The Price of Electrum
by R. W. Day

vol 3
num 7

It wasn't the deadly venomous insects, nor the snakes, hanging from the trees like false and fatal vines, waiting to choke the life out of you.  It wasn't the great cats lurking in the shadows, nor even the hostile tribes silently stalking them, dart guns at the ready. No, Quentin Cavanaugh sighed. The only true danger on this expedition was his employer. Ridiculous. He'd spent twenty-five years mucking about the inner reaches of the Eighth Continent; surely he could manage one petulant aristocrat?

"Really, Mr. Cavanaugh, I've been studying the maps and I think it best if we abandon your idea of following the river and strike out overland."  Lord Plotney pushed a stubby finger into the dead center of his well-creased map.  "The land route seems much more direct.  The river meanders for miles out of our way."

They had banked the boats on a mud-slicked slope for a rest break. Quentin hadn't wanted to stop; it was hard enough making decent time with Lord Plotney's luggage and Lord Plotney's haut-cuisine meals and Lord Plotney's daughter and her hapless maid, but the bearers were growing more mutinous by the day.  If frequent breaks would keep them from bolting, then frequent breaks they'd get.

Unfortunately, a break gave his exasperating employer yet another opportunity to demonstrate how completely unfit he was for an expedition of this type.

"My Lord, that 'direct route' goes through some rather difficult terrain. There aren't roads, you understand."

"I understand that Horatius used the land route when he reached the Necropolis.  We would be following in the footsteps of the great Horatius, how much safer could we be?"

Amateurs.   A bit of reading, a few speeches before Explorer's Club banquets and they think they're bloody Stanley in bleeding Africa.  Africa was a walk in the park compared to Lesser Gondwana. "If you have read Horatius' diaries, you will remember that he was captured and almost eaten whilst attempting the overland route.  I would prefer not to be eaten." At least not till I've been paid, Quentin thought.

"And I would prefer not to have my authority challenged in front of the help.  I am in charge of this expedition. If I say we are going by land..." He let the words drop away, his meaning clear.

"Well at least let me send your daughter and her servant back upstream.  Jani could escort them back to Nabutu safely."

The petty lordling's eyebrows came together in a caterpillar-like line.  "You forget - my daughter is the Silver Princess reborn. We need her, Mr. Cavanaugh."

Quentin looked askance at Lady Delanna, the copper-green tinge to her skin giving proof of her native blood, reclining on a rock under a parasol held by her long-suffering maid.  "What?" she asked.  "What did I do this time?"

"You breathed," Quentin muttered, but he knew when he was finished.  A few quick orders and they'd secured the boats for the (likely mythical) trip home, collected their belongings and started in a single file line into the heart of the jungle.

Not only were there no roads, there was no real trail, and the great Horatius, while undoubtedly a brilliant explorer, was an inadequate map maker, tending to pepper his cartography with 'Heere be Dragons' and 'Heere we yncountred six large Serpents' rather than with references to more practical landmarks that might have a chance of remaining in place for five hundred years.  One could hardly expect six large serpents to stay still so long.  At least Quentin sincerely hoped not. 

They forced their way through the jungle by arduous inches sun while the mosquitoes swarmed under the tropical sun. Quentin's arm ached from the strain of plunging his machete into the heavy vegetation again and again; it was a bit like playing tennis with a lead racket.  This was the worst job he'd ever had, and if he'd just ignored his greed and followed his instincts, he'd be sitting back in Nabutu drinking iced rum and reading his foreign papers. 

But Lord Plotney had turned up in Hanrahan's the morning after Quentin had taken some pretty substantial losses at the tables, and Plotney had quite intelligently begun their discussion with the money.  Quentin had already as much as agreed to take the commission before he even heard the destination.

"... and so I believe we can make the Necropolis in ten days, possibly less."

"Excuse me, My Lord, did you say the Necropolis?" The silly sod might as well mount an expedition to lost Atlantis or the dark side of the moon.

"Yes, haven't you been listening?"

"My Lord," Quentin took a deep breath.  "I certainly understand the appeal of an expedition to the Necropolis – its wealth is fabled, after all, and the first men to visit it since Horatius would be heralded in newspapers from here to London and beyond.  But Horatius' maps are lost, and his memoirs give insufficient details for the modern explorer to trace the land route, and nothing is known of the water route beyond the mere fact of its existence."

"Ahem." The aristocrat had withdrawn a folded parchment from his waistcoat.  "There's where you are wrong, sir.  I have the last copy of Horatius' map to the Necropolis."

The map had unfortunately been quite legible, showing both routes that would lead, allegedly lead, Quentin had reminded himself, to the Necropolis.  But lack of a route hadn't been the only potential stumbling block.

"Assuming we find the Necropolis, then what?  If the legends are correct, only someone of the royal blood of Char can open the inner sanctum."

And that was how Quentin had come to be saddled not only with Lord Plotney but with his annoying, part-native daughter - their ticket into the depths of the Necropolis.  He suspected the man had married the girl's mother with that goal firmly in mind – it wasn't in the nature of aristocrats to marry native women for love.  They might make for exotic bed partners, but hardly played well in the ballrooms of the Empire. The silly bint was damn lucky.  His half-native grandmother had been abandoned by her British father without a backwards glance

"Father," whined the girl.  "I'm hot. Can we stop for a rest, please?"

"Yes," Quentin hurried to say before Plotney could even get his mouth open.  "The bearers need another break."

There wasn't anything resembling a clearing in this part of the jungle, but it was amazing how the possibility of a rest energized the men, who made short work of the vegetation and in no time had a decent patch of ground cleared and a meat roasting on a spit over a roaring fire.

"This water is hot!"  Lady Delanna emptied the contents of her canteen onto the ground.  "I want some ice."

A sullen ring of men glared silently at her.  Water, potable water, was in short supply. 

"And my hair is a fright.  Aldis, come do my hair."

The poor put-upon maid, unlike her mistress obviously of pure European ancestry, took up her brush before her like a mythic Valkyrie wielding her iron spear.

"Quite a piece of work, eh, boss?"  Jani had slipped up beside him unnoticed.

"I'm surprised the maid hasn't strangled her in her sleep.  For that matter, I'm surprised he hasn't got a butler or footman or two following after, wiping his arse for him."  Quentin gestured back to their employer, sitting on a folding chair that some hapless bearer had dragged for the last fifty miles, fanning his florid face with Horatius' map.  "That map ought to be in a museum instead of aerating a fat git who'd be better off in the clubs of Deepest Darkest London, not looking for the Necropolis."

Jani kept casting glances around the pseudo-clearing they'd made.  "This place, it's on the outskirts of the Ngobo Confederation lands.  I'd suggest not going further today, camping here – we don't want to sleep in their territory."

"We may have to – I have no idea how long this trek is going to take.  That map is singularly lacking in anything resembling a scale."

Lord Plotney took the news that they were stopping for the night with better grace than Quentin would have expected.  Of course, it wasn't as though he had to do anything to make camp, just sit on his supercilious backside while the bearers set up his tents, made his meals, cleaned his dishes.

Lady Delanna's needs were seen to solely by Aldis, as her father seemed to think that if any native came within two feet of her, he'd be overcome with an irresistible desire to ravish her.  Since most of the bearers had wives of their own, Quentin thought this fear a bit silly. He felt sorry for Aldis, so joined her to help with the lady's dishes.

"Have you been in their service long?"
"Long enough. My mother was her mother's lady's maid. We grew up together.  It was fairly embarrassing, really, as most people...white people, that is...tended to assume I was the lady and she was the maid. She's not so bad when you get to know her." 

"I'll take your word for that," Quentin said, handing her a plate.

She scraped at the plate with a rough cloth in a poor attempt at hygiene. "I'll be glad when we get to decent water again.  We're going to die here, aren't we?"

She seemed a commonsense sort of girl, so he resorted to honesty.  "Yes, likely. Either we'll be murdered in our sleep by hostile natives, or the protective spells surrounding the Necropolis will turn us into crumbs. Sorry about that."

She shrugged.  "I'm sure you're doing the best you can."

Quentin watched her go, approvingly.  He hated hysterical women, which explained his lifelong bachelorhood.  Native women were down-to-earth sorts, but they generally came attached to half a hundred clanbrothers who'd move into your house and drink your whiskey all in the name of brotherhood.  Not for him the joy of connubial bliss.

The bearers were crouched down on their haunches, talking in low voices to Jani.  Quentin yawned. Jani was a decent bloke - good at keeping them from being snuck up on, so he could leave the setting of watches in his partner's capable hands and rest his machete-weary arms till the next day's toil. It would be an early morning and a long day's march.

#

He woke from an extremely unpleasant dream, probably prophetic, involving capture by the Ngobo and being tied up and covered in honey.  A burly warrior with Jani's voice was shaking his shoulders so hard his teeth rattled.

"Boss, Boss.  Wake up.  The bearers are gone."

"I'm awake, leave off. Gone?  Gone as in, off searching fresh meat, or gone as in bogged off back to Nabutu?"

"Bogged off in the night, with all their water and food."

Quentin pulled himself out of his bedroll, groaning.  "I thought you set watches."

"Well, I did, Boss, but after all, who watches the watchers? Left on their own after I'd gone down for the night."

"That tears it, we're done."

Lord Plotney emerged from his tent, a portly leviathan erupting from a sea of green canvas.  "Here now, Cavanaugh.  What's this I hear about the bearers doing a runner?"

"My guess is they weren't anxious to end their lives as entrees.  We'll have to go back now."

"Nonsense.  We go forward."

And since Quentin wasn't likely to see a shilling if his employer snuffed it all alone in the jungle, he nodded morosely.  "But we travel light."

Half an hour later, Quentin had whittled his pack down to bare essentials, water, food, weapons.  Jani had done the same.  Aldis, who didn't have much to start with, now had even less.  Even Lord Plotney had made a stab at shedding the bulkiest of his gear.  But Lady Delanna stood staring blankly at Quentin surrounded by her clothes and her tent and her confounded grooming tools.

"No. Not for all the money in the world." They were wasting valuable time.

"My daughter cannot arrive at her kingdom in anything less than her best," her father said.

"Yes, well," Quentin's patience was stretched past all reason. "About that.  First off, we're probably not going to get anywhere near the Necropolis before the Ngobo turn us into breakfast.  Secondly, if we do manage to get to your daughter's 'kingdom', considering that all her subjects are dead, I doubt they'll be offended if her hair's not curled."  And he shouldered his pack, picked up his machete and started forward along the general direction that Horatius' map seemed to suggest.  Aldis followed immediately, probably before her lady could demand that she carry the load, with Jani close behind.  Quentin could hear his employer jollying his daughter along, then silence.  He turned to see them following, most of the gear left abandoned.

"Good."

They were still arguing.  "But Father, really, I don't want to be the Silver Princess.  Silver's so common.  Can't I be the Diamond Princess, or the Gold Princess?"

"Gold would be a prince," Quentin called back, attempting to make peace with conversation. His grandmother had been full of Charian legend and lore. "Gold was male, silver female to the Char people – correlated to the sun and moon, I believe." 

"Yes, and I'm the Silver Princess reborn and under my power you'll all be able to walk into the Necropolis unscathed. Blah, blah, blah.  Then Father will take all the silly electric and make us rich.  Richer."

"Electrum.  Electrum, Your Highness," Quentin hacked at a particularly tough stand of vines, punctuating his words with blows of the machete, "is a naturally occurring alloy made of both gold and silver. I believe electrum symbolized the union of male and female in Charian mythology."

"That's not anywhere in Horatius," Lord Plotney protested.

"Well, considering that the great Horatius made his expedition in fourteen-something with the sole intent of proving that the Royal Line of Char was descended from angels, he was less interested in recording obscure and fantastical mythology and more interested in good old fashioned religion."    

"And might one enquire, Cavanaugh, why you didn't see fit to mention any of this esoteric knowledge back in Nabutu?"

Quentin was tired of talking – it caused dehydration, for one thing. "You didn't ask." 

They sweated on, for the day was as humid as it was possible to be without actually raining. Quentin thought that it might very well have been raining, considering how drenched he was by the time they stopped for a brief water break.  He lifted his face to the sky to catch any stray raindrops and a salty trickle ran down his face into his mouth.  No rain, just sweat. 

"Boss," Jani sidled up to him. "We're being watched."

"Watched?" Lady Delanna had been listening.  "By whom?"  She looked around frantically.

"Ngobo war party, probably.  Don't worry, Your Highness, we're far too entertaining for them to do us in quite yet.  They'll let us get within sight of the Necropolis, assuming the thing even exists, before they attack."

Frankly, Quentin wished they'd just get it bloody well over with and save him three hours' tramping through the jungle, but he couldn't be that lucky.  This trip had proven that.  So they trudged on, not speaking at all as the sun beat down on them, blistering skin, parching mouths so that their water skins and canteens were draining into them at an alarming rate.  Though on reflection, Quentin supposed it really didn't matter if they ran out of water.  The Ngobo would find some convenient local stream to provide the broth in which to cook them.

They'd gone on for another hour or so, when Quentin slammed the machete down through what looked like a perfectly normal stand of vines, then bounced back, arm shaking and teeth jarring as the blade struck stone.

"Hold on." He signaled for the party to stop.  The Necropolis was supposed to be ringed by a series of markers in concentric circles.  The outer ones were just informational, so legend said, a 'this way to the Necropolis, I'd turn back if I were you' sort of thing, but the inner rings had spells and protections that might still be in force and he'd no idea if this marker was magical or not.  Those Char sorcerers had been damned good.  He had a Char pottery cup that kept his tea hot all day long but was outwardly cool to the touch.  Remarkable thing, and two thousand years old.

"Jani, can you read this?"  There were symbols carved on the stone, weathered, but still barely visible.

Jani sank down on his knees, but was pushed aside by Lord Plotney.  "I am an expert on the Charian glyphs."  He put on a pair of pince nez spectacles and studied the symbols intently.  "Hmm. That's the glyph for Necropolis.  That other one, the frog one, I'm quite certain that's 'danger.' Or possibly 'carrot'."

Aldis came forward and knelt down. "It says 'This is the second marker of the great Necropolis; danger to he who comes with avarice in his heart.'"

The entire party stared at her as one.  "How on earth do you know that?" Quentin pushed back his hat.

"Being a lady's maid isn't exactly intellectually challenging.  I get bored and His Lordship has an extensive library."

"Very impressive," Quentin raised his eyebrows and nodded to her.  Charian glyphs weren't exactly a walk in the park.

"Thank you." She blushed rather sweetly.

"But the point is, if I might point out, we can safely proceed, yes?" Lord Plotney's foot beat out a frantic tattoo of impatience.

"Yes.  But fan out and be alert for the next set of markers."  The jungle was still dense, but the growth here seemed newer and would yield to determined hands, not just determined hands wielding machetes.

The next marker was found by Jani. "'Thy final chance, if thee be false, go not ahead'.  Or so I think." Aldis looked up and Quentin noticed for the first time how the blue of her eyes was the same shade as the sky of his homeland. "It's very faint."

"Horatius writes of three warning rings before the first magical barrier.  He spoke of seeing the outlines of the Necropolis from outside the magical bounds.  So I believe we can proceed with safety."  Lord Plotney said.

Quentin stared at him. "You willing to bet your life on that? Because that's what you're doing the minute you step beyond this line."

"No, Cavanaugh, I'm willing to bet your life on it.  That's what I'm paying you for.  Push on, old chap, push on."

Shaking his head in utter disbelief, saying a silent prayer to any gods who might be nearby and in an amicable mood, Quentin Cavanaugh stepped beyond the stone. Nothing happened.  "Guess I'm not false, then."

The others followed, and apparently they weren't false either.  And then, suddenly, as though by magic, he saw it rising before him, hazy in the mist, but unmistakable – the Necropolis.

It towered into the sky, higher than any modern building, any tenement or curiosity, taller even than the Princess Maude memorial in London which was rumored to be the tallest building yet constructed.  Twin spires, one covered in gold, the other silver, bracketed the central dome, symbolizing, undoubtedly, the two main deities of the Char.  The dome itself looked gold as well, but was of a lighter hue than the right hand spire, and Quentin knew it must be covered in electrum.  Priceless. 

Lord Plotney's breath choked off in his throat as he realized what he was seeing. "Go on, man, what are you waiting for?"

Quentin started towards a massive arch that seemed to give entrance to the Necropolis compound, keenly surveying the ground for the magical markers. He'd just stepped over an ekki bush when the ground shook beneath him and he stumbled to his feet.  "I'd say that's the first spell."  He kicked at the bush and his foot hit stone.  Missed the marker.  Stupid, stupid.  "This is a Very Bad Idea.  We should turn around now, while we still can."

In answer, a dart whizzed past Quentin's face, bare inches from his nose.

"Too late," Jani said. Quentin shoved Aldis and the two aristocrats over the boundary as the ground shook and buckled beneath them. They stumbled towards the Necropolis and the earth stabilized as the last of the party passed the marker.

The landscape leading up to the arch was littered with fallen stones, huge boulders crumbled from outbuildings and dilapidated sub-temples. Quentin made for one of the largest, and the tiny party followed crouching behind the stone as darts and arrows rained down around them.

"This is intolerable!" Lord Plotney muttered.  Then pitching his voice to carry, he shouted at their unseen adversaries.  "My daughter is the Silver Princess, you ignorant savages!  How dare you shoot at us?"

Quentin pulled him down.  "Shut up," he hissed.  "They don't give a tinker's damn if your daughter is the Silver Princess or the Queen of Jutland or the Duchess of Devronia.  All they care about is how she tastes with mint."  Oh, this was bad.  The Ngobo would have seen that crossing the marker resulted only in mild earth tremors, something fairly common here in any case.  Though the party had small arms and Jani's rifle, the sheer number of their adversaries would outweigh any technological advantage, and there was no cover beyond these rather inadequate rocks.

Certainly enough rocks, though – not only the boulders they were sheltering behind, but rings of tall standing stones, incredible, really, such things set up by cultures that weren't even blessed with the wheel, let alone proper labor unions and decent mechanics.  Of course, the Char had magic, much better than either.

Lord Plotney followed the direction of his gaze.  "The second magical barrier – I'm sure of it!  If we can get behind it, those savages surely will not be able to follow.  Delanna, my darling girl, run and open the barrier for Daddy."

It was their only hope.  Quentin drew his pistol and started firing in the general direction of the Ngobo, and Jani did likewise as Aldis started towards the markers, Lady Delanna in tow.

Aldis was back bare minutes later, panting and breathless.  "It's good, she's through, and I had no trouble either. Let's go!"

They abandoned the cover of the rock and ran for the marker. Quentin expected to hear the whist-whist of barefooted Ngobo warriors behind them at any moment, but as they burst into the space between the second and final set of markers, it seemed that there was no pursuit.

The temple loomed above them, a great vulture with two wings waiting to pounce and devour.  The air was calm, electric, the sort of stillness that comes before a storm, and though Quentin was almost certain they were going to die here, he couldn't help feeling just a minute's thankfulness that before his death he had been blessed by the sight of such a wonder.

The minute's thankfulness gone and facing cold hard reality again, they approached the third marker, a carved stone in the shape of an interlocking knot.  "Might as well get it over with."

Aldis knelt before the marker and puzzled over it for a long time.  Quentin wandered back towards the second marker, where he saw the Ngobo, lined up in ranks, waiting, eyeing them hungrily.  Jani, who had accompanied him, sighed. "Like all those great restaurants in London you tell me about, Boss, apparently at the Necropolis you got to wait for your dinner."

Aldis called them over.  "I can't translate this."

Plotney knelt by the marker as well.  "Seems fairly straightforward to me.  This symbol is silver, and the dancers, that's people, and this glyph means unite.  So the Silver Princess will be united with her people and the Necropolis will open."

Aldis shook her head.  "No.  First of all, that's not dancers - it's a beetle, which stands for gold, not people.  And it's poetry, so the imagery isn't literal.  At least I hope not."  She looked down and blushed.

"Why do you hope not?"  Quentin asked, curious.  He'd never heard of any Char poetry before.

Not meeting his eyes, she recited, "To seek the electrum as stars have foretold, silver and gilt must together enfold.  That's a paraphrase, of course.  Their version would be a bit more...earthy."

Quentin swore, kicking at a clod of earth.  "Then we're done for.  Even if she," he jerked his thumb at the lady, "is the Silver Princess, there's no Golden Prince for her to...um...enfold with."

Aldis stood, brushing dirt and debris from her skirts.  "I wonder...I mean, it doesn't make sense really, to have your holy place only accessible by two people.  What if the princess died in childbirth? Didn't they ever send in maids to have a tidy once in a while? Mr. Cavanaugh..."

"Quentin."

"Quentin. You said male was gold, silver female, and combined they yield electrum, yes?  As a general principle?" She was staring at his face so intently he began to wonder if his nose had fallen off. "High forehead, pronounced nose, the tiniest kink to the hair.  Tell me, do you have Charian blood?"

"Yes." A tiny seed deep in his belly was growing to melon sized proportions and he knew with a sudden dread where this was heading.  "But so do lots of people.  I mean, Jani, here—"

"My people come from Africa, boss."

"Lord Plotney, then—"

"I've no taint of the tar brush, I assure you, sir!"

Aldis smiled grimly. "Quite. I rather doubt if it matters whether the blood is royal or not.  For all intents and purposes, Mr. Cavanaugh-"

"Quentin."  .

"Quentin.  For all intents and purposes, you are the Golden Prince."

Quentin swallowed.  The world was draining of color, and the stillness of the air erupted into rolling thunder.

As one, they turned to look at him.  Jani was grinning as though his horse had come in at twenty to one.  "Your Highness, your princess awaits."

"You!" Plotney's mouth was opening and closing like a big ugly guppy.  "You and my daughter have to ... outrageous!" 

Quentin wasn't exactly a-tremble with delight at the prospect himself.  Now if Aldis had been the Silver Princess, that would be something else entirely.  The slender strand of native blood that ran in his veins had never seemed so damned inconvenient as it did at that moment.  "Believe me, sir; I have no wish to impinge upon your daughter's innocence." 

"Well, Boss," Jani said. "It's either that, or we go back."

They all turned to see the Ngobo lined up on the other side of the barrier, waiting. He'd swear they had napkins tied around their necks and the leader held a fondue fork.

"Not really an option, I'd say," Aldis said. "Just close your eyes and think of electrum."

"Excuse me," said the Silver Princess, nee Lady Delanna.  "Don't I get any say in this?"

"But my dear," sputtered her father, "don't you want the treasure?"

"Not if I have to touch him."  She pointed contemptuously at Quentin.  "Let Aldis do it.  That's the reason I have a maid, to do the nasty things I shouldn't have to, like cleaning chamber pots and washing my clothes and coupling with minions."

"But ... but Delanna, darling ... Aldis hasn't any Charian blood at all."

Lady Delanna marched up to Quentin, snatched the knife from the sheathe on his belt, grabbed her maid's hand and opened a shallow cut in her palm, did the same to her own, then squeezed hands with Aldis, who was, Quentin noticed, smiling broadly.  "Now she has."

#

Quentin knew the exact minute the third barrier came down, though he was rather pleasantly occupied at the time, and therefore completely missed the sacking of the Necropolis. This fact did not bother him in the least.

The Ngobo, who looked upon the Char as almost lesser deities, cancelled their dinner plans and attempted to make Quentin their king. He pointed out, in broken Ngoban, that the Char had been matrilineal, so it was really the Lady Delanna who should be invested with the ceremonial snake skin and crown of grubs.  He and Aldis and Jani made good their escape while Lord Plotney was attempting to buy passage home from their cannibal captors and the lady whined about how the color of the grubs made her skin look sallow.  Which it did.

"It's a shame Plotney got all the goods," he commented to Aldis as they boated serenely down the river towards Nabutu.  "If we couldn't have the treasure, it should have been left for scholars."

"Oh, he didn't get anything of value."  Aldis' hands dipped in the cool water, then flicked it on his face, laughing. 

"What?  I saw him, he had rings and brooches and necklaces and crowns piled up in every satchel."

"Paste.  He mistranslated an inscription in the hall, got misdirected to a false treasure room.  I tried to tell him," she looked up, wide eyed and innocent. She really did blush quite sweetly.

"But he's using that stuff to pay the Ngobo not to eat them!"  They might be natives, but they weren't stupid.  When they found out...

"We'll send a rescue party," Aldis said.  "And some scholars to begin a proper study of the place."

"You know, I was thinking, wouldn't it have been bloody inconvenient for the Char, having to have two people...you know...every time they wanted to get into the Necropolis?"

"Oh, I think a kiss would have sufficed," she replied. "It's sympathetic magic, largely symbolic."

"You think..." Quentin stared.  "Then why on earth didn't you say so?"

She arched her brows at him, and he felt his cheeks flush like a schoolboy. "We're going to be famous.  How would you like to be the wife of a famous man?"

"Famous and almost a prince.  What more could a girl want?"

"A crown of grubs?"

 - the end -

bio: R. W. Day has about 20 stories in print or awaiting publication in magazines and e-zines including Deep Magic, Cabinet des Fees, Lenox Avenue, and Book of Dark Wisdom.  Her first novel, "A Strong and Sudden Thaw", came out this fall from Iris Print.  She lives in the Tidewater area of Virginia, working for a public library and doing historical re-enactment in her spare time.