Category: Excerpts

The boy was no fool — I’ve said as much before — and his first thought was to get out of Mudferthing’s house just as fast as could be got.
But I’ve also said that the boy was brave and curious, and he was also, after so many trips to the giant’s house, more than a little tired of searching and searching and finding no answers.
“I’ll just take a peek and see what the old bugger is up to,” he thought to himself (not daring even to whisper). “Maybe I’ll see something that will give me an idea about how to beat him.”
You see, the boy had been at this for so long that he’d started to think of this as his quest, instead of something he would show a hero, once he knew Mudferthing’s weakness (which he very shortly will, as you might have guessed).
So the boy snuck ever-so-very-very-quietly up to the door frame of the room in which he could hear the giant’s sniffles — as well as a kind of ‘shoop-shoop… whiiiir’ every so often — and crawled on his hands and knees under the door (which is how he gotten from room to room since his first visit).
The room was stifling hot — Mudferthing had stoked up a fire that could have burned the boy’s house down in a minute — and the giant himself was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, working a loom.
The boy watched for several minutes, trying to figure out what it was that Mudferthing could possibly be making for himself that he couldn’t more easily have just taken from some hapless farmer (or King, for that matter), and finally he understood.
Mudferthing was weaving himself a scarf.
And the boy was no expert, but he was fairly sure that the giant was very bad at it.

Every day, the boy would find himself alone in his house, and every day he would walk into the Forest of Anything and along the wide, straight road to Mudferthing’s huge house, climb the trellis to the closet window, and search for something that would show him how the heroes of the Forest could beat the unbeatable giant.
It took a very long time. In the Slowing World, the door of summer closed and the gate of winter opened, and in the end the boy still found nothing.
Until one day, Mudferthing caught a cold.
—-
Now, some of you are being very pert and thinking to yourselves ‘A ha! The giant got a cold! That must be how he can be beat!’ Well, let me tell you that there is nothing in any story ever about a hero who saved the day by making sure that the monster went out-of-doors without his stocking cap and mittens, and there never will be.
You should just sit and listen a bit longer and try to learn something.
—-
Of course, the boy didn’t know that Mudferthing had a cold when he came to the giant’s house that day, and he didn’t know that Mudferthing had decided to stay home instead of wandering the forest in search of more princesses to eat and more children to boil. He didn’t realize it when he climbed into the closet on the third floor, and it wasn’t until he’d gotten down to the first floor (where he’d decided he would have another look at the giant’s trophy room) that he found out he wasn’t alone in the house.
He could hear Mudferthing sniffling.

“Well,” said the boy, “I went all through that house — the top floor, at least, and I saw all sorts of things that the giant has taken from other people. There’s armor, there’s treasure; I even saw a phoenix feather (I think, or something like it) standing in an ink pot! Why do people let Mudferthing get away with it?”
“Well, what,” said Kibber, “do you think people should do? And who do you think should do it?” He had crossed his arms across his chest, and looked like a grandfather who could not wait to hear his grandchild explain a spilt honey pot.
“I think people should stop him,” said the boy. “There’s all sorts of heroes and knights and hunters in the Forest of Anything, isn’t there? You’ve already told me about the King’s gamekeeper and how he was so good at guarding the King’s land that the King made him guard his people and castle as well, and the Lorrigan has all kinds of –“
“Shh, boyo, I get your point.” Kibber looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had heard. “But you don’t know about Mudferthing; if you did, you’d understand.”
“Then tell me,” said the boy.
Kibber gave him his very best angry look, but the boy didn’t budge. Kibber sighed. “Fine, boyo. If you must know, Mudferthing cannot be hurt.”
The boy frowned. “What, by anything?”
Kibber nodded. “There is nothing in Anything that can cut Mudferthing’s hide, and nothing so heavy it can crack his noggin wide — that’s how the saying goes, and that’s why heroes (and those who aren’t so much heroes) the land over can only dream of getting what was once theirs back from Mudferthing — no one can kill him, so they know that no matter what, he’ll come after them, and he’ll find them.”
The boy thought for a long time.
“I suppose that only makes sense,” he finally said. Kibber nodded and went on his way, sure that he had gotten his young friend to see reason.
But he whispered to himself after Kibber had gone. “I suppose it makes sense, except I don’t believe it.”

You see, the boy didn’t know which giant lived in the house, but it would have been obvious to most that it could be none other than Mudferthing, the richest and most dangerous of all. Knowing that, is it possible to imagine a house with more wonders?
The boy wandered from room to room, stopping here to gape at a golden spoon hung on the wall, there to stare at a suit of armor on a stand (with a very scary hole right through the middle) but, to his credit, he touched nothing and took nothing from the house. He knew that he had walked, not climbed, to get to this house (except for the window outside), and there were no convenient beanstalks to drop this giant from if he were caught stealing.
The day got on (as they usually do, even in the Forest), and the boy left the house before the giant returned, then made his way to visit his friend, named Kibber. As soon as he found him, he asked about the giant’s house.
“Oh ho, boyo, you found yourself Mudferthing’s place, and it’s lucky you took aught from it!” cried the wise fey.
The boy replied that he was no fool. “Still, I can’t figure out why someone hasn’t done something about that giant,” he said.
“Done something?” said Kibber. “What do you mean?”

During the course of working on Spindle for NaNoWriMo, I wrote a sort of fairytale/flashback about one of the characters — 3000 words that just gushed out in about 90 minutes.
I like it. I liked it so much that I read it to Katherine that night at bedtime. She thought it was scary, but liked the stuff about the jelly.
Anyway, the original thing was written in separate parts, so I’m going to repost them here the same way. Think of it as serial installments.

Continue reading “Spindle excerpt, 1″

Good gods, I can’t look at another page of revisions tonight.

Continue reading “something floating in the back of my brain”

Well, the internet doesn’t seem to want to entertain me today, so I guess I’m stuck with entertaining myself.
The following is mostly an exercise in description — a sort of literary still-life — the purpose was simply to force me to write something, because there is fuck. all. going on today worth commenting on.

Continue reading “Day trip”

Haven’t posted a one word in awhile. Here’s a couple.

Continue reading “several ones”