A Roush Writes Year-End Special

A short thank you and a short story...

Dec 31, 2021

Here’s a little recap of the year in writing:

This year, I finished a final(ish) edition of my novel, Kursed Kreatures, and have been querying literary agents. This is how one obtains representation to then sell the novel to publishers; this is no trite task, and it’s arguably easier than making your novel successful according to Elle Griffin.

In response to the many agent rejections (I’m up to 50 now), and having much more energy and time for other writing projects, I now craft stories for you, dear readers, and occasionally for submitting to literary magazines.

Here’s all the stories so far (in case you missed ‘em):

That’s why I can’t thank you enough for reading, sharing, and commenting. That’s why I ask that you continue to doing so, helping this community grow and grow.

What about next year?

2022 looms ahead - it might have promise, it might have more of the same, but no matter what happens, I have some incredible writing coming your way. Stories and worlds I’m really excited about.

A novella, currently titled The Art of Human Joinery. Genre: historical fiction/steampunk. To be released in serialized form.
More stories from the world of OrcBlood, the first story you’ve read being “To Make Things Rite.”
Potentially, a serialized version of Kursed Kreatures (I’m investigating the possibility of publishing on the Blockchain website, Mirror.)

Some other housekeeping…

All of you are now “Paid” Subscribers…

Substack’s best features are for “paying subscribers”, so I’ve given all 35 of you a lifetime subscription, for free! This is mostly so I can make use of the best features on this platform, plus I’m not planning to go paid until much later.

I promise not to tack you with a balloon payment later on…

Also, some readers have asked how to leave comments and/or respond to the short story emails. You have a few ways to do so, and they’re all easy!

You can:

Reply to the email like you would any email.
Click on a comment button like this one and leave a note when prompted (I just need to be better at putting these buttons in).

Leave a comment
Go to your social media of choice and rant about it.

And now, without further ado, I present to you the most recent edition of the first chapter of Kursed Kreatures for this month’s short story …

For newcomers to Kursed Kreatures, this is a YA fantasy novel like Harry Potter meets Zootopia (it’s the most accurate description to-date.)

All the “kreatures” are animals that walk and talk like humans, and they live in a world with magic, Gods, and darkness.

The Falling Sky

The day that everything went wrong, I was with you. I’d always been with you, and you with me. A fine pair of young, inseparable hare siblings. You with soft, mud-colored fur, and myself with white and black speckles. I knew how you liked your bread—lightly toasted with jam—what your shirt and trouser size was, and how stuck you felt in our little town.

That day was hotter than a smithy’s oven. I glanced at the clear, simmering sky and twitched my ears forward to cover my head. I flicked sweat off my paws and shifted the strap attached to the full picnic basket.

“I hate that we gotta go to the very edge of town just to bring the old tortoise his lunch,” I said and adjusted the strap again, unable to get it to sit comfortably. “Let’s take a dip in the river after this.”

You nodded. “You know, one of these times we’re going to walk up there and find him dead. He’s older than the oldest turd in Brambleton.”

“You sound like you want to find him dead, Tams.” I groaned and dropped the basket. “Mind helping me out?”

You came over, grinned, and pulled on the strap so the basket would fall. It plopped in the sand and you dashed away, smirking. You called back, “Seems like you’ve got it!”

I made to chase you, then stopped and grumbled while I picked up the basket. I wondered when I’d learn not to join you and Chester’s schemes. But in our small town there wasn’t much else to do, besides work the fields or fix up old buildings. One can only do chores so often.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have covered for you and Chester!”

“Kin before sin, Rabbs. And if you told the Council, I’d cook you up.”

I replied, “I’d make a fine hare stew. Don’t you reckon?”

“Keep your cannibalism to yourself. Don’t want Old Sage to confuse you with lunch, he’s confused enough as it is.”

We left the riverbed and hiked up a path worn into the vegetation. Before long, we emerged from the forest onto a grassy knoll. The clearing’s tall grass waved in the wind like ripples in a pond. A staggered line of trees hushed the space with their shifting leaves. It was a peaceful place, one I’d visited for thirty days carrying lunch to the old reptile. Problem was, Old Sage, the tortoise we were supposed to care for, wasn’t there.

You stopped and put your paws on your hips. “Where’s Old Sage? And what’s that thing up there?”

I dropped the basket and ran to catch up with you. You hadn’t taken two breaths to figure things out before running in. Typical.

“He was here. There’s his journal.” I pointed at the brown tome standing out from the green grass, right next to an object that resembled a door-sized mirror that reflected the trees encircling us.

The object’s edges were splattered with dark green liquid, darker than the grass itself. My stomach twisted in fear and I perked my ears up, on alert. Your emotions, on the other paw, hid behind your usual frown. When I picked up the journal, that same green stuff was all over the cover. I winced and wiped it on the ground. You knelt beside the mirror-like object and dipped a finger in the glop before examining it in the light.

“Rabbs, I think this is Old Sage,” you said as a matter of fact.

“What? This green goop? How?”

It dawned on me. The object had fallen from a great height, so heavy and fast that it smooshed Old Sage. I, compared to you, reacted the normal way one reacts to touching the remains of a kreature one knows.

“Oh, Gods, I’m gonna…” I threw up. You grimaced as that day’s breakfast spewed out of me. Toast with carrot marmalade. It was tasty going in.

As I retched, you squatted beside the mirror thing and muttered to yourself in thought. Then, you declared, “I think Old Sage is under this thing.” You picked up the journal, ignoring the slime altogether, and opened it. “He was writing something down when that thing fell on him!” I wiped my mouth and glared at you. “Are you done being sick as a tick? I need you to read this.”

I spat and said, “Wipe it off, first, then I’ll read.”

When you’d done so, my voice rasped, “Why don’t you learn to read? It says,” I cleared my throat, “The trees are lovely today. Not a lick of the kurse on them, unlike everything else. Oh, lovely, lovely day, the kurse is on its way. But no, don’t tell anyone. Golden said she’d save us. Mister Missus said we can’t be saved. Foxed if we do. Foxed if we don’t. Haha! Wait, what’s that noise? Sounds like rock breaking apart... And it cuts off right there. Crazy old reptile. He journals like he talks.”

You grimaced and looked up. “Old Sage didn’t get the chance to croak. He was crushed mid-thought.”

“I don’t think tortoisekind can croak,” I said.

“There’s a hole in the sky.” You sounded shocked, finally.

“What?”

I looked up to see a pure, starless night reaching in from the hole in the sky. It had the same, jagged shape as the thing that killed Old Sage. At the hole’s edges, like a puncture in glass, dark fracture lines stood out against the blue sky. Everywhere but in that spot, the day was unchanged. Those cracks were spreading as we looked on, and I imagined another piece falling and crushing us.

“Rabbs, we might be the only ones who know this has happened.”

“And?”

“We’ve got to do something.”

“How about bury this mess and go take a dip in the river like we planned?”

There came a look; a hard look.

I held my paws up. “Joking! What can we do? All we have is a journal full of Old Sage’s muddled thoughts.”

“He said a kurse is on its way. He also mentioned Golden and Mister Missus.”

“But what do the tales of Golden the Younger have to do with that old toad?”

You inclined your head, ears shifting like grass. “I’m not sure. I’m thinking we go to Mister’s hut and try to find out something else about this kurse.”

“Or we could read the journal…”

“You think we have time to read that whole thing? The sky is falling apart!”

“So we’re not going to bury Old Sage?”

You gestured at the huge sky piece over his remains. We hadn’t time for pleasantries like a decent burial with the sky falling and all.

“What about lunch?” I half-joked. I was hungry again already.

“You’re welcome to bring the picnic with us.”

“What about the journal?”

“Bring it!” you called from afar. I groaned and sprinted to catch up. I got the uneasy, fearful feeling I always got when you and Chester cooked up the next heist, prank, or scheme.

I sent a thought to the smashed tortoise, Rest in peace, Old Sage. Rest in peace.

…

We took a forest shortcut, jumping over bushes and weaving through trees, avoiding poison ferns and thorny vines.

I said, “Are we gonna tell anyone? Pa? Ma? The Council?”

“Not yet. We don’t know enough. You and I can do things faster than they can.”

I hated when you became intense like this, bent on completing the task at paw, all your soft edges hardened. “But they need to know what’s going on. If the sky keeps breaking, other kreatures will die. If it all breaks then we’ll all die. Wait, do you think the whole sky’s going to come down?” Fear climbed up my spine and my fur stood on end.

You replied, “Think about how much time we’ll lose if we run to town, try to get kreatures to look at the sky piece, and then figure out what Old Sage meant. That would take foxing forever. Who knows what’ll happen if we take too long to figure this out.”

Every so often, I glanced at the sky, watching and waiting for more pieces to break off. You never looked back. I had long hoped the years would forge me to be more like you. Even from our early kithood, you had an iron will.

The oak boughs and their leaves made a green ceiling over us, softening the harsh sun. Fear stirred in my gut, or maybe that was my hunger and upset stomach from seeing Old Sage’s remains. Your thoughts were on the tortoise, too.

You asked, “Do you think Old Sage went to the Free Lands?”

“I don’t know, Tams. He was a gentlekreature, loose as his mind was.”

“I hope so. But his note makes it sound like he wasn’t innocent. He knew about a kurse, and that kurse killed him.”

“Do you think this kurse is tied to the sky falling?”

“They seem to go together, don’t they? Look, why don’t you browse through the journal and see if there’s anything else. I’ll search the hut.”

Thunder rumbled in the clear sky as though lightning struck. We paused in our running and looked back to the hill we left behind. Another mirror-like shard broke away from the original hole. This shard was many times larger than the one that pulverized Old Sage. It tumbled and crashed beyond our sight, bringing down trees it sounded like. I flinched when the sky rumbled deeper, the sound reaching into my bones.

The air around the sky hole rippled as though they were superheated. Soon, those waves were spreading across the blue, distorting the clouds and sun; the sky itself looked like waves on water. As if the whole dome of the sky was an illusion breaking down. It was disorienting to the point of making me dizzy. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

I uttered, “What the fox is happening?”

“Huh. Seems like a kurse to me.”

…

Seeing the sky transform like that and hearing the thunder put some fire in us. We cut through the thickest part of the forest for the quickest route to Mister Missus’ den. The hermit toad lived clear across town in the northwest part, near where the river flowed over the endless cliffs. I didn’t relish the thought of going back there.

“I worked for the toad, I met the toad last summer. I helped Pa redo his landscaping. Great pay. Terrible summer.”

“I remember that. What was it you said about him?”

“That he was crazy—”

You interrupted me, “No, you said, ‘out of his foxing mind,’ which was the first time I heard you swear on purpose.” You chuckled, I glared.

Trees and bushes were no match for our quick feet. We leaped and dodged, slid and bounded our way down into the valley. Our route took us to the Brambleton River running parallel to the line of buildings that made up downtown. There, we joined the path that would take us north.

Another great crash came from behind us. Louder than before. This close to town, I could hear kreatures gathering and yelling.

“Seems like it’s getting worse,” I said. “One of us needs to go tell Ma and Pa,” I was letting fear speak for me. I wanted some other kreature to solve this problem instead of me.

“No way. We can’t be separated. If one of us gets in trouble, the other needs to figure out how to stop this.” You grabbed my paw and pleaded, “I need you, Rabbs.” Showing your fear helped me keep going.

Smoke rose above the tree line, around the bend from Mister Missus’ home. The toadkind’s hut perched over the edge of Brambleton River. A stilt foundation kept it from sliding into the water. We stopped at the gate. Surrounding the property was a hewn stone wall as high as our hips, one of the projects Pa and I completed. Pa was frustrated the whole time. Mister Missus smoked his pipe and gave directions if something wasn’t to his taste. He was a hard taskmaster.

It was humid there, in the depths of the swamp and away from the breezes that cooled the valley. I sweated heavily in my trousers. They felt hot and sticky.

“Wished you’d gone with the shorts, eh?”

“Thinking I might have to ditch these trousers.”

You grimaced. “Please don’t.”

A heavy scent of bacco-smoke wafted in the air. Thunder chased us, the sound becoming constant in the background. I forced myself not to look back at the hole in the sky.

You mused, “Why does the toad call himself Mister Missus?”

“It is odd,” I said and made to push the gate open, “maybe it’s a nickname he couldn’t get away from.”

“Does Mister do anything to make him seem like a Missus?”

I shook my head. “Couldn’t be more opposite. Low voice. Strong as a great-root tree.”

You pursed your lips and narrowed your eyes. “Strength isn’t only for Misters.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I pushed the gate open and looked about before stepping onto the white gravel path that meandered through the manicured garden.

You scoffed, “Gods, how much upkeep does this take?”

The garden’s fruit trees and bushes obscured the full view of the hut, but soon it was clear. Ivy dangled from long rafters which poked out of the circular roof every few feet.

“Mister’s done some serious decorating,” I said, “it reminds me of Old Sage’s place, too. The round hut. The contrasting paint scheme. I dig that ginger door.”

“If you like, we probably have time to interview Mister Missus on his architecture. His careful color selection.” I rolled my eyes at you.

A splitting crack resounded and filled the air with electricity like lightning was going to strike all around us. I folded my ears back too late and they rang sharply. Thunder rumbled afterward, unceasing. I stared in the direction of Old Sage’s hill. The hole had spread, the looming darkness visible even from so deep in the swamp.

Mister Missus better help us, I thought.

You bounded up the steps and hammered on the door. A deep, airy voice responded, “Oh dear, I’m all exposed. Give me a moment, whoever you are.” There was a thump and a resounding splash before the voice said, “Come in, dearies. It’s perfectly nice in here.”

“Doesn’t sound like a Mister,” you whispered.

You opened the thick door to a cloud of steam and a shadowy interior. Candlelight flickered in the gloom.

“Please close the door behind you. Keeps the steam in.” Her—definitely her—voice was playful, enticing. She pronounced every syllable with a flourish. Upon closing it, the rolling thunder was muffled. The gloom disappeared as my eyes adjusted. A tall, coned ceiling gave way to darkness, while bare walls encircled us. It was more spacious inside than I expected, with most of the floor taken up by a pool. Those candles stood at attention along its edge, their wax collecting in their saucers. It was solemn and quiet, except for a slight hiss emanating from the floor.

I said, “Definitely reminds me of Old Sage’s place.”

Slimy, pipe-in-mouth, and heavily muscled, Missus bobbed before us. She leaned against the wall of her pool, arms draped along its edge. Her cheshire smile, now visible in the low light, made me shiver. She said, “Rabbs, is that you? You’ve grown since last season. Quite pawsome, you’re becoming.”

She was as creepy and flirty as Mister was rude and difficult, but Mister was gone. This was now Missus.

“Thanks?”

“You’ve come from seeing the tortoise? How is he?”

“He’s dead,” you said, cutting right to the meat. I frowned at your bluntness, something that always embarrassed me.

I put a paw on your shoulder, “Maybe we should start from the beginning.”

“Is this your sister?”

“Tams,” you replied, and jumped back into questioning her, “we found this note,” you pulled it from my pocket, “and it mentions you. What do you know about the kurse?”

Taking a long draw from her pipe, Missus was silent. But I saw her mind working, her gears grinding. She calculated her options and responses. Finally, she sighed and swam closer.

“Let me see what you’ve found.” She held out her thick fingers, sticky with slime. You passed the letter over and she held it near a candle. “Yes, I remember this, even though I don’t want to. There’s no getting around it, then.” She sighed and set the letter down, then puffed on her pipe. “It was years ago when we last attempted a counter-kurse. Ah, but you wouldn’t know anything about magic except for stories, maybe. Here’s the long and short of it: Brambleton was kursed by a powerful mage long ago. So long ago that no kreature alive remembers what happened. Old Sage, Golden, and I were powerful mages then, and even we could not break the kurse. So, as the old world slipped away, we gave up being mages. This note was written long, long ago. Before your great-grandhare’s time, I’d imagine.”

We waited for more. She stared and smoked.

You spoke low and angry, “Are you going to explain?” Uh oh, I thought, that tone means nothing good. “What do you mean the old world? What do you mean kursed? How could everyone forget such a thing?”

Missus offered her palms in apology.

“My poor dears. So much you don’t know. If only the kurse had finished the job quietly in the night. Then there wouldn’t be any fear. I know you’re afraid, I can smell it on you. Come, linger in the pool and have a smoke. It’ll relax you.”

“We’re not here to take a foxing dip,” you snapped, “we’re here to stop the sky from falling!”

To try and slow your rage I stood between you and her, begging Missus, “Tell us more about the kurse. Please. There isn’t time.”

She took a long drag. “There’s no harm in knowing, I suppose. But the more you know, the angrier you’ll be. First off, there’s no way to stop the kurse. There’s no point in even trying.” My stomach dropped and I felt like a tomato caught between a rock and a fist.

She lowered her head. “A badgerkind named Fray kursed us. He was a mage chosen by the Gods, or so he claimed. When he gained his power, he made sure no mages would ever challenge him. He hunted us down. When he discovered that we fled here, he came and kursed Brambleton to decay. He trapped us in a world that would slowly fall apart.”

She paused and rubbed her bumpy head with long fingers.

“We prolonged the process with our own magic, but we knew that his powers would win out. Eventually, darkness would consume everything. The days and nights came and went. This eternal summer went on for years and nothing changed. We tried and tried to restore ourselves to the real world. Nothing worked.”

I reeled at the hidden history. Brambleton and the surrounding forests and hills were my whole world. There wasn’t anything beyond the mysterious, impassable borders. Not that we hadn’t tried to descend the sharp cliffs along the northern and eastern boundaries, or swim across the swift river to the south. If what she said was true, Brambleton was an island surrounded by endless nothing, but it didn’t use to be that way.

You said, “So those cliffs, the river?”

“An illusion of the kurse. Fray wanted us to remember the world but never be able to get there.”

The thought terrified me. I said, “Fray must have hated you.”

Missus looked at me with a wounded gaze. “He hated everything good.”

“And there’s no way to stop it?”

She worked her jaw, unsure whether to speak her mind or not. “There is a way to break the kurse. But it comes at too high a price. It would be more wrong to do so than to let the town die.”

You leaned forward to put your face right in front of hers and jabbed her chest with your finger. “I don’t give two shits what the price is. I don’t care that you were too weak to do what needed to be done. I need to know how to do what you couldn’t.”

Missus met your gaze with a sad look in her large eyes. Or was it pity? I wasn’t an expert in toadkind expressions.

I softened your approach, removed your paw from her chest. “Please, tell us.”

You asked, “What was the price?”

Missus rubbed her watery eyes and said, “I will not tell you. You would tell yourselves you could pay it and then set about to do so, and then realize it’s too high for anykreature.”

“So you were weak,” you spat. You looked down at her with contempt. “You weren’t willing to suffer the trade-offs. And so you left us to die.” You shook your head. “I will pay any price. Tell us what to do and tell us what it costs!”

“I won’t.”

Your face and ears twitched in anger, which was when you decided that words weren’t going to cut it. She opened her mouth, maybe to explain her reasons more, but you raised a footpaw and silenced her with a swift and sudden kick. Her head snapped backward, eyes rolling into her head. She rocked backward, unconscious, into her pool. Silence descended, except for the hissing pipes and water splashing.

I yelled, horrified, “What the fox?” I looked at you in disbelief. “Tams, you smashed her! Is she dead?”

You answered softly, “No. She’s fine. She’s just knocked out.” You didn’t sound so sure.

“Mister Missus?” I called, quietly. “Hello? Are you okay?” She bobbed on the surface like she was dead.

“I…I couldn’t have killed her.“ You clenched your fists, tried hiding the tremors in your paws. I thought I should check for the toadkind’s breathing, but I was struck with fear. Had you meant to kick so hard? It was an accident, right?

Now your voice quivered. “It wasn’t supposed to be so hard. I didn’t think…”

“Tamia, she needs help. We need to run into town.” Our eyes met and I saw the terror in you. Your fear-scent was palpable, your heartbeat loud. After a moment, you blinked and wiped your eyes, and then the fear was concealed, wiped away like rain from a brow.

“No, we still have a kurse to stop.” You looked around. “No furniture or cabinets. I bet she keeps all her stuff underwater.”

The gloom weighed on my shoulders, the steam and darkness and a lingering scent of bacco produced an altogether terrible feeling, like the stories about the Barren, the place bad kreatures go when they die.

“I’m going to take a look down there.”

I grabbed your paw to stop you, but you wrenched it away and jumped in, leaving me alone with Missus. Her slimy skin shimmered in the candlelight while muscled legs, wiry and corded, twitched. I needed to know for myself if she was truly dead, so I knelt on the pool’s lip and grabbed her nearest limb. Warm slime stuck to my fur when I pulled. I hastily removed my paw and tried washing it away in the water.

This spun her around until her head was beneath me. It was my chance to see if she was breathing or not. I leaned over and listened, hoping for a heartbeat.

Come on, just do it. Put your ear to her lips.

You burst from the pool, stopping me. “Found a box. Be right back.” Down you went. I backed away from the body, my courage evaporated; I didn’t want to know that you were a murderer. You soon surfaced with a rusted box and I helped you pull it up to the wall. The body floated away. We took the metal box and scrutinized it. We had to force open the rusty latch.

Its hinges creaked and squeaked until its contents were revealed. The box was sealed with resin, making it watertight. Inside sat a journal with a forest green bark cover. You offered it to me. I was keen to forget the body and so I flipped through the pages, searching. I caught snippets of Mister Missus’ life and settled on the most recent entry written some years ago.

Went to see if there was anything I could do about Old Sage’s mind. I tried everything, but his old self is gone. All that’s left is fractured memories. After two hundred years, age and overuse of magic finally got to him. The certainty of his senility robbed me of hope. With that, I left Golden’s journal and ring in her study. I’m not sure when the end will come, but I plan on doing nothing but enjoying myself every day. I took some time to say goodbye to my dear friends. Golden, being dead, said nothing in return, but I felt at peace. Old Sage listened to me, smiled, and said, “Don’t be sad you old-toad.”

Saying goodbye set me free. I don’t have to worry about leaving things unsaid when the kurse destroys us. Now, I’ll get around to making my home the way I like it.

You said, “So we need to go to Golden’s study.”

I gestured at the bobbing body. “What about Missus?”

The sharpness of your eyes made me lean back. “Leave her.”

“But she could die…”

“She left us to die, Rabbs. It’s only what she deserves.”

…

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!

Best,

Zachary Roush