A Princess, a Boatman, and a Lizard (Forward Motion Anthology 2012)

A Princess, a Boatman, and a Lizard

Forward Motion Anthology 2012

Edited By J.A. Marlow and Jan Sophia Grace

Exclusively Published By Star Catcher Publishing - Smashwords Edition

Starcatcherpub.com

Description

17 authors, 17 different stories, and one prompt.

A Princess, A Boatman, and A Lizard...

Seventeen authors took up the challenge and responded with works ranging from silly to dramatic across genres such as fairy tale, steampunk, science fiction, fantasy, Native American tales and more.

NOTE: As the authorship is multi-national, both British and American spelling conventions appear.

Copyright

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, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Princess Of The Mountain Forests - Susan Petroulas

Soul of Insurgence - A. Shelton

That Troublesome Bar - Gera L. Dean

A Present For Cynthia - S.E. Batt

The Warning - C. M. Clark

Convoy - Val Griswold-Ford

The Terrible Bedtime Story - Tobe Ornot

The Prince of the North - A.J. DeVial

The Adventures of Orville Bramson Esq - Catrin Pitt

Freedom of Wings - Jordan Lark

Predators - Jim Francis

Drought's End - Connie Cockrell

The Dancing Moons - Lane Decker Davis

Bowl the Lizard - J.A. Marlow

The River Of Souls - Necia Phoenix

Six Bullets - Linda Adams

The Princess, the Wizard Lizard and the Boatman - Lazette Gifford

Star Catcher Publishing Copyright

Princess Of The Mountain Forests - Susan Petroulas

They say that 95% of life is showing up. I'm living the other 5%.

I used to care, really. But after you've had your head pounded into the pavement enough times, it's easier and safer to just not show up. I go through the motions, I guess, but my heart's not in it.

I didn't work – I'd been retired on a disability pension five years ago. I had enough money to eat, pay the rent and spend most of the day arguing with people on Twitter. The shoulder still bothered me. I don't think it's going to get any better. So I take the meds and go on, day by day.

No one visited, dropped by or called to see how I was. I barely remember my mom - she died before I got old enough for school. And now my Dad and Gram were gone, too.

So I almost had a heart attack when someone literally pounded on my door.

Jesus. The pounding started again as I caught my breath and got up from the couch. A quick look through the security spy hole showed Froggy, raising his arm for another pounding.

I pulled the door open as his fist came down. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the front hall. Froggy, why the hell are you trying to break down my door?

Oh. Hey, Princess. He lifted his hand to wave, like he'd just run across me on the street. How you been? Froggy called me Princess. He'd heard me telling McKenna that Gram claimed I was descended of Chiefs. Geronimo was a cousin or something.

Do you know how to knock, Froggy?

Sure. He lifted his fist again, aiming for the door.

No, not break down, knock. Gently. He barely tapped the door. Fine. What do you want? I asked, already out of patience.

Froggy was a good guy, Apache, like me, and BIG. Even five years ago, that big was mostly muscle and he was Jake McKenna's muscle. He earned a reputation, but now he was mostly coasting. Like a lot of the reservation people, he was getting fat, but there was still a lot of muscle under that fat. His real name is Eddy Begay. He gave himself the nickname, after his favorite tattoo.

Hey! He grinned at me - he was missing a tooth. I'm just the messenger. The Boatman wanted me to find you.

The Boatman was Drew Ferry - Froggy liked nicknames and gave everyone one. Drew was originally the Ferryman, like the song, but Drew complained and Froggy started calling him the Boatman. Drew gave up after that.

Why would he need you to find me? I shook my head. Drew knows exactly where I live; he helped me move in here. Eight years ago. A lifetime.

Froggy just shrugged. All he said was 'Find Lily. Let her know that McKenna's looking to buy her land in the mountains.' And he said that I had to hurry.

Drew couldn't be seen talking to me? Did he think I was being watched? Well, whoever was watching could look all they wanted. I was doing precisely nothing and the only thing they'd get would be disappointed.

Did he say anything else, Froggy?

Nothin'. He gave me a number to give you and then had to run home to that wife of his. He dug into his pocket and fished out a wrinkled bit of paper.

Right. That wife of his. Barb or Beth or something that started with a B. Her father was Jake McKenna's boss and Drew was suddenly moving up in the world. Word was that she kept him on a short leash, but part of that was sour grapes. Before the warehouse accident, Drew and I had been together. He hadn't exactly stood by me after a pile of boxes landed on my back.

I needed to change the topic, fast. If I let Froggy start talking about Drew's love life, I'd never get rid of him. He gossiped worse than his grandmother. Would you like some iced tea? Just made. It was time to take more pills and, well, I liked sweet tea.

Froggy grinned and walked past me, toward the iced tea. As he walked by, I noticed a new tattoo.

Say, nice tat. That's an anole, isn't it?

Froggy froze, then turned narrowed eyes toward me. Did you just call me an asshole?

Oops. No. I slowed down to annunciate. I said 'anole', not asshole. Your tattoo. I threw up my hands. It's a kind of lizard.

Oh. Froggy twisted around to get a better look at his bicep. There are different kinds of lizards?

I gave up and brought him to my bathroom mirror, where he could see it better. Then he started asking questions and I had to look up anoles on the Internet. It took another 20 minutes to get rid of him, but at least he didn't talk about Drew and his new wife any more.

#

After Froggy left, I couldn't settle. I tried doing some yoga stretches, turning on some music. It didn't help.

When I get like that, jumpy and full of energy, there's only one thing I can do to burn it off - go for a run in the desert. I grabbed a backpack and filled it with water bottles - I'd need to bring my own water. On an impulse, I threw in a few protein bars and then I walked down to Interstate 25 and walked north.

A lady truck driver with a yappy little dog she called Ruby picked me up. She wore her crew cut hair under a Harley cap and listened to classical music on the best radio I'd ever heard in a truck cab. I let her talk over me about corrupt politicians until we reached the mile marker that my dad said was two miles west of our land. My land.

She didn't want to just leave me in the desert, but I convinced her that I knew what I was doing. Ruby did her business and the trucker waved as I walked due east from the mile marker.

I had long legs – I walked the two miles in 45 minutes without even thinking about it. I knew exactly when I crossed onto my land.

A dry wind blew through me. Not over me, through me. Details became clear – the harvester ants' mound, the light reflected off the scale of a grey-banded kingsnake that had been left behind. The low whistle of the desert wind and the far-away call of a coyote. I found an eagle feather and tucked it into the braid I'd made of my hair.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, the scents on the breeze bringing the desert to me. I always felt more alive here, on my father's land. I shook myself and opened my eyes, tied my running shoes a little tighter and started to run.

In high school, I ran track. Cross Country. I still had the pedometer that measured how far I'd gone and the time it took and I still checked it automatically. That day, I ran like I never ran in high school.

The desert wind ran alongside me, playful and dancing. It sang and laughed. I laughed along with it as I ran, stopping after ten minutes. By my meter, I'd run ten miles and I wasn't winded.

It was always that way in the desert, at least this desert. I could have run straight across the 200 acre property, but I'd arrived at my destination. This was where my father had wanted to build the ranch house.

Froggy had said that McKenna wanted to buy my land up in the mountains - this was what he was talking about. My dad had wanted to build out here, close enough to Alamogordo and the reservation, but far enough for privacy. I looked around, my heart aching. I hadn't been out here for two years and only a handful of times since Dad died.

The wind had quieted down. I unhooked my backpack and downed a water. One per hour, at least. I wasn't sure how long it would take to get back to Alamogordo, so I wouldn't drink them all at once. The cairn was still there – there was an Apache word for it, but I'd always thought of it as a cairn, so a cairn it was.

Dad and I had piled up the stones to indicate one corner of the ranch house, but that's not where we put the time capsule. I counted off the paces, keeping my strides a little small – I'd been 16 and three inches shorter when we'd buried it. The steps were 16 strides due south of the cairn, under where the front steps were supposed to go. I dropped to the ground and shoved and dug, until I found the flagstone we'd set there twelve years ago.

I pulled up on one end, exposing the hole Dad had dug and the cigar box still hidden within. When I opened it, I lost all the time I'd gained on that wild run.

One of my running medals sat on top of some letters that my mom had written to my dad before I was born. My Gram had made a medicine bag for us to include; it still smelled of sage and lavender. Dad had put the letter from the doctor in the time capsule and I'd put in Mom's charm bracelet. I put it on my wrist and jingled it a little. It was cheap, aluminum, made in China, but it was cheerful. And she'd loved it.

There was a book of poetry that Dad had put in. I left it in there. Underneath, Dad had hidden the key to a safe deposit box in that little cigar box and the safe deposit box held the deed to the land. I slipped Gram's bag over my head, like a necklace. I pulled on the cords – leather and still strong. I closed the lid, leaving the medal, the letters, all of them behind in the cigar box under the porch that hadn't been built. Yet.

I did what I could to hide it, setting the flagstone back in its hole and covering it with sandy soil. I looked up and around and I was still alone, except for a lizard staring at me from a sunny rock.

#

I downed another water and walked around where the House would have been, if we'd actually built it. We were high enough that trees could find enough water to grow, but the forest was surrounded by red, baked sandstone. An island of green crowning the desert. I closed my eyes and let the wind blow through me again. There was something primitive and beautiful about the power of the land and it calmed the nerves that had driven me here.

That power brought the scents of the sagebrush and the Agave to me, and the sounds of the cactus wren. I thought I heard voices, muttered and arguing - they clashed with the harmonies of the sounds that should be here, but it might have been the wind.

The voices rose, coming fast and angry now, and it occurred to me that no one should have been here. On my land.

I asked the wind and followed the voices - over the hill behind the House that wasn't there and down into the desert. Near a boulder, down below the treeline, sat a battered Jeep with three or four men arguing around it. I had to get closer.

Crawling along the rocks, I inched my way closer but I still couldn't hear what they were saying. Again, I asked the wind and I could hear.

Yeah, this is the place McKenna wants. I checked it on the GPS and everything. McKenna wanted the desert? What for?

Ain't nothin' here! Was that Froggy? Oh, god. Well, at least I could track down Froggy to find out what the hell they were doing here.

Look, this is where McKenna said to look. So we're here, looking. The other man was taller, thinner than Froggy, but not as dark. He sounded just about as bright.

"You got any idea what we're supposed to be looking for? Besides, he don't own this land, not yet. It still belongs to Lily Hodges."

She's not here, is she?

That don't make it right. She hasn't sold it yet.

She'll sell. She's a smart girl and she knows how to play nice. I wanted to slap him up the side of his head.

Still her land. I could have kissed Froggy's ugly mug.

The other man reached into the back of the Jeep and pulled out something that he pushed at Froggy. Just take pictures. McKenna can see for himself if what he's looking for is here.

Froggy grabbed the camera - that's what it looked like. What are you gonna do?

He didn't answer right away and when he did, I had to strain to hear him. Pick flowers.

What? Froggy would have hit the roof if they'd been inside.

Pick flowers - he wants me to get samples of the plants around here, okay?

They didn't say much after that and I got bored watching Froggy take pictures while the other guy collected samples. Besides, I wasn't exactly going to run them off my land, not by myself. I inched my way back over the hill toward the cairn, said goodbye to Dad and his dreams, then turned west. I ran the rest of the way back to the highway.

#

That night, I had strange, shimmering dreams of sagebrush and scorpions and skies as clear as ice. Wherever I was, the air was crisp and cold, like the ices I'd bought as a kid every summer. And through it all, I had an uneasy feeling, the kind that goes with realizing that you hadn't studied for the test. There was something else, but it faded out of reach as I woke up.

God, it felt like I had a hangover, even though I hadn't had a drop in 7 years. Truthfully, I hadn't drunk alcohol since I came of age and nearly poisoned myself. I crawled back home at dawn after drinking all night and my Gram locked me out. I spent two hours sleeping on the stoop, throwing up in her zinnias.

Gram woke me up when she went to Church, handing me a bottle of water and telling me that she wanted the stoop washed off before I went inside. Even hung over, I knew better than to crash before the stoop was clean. She let me sleep when she came home, bringing me corn chowder when it was time for dinner.

That morning, I would have killed someone for some of that corn chowder. But Gram had died shortly after my father lost his last battle with the cancer.

I dragged my sorry ass into the bathroom and guzzled about a gallon of water – four of the big glasses – then went into the kitchen in search of coffee. While it was brewing, I saw my Gram's old cookbooks – two yellowed and spiral-bound editions from her church ladies' group. I pulled out the first one and it opened to that corn chowder recipe. Her neat script noted the exact kind of peppers she added to the recipe and how long to roast the corn.

My eyes kept looking back at the cookbook while I ate my corn flakes and milk and, after a shower, I grabbed my bag and headed to the market.

#

The reservation was east of Alamogordo. Well, a little north and east. We don't even call ourselves the Apache – that's the Zuni name for us. It means enemy. Our name for ourselves is the Dine'. The People.

The Apache had started out in the Southwest, but when the white men came, they tried to move us to tightly controlled reservations and told us to behave. That didn't sit well with Cochise and Geronimo and a lot of my ancestors. They escaped the reservation and basically declared war on the white government that wanted them to play nice.

Just like Jack McKenna wanted me to play nice.

Outside the city line, the Apache who lived in the area had a flea market. Some of what they sold there was authentic, some of it was grey market and some of it was tourist stuff. The hotels around town promoted it as a good place to get authentic Apache trinkets, so they did a pretty good business. It was also the place where the People hung out – the more-authentic-than-I-was Native Americans.

An old man with a brown and wrinkled face sat at a tray table, whittling and telling stories to the young couple from Texas. At least the guy part of the couple wore a Texas A&M tee. A pair of older ladies wove thin reed baskets while they gossiped and laughed, Jeffrey Begay (Froggy's brother) sold arrowhead pendants and a half dozen girls walked by wearing jeans and t-shirts and beaded friendship bracelets.

I felt oddly out of place in the market I'd haunted when I was those girls' age, helping Gram sell her medicine bags and necklaces to the tourists. My Gram knew the old medicine – what herbs to use, how to prepare them and how to administer them. It wasn't just the medicinal properties of the herbs. There were prayers and rituals for all of them, given to the People by Usen, the creator.

She taught them to me, but I'd never used them. I doubted I could remember them. Apache Medicine is more complicated than handing out pills. It involves chanting, prayer, even dancing, and everything has to be perfect. It's the same with pharmacy, I guess. You can't mess up when someone is sick - life and death and all that.

I waited, watching the market, while the Texans bought a carved necklace for the lady. Hey Mr. Addison. I walked up with my hands in my pockets. I don't know if you remember me…

Lily Hodges. His black eyes focused on me, but he smiled. Maria's granddaughter. How are you, all on your own?

I'm fine, I lied, looking at the dust by my feet. When I looked up, he was still watching me. Uncle, would you let me sit and ask you a question? He wasn't my real uncle. My father's brother had been drunk, driving home one night. He was the only one in the car and Gram had said that it was the only good thing about that night - that nobody else had been killed.

Mr. Addison nodded and patted the wooden log beside him. I sat and didn't say anything, watching over his shoulder when he went back to carving.

What's troubling you, Lily? Mr. Addison concentrated on digging out a particular line in the carving. It was a Mountain Spirit, complete with the wild headdress that looked a little like the Kachina dolls of the Hopi Indians.

Can I… own land? I wasn't sure how to ask what was bothering me.

Don't you? I thought your father left you that pack of land just west of the reservation. He didn't look up from the carving.

Yeah. But that's the white man's law. What about our ancestors? Did they believe that we could own the land?

He dug out the hollow of the Spirit's cheek, along the line of its jaw. Not in the same way as the white man's law. Can you own the deed to the rain? To the air we breathe?

Then why is it different? Why am I different when I'm on the land my father left me?

The knife in his hand stilled and he looked up. What's happened, Lily?

I told him everything, in halting, half-sentences. I told him about the wind blowing through me and being able to run. I told him about McKenna and my being able to hear Froggy and that other man on the wind. When I was finished, I fully expected him to laugh.

He didn't, but he did smile, all the way up to his shining black eyes. You're Maria's girl.

What? I couldn't tell if I were crazy or if he were. I'd always thought I imagined all the things I did when I ran on my land.

Your grandmother taught you the old ways. And, I remember. You danced for the full four days of the Sunrise Ceremony. Not like these girls. He pointed at a gaggle of teenagers with his knife. They'll dance a few hours and have a party.

I shrugged. "They're girls. And