armed that magic evening so long ago. She had seen me, as now I saw her. Perhaps she thought me the ghost of a future me, dead and searching for her. And not understanding completely, still she took me in her arms.

As I, not understanding completely, now took her in mine. She smiled, brushing soft lips against mine. And my jazz friends began to play in a heart-clasp of sound.

Love is not a shy beast to be caught but a rare moment to be treasured. It burns within each cell, a living seed of hope. Its rays invisible to most, seen only by the searching heart.

Meilori was in my arms, and her love was a sheath that kept me whole. She lightly kissed me. I almost felt it. We danced through the embrace of shadows. And for a very short moment, I was home. Home.
******************************************