It’s an old stone house with a tall stone tower

It’s bent and battered but it still holds power

And the priests keep blessing but the dark’s still calling

So the cattle’s brought in soon as night starts falling

We’re the edge of the kingdom so we don’t pay taxes

And the only human sounds are the woodcutter’s axes

So the lords don’t bother and we like it that way

Though few who come to work here have the heart to stay

There’s a new girl in the kitchens and we have to warn her

Of the stain that hides in the shadow in the corner.

It’s Day Two of the October Frights and that means the start of loads of goodies! Check out the October Frights Giveaway 2023 for some great reads and there are more books at the October Frights Mini Book Fair if you’re looking for more. And that’s not all – on all of these blogs you can find more stories and spooky goings on so feel free to drop in.

Hawk’s Happenings

Crymsyn Hart

Be Afraid of the Dark

Camilla Voiez, British Horror Author

Frighten Me

Angela Yuriko Smith: Exercising My Writes

GirlZombieAuthors

James P Nettles

EV Whyte, Author

Silver Hollow Stories

Happy Reading

Your monuments, what do they mean?

Build your stone high and shout your deity.

Hope that the stone outlasts the age

Hold tight to written, lawful piety

And when the old roots wrack your faith

When the cold moon bites and rags your mind

How do you hold on to the bitter dregs?

How do you slip into your role assigned?

Old shadows creep and stretch before your feet

Old lanes and lines cross across your path

You’re happy to bask in summer’s generous warmth

Are you willing to take the lash of winter’s wrath?

Look at the stone path, that’s where you tread,

Turning away to turfed green paths that roam.

Is it because your faith outlasts the stone?

Or do you listen when your soul hears home?

Thanks to the Grumpy Old Gods Anthology coming out on 1st April, I was thinking about the tension between old faiths and new and I was reminded of this poem originally posted on a former blog on 4th April 2018. I hope you enjoy.

There is a castle on the hill,

A king sat there in days of old.

His knights were brave, his ladies fair,

The pinnacle of brave and bold

 

Minstrels there were, and jesters sharp.

Ministers with wisdom deep.

Priests and monks in cloistered nooks,

All knowledge gathered in his keep

 

There was a knight, a lady fair,

A false man and a desperate fight,

A riven kingdom, empty hope,

A funeral pyre and fading light,

 

The story’s old and patched with songs

On threads that wore out long ago

Who knows the truth of treasure there

Before the final overthrow

 

Young lads go there to try their hand

Digging the vaults and dusty hall

The tombs are empty, nothing’s there

A bird’s nest in a broken wall.

 

Some nights, when Venus sails the sky

And Mars is courting near the moon

They say that ghostly dancers whirl

To echoes of an ancient tune

 

Splendour and crowns have tumbled down

The painted walls have faded pale

And while we bustle round our lives

Dust slowly settles on the tale. 

As I’m gearing up for the release of King’s Silver, I’m revisiting my previous dips into medieval fantasy. I wrote this a long while ago, but I thought it would be fun to share it again. It’s one of the favourite poems I’ve written.

Cast your power over me,
Burn it to the sky.
You cast a love spell over me –
You’ll own me till you die

Now I am dead and gone, my dear,
And you are living still.
The spell persists beyond the veil
And wraps around my will

But things are different in the dark,
So much is clear to me,
The lines of magic run two ways
Though I cannot break free

For many years I was your love,
For many years your slave.
And still you feel my dead heart close
Still linking from the grave.

I’m standing at your shoulder now
I’ll never leave your side
You made your bed, now lie in it,
The love spell never died

So do your dreams grow dark, my dear?
Do your days drag long and grey?
You took my will away from me,
It’s time to make you pay.

As I sleep, my faerie lover

Curls against my back and sighs

Deep in slumber, resting with me

Dreaming of pearlescent skies

Matching me in dreaming’s dances

Stepping through my idling mind

Petals fall in springtime meadows

As winter’s cares are tossed behind

When I wake, I don’t remember

In the dirty light of day

My days are creeping through my autumn

But in my sleep, I dream of May.

The day is without motion, all is quiet

The smoke across the valley rises straight

And in the silent room that is my kitchen

I sit and nurse my tea and slowly wait.

I careful move, not to disturb the silence

The frost is hard and the brittle grass is white

I sit and chill within the silent garden

The sunshine has no heat, just frozen light

As slow as moss, I move back to the kitchen

And breathe while waiting for my heart to fill

One day I’ll thaw and rattle through the hours

Till then the light, the day and I are still.

I thought I heard your voice,

But it was just an echo.

Outside a car door slammed.

It was spilling laughter around it,

People were shouting across it,

And I think it reminded me.

And that is all the noise I hear.

The room is silent.

I stopped the clock

As its loud ticking hurt me.

The shadows through the curtains

Rise and fall with the daylight.

My room is dark and paused.

I should light a candle.

I should eat some food.

I should breathe carefully.

I should get some sleep.

I should push myself out of here.

I am here, quiet in the dark.

You have gone and are elsewhere,

In the daylight and warmth.

And that is all.

There should be storms, not the calm, still sky.

There should be storms, and dark castle walls.

This faded coffee shop, half empty, in the shade,

Is not the place to watch your life crash down.

I wait for you, and you are late again.

In the corner, reading a cheap magazine,

A woman droops and, trying not to yawn,

Turns the page to new adulteries.

I check my phone, there’s nothing new from you,

Just half an hour wait and waiting still.

I wonder if you know what waits here, crouching,

In this faded, shaded, tired coffee shop

Two girls behind the counter, talking low

Of boys and school and last week’s hair.

They bend the paper clip from next week’s hours

To try and free the block in the machine

They sound so young and earnest, taking care

Warning each other about the burning pipes

Promising to be there at the club

And one will lend the other their new dress

The woman yawns again and leaves the place

Out into the bright and shining mall

Past the old rabbi playing careful chess

Facetiming with his friend in Tel Aviv

The two old men talk with kindness, they are kind

And measure the words they use across the miles

What words can I use to you so close

When I stare across the table at your face.

The old rabbi taps his hearing aid and shouts

A gentle, kind goodbye across the miles.

Packs up his chess and leaves into the mall.

I am reading the left magazine

The coffee shop is shutting with the mall,

The sun is draining down the peaceful sky

There should be storms.  I text you, ‘It is over

Do not contact me again.  Goodbye.’

Another blast from the past, first published in 2016

Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,” he said.

– Walter de la Mare, The Listeners

‘Tell them I kept my word,’ he said

As the storm clouds gathered overhead

With the setting sun tainting them red

‘Tell them I came, as was my right

But the locked Great Hall was shuttered tight

And the echoes mocked in the fading light

He rested his head on the deep grained wood

The sunset glowed on his travel stained hood

‘Tell them I came as I said I would.’

‘Tell them I travelled over the seas

Across the great rivers and under the trees

But I kept my word and I held the keys’

A raven cawed in a twiggy nest

The wind was rising in the west

‘Tell them, say that I did my best.’

‘I saw strange stars and stranger skies.’

But he listened in vain for the listeners sighs

‘I kept my word, all else is lies.’

At the edge of the sky the thunder growled

And the rising wind wept soft then howled

At the dead Great Hall the traveller prowled

‘I kept my oath and now am free

I no longer approach on bended knee.’

He opened his hand and dropped the key

It seemed like no stroke of luck or chance

That the heavens threw down their fiery lance

As he rode away with no backward glance.

He felt the heat hard on his back

The Great Hall flamed from the lightning’s crack

But he still rode on down the weedy track.

I seriously recommend the original, and you can read it here

Originally published July 1st 2014

This was first posted some time ago, and was inspired, in a way, by my late grandmother’s dedication to the family graves and how, as a small child, they seemed like such an adventure and expedition, with a ritual tidying of the grave and a milkshake on the way home.

The first and third Saturday are set in stone

And nothing may disturb them.

It is inviolable that she goes, through wind and weather

No let or hindrance permitted

First the train ride, then the bus,

Then the long walk up the wooded hill.

Dragging the flowers and the cleaning kit

Into the murmuring cemetery.

It is a ritual, disposing of the old flowers from the grave

The browned leaves and petals on the heap,

The washing of the neat urn on the grave

The snipping of the stems

The flowers renewed, she wipes the headstone,

Trims the edges, picks up the gravel

Waters the tiny alpines in the cracks

Brushes off the dead leaves.

Nothing stops the pilgrimage.

And once the grave is neatened, then she sits and reads

Perhaps in the shelter near the church

Perhaps on the stone seat near the tree

The first and third Saturday are hers, defended

And who could argue against tending to a grave.

Who’s grave?  She doesn’t know but cares

Because they gave the gift

Of the first and third Saturday, unassailable.