Hearts All of Glass 2: Day One

Part two of many more, Enjoy:

“When presented with a great opportunity, when faced with a brave new challenge, are we -- the mightiest empire the world has yet seen -- not obligated to meet it with valor? Each brave young person in this nation is bound by their birth to become a force of history! I urge all of you to face the future with fervent resolve. Victory flows through your very veins! In this crucial moment in our empire’s march to glory, you are all champions of the national spirit. Go, make your homeland proud by what you choose! The path to glory is paved in bold actions and virtuous courage! All of you, promise yourselves one thing. Promise to take every step towards victory, no matter the cost or apprehension! The sons and daughters of Deltora do not hesitate to take what they want and overstep fear’s grasp!”

-Queen Elaine Glasskard, Youth day Imperial decree, Siphrobion 30th, 6011

I took her advice to heart. I had my own radio in my room at my uncle's flat, and used it to acquaint myself with the music and slang of the city. Many stations played new genres of music I was astounded to learn existed. I never once heard swing or electronica in my hometown growing up, and in fact I'd heard very little music aside from the live performances of old ballads and harvest dance songs from the old army band which resided at the tavern most of a turn. To have so much music readily available to me was overwhelming, I must have spend hours listening to the radio at first, while I leisurely read the old leather bound books my grandfather lent me when I left.

As you may have guessed by my authorship, I have always been quite bookish, to the extent that I often neglected to participate in public sports or the any athletic teams. I didn’t make me unfit, as I was still bound to the compulsory physical education at school, and did a great deal of walking myself, but when it came to my ability to throw balls or kick them, my performance was lackluster to say the least. Now in my hometown I had come to pace myself in reading so much, as I knew my grandparent’s collection was limited and I wasn’t often able to visit the library in the neighboring town. One day, before my uncle took me to the academy offices to enroll me, I wandered several miles away from the aerodrome, to a huge glass-domed temple; practically a palace of literature. The West End library was supposedly the smallest of the city’s five libraries but as I reverently crossed through the doorway I felt as if I could spend a lifetime there.

When I came home, my uncle showed his first sign of irritation at me.

“Where were you?” He growled in a stern voice I had not heard yet.

“I walked to the library. I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You missed dinner. Give me that book.” He tore the thin adventure novel from my hands and examined it. He gave me a suspicious look and broke out in his usual jovial laughter. Shoving the book back in my hands he took Mei by the waist and swaggered away. “Very well, light out now, and no radio, you have school tomorrow!”

I was perplexed by his attitude towards me. Distinctly more indifferent than my father’s, but somehow more hostile too. I didn’t think much of it at first and simply took a discarded muffin from the table and ate it in my room. I could hardly sleep that night, I could hardly sleep any night at first, the city’s constant murmur and glow just beyond the window pane was enough to keep me alert all night as I tried to guess what was in store for me at my new school. I never could have guessed I’d meet her there.

I asked my uncle why we walked to the Blackheart Academy’s high walled campus instead of taking his steam-car, but he gave a dismissive grunt and held open the iron gates of the school grounds. The entire campus was contained in an enclosed city block, with a large looming centralized hall full of classrooms with an office and the gymnasium contained in the building’s two wings. The quad was deserted, as it was early in the morning when we arrived to register, and I saw no students on the grassy field out front of the hall or seated at the many tables scattered here and there.

“Name, birth date, and identity card.” A rather impersonal clerical witch had me enrolled within minutes and informed us that my father had taken care of my tuition there in advance, I had only to get my uniform and return when school started that day. The tailor down the street was done with me quickly and before I knew it I was dressed up in a typical student’s blazer, dark blue, of course, with matching trousers and a tan knit vest. I admired the spiral crest emblazoned on the left breast of my jacket and began my habit of rubbing it for good luck as I crossed the street again. I wished my uncle goodbye, and entered through the gates, just as the morning bells sounded. I was accustomed to many students at the academy in my hometown, as they all came from the entire county to be educated, but the sheer density of this school was stunning. I meekly shuffled to class that first day admiring every aspect of the hulking modern school hall, and the first day flew by without very much conversation to any of my fellow students.

The second day, though, was a different story. My class schedule was boring routine of Deltoran literature, history, maths, physical sciences, and gym class, livened only by the random elective I was placed in. I had desperately hoped I would land in alchemy or creative writing, but it was in theatre arts I was assigned. I had nearly fallen asleep in there the first day, the over-enthusiastic golden haired man onstage flaunted himself about with a passion for acting I did not share. My uncle crudely commented that night that it was the class all the future courtesans took, and I should help myself to the plethora of easily swayed girls in there. Mei playfully slapped him with her long white glove and dinner continued in silence.

I did notice the imbalance of the sexes the next day, however, as we had been instructed to sit in a circle onstage and envision shapes out of cut scraps of paper we had been given. Beside me were two girls who giggled and chatted across me as if I did not exist, and snatched the colored pencils I had been using to color in their own scraps of paper. We had to illustrate what we envisioned those scraps of paper to be by coloring in the white space to clarify. I sat idle for a few minutes, discreetly spying for the colors I wanted, feeling amused by the elementary level of this assignment. I took to scoping out the girls in the class, and found them all surprisingly young, maybe only a grade below me but looking fresh out of middle school either way.

A couple of the ladies did catch my attention, either through meaningful glances across the circle of students, or by virtue of their figures. These city girls, I had noticed, had a habit of being graciously endowed and it came as a shock how openly they flaunted their assets. That is to say, it was startling at the time, though even the most radical Blackheart fashion of back then would come across as fairly conservative today. A lone redhead in the shadows peaked my interest the most, partially because she looked so very engulfed in shading in her scrap of paper, and somewhat because of her long auburn veil of hair covering her face, but mostly due to how she sat. Most indecorously hunched over her paper, she sat on the stage with her legs bent at opposite angles to her body as if she has just fallen from the sky and broken both her legs. I was tempted to ask if that hurt, but then I was startled to realize I was already walking over to her for reasons unknown.

I’m glad I didn’t ask how it felt to sit that way, but what came out of my mouth was less than inspirational. The Queen’s speech had possessed me for certain.

“Can I use that red pencil, when you’re done?”

Hearts All of Glass 1: Moving House

At last, I present to you some actual writing. Set on Shaar of course, this is the story of a young student's exploits in the capitol of Deltora, as well as a unique viewpoint on the world of Shaar through the eyes of an indifferent adolescent.

“The time has come for great changes in our society! In this coming war each and every one of you will decide the fate of our great nation, and in doing so, the fate of the world! Be proud, stand strong, and unite with confidence knowing that what we fight for -- what we do -- is right. I urge you all to do your part, be it on the field of battle or here at home. These times call for unquestioning loyalty, unfathomable devotion, and most of all strength, drawn from love, love of country which we all share.

Many a time in history great conquerors have been viewed as villains, and I assure you, the same will be said of us! But are not all great peoples envied for their success? Is it not natural for cowards to fear change? As your Queen, I promise you, the feelings of righteous fervor for country and for our cause are nothing other than just and true! Indeed, we take bold measures to ensure the survival of our race- but ultimately it is us who bring balance! We are the justified, the clear-sighted- and soon, the victorious.”

-Queen Elaine Glasskard, Independence Day National Radio Address, Herak 13th, 6008

She was wrong, of course, but who could have known at the time? That speech was the first time I really paid any mind to national affairs, as it was on the wireless in my grandfather’s workshop on during the festivities when I was six. One turn later, the war really did start, and I wasn’t phased by it in the least. Middle school came and went, and it wasn’t until the eve of my second turn in secondary school that the fateful orders came through to our city. In a discreet letter, rather than a confident radio speech, it was announced that due to the threat of enemy bombing, all youths below fighting age were required to move out of all cities and towns west of the Hel’Shaar province. It was decided that my younger siblings would reside in Yekratos, a bleak seaside village where my mother’s parents lived, as far East as my parents could afford to send them. This was before Kragos had joined the war, so the Eastern shores were thought to be safe. I couldn’t dream of quitting school to spend the rest of the war by the acrid coast, so I begged and pleaded with my parents to send me instead to my father’s brother Boris, my estranged uncle who worked for the railway in Blackheart. He was unmarried, living in a squalid flat above a cigar shoppe by the western aerodrome of the city.

I wrote to him repeatedly in the weeks before the deadline, with no reply. It was not until three days before we were to leave that my cousins came running into town to inform me that there was a call on my grandfather’s telephone, and it was for me. I ran up the hill to the manor where my grandparents lived and raced through the door without stopping to greet my grandmother as she opened the door. I snatched the receiver from another cousin, and in my best rehearsed telephone manners said:

“Hello, this is Dmitri Vladinova, may I ask your name?” There was a pause, then came a muted reply:

 “Hey kid, it’s your uncle Boris. You still want to come live in Blackheart?”

“You got my letters? I.. I mean yes, of course!”

“Take a train to Kamtcheska in two days, I can pick you up there.”

“Yes, uncle, thank you. But why there? We have enough to buy a ticket to Blackheart I, am sure.”

“Yes but you don’t want to bother with a big city station, trust me, I work there. Remember, Kamtcheska. It’s a suburb, oh- perhaps thirty miles out of Blackheart. I’ll meet you there.” I was stunned with excitement and relief, I managed a few more thank-yous and asked what to bring. “Anything you want, just tell your father he owes me big. Take care kid, be there in two days, don’t forget.” And with a fuzzy click he was disconnected.

It was no small feat informing my parents of the abrupt change of plans, and as I had no proof of what he had said on the phone they were vexed to pay a small fortune to send a telegram to him in the city. The next morning he replied, frankly stating that yes infact he had invited me to stay with him. My father was less than pleased to have sent the telegram when my uncle could have simply written back to me in a timely fashion, so I was hesitant to ask him about the money which my uncle had mentioned. It was at dawn, during breakfast, that I confided in my grandfather that I had no idea what to do, and he heartily laughed and offered me a thick stack of sovereigns which he said should satisfy my uncle.

The next few hours were a blur of tearful goodbyes and worthless promises to keep in touch with schoolmates. My sibling’s train had come an hour earlier and when I departed it was only my mother and father who waved goodbye on the platform. A long monotonous dance of shifting in my seat came next, and it was midmorning the following day when the conductor prodded me awake to ask if this was my stop. I peered out the window, my eyes glazed with sleep and smoke... I squinted to read the station sign and indeed it was my stop, and I kindly thanked the man before dragging my luggage out the door. On the platform I breathed in my surroundings.

Only a couple dozen miles away from the capitol, I could feel the distinct change from my hometown. Overhead the largest steel clad airship I had ever seen hummed lazily across the sky. Around me the buildings were tight packed and the maze of houses seemed to spread endlessly around me, with a few lonely clock towers or temples poking out in the haze. My uncle was late, and I wandered the platform for nearly an hour before I was overwhelmed with the urge to sit beside the girl on the bench by the track and strike up a conversation. She was holding a travel bag, and looking intently down the track when I finally mustered the courage to start to approach her. Looking as casual as possible I sat down beside her and opened my mouth to speak. A motor’s hissing roar and two notes on a car’s horn drowned out whatever I meant to say. I was still looking at her as she glared past me at a bright red steam-car pulled aside on the road by the tracks.

“Dmitri!” My uncle shouted, indifferent to the crowd of people on the platform starting at him. “Climb in, let’s go!”

I politely nodded to the girl on the bench and stood up. I maybe even also uttered a “sorry” but who knows. I was mildly surprised to see a fashionable woman in the passenger’s seat with her arm around my uncle. “Dmitri?”She asked, extending a gloved hand to shake. “My name’s Mei, a pleasure to meet you.” My uncle laughed, bold and crude, and told me to get in the back. I had never ridden in an open top steam-car before then, and the ride was fairly unpleasant to me, although I blamed it on being far too accustomed to dull miller town life. I held onto my hat and fished through my belongings for the money, although I couldn't find it considering the way my uncle drove. In the front, he and Mei flirted, oblivious to my presence until my uncle looked back and said: “Gods above, look at you, how you’ve grown! What are you, eight turns old now?”

“Seven.”  He laughed some more at this.

“Well, first we need to get you some new clothes! You look like you’ve just stepped out of the last century. Gods above, I know just where to get you suited- don’t you worry.” I nodded urgently, hoping he’d fix his eyes on the road sooner, if possible. He asked me a few more things on the trip back to the city and I answered mostly in single syllables. After a while the interrogation stopped and he stayed quiet while Mei introduced herself in full. She was Helio’Sharran, as evidenced by her almond shaped eyes and high cheek bones, although she was dressed like a singer at the most exclusive Operin nightclub. Her short bobbed hair and cloche hat, combined with her knee length dress and bare upper arms was a far sight different from how my mother and sisters dressed in my hometown. She told me how she came to live in Blackheart, and what she did for a living, but by this time we had crossed the Ellys river and were certainly entering the the capitol. The buildings grew taller and the sky grew grey, the air choked with exhaust and cigarette smoke. I marveled at the uniform grace of each shop and apartment, at the world famous monuments and parks at every other street corner. Never in my life had I seen so many people and automobiles and streetcars and airships and certainly never all at once! Nor the magic. Out in the country, there was only a sole witch’s shop. As a veteran of the Sand Wars she was nearing a hundred turns old in her isolated lab. Farmers came to her each turn for spells for their crops and my grandfather often consulted her, as mayors are apt to do. The owner of the granary was also a wizard, yet he hardly showed his face in town, rumor had it that a rival sorcerer had disfigured him in a duel, or as another tale went that he made a pact with a demon to win the heart of a woman he loved, but when she died the demon left him as well, aged and decrepit beyond his natural age.  
Here, it seemed, magic was omnipresent. I saw on the sidewalks aspiring wizards cast dazzling illusions over crowds, and above I saw countless varieties of sorcerers transformed into so many strange beasts to fly. Soldiers wandered the crowds as well, the ones stationed in the capital still donning bright azure uniforms, as opposed to the pale grey of the men on the front. The color of the uniforms came to reflect the state of the war but it was still approximately an entire turn before the soldiers in the streets of Blackheart would be wearing black, rushing to put out fires and dashing to shield their younger siblings from shrapnel with their bodies. No, things were very much in Deltora’s favor it seemed, and despite the order to relocate the children, the war was still very much undecided.

Now up three flights of dark smoky stairs to a stained door at the end of the hall, I saw where I would live the next couple turns. Apartment 24, 1029 Sakahlin street,  Blackheart, Kulikov Province. He unlocked the door and slipped inside, Mei kicked off her shoes and sat unceremoniously on a sofa across the room. It was very small compared to what I was used to, with low concrete ceilings and a central kitchen-and-lounge. My uncle gestured to the left and told me I was welcome to the spare bedroom, and he in turn went right, towards the larger master bedroom, which had an adjoining washroom. Nobody gave me any further directions so I shrugged and set about unpacking my things. My room was a small but well lit dwelling at the corner of the building, and its two windows gave a wide view of the busy street below and the roaring aerodrome a couple blocks away. I put my trunk on the floor and flipped onto my bed, producing a startling squeal of rusty springs from the mattress. I sat up and bounced in place to test this noise before opening my luggage and putting my remaining clothes and sketchbooks into the dresser drawers.

At supper we sat at round table in the kitchen, and my uncle and Mei chatted while they ate. This was common practice to them, in contrast with family dinner in my grandfather’s house. Every night in my hometown it was more often a solemn affair, with a mealtime blessing and scores of cousins sitting at the long wooden table, arranged by age. Embarrassed with nothing to say, I fished out the wad of cash from my trousers and offered it to my uncle.

“What’s this?” He said through a mouthful of pork.

“From my father,” I lied. “For taking me in.” My words hung in the air for a moment while my uncle and Mei exchanged an amused glance. He swallowed and burst out laughing. “My boy, I was only joking about him owing me! I see now you have a bit of spending money- That’s good, you’re in luck.”

“I.. You don’t want it? I can keep it?” He chuckled some more and explained that it was mine to spend or invest or gamble away. He couldn't accept money from his brother anyhow. I was tempted to ask how he had become estranged from my core family, but I could tell by his apparent lifestyle that the answer was probably obvious.

“We’ve got to get you enrolled in school. It started last week here in Blackheart.”

It’s Like a Devblog... but for a book.

TL;DR: Just a field day for grammar Nazis. If reading's not your thing though why are you on a book blog?

I can’t believe I didn't keep notes until now. That’s okay, better late than never. So... Without Further ado: “Once upon a time...” That’s what I’m thinking for a start. That’s how fairy tales are supposed to start, right? I want it to be known that this is above all, a steampunk fairy tale, a dark evolution of the vague mysterious worlds we grew up hearing about, not a tolkienesque fantasy world with dozens of races and supernatural beings. Actually, picture the way medieval Europeans viewed the world. the cryptic xenophobic aura of judeo-christian mythology, replete with demons, curses, and distant, almost absentee benevolent forces.

But of course shaar has it’s own flavor with touches of whatever cultures I see fit. Overall the books can only hold so many themes and alternating moods, so I’d like to condense or even polarize the character’s perspectives to reflect different cultural styles of mythical story telling.

These are human stories, love stories, war stories, and tragic tales, but all beheld in the face of a mysterious force nobody quite understands. In the instance of the European style fairy tales i think the brothers Grimm set the standard and it’s right in their names. Grim. Dark and blunt, unapologetic about the vague atmosphere and brutally straightforward about twists and turns in the threads of fate. there can be other styles to counterpoint this, and look no further than real mythology and epics to see this. I want every unique perspective to be reminiscent of a different culture's traditional simplified mythology, mostly meaning their (sentiment?) unique take on the fantastical implications of the world. Whether it’s Homer, Shikibu, Shakespeare, Pierce, or Valencia, it’s all different takes on the same expressions of the human spirit we witness in everyday life.

I largely want Shaar to be a new planet because I love fictional histories and making my own homemade mythologies. But I also think it’s important to spell out the dark fairy tales aspect. remember all those kingdoms with princes and princesses with resident dragons or angry spirits from all the fairy tales ghost stories? They grew up, but not old. If those generic vague fables are juvenile, then this is their turbulent adolescence. A dark clouded time, fraught with uncertainty and inadequacy. it’s hard to compare an entire human civilization to the the teenage experience, but isn't it just that? maybe its wrong to compare the course of civilization to a human being’s life, since as far as we know human lives only end in death eventually.

Either way, if the course of human civilization is a human life, then the past two centuries are only are awkward puberty and violent teenage rebellion. But I digress, Shaar is Industrializing, yes, and it brings about a planet wide question of purpose and value, which is ultimately disregarded in favor of outward expression. I’ll have to fill in my own psychological blanks for the most part here, and I’m always second guessing myself about the history of shaar every time I come to another big revelation about human nature. Would this affect Shaar’s history?

Maybe I should focus on individuals, since personally that’s all I’ve ever been. of course from the bottom up it’s no easier to see the big picture, but there’s certainly moments when it comes. And just like that I think I see how I’ll get the big picture for Shaar. Seeing it from each character’s perspective, every wildly different style and view, that makes up a truly rich and developed world. In short, I want something better than a two dimensional fairy tale world plus some gore and mature themes, I want a familiar, yet amazingly striking new world where we watch the mistakes and struggles of humans come to life against yet another fascinating setting.

Really, that’s all I feel I can control. If writers are gods, I’m a rather powerless one. All I can do is create the world and man in my image,  but I’m doomed to watch all creation play out the same song or dance that we all can relate to. I can’t claim to have full control over my own characters if that makes sense. So I do what I can, to set the stage as logically as possible, and record what my children see accurately while still capturing the essence of their personas. Comments welcome but distrusted.

Deliver us from evil,
No. 55