by Taki Drake
Inanna's Circle: Flight of Imagination - Thru the Darkness
Holiday Heartwarmers: An Anthology of Short Stories
Inanna's Circle: The Game Begins
Author Notes
I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this book even though it was not on my original plan. The tale of Zhanna and Dascha has just begun and I am excited by the characters, the storylines, and the fans that have adopted my Russian witch and Russian Blue cat familiar. After the first book, A Shade of Honor, I thought that you might like to learn about how the two of them got together. This story provides you some insight into their relationship. Hopefully, it will show you how far they have come already, and possibly where they are going.
Forgive me, please, for low puns and Easter egg jokes. They were just too much fun to omit!
Dedication
This book is dedicated to two very important people in my life. As always, the primary dedication is to my husband. I would not be able to live my life as it is without the loving support that he provides me. Thank you, John, for your belief in my ability to achieve whatever I attempt, your support when I falter, and your loving arms that comfort me when my inabilities drag me down.
The second person that I am dedicating this book to happened to have four feet. He gave me insight into the special bond that forms between partners of different species, sharing a bond of love and support. I only had him for 18 years, but his love will be with me forever. Snoball, valiant warrior, this book is for you.
Acknowledgments
No author can create in a vacuum. I am blessed with people that collaborate, support, kick my backside in their own mix of tough love and a crying shoulder. My thanks go out to the peerless Ds for their beta reading, editing, brainstorming, and cheerleading. No others have ever wielded pompoms with hidden tasers so well. Thank you for my sanity, cleaner prose, and the crystallization of my flaky ideas.
Thank you also to TS Paul. I love writing with you. The collaboration fills me with joy, sparking a storm of creativity that is both immersive and exhilarating. The books that we will create together are multiplying every time we talk. Thank you for the excitement and the occasional shove to exceed my wildest expectation.
Finally, I want to thank Bozena. Without her, my inabilities would be crippling, and my life would be far poorer. Thank you for coloring my world and letting me live it to the max.
The desolation was complete. It looked like God had reached out a hand and flattened the entire village. Building walls were toppled, roofs were broken, and the usual structure of their daily life had been totally destroyed. It would’ve been impossible to determine from the current scene that only a short number of hours before this it had been a village of over 4000 people. One teeming with the normal activity of a small village.
Zhanna stood with her hands balled into fists, staring around her. The sick feeling in her stomach was overwhelming. She didn’t know whether to fall to her knees, crying torrents of tears or to scream her rage to the heavens. Stuck between grief and anger, she was frozen.
How could have come to this?
The muted sound of soft sobbing filled her ears, and she turned to her left. Curled protectively around two small children, an older woman in the traditional head covering, or babushka, stared blankly at what remained of her home. It was Baba Marta. Zhanna knew that probably meant that the two crying children were Gregor and Anna, but she couldn’t see for sure. The sound of the children’s soft, frightened sobs told her both that they were alive and kicked off an unconscionable rage.
How could it have come to this?
Zhanna had seen other places where disasters had happened. There was always a bustle of people trying to rescue and repair. Men rushing around, caring stretchers, comforting their families. But all that she could hear and all that she could see was a frozen aftermath of a horrible disaster. There was no bustle, no rescue. No men.
There was the main problem. There were no men in the village right now. They were all out on contract. Without the men’s mercenary work, there would be no food, no shelter. The entire village was dependent on having the best, and the brightest spend huge amounts of time away from their families.
Her dark thoughts were rudely interrupted.
<> sniped through her thoughts.
She looked down into the brilliant eyes of her cat, her familiar. Dascha stared back at Zhanna with a wicked glint in her eye. The cat was gorgeous. The deepest gray coloring and the black undertone of the fur seem to glow in the sunlight. Almost too dark for a Russian Blue, Dascha looked more like a Russian Black. Looking at her cat, Zhanna felt the blast of astonishment that occurred whenever she thought of how she had ended up with such a beautiful, powerful, impressive familiar.
She must’ve stared too long at the cat because the next thing she knew her ankle was pricked by a set of very sharp claws.
<
<>
<
Zhanna drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. Forcing a calm look unto her face, the young woman walked toward the older one who was still clutching the crying children, calling out as she walked, “Just a moment, let’s see how you’re doing…”
<<<>>>
It had been a totally devastating time. Four days of unrelenting labor to take bodies out of the rubble, patch up the wounded, and salvage what they could of belongings. Zhanna was exhausted, and the remainder of the people in the town weren’t any better. Some of them were grieving the loss of friends and family, while others were coping with the destruction of their homes. The grief and the tiredness cast a dark cloud over the huddled people, one that was almost visible.
No one knew what had kicked off the twisters that had come through the small village. Appearing like evil fingers of fate, five of the roiling black clouds had zeroed in from the far side of the fields, ripping through the crops and colliding in the center of the town.
One of the observers had mentioned that it looked like a choreographed dance of death. The green cast of the clouds and the way that the winds twisted people into pretzels of tortured bodies and reduced sturdy buildings into a collection of splinters made Zhanna even less inclined to live anywhere where twisters were a common phenomenon.
Everyone was working tired. There just wasn’t enough food in the village to take care of everyone, so many of the healthier people were skipping their meals or splitting them. The children and the old people were the ones that everyone needed to watch. They were the ones most fragile in the face of injury or shock. Zhanna knew that her elderly grandmother would be especially vulnerable and resolved to somehow get her to eat. It would be an argument that she wasn’t willing to lose. Baba would eat!
<
The mental tone of Dascha, Zhanna’s familiar, worried the witch. Granted, the cat had only been her familiar for less than six months, and they were still learning about each other every day. However, Dascha’s normally snarky, semi-humorous tone was totally missing. The cat sounded serious, deadly serious.
Groaning audibly, Zhanna stood up and stretched her back. The other three people in her small work group looked up at her movement, most of them too tired to do more than look. However, obedient to the “suggestions” of Dascha, Zhanna simply said, “I think I’ll take a last turn around the area just in case something got overlooked.”
Weary nods were the only thing that she got in response, so she thought that perhaps she had made the transition unobtrusively.
She walked
toward the directional line of the psychic bond feeling in her head. The one that said, “Dascha is fine, Dascha fine” as a background mantra in her brain. The black cat was waiting for her in the semi-twilight just around the corner. The plush coat of the Russian blue was so dark that the subtle mixture of dark gray and black provided wonderful camouflage in the fading light of the evening.
Zhanna asked quietly, “Dascha, what is wrong?”
Dascha replied, <
<
<
Dascha moved to one side, allowing Zhanna to see what her body had been blocking. It was a small embroidered bag, about 4 inches tall and tied with brightly colored yarn. Even being within a few feet of the charm bag made Zhanna uncomfortable. It was like a cloud holding the stench of rotten blood in place. It made her skin crawl and her breath tight in her throat. A feeling of overwhelming stress and strain seem to press down on her from every direction. Zhanna shuddered involuntarily.
<
<
<>
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A series of deep tones and subtle vibrations begin to build within the room. As the sounds got more musical and louder, the swirling lights began to subside. Pawlik’s figure became more visible although Cal was having some difficulty seeing his mother. She appeared almost fuzzy to his eyes, which made him repeatedly rub his eyes in a vain attempt to see what was happening more clearly.
Finally, the sound transformed from a cacophony to a small repeated musical motif. The strength of the sound rattled against the hard surfaces of the room and rebounded to assault ears everywhere. There was a moment of an almost unbearable sound and intensity before all noise abruptly ceased, just as the swirling lights disappeared.
No one moved for a moment, as the entire room stared at the tableau. Pawlik was frozen in a kneeling posture with Ruth’s body held to his chest. His face was contorted in a grimace of pain, but his hold on Ruth was gentle. Flickers of light continued to crawl across his skin in small tendrils. His appearance was startling but paled in impact beside that of the body he was holding. Ruth’s face was calm and unlined, seemingly serene and untroubled. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her legs were extended, toes pointed. Wrapping her lower body in multicolored leaf shapes were shiny, veined petals of a reflective material.
The shapes appeared to be slowly building a covering around Ruth that reached from her toes to her mid-thighs. Even as the onlookers stared, the shrouding encased another handwidth of her body. Cal started up with a cry and lunged for his mother’s form, only to have his motion arrested by Gray. The man had ceased his muttering and was looking resigned but in control. He gave Cal’s arm a small shake and said, “You can’t help her now boy. Let Pawlik take care of her. He’s the only one that can touch her.”
Cal stared uncomprehendingly at Gray and asked, “What do you mean? I have to do something to help her.”
“They have bonded, and Pawlik is now her Anchor. All Mages are said to need someone that connects them to a planetary residence. When she broke her mind, her harmony with the place of her birth was forever destroyed. She will never again be able to live inside or on a planet without an Anchor.”
Cal drew a shaking breath and straightened up. He looked over at Ruth and saw that Pawlik had stood up, still cradling Ruth’s body. In total silence, Pawlik carefully strode across the floor and through the doorway, taking his burden to the privacy of a different place.
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Welcome to the Badger Hole Bar - where the bar is alive with the sound of races and dimensions unexplored. Sit for a bit, read the stories, and enjoy this collection of recipes from the Eat and Read collection. Whether you are vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore, this cheerful cookbook and story collection will provide you with a welcome to a new series!
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“I insist that you do something about that child!” Camilla Blackmore was a mean spirited woman. She was on her fourth husband. Number three dropped dead at the grocery store surrounded by innocent people. If she was killing them, they were the perfect murders.
“What has Aggy done now?”
“What hasn’t she done! That child is menace! Have you noticed the squirrels lately? Whatever she did to them was on a genetic level. They are breeding like that. Changing nature is against the rules Marcella. You, yourself, should know that.”
“Camilla calm yourself. She transmuted the squirrels when she was barely four years old. She holds the record for the youngest witch to perform a transmutation.” Marcella Blackmore was the oldest and current matriarch of the Blackmore clan. She was also the High Priestess of the Clan.
“Why do we celebrate this? She didn’t zap just one squirrel. She zapped all of them for ten square miles! Purple! She made the squirrels purple. They have become a tourist attraction for the Goddess's sake. I have to chase mundanes off my lawn every morning. For some reason my yard attracts the little monsters.”
“The tourists or the squirrels?” Camilla made a nasty face at Marcella.
“The squirrels of course! The mundanes are just annoying. I would zap those lavender tree rats but they are immune to magic!”
“The money those tourists bring into our shops has been good for the family. You can’t discount that.”
“Fine. Whatever. Her mistake as a young child can be forgiven. It is all the other things that we cannot forgive.”
“Camilla seriously? We all make mistakes when we come into our power. Even you did crazy things. I can remember making Mother’s clothes three sizes smaller so they would fit me. I can still feel the sting of Father’s belt to this day. A brave man my father.”
“I remember making all the bushes on the property taller, not changing the genetic makeup of animals.” The two women were standing on the back porch of the Blackmore mansion. The backyard was a jungle of herbs and flowers. The perfect place for a young witch to get lost in. I could hear them, but I was essentially hidden from view.
“It was just some squirrels Camilla. She will do great things one day, you know she will. Our seer has foretold she will change the world.”
“That is if she doesn’t kill all of us first. Her magic is out of control. The simplest things go haywire and chaos happens. Her change could be permanent. I have no intention of living out my life as a pink chicken or some other creature. Her poor mother.”
Marcella’s face got very stern, and she glared at Camilla. “That, was not the child’s fault and you know it. Teegan’s mental collapse was more the fault of losing her husband than it was Aggy’s misadventure. That was just a coincidence. That party was too much for her that day.”
Camilla blew out a breath. “My ass! What was it? Her seventh birthday? I was there Marcella. My dear husband and I organized the damn thing. I was the one who invited the other children. You cannot change my memories of the incident.”
I bowed my head at the mention of Mommy. It wasn’t my fault. It really wasn’t. Poor Daddy had died the year before on my sixth birthday. He was bringing a cake back from the store when a drunk driver hit him and he died. I felt a tear roll down my face. Pulling out my handkerchief I wiped my face. Mommy cried for almost a year. She was finally almost back to normal when the incident happened.
“Then the blame for the incident is on your head Camilla. Yours and Harrison. Teegan was not ready for guests, much less a yard full of young children. And then there was the gifts. Really, gifting a young child a Unicorn? She was far too young for that.”
“Don’t blame Harrison, may he rest in peace. He thought she would like a Unicorn. What witch child hasn’t dreamed of riding one? I know that Teegan
and I both wanted one as children. It’s a status symbol that’s all. Only witches ride in style.”
Marcella shook her head. “Agatha apparently. Camilla, I don’t know why you are blaming her. Only the Unicorn was affected. None of the other children had so much of a hair harmed on them. You should know that we ran diagnostic spells immediately after the event.”
“It was the shock of it. Poor Teegan. She fainted dead away. After that she was never quite right. I visit her, you know. Every week I check on her progress at St Bridget’s.”
“It was not Aggy’s fault and you know it. If Teegan had been more aware, she would have noticed the strength of her child’s magic. Teegan was never as strong a witch as you are Camilla. She wasn’t ready to accept that her daughter was so strong at such an early age. I myself would be very hard pressed to whip off a spell such as that without any preparation.”