Monday 22 February 2021

Beat for Beat by Owen Townend


 
Tookal always insists that he started it. He went into Bargis’s cave looking for trouble.

            Bargis may have been a Troll but he had the ambition of a true entrepreneur. The cave wasn’t simply a cave as Tookal insisted: it was Bargis's Cavern Tavern, a local watering hole for Trolls like himself, waking up after decades of inactivity. Bargis understood just how throat-drying that stiff gritty experience was.

            The business boomed and had seen its busiest week before Tookal arrived. Bargis steadily approached the door, eyeballing the little blue bastard. Wizards often meant trouble.

            Tookal didn’t disappoint. As soon as he set slippered foot through the door, he ran his fingers through his straggly green goatee and summoned a Rummage Spirit. At least that was what he claimed it was. Bargis thought it had too many red and black bits to be a harmless summoning. Indeed these foreboding colours flew and thrashed about the Cavern Tavern, knocking over quartz tables and shattering the luminescent stalagmite lighting. Within moments, all the customers had rumbled out.

            Balling up his craggy fist, Bargis threw himself at Tookal, startling the wizard with an outcry that sounded like a dozen rockslides. The wind caused by the huge troll’s unlikely sudden movement, sent Tookal’s hat flying but he managed to deflect the incoming body blow with a quick shield spell. A turquoise semi-sphere umbrella'd around the skinny wizard, causing Bargis’s punches to rebound.

            Regardless the troll kept on battering Tookal’s shield spell. It was only after the tenth hit that Bargis began to slow down.

            Tookal straightened up, tilting his head. “Wait,” he said. “Keep going.”

            Bargis frowned but was willing to oblige if it meant busting through the shield and throttling the wizard who had ruined his livelihood.

            Then he began to hear something. Every time his weighty blows were deflected, they created a curious sound on the shield's surface. This was like a drumbeat but more resonant, possibly with magic but then Tookal didn’t seem to recognise it either. Bargis slowed to a complete halt in his bewilderment.

            “The power of your hits seems to make this new sound,” Tookal muttered, stroking his beard again. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Have you?”

            Bargis shook his head. He made another fist and pounded down on the shield even harder. The beat was more resonant than before and somehow tuneful with it. He began to scratch the fissures in his forehead.

            “I don’t get it,” he grunted. “But it sounds appealing.”

            And so their alliance began. They formed a band, Tookal’s melodic incantations measured out by Bargis’s craggy-fisted percussion. It took a lot of effort from both the troll and wizard but neither could deny the business potential of making such strange, sweet music.

            They named their soulful folk band ‘Tookal and Bargis, Beat for Beat’. They took their show of shield spell ferocity on the road, both delighting and disturbing kingdom after kingdom. Perhaps you’ve even heard them. They still argue like hell, of course, but they really can’t do without each other now. Such is the fate of two wily entrepeneurs.

            Bargis and Tookal will soon be crossing seas to a village near you.

Monday 15 February 2021

Waking by Anna Kingston

Bedroom curtains breathe in and out, in and out, in perfect rhythm with the cool, early morning breeze.

Bathroom fan clatters discordantly in the same gusts of air.

Enough hazy light to make out the shape of the sleeping man next to me, gently snoring.

Magpies argue their way into the morning, and the kinder sound of blackbirds heartily greet the day, early spring heralds in their shiny black cloaks.

A half-asleep child in the next room sneezes several times, and then settles.

Cat leaps daintily onto my bed, picks her way through the hills and valleys of our limbs underneath the quilt; delicately and urgently pushes her cool nose under my hand, demanding attention.

Child two out of bed, in the bathroom, water running and radio playing quietly - for him. Pokes his head around my door, mumbles something that faintly resembles ‘morning’, and thumps downstairs in that half-awake, teenage-boy way.

Early-rising neighbour over the road drives off to his postie job, and next door piles his dog into the car to take the eager pup for a morning run - the dog’s joyful yapping carries in the still, clear air.

This not-quite-spring Saturday morning gears up into sleepy action, still too cold and early in the year for the lawn-mowers, seed-sowers, and laundry-hangers.

But still beautiful to me.


Anna M. Kingston
February 2021

Monday 8 February 2021

Castle Hill by Susie Field


Looking down from Castle Hill

A beautiful world, perfect and still.

The setting sun its crimson glow

Casting shadows on the earth below.

So many memories slowly unfold

Kept close in my heart – stories untold.