Preface
If you don’t know any better, books seem like very quiet things. They sit bound on your shelf, on the back of the toilet, in your purse, not making much noise at all. They’re innocuous and raise no fuss at being carted around everywhere you go. They’re the perfect companion.
Stories, however, have loud, loud voices.
I chose each of the stories in this collection because of all those I’ve written through the years, they have been the squeaky wheels. Not every story deserves to be read (lord knows I have a trunk full of stories that shall remain forever hidden from daylight and the eyes of innocent readers), but when a story refuses to stay quiet, when I can still hear it murmuring away years after I’ve written it, then I’m only doing due diligence as an author (and now a publisher) to let it free.
“A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” is the story of a young man reliving the last moments of his fellow soldiers’ lives; “The Girl with Wings of Iron and Down” tells the tale of a broken family and a girl with mechanical wings; in “Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons,” we’re introduced to a typical prince, princess, and dragon, and a not-so-typical love triangle; “The Colour of the Sky on the Day the World Ended” follows a girl and her ghost dog as they search for a bright light in the darkness; and “Tide of Shadows” is about a soldier and his lover, a mother, and planetwide genocide.
I’ve been a writer since before I can remember, but “Tide of Shadows and Other Stories” marks my first foray as a publisher. I’ve always considered writing to be very self-centred—ultimately, it’s something I do for myself, an exercise to satisfy the curious parts of my mind that will not stay still. Publishing, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite: it is taking something that is near to me, something that I’ve had complete reign over from the first word to the last, and preparing it for transfer to my readers. Once this book is out on bookshelves (or eReaders), the stories are no longer mine. They belong to the readers. This is a new, exciting, and scary thought.
In addition to the stories themselves, I’ve included story notes that are my attempt to turn fresh eyes on tales I wrote over the years. Whether it’s an examination of the story’s origins or a look at how things might be different if I wrote the story now, I hope you’ll find something of value in the anecdotes I’ve recorded. Perhaps my insights might make it enjoyable to reread the collection with a new or different perspective.
So, then, I bid adieu to these five stories as they pass from my hand to yours. I have only one request of you as a reader: please take care of them for me, will ya?
~Aidan Moher
Victoria, March 21, 2015
A Night for Spirits
and Snowflakes
1
The dead man watched with glazed eyes as I dug his grave. My blade bit into the frozen earth. I pulled hard and it came grudgingly free. I struck again and hit a stone—a new dent in the dull sword. I was too cold to feel the shock, too tired to care.
The grave—the first of four—came slowly, revealed one swing at a time.
The forest was still, a twisted play on the chaos that had whipped through the trees just hours before. Those moments of slaughter, that maelstrom of death's laughter, were over. The only reminder of the battle was me, weary and digging graves for my fallen brothers. It is what my long-dead, never-buried father would have done.
The other bodies, those of the barbarians who had set upon us, could rot—picked clean by howling wolves until they were nothing more than the skeletal remains of fathers, brothers, and sons.
For all I cared, they could feed the spirits of the dead and be forgotten.
Dawn's blush fell across the forest, the soft kiss of morning's first light. Sinuous tendrils of mist curled from the wet ground to dance slowly around my feet. The trees around me towered like sentinels reaching for
If you don’t know any better, books seem like very quiet things. They sit bound on your shelf, on the back of the toilet, in your purse, not making much noise at all. They’re innocuous and raise no fuss at being carted around everywhere you go. They’re the perfect companion.
Stories, however, have loud, loud voices.
I chose each of the stories in this collection because of all those I’ve written through the years, they have been the squeaky wheels. Not every story deserves to be read (lord knows I have a trunk full of stories that shall remain forever hidden from daylight and the eyes of innocent readers), but when a story refuses to stay quiet, when I can still hear it murmuring away years after I’ve written it, then I’m only doing due diligence as an author (and now a publisher) to let it free.
“A Night for Spirits and Snowflakes” is the story of a young man reliving the last moments of his fellow soldiers’ lives; “The Girl with Wings of Iron and Down” tells the tale of a broken family and a girl with mechanical wings; in “Of Parnassus and Princes, Damsels and Dragons,” we’re introduced to a typical prince, princess, and dragon, and a not-so-typical love triangle; “The Colour of the Sky on the Day the World Ended” follows a girl and her ghost dog as they search for a bright light in the darkness; and “Tide of Shadows” is about a soldier and his lover, a mother, and planetwide genocide.
I’ve been a writer since before I can remember, but “Tide of Shadows and Other Stories” marks my first foray as a publisher. I’ve always considered writing to be very self-centred—ultimately, it’s something I do for myself, an exercise to satisfy the curious parts of my mind that will not stay still. Publishing, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite: it is taking something that is near to me, something that I’ve had complete reign over from the first word to the last, and preparing it for transfer to my readers. Once this book is out on bookshelves (or eReaders), the stories are no longer mine. They belong to the readers. This is a new, exciting, and scary thought.
In addition to the stories themselves, I’ve included story notes that are my attempt to turn fresh eyes on tales I wrote over the years. Whether it’s an examination of the story’s origins or a look at how things might be different if I wrote the story now, I hope you’ll find something of value in the anecdotes I’ve recorded. Perhaps my insights might make it enjoyable to reread the collection with a new or different perspective.
So, then, I bid adieu to these five stories as they pass from my hand to yours. I have only one request of you as a reader: please take care of them for me, will ya?
~Aidan Moher
Victoria, March 21, 2015
A Night for Spirits
and Snowflakes
1
The dead man watched with glazed eyes as I dug his grave. My blade bit into the frozen earth. I pulled hard and it came grudgingly free. I struck again and hit a stone—a new dent in the dull sword. I was too cold to feel the shock, too tired to care.
The grave—the first of four—came slowly, revealed one swing at a time.
The forest was still, a twisted play on the chaos that had whipped through the trees just hours before. Those moments of slaughter, that maelstrom of death's laughter, were over. The only reminder of the battle was me, weary and digging graves for my fallen brothers. It is what my long-dead, never-buried father would have done.
The other bodies, those of the barbarians who had set upon us, could rot—picked clean by howling wolves until they were nothing more than the skeletal remains of fathers, brothers, and sons.
For all I cared, they could feed the spirits of the dead and be forgotten.
Dawn's blush fell across the forest, the soft kiss of morning's first light. Sinuous tendrils of mist curled from the wet ground to dance slowly around my feet. The trees around me towered like sentinels reaching for
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