TO TOUCH STRANGE FIRE

 

St. Marok's Orphanage taught Major Richard Blaine to curb his impulsive nature, but under great stress, he acts impulsively ... 

and usually ends up in trouble ... but never so dire as now.

TO TOUCH STRANGE FIRE

“The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.”

– Rabbi Lt. Amos Stein

 

I looked up into the hell-sky as if for inspiration and only saw Helen’s flaming angel form frozen in an arc of supple beauty and grace.

For some odd reason, the words of the forgotten poet, Robert Herrick came to me:

“Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find

A way to measure out the wind?”

Helen was racing to a suicidal charge against one hundred Nephilim … just when I had a glimmer of an idea how I might save her and the rest of my Spartan 300 … but me, not so much.

Now, she was flying away before I could tell her … or was she?

I glanced at Darael. I could see he was smirking though his features were misty … but not that misty.

What did the science for which he held such distain teach us? What could be done once could be done again.

I am an impulsive person when under stress. A thought hits me, and I act upon it. I can no more hold back any more than it is in a thoroughbred stallion to race slowly.

I should have held back.

Since he was in my mind, what I planned was plain to him … but too late … for both of us.

“No!” Darael cried.

I put all my mind’s focus upon Helen, her essence, her very soul, the faint apricot perfume that wafted after her whenever she passed. 

All the sensations that embraced me when I held her image close in the darkest of nights.

It went faster than I dreamed … which should have clued me in right away that the dream had become nightmare.

I was drowning in a roaring maelstrom of madness worse even than when I awakened in the energy vortex within Sentient’s craft.

There was no up, no down, nothing my mind could grasp as sane or earthly or reasonable.

The fiery cataclysm arabesqued in currents of sizzling jade and searing silver.

“NO!” screamed Helen from all around me, though I could see her nowhere in this swirl of searing energies.

“You cannot be here!”

I put a shrug in my words though I couldn’t see myself any more than I could see Helen.

“Well ….” I began.

“Yes,” she snapped, her words billowing in my mind. “Obviously, you can. But you should not!”

“Why?”

She ignored me as was her habit when truly annoyed with me.

“You should have been vaporized the moment you entered my essence. I am in touch with the Infinite!”

I heard the capitol letter to “Infinite” without understanding it.

I sensed her attention elsewhere, and she snapped, “Darael! I should have known you were behind this!”

“No, fledging seraph. This intrusion into another seraph’s mind is beyond even me. This rash Son of Adam dragged me along with his rash impulsiveness.”

A low Voice, so modulated in waves of utter power and calm, it tremored the very marrow of my bones, spoke in a strange, bemused tone.

It possessed an air of massive antiquity.

‘Believe the provocateur, Helen Mayfair. Darael has a poet’s high, almost satanic, pride in what he can and cannot do.’

“Elohim!” They both cried out in sheer fear mingled with cavernous deep awe.

I did not need them to identify the Speaker.

 I could not say that I knew Him. Only One had the right to say that, and the sons of Man had murdered Him.

‘How quaint. You, the black sheep of all my experiments, take off your shoes, as it were, in my Presence.’

“The prayers of Curtis and Richard, my smallest Spartans … they are keeping me in one piece here, aren’t they, sir?”

Praying He had a sense of humor with a corresponding sense of the absurd, I ended with …”Over.”

Helen gasped, “Richard, are you addled?”

The deep, mellow laughter went on for an ice age or two, then, finally,

‘Yes, he is … as what might be expected of an orphan who has survived his season of Gehenna at St. Marok’s.’

I felt icy fingers brush back the forelock of hair that I knew deep down had not accompanied me into the essence of the seraph whom I hopelessly loved.

‘Do not be too sure it is hopeless, Richard Blaine. I am the Deity of the Impossible. And you are correct: the moment you entered within all that is Helen Mayfair, the glow of the Spartan helmet pins went out.”

His chuckle was not cold, nor was it kind.

‘They wailed at the  sight as if their sides had been pierced with a spear … 

and though both were an ocean apart, at the same moment, they began praying for you to be resurrected, of all  things.’

This time his chuckle echoed puzzlement.

 ‘So, what was there for me to do, but honor such childlike trust and love? Thus, is your unthinking act of kindness to two who could in no way benefit you rewarded.’

A sigh enveloped me.

‘You will be Man’s only briefly, whispering of the road between realities and the path into the stars. Yet soon theirs no longer.’

I felt a slap on my rump.

‘Now, off with you! It is time for you to pull a miracle out of your own hat for a change.’

Abruptly, I was in the midst of my Spartan 300.

Taylor gasped, “The Major’s back! And he’s glowing!”

Beside me, Darael groaned, “Of course, he is.”

Porkins gulped, “And the angel is on fire!”

“Which one?” grumped Reese.

I sighed. Things were back to normal:

Incomprehensible.

 ***

“For thin is the veil betwixt man and the godless deep.

The skies are haunted by that which it were madness to know.

 Strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies.

Unnameable things have come to this world in alien horror and will come again.

Beware: the evil of the stars is not as the evil of this world.”

- Darael

FOREVER IS COMPOSED OF NOW'S _ A TALE OF MEILORI'S

 I walked to my table at Meilori's and paused. 

The ghost of Emily Dickinson was already sitting there, frowning at my open laptop.

She looked up.  "Dearest Roland, I am somewhat overwrought.  Could you help me?"

To my right, Mark Twain vigorously shook his head at me and gruffed, 

"Missy, you are always overwrought.  Why I declare most of your verses have hernias from being wrought over in knots."

Emily rolled her eyes at him and sighed, pointing to my laptop "Your words tear at me.  You ask: "Does the world need another writer?"

"I know how wretched and galling it feels to have one's carefully crafted words misunderstood or ignored."

{Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in a review of Emily Dickinson’s poetry published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1892:

"But the incoherence and formlessness of her —

I don't know how to designate them — versicles are fatal….

An eccentric, dreamy, half-educated recluse in an out-of-the-way New England village (or anywhere else) cannot with impunity set at defiance the laws of gravitation and grammar." }

Mark knew how deeply those words had wounded Emily.

He snorted, "Emily, dear, whose name is familiar to the world today: yours or that jaybird Aldrich's?"

Mark bent over her slender shoulder and read my words.  

"Dang it all, why should we bother ourselves asking if our books are needed?  Is beauty needed?  Is humor needed?  Is love needed?"

The ghost of Hemingway paused beside us as Marlene Dietrich waited impatiently for him to pay attention to her again.

He said roughly.  "I see your point, Clemens.  We need to eat, sleep, and breathe ... all else is extra."

"No," Emily murmured.  

"For living souls must soar above mere appetite.  It is our yearning for beauty, for humor, for love that raises us above the level of an animal."

Marlene's ghost sat beside the poet and patted her hand.  

"As odd as it may appear after my spit-fire life, I agree with you.  

Why, one of your verses meant much to me my whole life --

 Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all."

Hemingway bent and read my words, too. Dang it all, I wrote those words to myself, not to all of Meilori's.

 Hemingway glared at me, "Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.

He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.

For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

You know that fiction is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing.

You do not have the reference, the old important reference.

You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true.

You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable 

and also have it seem normal so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it."

Marlene rose abruptly, "Enough, Papa, you owe me a tango."

And off they went into the shadows.

Emily sighed, 

"Publication is the auction of the mind of man, and I prefer my bare-foot rank best as it affords me the freedom to write as I wish."

She looked off into the shadows that had swallowed Hemingway and Marlene.

"Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition, So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!"

Emily looked up at me.  "I wonder if your friends will continue to write should success elude them?  

Are the words burning within them, as they are with me, to find life on the written page?"

Emily squinted to make out the head of Marlene in the darkness as she finished the verse which meant so much to the actress:

"And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."

LET ME FALL

 It's time for a bit of whimsy: 

I even put myself in it

LET ME FALL 
{872 words}

"Let me fall,

Let me climb,

There is a moment when fear

And dream must collide."

 
I am the last of my race. I am Tuatha de Danann. And, no, human, that does not mean elf, or fae, or damned. I take that last back. 

I am damned.


"Someone I am

Is waiting for courage,

The one I want,

The one I will become,

Will catch me."


I have no memories of my youth. Youth. The word is a mockery to me.

Though I look a young woman, I have lived centuries which I do remember. I remember when the sphinx had a nose,

when the pyramids were caressed by shimmering limestone,

and when courage and honor were not hollow words.

Yes, that long ago do I remember.


"Let me fall,

If I fall,

Though the phoenix

May or may not rise."


Then how do I even know I am Tuatha de Danann? The knowledge sings to me from the depths of my spirit in the night.


Its melody mocks with teasing glimpses of a time long gone, yet unborn.


"I will dance so freely,

Holding on to no one;

You can hold me only

If you, too, will fall

Away from all your

Useless fears and chains."


How do I know I am Sidhe? It is the face which mocks me from the mirror.

High cheekbones which seem intent on bursting up and out of flesh which shimmers as if coated with stardust.

A living waterfall of honey-wheat hair, looking more like a lion's mane than any other earthly term I could use.

Large, slanted fae eyes, chilling even me with their lack of warmth or mercy.


"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

There is no reason

To miss this one chance

This perfect moment;

Just let me fall."


But enough about me. What do you think about me? On second thought, do not tell me.

What care I what humans think of me? But I lie. I do care. At least about what one human thinks of me.


Roland Yeomans. DreamSinger. 

He is Lakota myth come to life. 

He is the shaman who sings dreams to life. And he will tell me my beginnings or die.



"So let me fall,

If I must fall,

I won't heed your warnings;

I won't hear them."


My mind is churning with images humans could not comprehend as I sway up the steps of the Art Nouveau house,

that is just one of the doorways into Roland’s psyche.

Just its name alone is punishment to think, much less speak: Jugendstilhaus in der Ainmillerstrabe.

Once it had been the home of the infamous Countess Franziska zu Reventlow,

her erotic lifestyle and cosmic nonsense had inspired and broken the hearts of an entire generation in Munich.

Now it has to settle for being the most elite restaurant in the city.

No knocking on the door. 

This restaurant is much too elite for that. Only a rare electronic key will work … a key based on the silicon ingrams of Roland’s own brain.

I have mine in my longer than human fingers. Roland had sung this establishment into being along with most of Munich back when he used the pen name, The Brothers Grimm.

I slide the key through the black slot whose color matches my short-skirted version of a S.S. uniform.

True, I am some seventy years out of date. But what is seventy years to a Tuatha de Danann?

A mere hiccup in time.

I remember Wagner trying to teach me German ... among other things. I go cold inside. 

I remember too much, feel too little.

I enjoy the glares of the pompous patrons as I roll my hips to the back table reserved for DreamSinger alone.

The maitre d' nearly breaks his neck getting to me, but I am already seated, making sure my short skirt is hiked up suitably indecent to induce doomed desire.

He stands trembling over me as I take out my copy of The Spirit as Adversary of the Soul by old Ludwig Klages from my skirt pocket.

I am almost through with his nonsense. Seeing how close he can come to the truth, while stumbling right past it always makes me chuckle.

The maitre d' isn't close to chuckling. "Fraulein, you simply cannot wear that uniform in here!"

"Sure I can. What is the matter? Afraid those power brokers to our right will find out your grandfather wore this uniform for real?"

He spins around so fast he leaves an after-image. Roland clears his throat across the table from me.

“He cannot help his past.”

I study this strange man. His eyes. By the White Lady, his eyes. 

They look as if they have seen all the pain in the world … and have felt most of it.

“I’m tired of this dancing, DreamSinger. Who am I?”

Roland looks truly surprised. “I thought you knew. You are my muse, La Belle Dame sans Merci .”

"Is that my name or my nature?"

"Both."

I sit back in my chair. I had been right, after all. 

I am damned.

To read more adventures of Fallen, buy THE LAST FAE in Kindle, Print, or Audible:

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DQ9YBNY/

SHADOW GIFTS COME WITH SHADOW STRINGS

 

Major Richard Blaine stands on the cusp of the last day of his life and receives an unwelcome visitation.

BEWARE OF SHADOWS

“To warn, to comfort, and command;

And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.”

– William Wordsworth

 

Helen’s lithe body seemed caressed by licking flames as she soared up into the fire and snow.

“Great Father of us all, grant her protection for she is beyond mine.”

A familiar sizzle of electricity cascaded down my body, and I heard Darael’s mocking voice beside me.

“Do you know how many of your species all through your race’s history have prayed for any of mine?”

I turned and saw his wavering form as he drily chuckled,

“Let us just say you could count them on the fingers of one hand and still have enough left to pluck a penny from the ground.”

I looked up.

Helen was frozen in place against the unnatural azure sky like a butterfly stuck on a board, sparkles of snowflakes contesting hopelessly with sizzles of sparks.

“Sentient,” I muttered without kindness.

“No. I am afraid I am the culprit this time. We are speaking in that nano-second it is taking your thoughts to fly from one synapse to another.

Darael sneered, “And, yes, your present science would say this is impossible. The human brain does not act in that way at all.”

He smiled in contempt.

“Shall I tell you of the frayed, raggedy history of your science? It has been, for the most part, incorrect partially or totally for all of its existence. So, when your present science tells you something, ignore it, for it is likely full of cotton candy … if not something more malodorous.”

“Why freeze time like this?”

“You listen, but you do not comprehend. How like all of your species. Not freezing, merely stretching the moment to Elohim standards.”

He sighed, “Does it ever bother you when you pray and nothing happens?”

I frowned, “No. I just figure I asked incorrectly or the Father gave me a brain for a reason, and it was past time for me to start using it.”

“Quaint,” he said, tapping my forehead.

“OW! That hurt like Hell!”

“Fitting since you are fighting Hell. You were fated to die this day, did you know?”

“It seemed likely.”

“Ah, but the Dark One had to overplay his hand as is his wont, throwing more pieces on the board than was allowed. So, Elohim decided to throw you a bone.”

“I am underwhelmed.”

Darael ignored me as I was beginning to sense was his wont.

“You are now a living teleportation devise much better than that madman, Reinhardt König, theorized … able to take yourself and whatever or whoever you touch anyplace you can conceive if the need be great enough.”

“How is that even possible?”

Darael sucked in a breath so deeply I could imagine feeling the air rush from behind me to enter his ethereal lungs.

“That is not unlike asking me why those of my species find the scent of the color ‘Purple’ nauseating. Ironic since that is the very color Caesars and Kings found so appealing and drove us from their very presence.”

“I have an I.Q. of 400.”

“Which is the I.Q. of my left little toe.”

He shook his insubstantial head,

“Let’s have a go, then, shall we? Your eyes see images upside down and reversed. Those pesky inaccurate images fall upon the retina which detects the photons of light and responds by firing neural impulses in the optic nerve. 

The brain then uses those electrical impulses to create a right-side up 3D image.”

He raised a very long spectral forefinger. “So help me, if you ask why the images are upside down, I will develop a nosebleed.”

I bit my lower lip in thought.

“And all this happens without me being aware of it like I am unaware of my brain controlling my breathing and blinking. It’s all unconscious reflex … 

as is my now being able to teleport me and others.”

Darael raised that forefinger again.

 “If the need be great enough.”

“That could prove tricky.”

“If it was easy, then you would know it was a gift from the Dark One and would ultimately destroy you.”

“You mean if I could convince my men to come inside, I could touch a wall and transport all of us to St. Marok’s or the White House?”

He clapped his long hands. 

“Splendid! Now, you are getting the hang of it.”

Darael made a face. 

“Of course, that would leave your Helen to die a most horrid death. And the 100 Nephilim free to decimate the Allied troops of Overlord.”

He shrugged.

“It would take over a year for America to regroup feebly. 

In that time, seeing Germany free to focus totally on his country, Stalin would sue for a peace he did not intend to keep.

 Churchill would be forced to negotiate a very unsatisfactory truce that would ultimately end in ruin for the British Empire such as it has become.”

Darael flashed a wide politician’s smile. 

“But you and your men would be alive.”

“I would tell you to eat feces and die, but you can’t help being you.”

His eyes deadened. “How magnanimous of you.”

I pointed a forefinger at him. 

“Is there a limit to how many times I can do this?”

I could see he wanted to turn away, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“Pretty much indefinitely. Between the treatments you received in the future and König’s Tunnel, you truly are a specimen worthy of being called one of the Master Race.”

“Good. I think I see a way I can win this one.”

His voice became as dead as his eyes. “How wonderful for you.”

“Oh, it will kill me. Maybe you should stick around to see my final curtain call.”

“I think I will.”