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    Three Kinds of Fire
    Three Kinds of Fire
    Three Kinds of Fire
    Ebook44 pages39 minutes

    Three Kinds of Fire

    By John Peace

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    About this ebook

    In this collection the author takes us on three journeys.
    In one, a young man paddles off across the lake to escape the pain that's erupted in his family. But he discovers that the pain comes with him, and he must take an honest look at himself in order to deal with it.
    In the second, we join a traveller as he takes a day trip up into the mountains of an exotic island. In his attempt to visit a friend, he is invited in by a poor man living in a tiny stone hut. Can the outsider overcome his prejudice to see the man for who he really is, and hear his story?
    The final story is longer and imagines an English teacher in the Middle East who is challenged to live what he believes. A young woman who he's met only once has been kidnapped elsewhere in the country. Where will his daring take him?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Peace
    Release dateJun 9, 2012
    ISBN9781476465333
    Three Kinds of Fire
    Author

    John Peace

    Originally an engineering graduate from the UK keen to become an astronaut, somehow I ended up working in community development overseas for some years. Did I take a wrong turn? I don't think so. I have very few regrets. In between, I've worked in a soup factory, driven a taxi in London, served refreshments in Regents Park and a few other odd jobs. Last year I settled with my Canadian wife and our two sons in Ontario, where we enjoy the great outdoors, Finnish pancakes and blueberries, preferably all three at once. I confess to a lifelong fascination with science and science fiction, ever since watching Dr. Who and Blake's Seven on the BBC as a boy. I'm even old enough to have fuzzy memories of watching the Apollo 11 landing on TV. Whew! That's hard to believe. At the time of writing I'm working on a series of science fiction novels for pre-teens (8 to 12 year olds) called Beyond The Elder Stars. The first one is named 'The Calling'; it's published on Amazon Kindle and in print with CreateSpace. See my blogs for links to the book and for extra free content. I welcome correspondence. To contact me, spell out the following (the address isn't given complete to evade the dreaded spam spiders...) rj + peace (snail shell thing) 123mail (dot) org

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      Book preview

      Three Kinds of Fire - John Peace

      Three Kinds Of Fire

      A Collection Of Three Short Stories

      By John Peace

      Copyright 2012 John Peace

      Smashwords Edition

      Discover other titles by John Peace at Smashwords.com

      John Peace drip-feeds a couple of blogs at: http://johnmpeace.blogspot.ca/

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Many thanks to Smashwords for making it possible for writers to publish their ebooks here!

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      CONTENTS:

      Title Page

      A Kind Of Fire

      The Captive Guest

      The Hostage

      About The Author

      Publishing History

      Cover Art Credits

      + + +

      A Kind of Fire

      Only as the shore receded to a flat backdrop of treetops and arrow-head roofs did I settle into my rhythm. For elusive moments my writhing, overcast mind cleared to a flat calm, like the water, but regimented by the paddle strokes. The scent of the canoe resin was strong enough to be noticeable above the background big-lake-smell, the smell of the water as it absorbed the vegetable matter in it and the occasional dead small fry on the surface. The cedar paddle's smooth shaft hardly strained in my hands and the drops of liquid light fell back to the lake's surface in a string, like the molten sparks from a welder's torch. It was so good to get away alone. If I'd stayed I would have come apart.

      It had been Cam's idea, the night before, after Mom and Dad had left for town, Mom in her shiny black Matrix and Dad in his mud-splattered perhaps-red GMC pickup. But I was always stuck with a lazy older brother. Cameron hadn't stirred until nearly noon, so while I was waiting I downed a pile of leftover nachos and half a cold pepperoni pizza and a can of something fizzy and sour. Then I grabbed a paddle and life jacket, and lifted the red Langford Prospector to my shoulder to zigzag between the balsam firs and jack pines, and over the black rocks to the water. The canoe's bow swung down and butted one of the boulders.

      I didn't care about the scratches on the new canoe. I had to get out there. The island beckoned, like a lighthouse in a hurricane.

      Finally its cliffs began to take on character. Its features were like those of the Finnish grandpa I had hardly known. Laughing in the home-built sauna, his face had the look of pink granite. Dropping his car keys in the mud, bending like his back was a thick tree trunk. Making us smile with the same worn stories about working in bush camps. He was long gone.

      But somewhere up on the cliffs lived a pair of bald eagles. Once, way up on the top, I'd seen a pair of otters in the little lake. A friend said he'd glimpsed a real caribou once. I

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