by Dima Zales
At a conference held in 1604 in Hampton Court Palace, a few miles from London, King James I appointed a committee to make a new translation of the Bible. The result, published in 1611, drew heavily on the works of Tyndale and Coverdale, martyrs who had dedicated and sacrificed their lives to bring the word of God to mankind. It is impossible to overestimate its beauty, power and influence. As Galileo's work opened the door allowing science to freely discover God's universe, so did The King James Bible set mankind free to discover God and man's place in His universe. Science and the Bible coexisted in relative comfort alongside each other for the next 200 years.
Two hundred years. She’d read in one of her books that the original translation of “once upon a time” was two hundred years. Curious, she typed ‘once upon a time’ on her computer’s search.
“Once upon a time" is a stock phrase that has been used in some form since at least 1380 (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) in storytelling in the English language, and seems to have become a widely accepted convention for opening oral narratives by around 1600.
The phrase also is frequently used in oral storytelling such as retellings of myths, fables, and folklore. These stories often end with "... and they all lived happily ever after", or, originally, "happily until their deaths".
But what if no one dies? Can there be a happily ever after? Petra lay back against her pillows, suddenly tired of research, tired even of the wallpaper.
Zoe popped her head in. “Can you take me to the stables?”
Petra opened one eye. Zoe had on her riding boots and breeches. She carried a helmet under one arm and a whip in her hand. Petra smiled, wondering if Zoe would turn the whip on her if she said no. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.
Zoe rolled her eyes. “It’s Saturday, dummy.”
“Hmm.” She’d lost all sense of time since she’d been home. The days and nights melded into each other, and she realized with a start that today must be the prom. She wondered if Robyn was at that moment having her nails done, or her hair, or her make-up. She wondered in a detached other-worldly way where her friends had bought their dresses, where they were going to dinner, who’d they’d hired to take their pictures. It seemed amazing that just a few weeks earlier it’d all seemed so important to her. The clothes, the hair, who was seen with whom. She’d been a part of it. She’d lived in the walking, talking fashion drama.
Soon she’d have to go back to school and make up all the work she’d missed. She didn’t care. She supposed she’d have to go to summer school and maybe take classes at the junior college. She’d overheard her parents arguing over hiring a tutor, yet she still didn’t care. She’d get into a good university eventually. If that was something she still wanted.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know what, or who, she wanted. She just didn’t know how to get him.
“Stables?” Zoe flicked the whip in her direction.
Petra bit her lip. “You know I can’t risk infection.”
Zoe sighed. “You didn’t use to be all obey-the-rules-or-hell-breaks-loose.”
Bored to distraction and tempted, Petra sat up and moved the laptop off her bed. Zoe broke into a happy jig when Petra swung her legs from between the bed sheets. Frosty, who’d been lying nearby, jumped up, as if something momentous was about to happen and he didn’t want to get left behind.
Zoe stopped dancing and frowned. “I’ll wait for you to shower.”
Petra touched her frizzled hair. “Shower?”
“You know, stand under a stream of water so that you don’t smell like poop.”
“I don’t smell like poop!”
Zoe raised her eyebrows. Frosty sat and cocked his head, as if he agreed with Zoe.
“Fine.” Petra limped toward the bathroom. Frosty followed, nails clicking on the tile. “Where’s Laurel and Hardy?” Petra asked over her shoulder.
“They’ve gone to the car show, so we’ve got loads of time.”
Loads of time. Two hundred years. Once upon a time. There’s no such thing as happily ever after. Petra locked the bathroom door and turned on the shower full blast.
A few minutes later she found Zoe watching TV in the family room. Zoe clicked off the TV and looked her up and down. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”
Petra looked at her black toenails sticking out of her flip flops, the jeans that hung on her hip bones like a saggy gray flag below her Blue Man Group t-shirt. “What?”
“At least let me do your hair.” Zoe grabbed a hairbrush and elastic from off the table as if she’d been expecting to do Petra’s hair.
“Zoe, why am I getting dressed up to watch you ride horses?”
“It’s not like you’re getting an up-do. I’m just combing it. For once.” Zoe twisted an elastic band around Petra’s hair.
Looking in the glass doors at her scrubbed clean face and pulled-back hair, Petra decided she looked better than she had since the accident. Frosty even wagged his tail at her.
“You’ll do,” Zoe said, gathering her whip and helmet.
“This is as far as I go,” Petra said, staring at the stone-and-timber building across the muddy parking lot.
“Come on,” Zoe whined, her hand on the door handle. She gave the stables a mournful look before turning her large green eyes to Petra. “You’ve come this far. You showered.”
Petra laughed. “I know. It’s all remarkable and amazing, but I can’t ride, and watching someone else ride is boring. Besides, the stable is a pretty infectious place.” Leaning over Zoe, she pushed open the passenger door. “You have your phone. Just call when you’re done.”
Zoe leaned her head against the seat and wailed. “You promised you’d never leave me again!”
Stunned, Petra said, “I’m not leaving you alone. Pete, Rose and probably half a dozen of your friends, human and equine, are just through that gate.”
“Come and make sure,” Zoe wheedled.
“You know I can’t.”
“What if someone abducts me?”
“It’s ten yards! But if by some random chance someone tries to carry you away, scream and I’ll come to your rescue.”
“Triple-dog-dare promise.” Zoe’s mouth was a grim straight line. “Say it.”
Petra pushed Zoe’s shoulders. “Get out of the car.”
Zoe said, “Repeat after me. I, Petra --”
“Fine. I promise that if anything happens to you I have to do triple dog dare.”
Zoe beamed. “Then you have to stay. You can’t hear me scream from home.”
Petra leaned against the seat. At least looking at the canyon was different from looking at wallpaper. “I’ll stay within screaming distance.”
“Here?”
Petra shook her head and pointed to the trail on the other side of Bear Ranch’s gates. A small bench sat beside a water fountain. It looked peaceful and germ-free. Petra picked up her journal and a pen. “I’ll be over there.”
Zoe looked like she wanted to argue, but suddenly her expression lightened, as if a light went off in her head. “’kay, bye.” Zoe slammed out the door and bounced away.
Petra climbed from the car. From the other side of the stable wall she heard Zoe greeting friends, human and animal. Clutching her notebook to her side, Petra put her pen in her pocket and hobbled the short distance to the gate.
Fitz the guard, who looked suspiciously like Fritz from 1610, waved and buzzed open the gate. Smiling, she remembered the time Kyle had tried to break through the gates. He’d been captured on camera climbing the fence and had to spend an hour waiting in the guard house for her to finish her swim meet and rescue him.
Petra took the sidewalk to the trailhead and then sat down on the bench. Flipping open her notebook, she wrote down the Fritz/Fitz similarity. She looked over her weeks of writing. Emory, Rohan, Anne, Robyn, and Kyle. In her head, it was beginning to make some sense, but that didn’t make her happy.
Next on her agenda was to do genealogical research on Garret, Earl of Dorri
ngton and Kyle to see if they correlated at all. A long shot, she knew, but she was curious. As a wedding present, a friend of Laurel’s had done family history search on Petra’s father to see if Laurel’s family lines had ever “entwined,” her word. Petra had thought it a lame word and an even lamer gift, but now, she wanted to know.
A scream tore the air. Petra bolted up from her bench, heart thumping. Open-mouthed, she watched Emory and Zoe on a giant stallion sail through the air and clear the gate. Horse Guy, the rational part of her brain told her, but her heart was telling her another story, an irrational, emotionally charged story of another time and place.
The stallion and his riders landed on the grass with a rumble of hooves. Zoe laughed while Fitz catapulted from the guard gate, waving his arms and yelling threats laced with obscenities at Emory and Zoe.
Horse Guy swung to the ground and slapped the horse’s flanks. The animal took off, carrying Zoe away. Petra stared as Emory/Horse Guy walked toward her.
Logic caught up with her. “Zoe! No!” Petra called after her sister, limping after the horse thundering down the trail. “No! You can’t!” She hobbled for a few yards and then stood, horrified, as Zoe and the horse disappeared around a corner. “Fitz, stop her!”
The guard gave Emory a scowl, then took off after Zoe, running, his walkie-talkie pressed against his lips.
Arms from behind wrapped around Petra’s waist; lips touched her neck and the familiar zing tingled up her spine. She stiffened in the embrace. Turning, ready to attack, she stopped when he caught her chin. Tipping her head back, he softly lowered his lips to hers and gave her a gentle kiss. All Petra’s fight drained away. Once upon a time, happily ever after, happily until death. Her head and emotions sang with questions.
“I’ve been waiting two hundred years to do that,” he said.
Two hundred years. No, four hundred. She didn’t say it out loud, because it sounded crazy, but he read her expression.
“Ah, I see you’ve forgotten Sleepy Hollow.” He laughed softly, cradling her face in his hands. “Tis of no matter. This, perhaps, will remind you.”
And he kissed her again.
The End
The series continues with Beyond the Hollow.
To join the author’s mailing list and be alerted when they release new books, go here.
Nolander
Emanations: Book 1 - Becca Mills
Prologue
Beginnings
The great beast slid through tall, dead grass.
The wind had led him here. It wanted to show him something.
His once-paws sensed broken asphalt and the hardened earth of early spring in the northlands, the damp soil still mixed with particles of ice.
His crystalline coat moved as the evening breeze greeted it.
The wind was getting reacquainted with him, here. He had not visited the north during the most recent coming of the ice, when the storms scoured the surface of the glaciers, and the land beneath was pressed low and remade. When the ice drew back, the fresh place attracted him. He had spent many days here, of late.
The humans brought newness as well, of course — structures, vehicles, plants and animals from other places. But these things interested him less. They had all come so quickly. Surely they were ephemeral.
As were humans themselves, most likely.
The beast had interacted with them on several occasions. They called him Ghosteater.
The idea of being a sound was strange to him. A scent. A posture. A way of looking down and to the side. These were more proper. But he no longer knew creatures who could address him properly, so sounds would have to do.
He looked up at the gray clouds, watched as they pushed and crowded one another across the sky. A full moon would rise soon, but its light would be dim.
He lowered his eyes to the broken place that stood before him. In days past, humans had used it. Now other creatures came and went — bats, mice, coyote, an owl.
But tonight, the wind whispered in his ear, something here would change.
No, that wasn’t quite right. He sifted the wind’s strange language, seeking understanding.
Things would change, and that change would begin here, tonight.
The wind suggested it concerned him. He could not imagine how. Nevertheless, change was interesting. He settled down to wait.
1
Anyone can take a nice picture of something pretty. Being able to show the beauty in ugliness and the interest in tedium — that’s what makes you a real photographer.
The insight isn’t my own. I read it on some website right after I won a fancy camera in St. John’s Shingles, Fives, and Tens New-Roof Raffle.
I didn’t have much money, and I wasn’t a particularly eager church-goer, so I hadn’t planned on participating. But when dirty water is actually dripping on your church’s altar, the social pressure gets pretty strong, if you know what I mean. So I bought a raffle ticket. When Pastor Ezra called my name for the camera, I couldn’t have been more surprised. I’d never won anything before.
I had to figure out what to do with the thing, so I went online, and that was the advice I found: great pictures bring out what the eye wouldn’t normally notice.
In the time since, I’ve wondered what would’ve happened if I’d just stayed home that night, if Shingles, Fives, and Tens had gone on without me. You had to be there to win, so I wouldn’t have brought that camera home. Without the camera, I wouldn’t have started looking for what’s hidden in everyday things. So maybe I wouldn’t have started seeing monsters. Not right then, anyway.
But I was there to hear my name called, there to walk up and be handed that shiny new box, there to head back to my chair, blushing and smiling like a dork.
Can you blame me for being excited? I was twenty-three and stuck in a small town, employed but poor, unwed and pretty much undateable, not highly educated, and at least a little lonely a lot of the time. Winning an $800 camera was the best thing that had happened to me in quite a while.
I know that sounds pathetic. I guess I was sort of pathetic, back then.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t mind having stayed that way a while longer.
“Betty! How you doing, sweetie?”
Fixing a smile on my face, I closed my porch door and waved at Suzanne Dreisbach, my next-door neighbor. It looked like she was just getting home from the store. She always shopped on Saturday afternoon. You could set your clock by Suzanne.
She waved back and gave me a bright smile, shifting the paper bag she was carrying from one ample hip to the other. Suzanne was a wonderful neighbor — the kind who’ll pull your trashcan out and back for you three weeks in a row, and not even mention it.
That said, I really hated being called “Betty.”
“I’m fine, Suzanne. How’re you today?”
“Can’t complain, can’t complain.”
Actually, Suzanne could complain like a champ. She was a big gossip and always seemed to know something new about everybody in town — with a focus on the titillating stuff. Listening to her “news” was one of my guilty pleasures. But I just wasn’t up for it at the moment. It was chilly, and the desire to take pictures was gnawing at me.
“Good, good. Hey, sorry, gotta get going.” I raised my camera. “I don’t want to lose the good light.”
Suzanne nodded obligingly and said we should get coffee tomorrow after church. That was nice. I was on my own, so my weekends got a little lonely, sometimes. I told her I’d come find her after the service.
I made the short walk to what we called our “downtown.” Despite what I’d said to Suzanne about good light, there really wasn’t any. The late afternoon sun was having a hard time breaking through the cloud cover. Everything looked sort of dismal. Early April is like that in northern Wisconsin — spring in name, but not in fact.
Downtown was a single street of stores, bars, and eateries. Dorf isn’t large enough to attract the big chains, so we mostly still had Mom-and-Pop operations. A lot of
them were hanging on by a thread. The slightly rundown look of the buildings was sad, but it did make for good photos, so long as you could bring out the rootedness and persistence that gave the place its dignity.
I wandered down the street, taking pictures and greeting passersby. I knew most of them by name — Kathy, the dentist, whose little sister I’d gone to school with; Victor, a forty-something welder, out shopping with his son; Bernice and Frances, a pair of octogenarian “spinsters” who’d shared a home for fifty years, and whom the denser members of the community still hadn’t figured out were a couple.
That’s what it’s like when you grow up in a small rural town. There are only so many people, so many houses, so many jobs. Spend a few decades there, and you’ll be able to call the whole place up in your mind — not just the landscape and streets and buildings, but all the people, for better or worse. You’ll see their connections to one another in your mind’s eye. You’ll know their histories, stretching back like long, knotted tails. And you’ll be able to see their futures stretching out ahead of them with nearly as much certainty.
It was comforting. Safe. But also oppressive. The future Dorf had in store for me didn’t look too good.
I paused across the street from J.T.’s, the seediest of the three bars on Center Street, complete with dented metal siding, crumbling front steps, and ancient neon beer signs in the windows. To my eye, something about the place said, I have been loved for a long time by people who would never admit it. But I’d never managed to capture that feeling. In my pictures, J.T.’s always just looked like a sad old dive.