Quicksilvertrance... a Memo

1. “Sandkings”

2. “Snow”

3. “Bears Discover Fire”

4. “Magic For Beginners”

… and guess what? They’re all (or at least some of them) are parts of two anthologies edited by Orson Scott Card.

The names of the anthologies? Future on Fire and Future on Ice. Nice!

…laced with pain and tears. With poison.

The sound of the horn, blown by a heavy heart, cut into the silence. The time had come to thrust away the last inklings of doubt, those traitorous feelings that lurk in the corners of man’s soul, and face the red of war. Hands clasped in prayer, he whispered the last of his confessions, sending them up into the heavens like white doves—a pure white, a white like bliss, a white like surrender.

But it was too late to turn back. Not that he had much of a choice in the matter; the authorities had scoured his home village for every last able man, rousing them from their meager, yet comfortable lives. Even the widow’s only son who never spoke a word, harmless as a baby in a cradle, was dragged to the gates of death.

And at those very gates, peering above the prickly hedges, the men waited. Crouched low, stomachs growling after days of starvation, the men clung closely to what little weaponry they were granted. One man, his face gaunt from fatigue and hunger, gripped a broken spear, his knuckles clenched white—his eyes were sharp with the fright of a desperate animal. Savage and too far gone for help.

They rose together, the rags that were their clothes flapping wildly in the wind, as if commanded by some supreme voice. With their lives dangling precariously over the edge, their axes and hammers were poised to strike.

He gave one last long look at his comrades. A man grinned, his demonic smile resembling that of a skull—the hunger for kill burning, fueled by hatred and the promises of glory and wealth should he return alive. But the others knew better, nursing their tired legs, catching their tears, they knew it was a lost cause. No one in the platoon would survive the slaughter. No one was coming back in one piece.

The widow’s boy, now drummer boy, clutched at the worn drum that hung around his neck. Resignedly, he began the steady beat that chorused the soldiers’ march to the battlefield. With each fall of the drumsticks, the soldiers took another step.

The arrows fell first. As if a dark cloud had moved over the fields, the volleys of arrows plunged like rain. Then, the thunder of hooves screamed the coming of the enemy. In flocks and heaps, they poured from the mountains, washing the valley with bullets and blood, tearing the air with piercing screams.

The men who hesitated were trampled. Those who lusted for the ends of others, or their own, succumbed to the enemy’s force. But he dared not linger with glances that would be of no use in the dire situation; he wasted no tears on the fallen—men whom he had grown up amongst, men whom he once called neighbors.

He felt a weak tug at his legs and looked down to see the drummer boy gasping for breath, a crimson flower blossoming at the dying boy’s side. Too tired to fight, too hopeless, he threw himself over the now-dead body and closed his eyes. No more would he have to feel fear.

— written for my homework assignment on sentence shelves.