“Lucky or Unlucky?”
Well, maybe it’s unlucky number thirteen in that I was working on a pretty great post this weekend and I just didn’t have the chance to finish it, but at least it’ll be ready for next Tuesday. But maybe this is lucky number thirteen because I got officially published again! Now I have a fiction piece published, and it’s actually one that I’ve posted on this site before; “Beezlebub Dayz.” I submitted it to Rainy Day Literary Magazine, which I think is Cornell’s student literary magazine, and I was accepted! So now I’m officially published for both memoir and fiction pieces, which is pretty exciting. Now I just need to write some more stories to submit to some other places and I’ll be on my way to having a pretty solid backlog of publication! And then maybe someone will buy my book. I.e. this one, Spectral Crown. Read it here until then.
Side note, I know Spectral Crown isn’t perfect, and there are things in it that I would change before publication, but also if it ever were to be picked up it would go through a pretty rigorous editing process anyway, so I’m largely saving those edits if/until it gets picked up because I don’t have the time or motivation to dive back into it right now. But if I ever get the time (and I don’t feel like working on a new project) I’ll probably give Spectral Crown a once-over before sending it to some more agents or whatever. Or not, because the most serious changes will take places farther into the book than the query letter/sample pages would get, so who knows? Point is, if you’re reading this and for some reason are thinking “hey, I should try and publish this,” I already know where the edits need to happen, so I’m way ahead of you. You’ve got your work cut out!
Spectral Crown, By Andy Sima: Chapter Thirteen
“There’s a skeleton back there. So what? I’ve seen dead people in my day,” Kolte said, hands on his hips as he strode about the maids’ quarters, where we were gathered. After I had exited the passage behind the fireplace, we replaced the bricks as best we could and retreated to discuss matters with each other.
Simon said, “Saelac tells us this skeleton was chained up. It did not simply become trapped back there and die. It was chained up and left for the rats. A fate, I’d wager, that is a particularly unpleasant way to die. This was no accident, I’m sure.”
“Simon’s right,” my mother said. “This was intentional on the part of whoever left it there. Probably some old Blestemat, wanting to leave a message for whoever found the passage next.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Freda said. “Reinhard threatens to have us executed every other day. Sometimes he even does it. Death is a part of life in this world. It shouldn’t stop us from living.”
“Well spoken, sister,” Franz said, slapping her heartily on the back.
“I agree with you,” my mother spoke up again. “This is, so far, the only means we have of leaving these rooms, without an escort by Iacob or Sorina’s servants. What I’m trying to say is that we should exercise caution when exploring these tunnels. We do not know what other secrets they contain.”
“I don’t know why we would even risk it, now,” Simon said. “I was all for the passage in the heat of the moment, but now it does not seem so wise. Why risk getting ourselves killed? Might as well wait it out until we can just go home after the wedding.”
I thought back, in a flash, to the beast I had heard in the bowels of the castle. “What makes you so sure we’re getting home at all?”
Our motley crew turned to me as one. “Why do you think we’re not?” Simon responded.
I spoke again, clearing my throat. “This castle is not normal. You all have felt it.” There were scattered nods from the group. Simon stared at me, and adjusted his glasses. “The soldiers are nowhere to be seen. Our horses have been taken away from us. And we’re sealed into this room, far away from anyone with any sort of power. It seems to me that the Blestemats want to trap us here, for better or for worse.”
“All the more reason to explore those tunnels, then,” someone said. There were nods of agreement from most, save Simon and a few more timid souls.
“If you want to explore them, I won’t stop you. But I won’t be going in, either,” Simon said, crossing his arms. “Remember, this is for the good of our people.”
“You can’t reap what you don’t sow, Simon Taylor,” Ema said, eyeing the thin man. “You had better put in some effort too.” We turned to face Simon. The Brandt siblings stared him down with toothy grimaces.
Simon adjusted his glasses nervously, and then relented under our steely gaze. “I suppose you’re right. Perhaps I can stay back and hold down the fort, as it were. And I can keep Reinhard out of it.”
“Now there’s something useful,” Kolte said. “Keep the dwarf uninvolved.”
“Yes,” said Simon. “He listens to me slightly more than the rest of you. Though he still doesn’t pay me much mind.”
“It’s settled, then,” my mother said. “We’ll explore these passages behind the fireplace, in small groups. For safety. The rest of us will stay here, to keep up the impression.”
“That’s all well and good, Josefa, but what’s our goal, then?” Franz asked, scratching his head.
“I’m not sure,” my mother said. “Right now it will just be to explore the rest of the castle, so we aren’t so unprepared for anything that might go… wrong.”
“Who shall be on the first expedition, then?” one of the maids asked. Everybody looked from one neighbor to the next, and then to my mother. It seemed, since she was the leader, she was expected to go first. But yet…
“I’ll go,” I said. “I found it. But I can’t go alone.”
“Franz and I will go with you,” Freda spoke up. Franz’s eyes just about popped out of his skull in shock. But he regained his toughness and gruffly agreed.
“I’ll go, too,” said a small voice from the back of the crowd. He pushed his way forward, and I was surprised to see that it was the young servant, George, who had traveled in the carriage with Simon, my mother, and I.
“You a bit young, ain’t ya?” Franz asked of the child. He looked to be no older than twelve.
“I will have you know,” said George, “that I am sixteen years old, as of last month. Saelac is not much older than I am.”
“But Saelac is more fit than you are,” Freda chuckled. George puffed out his chest. He put on a good show, but fear hid inside his eyes like frightened dogs.
“I can exercise just as well as the Uradel soldiers. I train with my brother every other day,” George said. Franz and Freda seemed more entertained than convinced.
I sensed that this was not a mere show of bravery by the boy. He was shaken by the disappearance of the soldiers and his brother. “I say you let him go with you,” my mother said. “No point in him staying here.”
George turned and bowed low to my mother. “Thank you, madam Bergmann.”
“Oh, quit your pleasantries,” she smiled. “Just go with Saelac and the Brandts. Good?”
“Quite good, yes,” the boy said, and smiled. His slight frame shook, just a little.
“So it’ll be Franz, Freda, George, and myself, yes?” I said to the assembled group.
“That sounds about right,” Kolte nodded. The Brandts, George, and I separated ourselves from the rest of the group.
“Would someone bring us our canteens?” Franz said, as we stood by the door to the common room. “Or any canteens, really? Don’t want to die of thirst now.”
There was a scurry of movement from the back of the group, and a few of our fellow servants appeared before us with canteens of water, which we clipped to our belts. George’s looked like it was weighing him down.
As a group, in an eerie, expectant silence, we then made our way out of the maids’ quarters and into the common room. There, Franz and I grabbed up a torch each. I also took the skull I had retrieved from the passage the first time. The hole in its forehead made it look like it had been smashed in with a heavy object. I wasn’t sure if it happened before or after death.
“Here goes nothin’,” Franz said as we made our way over to the fireplace. I knelt down next to it, crawled inside, and began to remove the bricks that hid the gap in the wall, as if I were digging a grave.
Eventually the space was large enough for us to pass through, and I glanced back before I stepped through the wall. My mother’s eyes held quiet fire, backlit with fear, and Simon had only a tired look in his eyes. The rest of our crew I could read less clearly, but they all seemed to shine with equal parts excitement and unease. I did my best to smile reassuringly and passed through.
On the other side, it looked just as it had last time, with grey stone floors, grey stone walls, a ceiling that I could not quite make out, and passages going off in either direction for an indeterminate distance. The torch I held above my head cast flickering shadows on the walls. Somewhere, rats and perhaps other things scurried in the darkness.
The next to pass through was George, whose shoulders were significantly thinner than my own. He had no trouble entering the space behind the walls, but it was not the same case for Franz and Freda. Their barrel-chested nature nearly prevented them from coming through. When they finally did push their way through, each of them ended up being scratched by the bricks at the edges of the porthole, the wall having giving birth to them.
“Alright, that was fun,” Franz said, prodding his scratches tenderly with one hand. “Now what do we do?”
I was about to answer, when I heard my mother’s voice from the other side of the wall.
“Saelac,” she said, “we’re going to put the bricks back, in case Reinhard wakes up, or Iacob’s servants come back.”
“How will we know where to come back through?” Freda asked warily, crouching down to see my mother’s worried face.
“We’ll give you another torch,” she said. “Place it against the wall on your side, so you can see it from a distance.”
An unseen hand pushed a third torch through the hole in the wall, and Freda grabbed it and placed it on the ground next to the hole. “Alright,” she said. “We’re ready.”
“Godspeed, my friends,” someone said from the other side. It sounded like Kolte.
“Godspeed, indeed,” someone else muttered. And with that, silent hands from the other side of the wall began to seal it back up. The four of us on the far side watched it as the light beyond was bricked up and slowly removed entirely. We were left in the darkness of the secret passage, lit only by our two torches and the placemarker on the ground.
“Alright,” Franz said, now that we could not turn back. “We had better get moving. We’re wasting firelight.”
“Which way are we going first?” George asked, looking smaller than he had before we went through the wall.
“This way,” I said, and pointed down the darkened hall towards where the chained up skeleton lay nearby. “There’s something I have to do first.”
I received no argument from the other three, and I stepped down the hall towards the pile of mangled bones that sat beneath the place they had been chained. I placed the skull on top of that frightening cairn.
“May you rest in peace,” I said, and walked onward down the hall, away from the corpse’s pile. Franz, Freda, and George followed me, torches shifting in the gloom.
Classes are absolutely as bad as I feared they would be so we’ll see how often I have to resort to this. But also I promise I have a really great post in the works for next week, it’s gonna be rad. Thanks for reading.
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