Jef Murray

Author's details

Name: Jef Murray
Date registered: November 11, 2014
URL: http://www.JefMurray.com

Latest posts

  1. Rusty — July 23, 2015
  2. The Monastery — July 23, 2015
  3. The Abbot and the Raven — July 23, 2015
  4. The Minotaur — July 23, 2015
  5. Avenging Angel — July 23, 2015

Most commented posts

  1. In the Company of Angels: Episode 1.1 – A Rumpus in the Library — 7 comments
  2. The Navigator Quiz — 6 comments
  3. In the Company of Angels: Episode 16 – Epilogue — 6 comments
  4. In the Company of Angels: Episode 7.2 – The Attic (cont.) — 6 comments
  5. In the Company of Angels: Episode 15.1 – The Abbot — 6 comments

Author's posts listings

Apr 28

The Golden Dragon

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“The Golden Dragon“

Digital, 8″x8″ wide.

Signed and numbered prints – AVAILABLE

To purchase a print of this item, please click here.

 

 

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Apr 28

Azarias on Orbaratus

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“Azarias on Orbaratus“

Digital, 10″x6.2″ wide.

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Apr 28

The Wardrobe

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“The Wardrobe”

Graphite, 10″x8.0″ wide.

Signed and numbered prints – AVAILABLE

To purchase this original sketch, please contact Jef by clicking here.

To purchase a print of this item, please click here.

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Apr 28

The Cottage

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“The Cottage“

Mixed digital, 10″x8.0″ wide.

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Apr 28

The Raven

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“The Raven“

Graphite, 8.0″x10.0″ wide.

Signed and numbered prints – AVAILABLE

To purchase this original sketch, please contact Jef by clicking here.

To purchase a print of this item, please click here.

 

 

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Apr 23

In the Company of Angels: Episode 11.1 – The Broken Gate

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In the Company of Angels, Episode 11.1 – The Broken Gate

 

“There is a tendency to dismiss the events on Orbaratus as an anomaly. ‘Surely’, the historians will say, ‘the catastrophe on Orbaratus was simply an aberration on a world that had nothing whatsoever to do with our own.’ Yet, it was not so. The near cataclysm on that planet — distant in time and in space from the earth — came closer to destroying our world than any historian may ever be willing to acknowledge.”

       Brother Azarias, The Orbaratus Chronicles.

 

When the second earthquake on Orbaratus began, Polydora had spread her glittering silver wings and soared twenty or thirty feet above the Plaza of the Masters. There she circled above both the monolith Luke had sketched upon and the portal into which Jill and Sam had vanished. She soon was very glad that she had taken the precaution, for this earthquake was much more violent than the first. New cracks appeared on the plaza floor, and additional stone monuments were heaved from their pedestals and toppled. Among these was the very one that Luke had sketched upon. But there was nothing Polly could do but wait out the calamity, so she continued to circle above the plaza while the ruined city of Cenurbus trembled and buckled beneath her.

Debris exploded and fell into the shadowed streets, and rumblings like distant thunder heralded the collapse of structures that had been abandoned for centuries. At length, the roaring of the earth began to subside and the ground ceased its convulsions. Only then did Polydora glide gently back down to the plaza’s surface. She alighted near the fallen monolith upon which  Luke had created his sketch. She was relieved to find that the stone had fallen on its side, and that the sketch was still visible and intact; if it had been otherwise, Polly knew that Luke would have been unable to return through that frame.

Polly turned her attention to the other portal. It still remained suspended in space near the edge of the plaza; she noticed nothing different about it, and could see no sign of anyone when she gazed through it. She wondered where Jill and Sam were, and how they were faring in their quest to capture the raven.

She then turned her gaze upon the gateway into the mountain. It appeared not to have suffered from the earthquake, but she strode toward it to make sure. With each step the feeling that there were other beings stirring beneath her feet increased; that feeling had ceased when she took flight, but now that she was walking once more upon the surface of her planet, it was back, and now much stronger than before.

She approached the gateway and saw with dismay that now two of the three sapphires were missing from the mirrored surface within which the stone slab door was set. She ran to the gateway and began searching through the rubble, hoping that the gem might have been accidentally  dislodged by the earth’s heavings. But it was not so. The sapphire was gone.

Polly looked across the plaza at the distant portal and wondered. Had the raven come back during the earthquake, unmarked by her while she was aloft? It was possible. But now only a single stone remained, and she was unsure what that meant. She shut her eyes and tried to sense with her whole being, attempting to learn through her empathic powers what might be happening behind and below the gateway.

And this is what she experienced:

Deep, deep down through the crust of these high places her awareness drifted. At first she felt the presence only of cold stone, but then pockets of warmth pricked her. Scattered like the tiny chambers crafted into the immensity of an Egyptian pyramid, these pockets were few, but each was filled to overflowing with white linen-wrapped bodies. They were seeds within an otherwise empty and lifeless sea of living rock. And within each of the pockets there was growth; wild, malignant growth: of consciousness; of hatred; of violence. Each pocket was reaching out in diseased flailings as it found its bonds weakening and falling away.

Polydora pulled back her awareness and opened her eyes once more upon the Plaza of the Masters. She then understood that the forces that guarded the gateway were failing, and that some great horror must soon be unleashed unless…unless what?

In her centuries alone upon her planet, Polly had learned the dead languages of her people, and even snippets of the older language of the Masters. To the extent possible, she had absorbed the culture of the Ferrumari: their understanding of themselves before the end times had come; their understanding of what goodness, and truth, and beauty meant in a world that could still be controlled by evil. She remembered what we might call prayers, and these she began to recite aloud, as she had done, alone, whenever her heart had quailed and trembled during those earliest years of her life.

Polly stood before the gateway, reciting the prayers of her people, over and over again. She had remembered a litany against fear, against evil, against cruelty and hatred. And as she said the words aloud in the tongue of her people, she felt calmed and uplifted, as if the prayers themselves were calling forth the life force of all of those that had ever stood upon this plaza, generation upon generation, perhaps knowing what was behind the gateway or perhaps not. But Polly was comforted, and she resolved to continue her vigil, and to continue her prayers, as long as was necessary.

She stood alone, upright before the gateway, and the darkness increased. She knew not the time of day, but this darkness seemed unnatural, and she felt that there must be much more to it than simply a change in the weather. She felt new rumblings beneath her feet, and understood, she knew not how, that some Thing of great power had thrown off the last of its shackles and was now making its way to the surface, intent on finding a way out of the prison that had held it for so many thousands of years.

“The Light is my guide and my refuge,” Polydora said under her breath, “I shall not fear. Fear is the tool of the darkness; it is the mote that mocks the meek. I shall breathe in my fear; I shall allow it to wash over me and through me; and I shall breathe it out again. Then, my fear shall be no more, and only I and the Light shall remain….”

Now the darkness had increased so that the Plaza of the Masters appeared as it might have at twilight. And Polydora could sense movement in the air above and around her. She looked up and saw shadows flitting between her and the high clouds above, and she understood that something evil from beyond her own world had found a chink in the continuum of space and time, and was flooding through that chink to gather around the plaza. This was, she suddenly knew, the culmination of some grand design that must have been in progress for many ages. That she was alone, here, standing before the gateway, could not be coincidence. She must be there for a reason, and that reason could only be to stop what was about to happen.

But how could she? She did not know the nature and power of the forces beneath her, nor of those creatures swirling around her, although the latter she suspected must be the spirit beings, the Amenta, of whom Luke and Sam and Brother Azarias had spoken so often. Alone in the Gallery, she had never encountered them; she had only heard the tales told by others, as one might hear ghost stories told around a campfire.

But these were no ghost stories. These were malignant spirits blotting out the sky. And she alone might be able to hold the gate; if she only knew how!

Rumblings beneath her feet heralded the approach of yet another earthquake, and this one, she knew, would likely be greater yet than the two that had come before. She could but wait for it to burst upon her here in the open, before the gate; she dared not rise above the surface lest some new evil be allowed to pass in her absence. She felt the rumblings and the heaving waves of fluid rock beneath her feet. And she saw cracks form in the frame around the gateway. At the peak of the earthquake, the stone slab of the gateway itself began to yield; it moved forward as if thrust from the inside. Around her, more of the monoliths toppled, and Polly heard the cracking of stone, glass, and metal around and below her. She looked wildly to her left and her right, watching all the time to make sure that none of the destruction might rain down upon her.

Then, a single voice rang out, as deep as the very roots of the earth. It was a voice of command, and at its words, the earthquake ceased.

Polydora swung her gaze back toward the gateway. The stone slab had been thrust forward. A crack in the center had appeared, and the slab, now in two pieces, swung outward and toward her on unseen hinges. Polydora saw blackness behind it: not emptiness, but blackness; and there was motion there, as of some monstrous convulsion in the shadows.

A form emerged from that blackness. Coppery red it appeared in the dim twilight, and the fleeting forms of the Amenta gathered toward it as blackbirds flock together. The reddish shape emerged, and Polydora saw first the horns, and then the leathery black wings and the clawed arms. She recognized this shape; it was one she had seen in paintings on earth: of demons, and of the Devil himself. She knew not what to think of such a form appearing here, on her home planet, unless….

…unless this was some universal form of evil, one transmitted by dreams and myths between all worlds and all peoples and times. But now this creature literally stood before her, stretching its clawed arms out to embrace its newfound freedom.

Then the creature’s fiery eyes turned downward and focused upon her, and the monster paused, for just a moment. Then it chuckled. The chuckle grew into laughter, and the laughter into a maniacal howl of glee. The Amenta joined their howling to that of this, the greatest of The Masters, in an unholy chorus.

And Polly stood there in dismay, quailing in the roar of the hideous din….

       [ To read Episode 11.2, click here…. ]

 

 

 

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Apr 16

In the Company of Angels: Episode 10.2 – The Chase (cont.)

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Perelandra_dragon05_cutout_800

 

In the Company of Angels, Episode 10.2 – The Chase (cont.)

“There may possibly be a way we can narrow down which is the more likely of the paintings,” said the Professor. “Some of these might never appeal to a raven, although I’m not sure I’m any judge. At least let’s gather them all together in one place so that we can see how many we have to choose from.”

The suggestion struck them all as sensible, so they carefully looked through the attic. Every painting that was visible and that might easily have allowed the raven to escape through it was brought to the spot where the Orbaratus painting was propped against the wall. When they were done, they had seven total paintings collected.

“Did you store all of these here yourself?” asked Sam.

“Yes, but it has been over quite a few years,” said the Professor. “I’ve lived here since the 1920s, and although I very much enjoy paintings, I do like to shuffle them around once in a while so that I can see them anew.

“This one, for instance, is of a little town in the Cotswolds that I enjoy visiting on occasion. I don’t recall who the artist was; I believe I purchased it at the town market one weekend.

“This next one is a reproduction of a Matisse still life. You may not have seen it before; it was one of his earlier paintings.”

“I don’t think he’d fly there,” said Jill, “I can’t imagine he’d be attracted to a vase with sunflowers in it.”

“You’re probably right, my dear,” said the Professor, “but this next one might be of interest….”

The Professor indicated a small but very colorful painting of what appeared to be a rather friendly-looking dragon coiled around the trunk of a tree. The dragon was reddish gold in color, and the treetrunk around which it had wrapped itself was a deep blue: almost black. The tree had beautiful silver leaves and yellow fruit hanging from it. Beyond the dragon’s tree there were other trees of varying hues. The ground was copper-coloured.

“What a strange painting!” said Jill.

“Yes it is. It was done by one of my students: quite a talented painter. He was trying to depict a scene I had written into one of my stories.”

“Oh! I didn’t know you were a writer as well as a Professor!” said Jill.

“Yes, I am, but only in my spare time. What do you both think about this next one over here?”

And so they looked through each of the seven paintings, ultimately narrowing them down to four that were the most likely to have attracted the bird. But each of these was a portal into an entire world! There were three that were set in the open countrysides of England and Ireland, plus the painting of the world with the dragon. They were at a loss, at that point, as to how to proceed.

It was just as they were each puzzling over the four that Jill heard, very faintly, the sound of a flute. But it wasn’t a flute exactly, and it took her a few moments to realize that she had heard it before.

“Do you both hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?” asked Sam.

“Something like a flute. It’s very faint.”

They all listened.

“I can hear nothing, my dear,” said the Professor, “but my hearing is likely not as keen as yours.”

“I don’t hear anything either,” said Sam. “But where do you think it’s coming from?”

“Let me see,” said Jill. She listened intently and began to walk away from the paintings. The sound diminished. She returned to the paintings and it became louder once more.

“It’s definitely coming from one of these,” she said, pointing to the paintings.

“Which one?” asked the Professor.

Jill held her head close to each painting in turn, finishing with the one of the dragon. “This one,” she said, “it’s definitely coming from there.”

First the Professor, then Sam bent down next to the painting and listened.

“I got nothin’,” said Sam. “But, if you’re sure it’s coming from this one, I’ll be happy to go through and see whether there’s any sign of the raven on the other side.”

Jill listened once more. “It’s definitely coming from there,” she said.

“Alright then. The sound could mean nothing, or it could mean everything. But we’ve got nothing better to go with at this point.

“This is a pretty small painting; I should just be able to squeeze through; but that might end up being a good thing. If I’m able to find the raven, I may be able to scare it into returning. Professor, do you have that blanket still in your office?”

“Yes…Ah! You want us to wait here, and if the bird comes through, toss the blanket over it?”

“Exactly. That may not be necessary, because this may not be the right painting. But….” Sam looked hard at Jill, “Mr. Luke told me to trust you, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

The Professor retrieved the blanket, being careful not to leave the hatchway open for longer than a moment, and then they all clustered around the dragon painting. Because it was so small, Sam had to get on the floor and wriggle through.

“OK, here goes. Keep your crystal touching your skin; that may allow you to see the raven coming if I’m able to scare him back in this direction. Oh, wait, before I go, let’s turn these other paintings against the wall. That way if you aren’t able to catch him with the blanket, he won’t have any other worlds to fly off into.”

They turned the other paintings around, and Sam got down on his stomach and wriggled through the glowing frame. They could still see him briefly whilst they looked through the frame from the attic, but then he was gone.

“By Jove!” said the Professor. “I would so love to try that!”

         . . .

When Sam tumbled out of the portal, he landed on a soft, spongy surface. He stood up, brushed the attic dust off of himself, and turned to make sure of the frame’s location. He saw it suspended in space at about the same height as his own eyes above ground level. But as he looked at it, he started to feel slightly disoriented.

“That’s not right,” he said aloud, “I don’t ever get frame fatigue!” Then he realized that it wasn’t the framerunning itself that was troubling him. The ground itself appeared to be gently rising and falling, as if he was standing upon some huge raft that was being lifted on great ocean swells. He looked around him. Just past the portal he could see what looked like a distant golden sea. The sky was golden as well.

Sam turned back to look again at the dragon. “I forgot to ask the Professor if you were friendly or not,” he said aloud. “I’m hoping that if you’re not, he would have thought to mention it.”

Sam looked up at the branches of the tree around which the dragon was wrapped.  It wasn’t very large, and the other trees around him weren’t either. That was good, he thought, because it likely meant that the raven, if it had come this way, wouldn’t be able to perch so far up that he couldn’t reach it.

Sam looked more closely at the fruit hanging from the tree, and it occurred to him that he might be able to pick some of these and throw them at the raven if he found him; that was just as well, since there didn’t appear to be any stones on the ground that he could use for such a thing. Instead, there was some sort of coppery-looking weedy stuff that almost looked woven together. He couldn’t see anything like sand, or soil, or rocks anywhere.

He put his hands on his hips. “Didja happen to see a big black bird flying through here recently?” he asked the dragon. After all, he thought, he couldn’t be sure whether the creature could speak or not. If it was Middle-earth or some other Iconic Realm he was familiar with, he’d know, but this world was new to him.

The dragon seemed uninterested in his words at first, but then it uncoiled itself and started waddling away from him on the forest floor, moving ever deeper into the woods. The creature was only about the size of a largish dog, so it was soon lost to sight.

Sam shrugged and followed. He occasionally had to grab hold of one of the tree trunks as he walked, since the land would occasionally rise up and then fall back down again. He could tell that these were almost certainly ocean swells, because at times, when he looked back, he thought the distant sea appeared to be down a fairly steep slope, but at other times he lost sight of it completely. He assumed that meant that the land had dropped below sea level, as crazy as that might seem..

“Weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of,” he muttered, looking back. When he turned back around to continue following the dragon, he nearly tripped over the creature, which had ceased its waddling.

The dragon had come to rest at the base of one of the many fruit trees and was slowly winding itself up the indigo-coloured tree trunk. Sam peered into the branches and saw something black.

It was the raven.

The raven was eyeing the dragon nervously. Sam walked past the tree and then reached up and picked several of the yellow gourd-like fruits that dangled from an adjacent tree. The smaller ones he stuffed into his pants pocket, but the larger ones he held in readiness. He turned then and watched the raven. The dragon had now gripped the tree tightly and was, serpent-like, gliding ever closer to the bird’s perch.

The raven flapped its wings nervously. Sam thought he could still saw the crystal in its talons. He took aim with one of the gourds and threw it. It landed with a splat on the branch next to the raven, and that was just enough to startle it into taking flight. Sam saw the crystal it was holding in its talons drop to the ground, and he started shouting loudly and waving his arms as he stooped to retrieve it.

The raven circled the tree once, but didn’t dare get near Sam, and as soon as Sam had the crystal stuffed into his pocket, he began throwing more of the yellow fruit at the bird, trying to frighten it back toward the portal.

His plan worked.

The raven, unnerved by the dragon and then by Sam’s unforgivably rude behavior, decided it had had enough of this place. It circled the tree one last time, and then wheeled back toward the edge of the forest. Sam followed after it as fast as he was able, only occasionally losing his balance as the ground continued to dip and heave beneath him. Soon both he and the raven had returned to the dragon’s tree, and Sam saw his quarry tuck in its wings and glide right into the dark portal.

“Gotcha now!” he cried triumphantly. He then ran headlong after the bird and dove through the frame and into the darkness of the Professor’s attic.

         [ To read Episode 11.1, click here…. ]

 

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Apr 10

The Framerunners – Newsletter for April, 2015

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What’s new on the website?

I have been adding additional short tales to the Vignettes section of the website (also reachable by clicking on the Stories menu. . Currently there are four vignettes posted. Some of these may end up being teasers for upcoming story lines, but there are no guarantees! That said, if you really, really like a particular vignette, let me know and perhaps we’ll explore some aspect of that scene going forward.

I continue to lag behind in keeping the illustrations for each episode posted in the online gallery (located at http://jefmurray.com/framerunners/the-gallery/ ). But, I am including a link on each episode image posted that will allow you to order prints, if you are interested in doing so. If you don’t know the name of a sketch or painting print that you’d like to have a copy of, you can reference the episode in the description. I will once again promise to try to update the gallery more regularly going forward!

Where are we now?

Episode 10.1 still has the Framerunners spread out between three different worlds. Polydora remains on Orbaratus, Luke Lester, Brother Azarias, and Father Hildebrandt are in Italy. Meanwhile, Jill and Sam, with help from the Professor, are attempting to catch the raven, whom they have discovered has a second sapphire in its possession. We found out in Episode 9.2 a great deal about ancient Orbaratan history, and some of it has some frightening ramifications going forward.

If the above is confusing, you can read all nineteen posted episodes from the beginning by clicking here: http://jefmurray.com/framerunners/in-the-company-of-angels/ and then clicking on Episode 1.1. At the end of each episode, you’ll find a link that will take you to the next installment in the tale.

Where are we headed?

In Episode 10.1, Jill and Sam are still with the Professor in England, trying to capture the raven and retrieve the second sapphire that it appears to have in its possession. They manage to trap the raven in the attic, but it appears to have disappeared into one of a half dozen paintings that were stored there.

 

How else can I get involved?

We have set up two discussion pages on Facebook and on Google+, both of which are entitled “Framerunners’ Forum”. Please feel free to post questions or observations there, or as comments on the individual episodes on the website going forward!

Our email list continues to grow, and a number of folk have now been posting comments and questions after the episodes themselves. Please feel free to do so! I’m happy to answer questions as long as I don’t reveal any spoilers (about this I’ve been warned quite sternly by a couple of readers ;-). Several folks seemed a bit unnerved by episode 9.2, suggesting that many of the events leading to the apocalyptic fall of Orbaratus reminded them of events occurring in our own day. I want to assure everyone that “In the Company of Angels” is not an allegorical tale, but I’m happy if fruitful comparisons can be drawn.

I’m continuing to try to learn about homeschool groups and YA literature groups to try to introduce The Framerunners (www.TheFramerunners.com) to new readers. If you know of young readers in your families or community whom you believe would enjoy these stories, please have them join our email list and/or like our FB page, or feel free to let me know about them! List information will never be shared with anyone else for any reason, period.

In any event, if you are continuing to like what you’re reading, please spread the word! The more folks involved, the more fun it is for all of us!

 

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Apr 09

In the Company of Angels: Episode 10.1 – The Chase

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In the Company of Angels, Episode 10.1 – The Chase

 

“You cannot stuff a raven into a soup pot!” said Jill, whispering as loudly as she dared.

“Well, then what would you suggest?! I don’t see any bird cages handy!” Sam whispered back, fiercely.

They were still sitting in the Professor’s study, and the raven, for the time being at any rate, remained perched on the floor of the hallway not ten feet from where Sam was seated.

The Professor, too, was racking his brain for any item that might be useful for caging a wild bird, but he, too, was drawing a blank. He whispered,“I would suggest that we determine how to capture the poor thing before we divert ourselves too much with housing options. But while we’re brainstorming, how on earth did the creature come by another crystal?”

The raven, almost as if listening, seemed to tighten its grasp on the second blue gem. It had apparently returned to its hoard atop the wardrobe, discovered the first sapphire gone, and had flown out of the open door to see what might have become of it. The creature couldn’t land easily on the bannisters while holding onto the second crystal, so it had ended up on the floor. From there it had half flapped and half hopped over to the doorway into the study to see what could be seen.

Sam glanced at the Professor. “Do you have a towel or a blanket that we could throw over it?”

“Oh, yes, that might work!” whispered the Professor. He slowly stood up and tiptoed toward the second door in the study; it lead to a bedroom just beyond his office. But the raven was having none of this; it hopped away from the door, all the while keeping a close eye upon everyone in the room.

“I don’t know if it’s going to stay long enough for me to retrieve the blanket,” said the Professor.

“Yeah, but it’s still worth a try. Just move slowly,” said Sam.

Ultimately the effort proved futile. As soon as the Professor returned from the bedroom with blanket in hand, the raven flapped its way back up to the top of the wardrobe. They knew there was no room there to throw the blanket, so they stood in the doorway considering how best to proceed.

“One thing’s for certain,” said Sam, returning to his normal speaking voice. “We have to get the painting of Orbaratus out of the crawlspace, or at least covered up so that the raven can’t fly back into it again.”

“Oh, gee, Sam!” said Jill. “We should have thought of that to begin with! Professor, can we get back into the other crawlspace — the one Mrs. Mills found us in — without passing by the wardrobe? I’m afraid walking past it might spook the raven and drive him back out of the house again.”

“Yes, there’s another way in,” replied the Professor. He pointed to a small hatch in the wall. “That connects with the larger attic space. The section of attic that houses the wardrobe is entirely separate.”

Sam stepped toward the hatchway and opened it. He recognized this door as one of the two they had first discovered when they were exploring the attic. “I’ll go and turn the painting around toward the wall. That will at least stop the bird from using it to escape back to Orbaratus.” He disappeared into the hatchway.

“Professor, do we know how the raven reached the wardrobe? That is, where the hole in the eaves is located that he might have used?” asked Jill.

“No, I don’t believe so. We would have to go outside the house and look for it. I’m assuming we can’t get to it from inside without frightening the bird away, and if we do that, it may or may not return to the other attic.”

“I wonder if there’s any way I could lure it out of the attic?”

“Do you mean telepathically, or by some other means?”

“Oh, I hadn’t really thought of that! But trying to communicate with it telepathically is certainly worth a try! We’re open to anything at this point, I think.” Jill took a couple of steps into the hallway toward the wardrobe. She shut her eyes and tried to “find” the raven. It took her a few moments, but she thought she sensed the bird, still atop the wardrobe. “But what should I do next?” she wondered. She had only just started exploring the use of her abilities with people; how in the world would she know how to “chat” with a bird?

As it happens, she didn’t get an opportunity. Just a few moments after she was sure that she felt the presence of the raven, she realized that it was on the move. She didn’t need her empathic senses to tell her: a loud squawk followed by the flapping of wings heralded the bird’s abdication of its roost. She tried to sense whether it was still in the house, but could detect nothing.

“Well, I guess we either go outside and see if we can find where it’s ended up, or wait here and see if it returns,” she said.

The Professor was just about to respond when they heard a loud yell and a crash come from the office hatchway. They hurried into the office and Jill stooped down and entered the attic.

“Sam? What happened?” she called out. She could see nothing in the gloom.

“Over here,” said Sam. “The bird came back. It flew past me and startled me. I knocked over something as I tried to see where it was headed, but I lost it in the dark.”

“Quick, Miss Jonsson,” said the Professor from just behind her,”let me in and let’s shut the hatchway door.” Jill stepped further into the attic and the Professor ducked and came in as well.

“Sam, can you hear me?” asked the Professor.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Sam, do you know where the bird came from?”

“Yeah, there’s a hole over here at this end of the attic. Jill and I saw him come in that way before Mrs. Mills found us.”

“Can you stop it up with something? Anything will do: a box, a blanket, whatever you can find.”

“Yes! Good thinking! Let me see….” Jill and the Professor heard a rustling, then a scraping sound from the far end of the attic. By now their eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and they shut the hatchway tightly behind them.

“Sam, is his escape route closed off?” asked Jill.

“Yeah. I don’t think he can get back out that way at least. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t some other hole in another part of the attic, though. This is a pretty large place to hide!”

Jill moved toward Sam and the Professor followed her. She passed by the spot where the painting of Orbaratus had been and saw that Sam had turned it around and propped it against the wall. He had shoved a small box up against the back of the canvas to make sure no opening remained for the bird to fit through.

“Professor, did you bring your flashlight?” Sam asked as they all collected at the farthest end of the attic.

“My electric torch? No, I left it in my office.”

“OK, we’ll just have to use mine.” Sam took his flashlight out of his pocket and switched it on.

“Oh my! That is an extraordinarily bright torch!” said the Professor. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

Sam was about to explain about the LEDs, but Jill nudged him and he remained silent.

“Let’s stick together and go through the attic slowly. If anyone sees anything move, holler,” said Sam.

They stepped through the entire length of the attic twice and never saw the bird, nor any other movement other than the stirring of dust.

“There appears to be no sign of it,” said the Professor, “so either it has a second nest and is in it trying to remain quiet, or it has found another way out of the attic.”

“I think it’s the latter,” said Sam, “but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Jill do you have your ring on?”

“Yes, but I’m not touching the crystal.”

“Better do that now and take a look around us.”

Jill turned her ring back around and clenched her hand shut. The gloom of the attic was suddenly punctuated with a half dozen glowing images. These were the paintings they had first noticed when they arrived in the attic.

“Oh my!” she said.

“Why? What are you two looking at?” asked the Professor.

Sam reached out and grasped the Professor’s wrist. “Take a look at the paintings,” he said.

“Why, they’re glowing!” said the Professor. “Is that how they always look if you have one of the crystals on?”

“Yes, Sir, they do,” said Sam. “We don’t have time to explain everything right now. But we do have one enormous problem to solve.”

“And what is that that?”

“We need to figure out which of these half-dozen worlds the raven flew into! And even if we knew that, how on earth would we ever be able to capture him there?!”

They all stared at the various images and Jill felt her heart sink.

         [ To read Episode 10.2, click here…. ]

 

 

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Apr 09

Vignettes: The Window

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The Window 

 “Tap, tap, tap….”

Sam stirred ever so slightly from his sleep.

“Tap, tap, tap….”

At first he thought it was a bird, but then he remembered: it was pitch black outside, and other than owls, no birds should be stirring. He sat up in bed.

“Tap, tap, tap….”

Sam looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He noticed the faint electric glow of starlight streaming through the windowpanes onto the wooden floorboards. But there was something else there as well: something blocking the light. He couldn’t tell what it could be.

“Sam! Open the window!”

Sam rubbed his eyes. He flung aside the covers, pushed himself out of bed, and stepped toward the pool of starlight on the floor. As he approached the window, he saw a figure huddled just outside among the bushes: a dark silhouette.

“Sam, open the window. It’s cold. I need to come inside.”

He knew the voice, but he hadn’t heard it for quite a while. Was it his cousin?

Sam lived with his Uncle Charles. They shared the house in which his uncle had resided for decades. It was the house with the strange and ancient chest in the attic, the one filled with magical artifacts. The chest had been entrusted to his uncle by someone else, many years before Sam had been born. Sam had borrowed something from the chest once: a book filled with the most amazing stories. He had read it all night long. But the next morning, when he awoke, the book had vanished. It had returned, of its own accord, to the chest. That had been Sam’s first experience of magic: real magic.

Now he squinted into the darkness. It was an April morning and it had been unusually warm, but there was no warmth near the window. In fact, he thought he saw frost at the edges of the panes. But just a few inches beyond the glass, Sam could make out a pale face with eyes that reflected the light from the stars in an odd way: a spooky way.

The face appeared to be that of his older cousin; yet it was not his cousin. His cousin was overseas, he remembered. He was staying in the home of friends in Italy, where he was studying the writings of the desert fathers.

“Come on, Sam, let me in…,” whined the voice once more, and the creature continued its eerie tapping upon the windowpane, with fingernails that looked more and more to Sam like claws….

He realized that this was not some dream; nor was it something that he might ever be able to truly understand. The night was passing, but he suspected that his thinking was still not sound, and he didn’t entirely trust his natural first impulse: to help someone who appeared to be in need of shelter. “Things, and people especially, aren’t always what they appear to be,” his Uncle Charles had once told him.

He shook his head to clear it and then looked around at his bedroom. His eyes came to rest upon a small icon of St. Michael the Archangel on his bedside table. It had been given him by Father Hildebrandt when they had first.

Father Hildebrandt had looked deeply into Sam’s eyes, and had then stepped to the wall beside his desk, on which had hung this icon. He had removed it and handed it to Sam. “This may come in handy someday,” the Abbot had told him.

Sam stepped away from the window, took up the icon, and knelt with it by his bedside. He began to recite the prayer that he had learned long ago from his uncle: “O mighty prince of the heavenly hosts, St. Michael, we beg you to protect and defend us….”

As Sam continued the prayer, the tapping upon the windowpane slowed and then ceased. Soon he thought he could detect the faintest sweet scent in the air around him. What was that? Frankincense?

He completed his prayer and looked once more, with trepidation, toward the window. But there was no longer any figure huddled outside. Instead, the faintest blush of dawn was showing upon the horizon. Whatever creature had assailed him during these darkest hours of the early dawn had been vanquished.

Sam, grateful that he had been spared any greater trial, returned to his bed, and he fell into the deepest and most untroubled sleep he could ever recall having had in all of his tender years….

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