Teagan's Books

Saturday, December x, 2023

Welcome back to the Atonement, Bad Bishop serial.  I’m glad you’re here.  Like they say, great minds think alike.  This time, the random reader things, which drive this episode were from the “soundtrack” offerings. Two of you suggested the same song — I’ve Seen All Good People, by the group Yes (as in the video above).  The song was from Dan Antion and Kerfe at “memadtwo” blog.  Some of the song lyrics acted as “random reader things” to drive this episode, as did the mood of the music. 

Several good people come together in this episode, so it’s a fitting song.  Let’s just hope that it doesn’t go badly for our characters, because as they move ahead two squares, they’ll be in danger.

Ahead

This episode brings back the otherworldly pigs and is told from Deme’s point of view.  At first, she is with her best friend Honeybell.  Then there’s a short jump (for the sake of a little suspense) and we return to Deme, but she’s with the rebellious but determined Moccus.  This episode is around 2500 words.

Previously

“No, Pepper,” Uncle Salty told me fondly.  “Go back.  No matter how hard it is, or how afraid you are, I need you to wake up.  Wake up,” he stated without explanation, and disappeared.

However, Pepper Riley still did not awaken.  During the same time when her spirit was with Salty Riley in that between place at a foggy river, and after he tried to send Pepper back into the living world, Deme and the other glowing pigs were doing their best to find a way to help protect their town.

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Episode 1 — All Good People

Deme

The water of the mill pond mirrored the clear blue color of the sky.  It also reflected the green aurora borealis lights spiraling above.  Streams of auroras combined to create a narrow rotating column.  The two otherworldly pigs shivered.  Both could feel the wrongness that permeated the day.

In the distance the sweet sound of sirens singing could be heard.  It was too far away to endanger human ears.  Otherworldly pigs have keen hearing, but they are immune to all but the most powerful of siren calls.  Their hearing was so sharp that they registered sounds far beyond the song, neutralizing it.  Even so, Honeybell shivered.  Deme looked uneasily at her friend and suppressed a shudder of her own.

A cruel and powerful elemental had set in motion a bizarre game of chess.  As her bluer than blue eyes fixed on the green lights, Deme wondered how or why the Great Protectors would let such a thing happen.  Breathing hard, she slowed and stopped.

“Oh, thank the Lady,” Honeybell panted.  “Yes, I have to rest.  I haven’t caught sight of Moccus for the longest.  How that scruffy pig ever got so fast is beyond me.  I guess we’ll catch up with him at the mill.  We’re almost there.”

Gasping for breath, Honeybell eventually noticed her companion’s silence.  She followed Deme’s heavenward gaze and answered the grunted question.

“Deme, such things aren’t for the likes of us to understand,” Honeybell murmured.

“It’s not that, Honeybell.  Or it isn’t only that,” Deme started.  “Now and then, I could swear that I see something solid inside that spiral of auroras.  It sort of reminds me of… of a giant barber pole, of all things.”

As memories clicked into place, the two pigs turned wide bright blue eyes toward one another.  They snuffled, gasped, and snorted.

“Those are just stories,” Deme grunted looking again toward the lights.

“Implausible…” Honeybell began, and Deme gave her a sharp look for the unexpected turn she believed her friend’s words were about to take.  “But not impossible.  Actually, it might be quite logical, considering everything that’s been happening in Atonement, Tennessee.”

“Do you hear that?” Honeybell began and Deme grunted, puzzled.  “Or I should say, do you hear what isn’t there?  The siren song has stopped.  That doesn’t bode well.”

“You think it means they already have finished whatever hateful thing they were up to?  Whatever they were going to do to Donny Metatron?  We need to get to the mill,” Deme said and started toward the two-story mill building.  “Come on.  We’re not there yet.”

However, Honeybell crouched down, looking beyond Deme.  An unexpected gust of icy wind caused the two pigs to huddle against one another.  A large shape blotted out the sun.

“Great Dragon,” they murmured with quivering voices.

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A short while later, Moccus came back for Deme and Honeybell. Deme barely noticed him amid the gusts of frigid air as her best friend was lifted by the ice dragon. 

The shock negated any sort of rest from that momentary stop.  Deme’s breathing labored as she struggled to keep up with him.  Despite the bandana tied around his neck, his appearance was disheveled. Deme was one of the fastest runners among the Lady Goewin’s drift of otherworldly pigs, but even she couldn’t travel as quickly as Moccus.

“I’m worried about Honeybell,” Deme grunted between gasps for breath.  “I should have stopped her going with him… but the whole thing took me by surprise.”

“She’ll be fine,” Moccus called back over his shoulder.  “Honeybell has a grip like lockjaw.  I guess it’s a good thing I came back for you when I did.  Honeybell is doing what she has to do.  It wasn’t for either of us to stop her.”

Deme stumbled to a stop as her attention was diverted to the sky.

The auroras flickered, then very briefly, extinguished.  In that moment, she beheld a solid column where a red, blue, and purple haze rotated.  At each end of the column were silver structures.  She could have sworn that she saw a narrow light strike down from it to the ground.

“Can you keep going, Deme?” Moccus asked in an impatient tone that was in keeping with his gruff exterior, although she saw that concern for her was reflected in his eyes.

“You’re so much faster, Moccus.  You need to go on ahead.  I’ll catch up,” she told her friend.  “It won’t help Donny Metatron or anyone else for you to wait for me.”

“I’m not going without you, so hurry up and catch your breath,” he snorted.  “Besides, based on all that stuff in the sky, I think Enoch’s already at the mill.  If he’s going to start any irreparable retribution, then we’re probably already too late.”

As Deme looked at the sky, her bright eyes caught sight of large blue and gray mottled wings just before they disappeared beyond the auroras.  She drew in a breath, and would have crossed her fingers if she’d had them instead of cloven hooves.

“Maybe not.  Whether or not they would be intimidated by Usdi, Honeybell is smarter and more persuasive than anyone I know.  She might be able to help in her own way,” Deme grunted, her bemused gaze following that streak of blue and gray.

Deme took a last glance over her shoulder, up toward the column of spiraling lights.  Then she and Moccus plunged into the darkness of a tunnel that was cleverly hidden from human eyes.

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Their tiny hooves echoed, and occasionally splashed, in the damp tunnel.  Soon Deme heard the reverberation of a bass voice in the distance.

Moccus was right.  Enoch is said to have a deep voice like that, Deme mused.  He’s already here.

However, she kept the thought to herself.  Moccus had more than his share of self-confidence.  I wouldn’t do to admit that the scruffy pig know he had been right about anything.  He’d be insufferable.

“I’ll do whatever it takes.  Donny is my blood,” the man with the resonant voice growled.

“Your vows bind you, as do your obligations to this place,” a melodic baritone replied.

The two otherworldly pigs hesitated.  They exchanged a discomfited glance.

“I think that’s Bheema and Enoch… discussing the situation,” Moccus remarked, and lingered on the word to make it a synonym for arguing.  “If those two get into a fist fight, I don’t want to be around.  They’re both so strong, the tunnel could cave in and bring the entire mill down on top of us.”

“Oh Moccus, Lord Ganapati and the Metatron are both too mature and wise to brawl with each other,” Deme told him derisively, but she didn’t feel too confident about her statement.

“I can still act.  Yes, I have position here, but I’m not one of the Great Protectors.  As long as I don’t let… those friends help,” Enoch countered, and in the brief silence Deme imagined Bheema lifting his eyebrows.  “You know, the friends who gave me a lift to get here so fast — they’re still nearby.”

Deme followed Moccus who crept closer to the conversation.  When they rounded a bend in the tunnel, the two pigs were much closer to the men than she had expected — they could see them.

Another step and we would have blundered right into them! Deme thought.

At first, Deme only saw one man, and with no one else for scale she didn’t realize just how huge he was.  Bald and dark, he wore ceremonial robes of white brocade, which were open in front.  Down the front were two panels lavishly embroidered in gold, and one similar panel in the center back.  A short cape of the same brocade was slung over one shoulder as if it was an afterthought.

She had seen photos on Gruntle.com and the robes looked similar to those of the bishop in an Oriental Orthodox Church.  Deme wondered if that was simply coincidence.

The gold embroidery twinkled as the big man shifted.  Then they could see the Conductor of Celestial Armies, still in his ceremonial gear.  Bheema’s height was a little taller than average, but he barely came up to the man’s shoulder.

“Enoch is even bigger than the stories say,” Moccus snorted quietly.  “He looks like he’d be as strong as Bheema, and Bheema isn’t human.”

Deme had to agree.  The man was as tall as any human she had ever seen, and broad as a door, but he was all muscle.  She was more intimidated than ever.

Hunching down in the shadows, she and Moccus waited and listened.  Deme told herself that she was simply being respectful and waiting for the proper time to make her presence known.  She definitely wasn’t eavesdropping.

“And those friends who lifted you up from the desert, Enoch Metatron, will do anything they deem necessary to protect you.  That is the true danger here,” Bheema argued wryly, and Deme flinched at the inflexible ice in Lord Ganapati’s eyes.

“Just as your Gana will do anything to protect you,” Enoch reminded him with no small amount of heat in his tone.  “Alright, alright.  I realize the Gana are an entirely different matter than… than the kind of maverick help my friends would provide.  I know that would constitute outside interference.  I guess we’re both bad bishops — we’re prevented moving effectively on the chessboard by friendly pawns.  But I have to do something!”

Deme’s keen ears noted the minute slog of a wet footfall that came from another entrance to the tunnel.  It came out behind the two men.  In the flickering light, a shadow fell across them.

“Grandpa, tell your friends to stand down,” Adelle Metatron stated.

“Adelle is right, Grandpa.  They might jump in to defend you, but they feel no obligation to protect either of us,” declared Annie as she walked into the space with her twin sister.

Torchlight gleamed on the shuriken that were tucked into Annie’s belt.  Deme recognized the Japanese throwing stars for magical artifacts.

“And God take pity on the imbeciles who thought they could use my son as a pawn and get away with it,” Annie added as she brought out an antique crossbow.  “I’ll send their instant karma,” she murmured grimly.

“Holy hog’s wallow,” Deme whispered to Moccus.  “Annie’s always been the retiring one.  I guess that’s what humans mean by mother lion.”

“Annie, Adelle—” Enoch began, his mouth set in a firm line.  “You two need to move on back two squares.  And take those artifacts back where they belong.  I’ll bring Donny home.  I’m not going to risk either of you.”

They’re all good people.  It would be awful if any on them get hurt, Deme thought when she noticed that Adelle was also armed, but with a small gold-plated .38 revolver.

When Moccus saw the gun, he gave a low whistle that only Deme could hear.  He snarked that he wondered if the bullets were gold too.  However, Deme had seen that pistol once before.  That time Adelle had used it at the masquerade party Lou Lawton-Gyffes had given.  It was the party where Esmeralda Lawton was in so much danger that Deme risked herself to try and save Ralda-Esmeralda.

“Moccus, what are we going to do?” Deme cried in a whisper.  “Annie and Adelle are sure to get hurt.”

“Help me get that stuff out of my bandana,” he replied.

Deme figured that was as close to an answer as she would get.  She snorted her annoyance, but helped.

Taking a deep breath, Moccus boldly moved out of the shadows.  Deme followed, albeit timidly.  The scene was so tense that they might have gone unnoticed if Moccus had not grunted loudly.

“Before you go any further,” Moccus began and dropped a misshapen chunk from his bandana to the stone floor.  “You might want to put some of this stuff in your ears.  Siren-song doesn’t bother us pigs, but that might not be true for you.”

Annie and Adelle seemed exasperated by the interruption.  Bheema glared, as if ready to chastise the pigs for being there.  Deme knew that Lorg Ganapati only meant to protect them, but he wasn’t somebody she wanted to annoy.

Enoch Metatron looked at the pigs in surprise.

“Friends of the Lady Goewin?” he asked, and then gave them a dazzling grin.

The big man looked from the pigs to the glob that Moccus had presented, seeming to understand what it was.

“I um… liberated it from Kapros, the Erymanthian Boar, who probably intended to sell it to his side,” Moccus told the very tall, heavily muscled man.  “Some of Leonidas Gathright’s minions aren’t immune to the power of sirens.  Truth is, Old Green Eyes has gone off the chessboard, so to speak, by letting the sirens get involved.  As far as I can tell, they’re acting on their own.”

Enoch gave such a deep loud laugh that Deme thought she felt it vibrate in the stone walls.

“Beeswax?  But not just any old wax.  This is from the original, isn’t it?” the big man chuckled and the other people turned questioning expressions toward him.  “In the poem, The Odyssey, when Odysseus’ men were advised to block out the sirens call, they used beeswax,” Enoch explained, but looking at Annie and Adelle, he abruptly sobered.

“But that only solves one problem.  You two are staying out of this,” Enoch told the twins.

As Deme looked around, she was certain none of the people believed the women would cooperate with that.  She didn’t think Enoch believed it either.  However, when the eyes of the Conductor of the Celestial Armies met hers, Deme felt Bheema had someone else on his mind — Pepper Riley.  He turned to Enoch.

“They’ve already used Donny to draw us out and force a move,” Bheema started.

“You think Leonidas Gathright is trying to make us leave the white queen unprotected?  It sounded to me like Old Green Eyes slinked off to lick his wounds,” Enoch stated, but paused consideringly.  “Gathright’s an elemental, and that might influence the sirens to work for him, but it’s unlikely.  He has a history of decimating waters, Bloody Pond down in Chickamauga, Georgia, for instance.  The sirens aren’t likely to be working with him.  They’re just opportunists who enjoy using their seductive powers.”

“That’s all true, but Gathright would be quick to use the situation to his advantage even if he has no agreement with the sirens,” Bheema said.  “Right now, Pepper Riley is weak from her injury, and she has only the hybrid kitten and Maudie Rocket to protect her.”

“And you’re reluctant to use the “queen’s rook” are you, Bheema?  Can’t say as I blame you.  He isn’t someone I’d want around a woman I cared about, although Cadence Nix is probably our best option.  But I thought he fell off the grid quite a while back,” Enoch remarked.

“I can find him,” Moccus stated abruptly.  “Cade owes me.  I’ll get him to go to the boathouse.”

For a second, everyone was silent.  With an unaccountably sad expression in his large eyes, Bheema murmured something that sounded like “So be it.”  He nodded to Moccus and the pig scampered away.

Then Bheema squatted down so he would be closer to eye level with Deme.

“Deme, I want you to go back to Lake Uktena,” he told her, his voice becoming gentle.  “Warn Maudie, and if Pepper is conscious, her as well—”

“But Lord Ganipati, we pigs are forbidden to talk to humans or even speak in front of them!” Deme exclaimed and then felt mortified that she had interrupted such a person.

“Little one, I’m sure that neither the Lady Goewin nor the Great Protectors would object in this instance,” he replied with a small smile.  “Now go and warn them that there might be a danger from Gathright or some of his creatures, but that help is on the way.  Tell them to stay there until Cadence Nix arrives.”

Bheema stood and faced the others.  A resigned expression was on his face.

“We’ll have to leave their safety in Cade’s hands,” Bheema added, and Enoch raised one eyebrow.

The Metatron had seemed to recommend the idea a moment before, Deme thought.  Why does he seem sort of surprised?  I think he doesn’t trust Cadence Nix…  No, it’s not a general distrust… it’s only about women, Deme realized and her intensely blue eyes widened.  He thinks Lord Ganapati has given up — that he’s just letting go of Pepper Riley and knowing that the nix will probably want her for his own!

“Cade has been part of the Rectify community for several years now.  He’ll do all he can to help,” Adelle offered, although her eyes didn’t seem be in agreement with her words.

“I think maybe that’s what Bheema’s worried about — what kind of help that might be,” Enoch began derisively.  “The nix might have trouble overcoming his basic nature.  No matter that he’s been in Rectify working on it.”

Deme swallowed worriedly.  She took a breath and then hurried back toward the boathouse.

♣ ♣ ♣

In the next episode, Deme will reach the boat house with Bheema’s message.  But is there really any help at all for Pepper?

Next time my inhibitions were left at the door, when I got crazy with the soundtrack. I love to hear from you, so friendly comments are encouraged.  Hugs!

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Atonement in Zugzwang, Book 1

If you haven’t followed the serial, the searchable Kindle (e-book) is a perfect way to start.  Likewise, if you want a refresher since this new serial is absolutely tied to Book-1, I’ve given you an easy way to catch up.

Universal Purchase Links
Kindle: relinks.me/B0CHNX2X6T

Paperback  relinks.me/B0CHL7DL6Q

The Rest of the Atonement Series

Atonement, Tennessee

Full series of e-books with one click:  relinks.me/B087JV25JT

Kindle:  rxe.me/HGSVA8A

Paperback: relinks.me/1481826948

Also in Spanish, translated by Olga Núñez Miret! The title for the Spanish-speaking market is Expiación y Magia

Atonement in Bloom

Kindle:  rxe.me/5RRBLH

Paperback:  relinks.me/1726882128

The Glowing Pigs, Snort Stories of Atonement, Tennessee

Kindle   rxe.me/LTBDNH

Paperback   relinks.me/1725891972

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This is a work of fiction.  Characters, names, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene

All rights reserved. 

No part of this work may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

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