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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: In a strange world where clocks melt and transistor radios play endless songs to empty castles, an aging knight struggles to rescue the woman of his dreams. Little does he know that he is the one who needs rescuing.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Hypertales and Metafictions, 1990
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2002

18 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [75 KB], eReader (PDB) [32 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [18 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [17 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [67 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [92 KB], hiebook (KML) [69 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [50 KB], iSilo (PDB) [15 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [47 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [29 KB]
Words: 5283
Reading time: 15-21 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

A brilliant evening, sultry and sainted. The beach shimmers with gutted mollusk shells, seaweed bulbs, stranded anklets of kelp. The sea cliffs, a rough crosshatching of granite, strain upward. At their summit the castle stands, juts, hulks. On the open air height of its balcony, above the figure-sculptured walls, Hera turns in her sleep. She has let down her hair and clumped strands slide against the pillows. Her face lies in shadow yet her dreams are framed by light, bright as down, sweet and false and a fleeing lover's last touch. Sweat shines on her thighs and in the taut hollow of her throat.

Below her the great hall waits. Candles low. Shadows deepening. Cupbearers have fled to the ministration of lesser deities. Upon the sooted walls swords and escutcheons sag in their leather halters, tattered arras hang motionless. An old man, once a renowned sage or jester--some say the bastard first-born of the liege himself--now frail, creased as an empty snakeskin, sweeps the mitered stones. Back and forth, back and forth, the ratted broom blows. But for their puckered grayness, his hands are skeletal. Dust bugs and loose pieces of straw swirl about his slow advance.

His mind wanders from his task and for a moment he pauses, raising his bent head. He stands transfixed yet tottering slightly. His belly weighs against his doublet, the furrows of his brow widen. His eyes are webbed by something other than age: sweet passion, wistful and unformed. He is thinking that tonight she may favor him.

After all, he is the only one left.

He has completely forgotten his impotence.

Close by the shadow of the sea cliffs, androgynous sheep emerge from the tide. Or is it only Hera's dream? Their eyes are mindless, baleful, red and moon-filled against the dark water and the foam. They shake the brine from their woolly backs, begin to mill. Flailing hooves churn and clot the sand. Somewhere the destruction begins.

Troops pound across the clearing and into the trees in parallel files. Their pace is a rapid one. A steady ratchet of breathing falls heavily against the lighter, less-definable sounds of shifting clothes and equipment. Now and again they hack the brush to make their passage. Forest animals flee. Wings rise in the stillborn air.

Suddenly the explosions sound all about them. Deafening. Constant for several minutes. An ingot of flames, catastrophically bright, lucents the night with death and a false dawn: the softer yellow of burning blossoms from its core.

Amid the streamers of smoke ... screaming in the sky.