Stories of Hope

by Aussie Speculative Fiction

  Colin walked forward, his shirt flapping in the wind, though every ember that poured down on him fell black and lifeless to the ground in his wake.

  We watched as Old Colin approached the fire. Watched as it took a new form, lashing a tail of red scales and searing heat. We watched as the smoke clouds became a crest and a blazing mouth opened wide and roared so long and hard that Colin’s hair stood out like an echidna’s spines.

  Colin stood before the dragon and lifted his head. He stared into it with his hands raised, ready to strike it down. The fire seethed and writhed as Colin’s arms corded with strain. He pushed back against the elemental beast with a force that cracked the air and shredded the smoke. The blazing trees along the creek snuffed out, creaking and breaking until they shattered. The fire lost its grip on them and retreated, defeated by Old Colin.

  Mum hit the gas and the car raced forward. She swerved and skidded in the dirt and we stopped next to Colin. He stood unmoved by the wind, arms by his sides, calm as a rock. Mum hit the button and my window whirred down. Instead of smoke, I could smell something cool and sweet, the air tasted like freshwater.

  “Colin! Mum yelled. “Get in the bloody car!”

  “She’ll be right,” Colin said calmly. “You lot get on and I’ll stay here and keep this bugger off the house.”

  “Col, I saw it!” was all I managed to say.

  The old man turned his head and winked at me with eyes as blue as the sky in spring. “Told ya it’s a bloody dragon, young fella. Reckon it learned its lesson this time, eh?”

  Colin touched the brim of his battered hat in salute and turned back towards our house. Mum hesitated for a second and then drove out across the bridge and through the blackened gap where the fire had been defeated.

  I twisted around in my seat and tried to see Colin in the swirling smoke. I could barely make him out, hopping over the fence of the home paddock and advancing on the dragon roaring amongst the trees.

  Colin the Dragon Slayer would protect our home from the beast.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: PAUL Mannering is an award winning New Zealand writer who has recently relocated to Canberra, Australia, where he now lives under an assumed identity as a functional adult.

  https://www.facebook.com/NZPaulBooks/

  The Gardens of Hades by Suzannah Rowntree

  THE GARDENS OF HADES are barren when I come.

  He snatches me from the sunlit lands and carries me to the underworld, a dark chasm lit only by the distant flames of Tartarus. His house is of black marble, and as he drags me through the shadowed halls, I try to empty my mind of everything but this moment.

  I know the stories. I know that the gods have cruel desires.

  Instead, he opens the door to a walled garden. A black pool glitters at the centre. Naked sticks rattle in the earth, but nothing lives here.

  “This is yours, Lady Persephone,” he says.

  Then he leaves.

  I’M JUST GLAD HADES leaves me alone, so I don’t ask questions. I infuse the pool with light and call grass and asphodel from the dead soil.

  When he visits again, he comes with a gift.

  “I have brought you a servant.” A veiled shade follows him into the garden.

  I wonder if he wants me to thank him for giving me a slave when I once had friends, a desert when I once had flowers.

  I wonder why he took me.

  Hades inspects a young shrub. “What’s this?”

  “A pomegranate,” I say.

  For a moment, I think he’s going to speak. Then he swallows the impulse and leaves.

  ON THE DAY MY POMEGRANATE tree blooms, I find the shade sitting beneath the tree wiping her eyes with her veil. She says her first word: Springtime.

  Little by little, she remembers how to speak. She talks about finishing this garden and moving on, the underworld blooming under my touch.

  She doesn’t remember her name, so I call her Lethe.

  MY POMEGRANATE TREE bears fruit, but as I peel it open Lethe grabs my wrist. “If you eat, you will become a creature of his realm.”

  I hurl the fruit at the wall.

  IT’S ONLY A MATTER of time till my mother finds me.

  Hades keeps sending gifts: servants, seeds, pruning-hooks and shovels. As the garden fills with life, so do the shades. The third time he visits, he dismisses the servants and looks at me with tired eyes. I wonder if he is always this sad.

  “Your mother grieves without hope. Crops and men die, and no one sacrifices to the gods.” He sighs. “I am to send you back.”

  Back to the home he took from me. Back to mother and wind and sunlight, but first I have one question.

  “Why did you take me?” I spit.

  He is the lord of the dead. He cannot sugar his words, as other gods might. “I need you,” he admits.

  I think of Lethe, and to my surprise, I understand. I am springtime, but he is pain. No wonder the dead suffer, if that is all he can give them.

  Before he can stop me, I rip open a pomegranate, and the juice is sour on my tongue.

  THE GARDENS OF HADES are barren when I come.

  But, where I tread, they bloom.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: SUZANNAH Rowntree lives in a big house in rural Australia with her awesome parents and siblings, drinking fancy tea and writing historical fantasy fiction that blends real-world history with legend, adventure, and a dash of romance. If you like the mythic fantasy of Stephen Lawhead, S. A. Chakraborty or Naomi Novik, you’ll probably enjoy her stories too!

  www.suzannahrowntree.site

  Hope Moves by Belinda Brady

  THE FIRE WAS QUICK and unrelenting. It tore through stone and wood, flames lingering on both as though they were deliberately taking their time to destroy it, painfully dragging out the process. The furniture and artwork meticulously collected and lovingly put together, gone. The house—my home, my family’s home—was gone. All of it gone—reduced to ash within minutes, the simmering embers the only evidence that life once existed there. A family once existed here. And now this family had nothing. Our lives now were the clothes on our back and our memories.

  We had to start again.

  It was hard, though I never thought it would be easy. Finding somewhere to call home took some time. We needed to find a place we felt safe, a place we could easily fit in—though we thought we had with the last place and we know how that turned out. Once we’d found a suitable abode, we needed to furnish it, fill it with homely things. After months of browsing antique stores and opportunity shops, the rooms were filled with beds and chairs and huge chiming clocks. The house was now looking like a home.

  We could finally start again.

  I STAND ON THE BALCONY overlooking our vast front yard, carefully scanning the woods around us, my full black skirt moving gently in the cool wind. There’s not a soul to be seen. The snow is thick and picturesque and has blanketed everything within an inch of its life. I’d been told it snowed for the best part of the year here and that was the selling point for me. Not the five bedrooms, not the ceiling to floor windows and not the lack of neighbours. It was the snow. Things can’t burn if they’re wet.

  “No chance of a fire getting us here,” Jackson observes, as he sidles up next to me.

  I turn to look at my son. He’s dressed to impress in his black suit and hair spiked at differing angles. I adjust his white collar that’s decided to fold in on itself, leaving his look a little unkempt.

  “No, no chance of that,” I reply, concentrating on fixing his collar, smoothing it into place once it’s back in its correct position.

  “Through all of this . . . mess,”—he places his hands on mine, resting them on his chest—“you never wavered. You never gave up. How did you do that, Mother? After what happened to us, what those horrible people did to us, how could you not give up? How could you not let it destroy you?”

  I look up at him and sigh. “Hope, my dear boy, I never let go of hope. Sometimes it’s all we have and sometimes it’s what we need to hold onto
the most—the knowledge that things will get better. It helps us through our darkest days. We always bounce back—always. One day we will look back on these days of sorrow and struggle and remember how hopeless things felt, but we survived. We thrived in fact. We were in the face of doom and we prevailed. We won. We have a home once more. Hope is a powerful thing and something we must never let go of.”

  I remove my hands from his, giving them a tight squeeze as I do. I turn back to the front yard. It’s quiet and safe. No mobs storming our path, yelling, screaming for blood as they break down our front door torching everything and anything in their way. No screams of anguish as my son and I flee into the night, leaving our home to burn.

  I take in the twinkling lights of the city on the horizon and the black luxury car that’s now sitting in our driveway, ready to take us to the Winter Ball.

  “Now,” I turn to my son and smile, fangs exposed, eyes burning red, “are you ready to hit the town and meet our new neighbours?”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: BELINDA is passionate about stories and after years of procrastinating, has finally turned her hand to writing them, with a preference for supernatural/thriller themes; both often competing for her attention. She has had several stories published in a variety of publications, both online and in anthologies. Belinda lives in Australia with her family and has been known to enjoy the company of cats over people.

  The Wandering Flame by Jon Ray

  TIMMAR OF ASCYA WAS an apprentice wizard who had grown up most of his life in the small village of Ascya in the southernmost reaches of the Kingdom of Oscia. The people here were mostly foresters, farmers, stonemasons, and miners. But Timmar had always yearned to a higher calling as a powerful wizard. The simple life of Ascya did not suit him well, but it was where his family called home and regardless of how he felt, he was from there, no matter how boring.

  He did enjoy his occasional trips over to the Kingdom of Irondom to the west. There he would venture into the small town of Mebredor. The town was mostly comprised of fishermen, but also had miners, merchants and a place to get a wicked brew at a place called The Fishy Apple. It was at this establishment one evening that Timmar met another apprentice wizard named Quilkor the Quick.

  He had found employment after his wizard’s apprenticeship in Mebredor working for the local alchemist in potion-making. Being still new to the town, he was surprised to find another apprentice wizard there. Had Timmar known before he came to Mebredor, things might have been different, but being that Timmar was from the Kingdom of Oscia and Quilkor of the Kingdom of Irondom, an instant rivalry formed. This extended well beyond the young wizards as those from Oscia and Irondom only tolerated one another through occasional trading, but each was suspicious of the other. Some wounds still remained through the generations from previous wars between the two kingdoms, but it had been long enough since the last that now only a mutual distrust remained. On the surface, the townsfolks were still civil with one another, but you could bet your last gold piece words would be said the moment you turned your back.

  ON THIS EVENING TIMMAR decided to leave The Fishy Apple soon after Quilkor had arrived and challenged him to a wizard’s duel in the street outside. Timmar wanted nothing more than to accommodate the challenge, but he had promised his mother back in Ascya, he would bring no trouble to his household nor himself. Biting his tongue, he tossed the barmaid payment for his drinks and left outside into a Viscus Solum afternoon. Timmar thought it beautiful how the rays of the sun reflected upon the waters of the nearby lake, broken by the occasional fishing boat with white sails. It appeared the local fishermen were having a good afternoon harvest as the nets appeared full of fish. Quilkor came to the door of the pub and stood there as he threw taunt after taunt to try and provoke Timmar, who only wanted to get back home before dark. He turned his back on Quilkor and was called a coward. Timmar ignored the foolish jest and continued walking towards the stone bridge outside of town. Timmar slowly made his way while wearing his wizard blue robes and white sash. Quilkor wore a light green leather jerkin and earth-coloured cotton trousers, he was able to chase quickly after Timmar and shot a magic burst just over his left shoulder, which Timmar could not tell if it was just a miss or warning shot.

  Timmar turned to face Quilkor, “I don’t want to fight you, I have no quarrel, let me be.”

  “But, you are of Oscia? Why do you think you can simply walk into my town?” Quilkor toyed with Timmar.

  Before Timmar could answer, Quilkor produced an elemental wand and began to summon. Timmar panicked, instead of making his way towards the bridge, he decided to try and lose Quilkor in the nearby forest to the north. He quickly disappeared among the trees as Quilkor stood in place on the road with his wand in one hand and an outstretched hand in the other. He gave the wand a slow twirling motion, round and round it went. From his hand, a magical pulse of energy fed into a blue shimmer of light before him on the ground. A water elemental, small at first, slowly began to form and grow in front of him.

  TIMMAR MEANWHILE RACED towards Asyca in what he hoped would be a shortcut and avoided trouble with Quilkor. He didn’t understand why the older wizard would challenge and attack him, he hadn’t done anything wrong and left as soon as Quilkor had tried to make trouble. It may have been an ego thing for Quilkor, something to provide his worth.

  Timmar made his way into a clearing in the forest that indicated he was halfway there. Before he could reach the other side however, the loud sound of crashing and splashing water could be heard coming from behind him. He knew what was coming, so he pulled out his robes a charred piece of wood with two small red shiny rubies embedded at one end that resembled sparkling eyes. He quickly cast the summon spell of a fire elemental upon the charred wood as he dropped it. The wood began to smoke and then caught fire.

  In no time, the wood was replaced with a humanoid figure standing in front of him awaiting instructions. The fire elemental might not stand up well to the water elemental, but it might just buy him enough time to make his escape. Timmar pointed toward the water elemental now crashing into the open clearing of the forest and commanded it to protect him. The fire elemental turned and did as it was told. Quilkor had just entered the clearing himself when there was the loud hiss of steam coming from the attacks of the fire elemental upon the water elemental.

  Quilkor commanded his water elemental to chase after Timmar and ignore the other elemental, but with each move the fire elemental countered. Quilkor grew tired and commanded his water element to splash damage the fire elemental to end the fight. The water elemental did as told and the fire elemental hissed in pain and the charred wood remains were splashed up and high into a nearby tree. With the battle over, Quilkor urged his water elemental after Timmar, as he threw curses and taunts. He was upset about being denied a wizard’s duel. If Timmar was a real wizard it had to defend the honour of his master wizard. It was disgusting to see another wizard act in this manner and Timmar had to be taught a lesson. Quilkor’s anger grew as he continued to give chase.

  TIMMAR HAD HEARD THE hiss of his fire elemental and knew that the water elemental would soon catch him, so instead of running, he decided to climb a nearby tree. If the water elemental could not reach him, he would be safe. He made his way up the tree to about 20 feet off the ground below. The water elemental splashed into the trunk of the tree with a strong force that knocked Timmar out and onto the ground below where his head hit a jagged rock sticking out of the forest floor. The world grew cold and the last thing Timmar remembered before slipping into darkness was the painful suffocation of water filling his nose, mouth and then lungs.

  Quilkor was shocked when he arrived at the base of the tree Timmar had fallen out of. His water elemental covered all of Timmar’s body in a watery grave. He had only wanted to rough the other wizard up, but not this, not kill him. This could mean trouble if anyone found out. Quickly, he released his summoned water elemental and Timmar’s lifeless body came to rest on the forest floor. Quilkor slowly walked over to him
and waited, there was no sign of breath. He cast an elementary life check spell that confirmed his worst fears, Timmar of Ascya was dead.

  He looked around to make sure no one had seen what had happened and quickly made his way back to Irondom and then the town of Mebredor. Later that night, calls went out in Ascya for Timmar, but the young lad never came home. A worried mother left Ascya to desperately check out her son’s favourite spot to visit in Mebredor. He should have been home by now, she worried something might have happened, her motherly instincts told her it had.

  THE CHARRED PIECE OF wood with sparkling red ruby eyes began to smoulder in the dry tree branches. The smoke soon turned to flames as the fire elemental returned to humanoid form. As the weight grew the elemental slipped back down between the branches to the ground below, lighting on fire everything it touched. Once it was on the ground it began to circle around looking for the one who had summoned it and asked for its protection.

  The fire elemental lit everything around it on fire and soon the entire area was ablaze with fire, smoke, and ash. The wind began to blow hard, which caused the flames to creep westward back towards Mebredor. As the fire grew, Timmar’s worried mother could see the growing smoke and flames across the river on the other side from the road she travelled. With the sight of a growing forest fire nearby, her urgency to find her son only increased. Her sixth sense told her to search the fires of the forest so she broke out into a run to cross the stone bridge outside of Mebredor. Once there she saw another strange lad coming from the forest.