weirding plots

I am currently editing/fixing the early three scenes of The Weirding Road. Again. This time it's mostly formatting it as a proper novel and fixing/finding errors. I added one more scene last night and need to add at least one -- possibly three -- bridging scenes to next once, since Amaris ending up back at Zel's place makes no damn sense as it is written now. I have a sort-of feel for where the story is going and how the plot will get it there but nothing is really concrete yet.

Once this draft is finished, it's going to be working on the edit of Ghoulish Happenings (with breaks to work on the Magician Series of stories but nothing more) until I get the novel working properly. At which point I will continue my re-write of the sequel, which is going to be fun since I pared down over half the plots and characters and plan to center on the one character getting his appendix out, which is so deliciously normal it'll be great fun to write.

weirding woes

So. Here I am, ~5000 words into the story, and I realize it is only going to work if it is first-person from Amaris' pov. Which will involve getting both more and less into her head as a character. On one hand, I get to make her prejudiced (as only makes sense in the setting) which I only realized today is Kind Of Important.

I am pantsing this story, so that shall be my excuse :)   Now off to redo 9 pages....

The weirding road: market forces

General thoughts: Given the nature of the city as layers of wood on wood over the old city few visit or trust, the nature of trade and goods in a city where one might have to flee any area in a given moment becomes both complex and fun. It can be assumed that most real professions in need to machinery in one place are tied to the Merchant-Lords, who have pretty much claimed all areas of the city that -- for unknown reasons -- the weirding does not touch. Which makes them both necessary and powerful because of that very necessity. 

Morning sunlight was a washed-out smudge behind clouds far overhead as Amaris slipped out of Zel's hidey-hole. She'd seldom come down this far in the city in last few months and never alone before now. Her father's explorations of the stone homes and walkways of the city had armoured her against some of the superstitions of the world but even he had said that, in the face of the weirding, sometimes superstition was all anyone had. Superstitions that would lead other men to hunt her down and turn her fingers into talismans against the weirding.

She smiled grimly to herself and flexed her hands slowly. About her the city was old wood built tight and made to last. The first layer had been built on top of stone homes and canals but it had been built with permanence in mind. Lessons about the cost of stone and the logical use of wood to grow a city filled her mind for a moment before she dispelled them with a sharp shake of her head. That was past, and the past meant nothing to the present. Her eyes strayed down unbidden and the roll of the waters of the city caught her gaze.

Even in day the causeways were dark and sluggish, a bubbling darkness of fog and shadow that seemed to blend into the old stone the water pressed against. They said if you swam in the river, the weirding could not touch you. They said many things: she'd ceased to listen to any of it months ago. The weirding had taken all except her and no story or tale could put that one to rest for her. Amaris held the river with her gaze: it was only water.

It was the work of moments to find a ladder leading up another layer of the city. Layers of wood on wood and home on home made up the city as it stood now, the ancient canals now walkways crossed by wooden planks scattered about and moved at need to connect with the walkwalks built around and through the buildings. Planning didn't exist for most of the city: you built as needed, took care not to destroy what was below you in the harvesting of wood and made walkways and ladders and ropes to the rest.

Some days Amaris felt the city had more walkways than it did homes, more paths than people: all made so that the weirding could be fled. Nothing was permanent: both storms and magic could destroy entire swathes of the city in days, the flow of people a scrambled search for safety and space to call their own. The Merchant Lords whose wealth came from terrifying trips outside the city lived in the only true homes, the old stone towers and wood above them that the weirding itself still slid away from. The city had been something different long ago: now it sulked over itself like a scavenger feeding on the dead.

It took two more levels before the city felt more like home, half-built and barely holding together as if it was a dream of itself. A flash of red a few blocks to the left was enough to orient on the red district, though it had many other names. The glass tower at the north end of the city where the magician Hodor lived made a second reference point, even for Amaris to be sure she was a solid hour from the small hole she called a home. She moved up steadily, slipping past people and up roads and ladders as shew found them until she hit the seventh level. Four walkways and two ladders took her up another level and to a market.

Markets littered the city on the tops of the upper layers, flashes of bright colours and cheap textile signs to lure people up. Up was sky and wind, a kind of safety from the dark below if one didn't fall, and most markets were as simple as that idea: one family, stuff they could carry, a few others joining in as the day wore on. Bright enough to be seen, small enough to take apart and flee with at the hint of the weirding flowing through air and stone like a river, only not like a river at all.

The better markets had weirdcasters, humans sensitive enough to the weirding to sense it before it manifested but sane enough to not want to become magicians. All the good ones worked for the Merchant Lords but it did pay well for those who had the skill, entirely based on how human you were. One weirding twisting and everyone dropped you, no matter how mild it might be. Amaris didn't consider herself one: whatever luck she had lay in mostly finding stuff when she needed it and not being around when the weirding hit, which wasn't the same trick at all. And as it was luck, that was all it was: a thing that would run out.

She shook the thought aside and slipped into the market, past small stalls, snagging old fruits from a boy who looked like he needed them more than her for a few shells his mother snatched away. Finding a fabric seller was easy: it took two before she found one who knew her, and Rigore accepted her offer of a one running for bandages and clothing. She was getting the better deal, but bandages were traded cheap – you never knew when someone who you'd held bind up would be able to pay you back – and they both knew that if he needed her again, she'd put things aside for him.

She had worked hard. Too hard, she thought now, given that people were after her, but it had given her some flow to barter with. Have enough ethic – enough honour – and people cut slack and twisted corners because you were good for it. Until you weren't, in which case debts tended to come due violently, regardless of how young you were.

"Careful, little gull," Rigore murmured as he handed her a bag he placed the clothing in. The bag itself was enough to sell at other markets for several meals. He was a big men, gentle in the way they sometimes could be and one of the few people who had known her from Before, though they'd never talked about it. If he recalled her father, he said nothing, but there was enough in that nothing for her to accept a use-name from him.

"Careful for?" she parried, leaving unsaid if it was a what or who.

"At least one of our esteemed Lords has his eye on you and those are more than most hunters."

Amaris ignored the twinge in her arm. "I know. I'm good."

"No one is that good. Not alone." No offer, just fact.

Amaris just grinned and held up the bag in response; let him think it was a friend if it made him feel safer. She owed him that much to balance debts a little, and smiled inwardly as she headed out of the market. Have of having good flow was things like that, paying back debts people didn't even know they owned. Not being owed, or owing, but some balance between it all as solid as a half-rot plank. She's done it, and wouldn't be the last to say she'd done it well, but no one lasted as a runner.

It was safer than being a thief, but that wasn't saying much at all. Amaris let out a breath and slid down two ladders, then four more, stopping a bare two levels above stone before she began to wind her way back to Zel: going this far would be enough to deter common pursuit, but wasting her time on the future would only distract her from living to read it. She drew her second-best knife from the sheathe on her back. It was thin, sharp, woven glass and bone she was more than prepared to use if she had to.

Sometimes all there is for it is to go on as we meant to begin. Her mom had said that, and for once the memory didn't hurt. Good truths didn't as much as the other kind.

The Weirding Roads: first blush

And the start, though not actually the start. This is about 1K and I wrote another 1K for the previous scene (twice) and then scrapped it entirely as an opening and went with the following instead. The MCs name has changed twice this morning, but I think I'll stick with Amaris for now.

Amaris woke from sleep with her ears, the way she'd learned to in the months of living alone. Soft, ragged breaths, the shuffle of feet, a sound of bandages pressing to flesh: the boy whose hiding place she'd scrambled into to try and to flee the weirding still remained. She set that aside, eyes still tight, a slow flex of fingers and toes. Still herself. The weirding had been close enough to ripple air in front of her, give it the grey light of dead stars. The taste of burnt copper still lingered on her tongue, but it felt like a tongue.

It took everything she had not to gasp in relief at that. She'd talked to some of the twisted – the changed, in their own terms – and met one man who had been altered by the weirding in sleep, to wake knowing he wasn't truly human anymore. Everyone else had been awake, running from it and engulfed in wild power to become no longer themselves, bent and twisted beyond human norm or seeming. She'd survived when she shouldn't have, not at all: she'd heard one of those chasing her scream, high and bubbly, the sound of shattering bone. They'd call it luck, her living, though it never felt like that at all.

The boy in the room had frozen on seeing her, frozen further at the weirding boiling in behind and she – Amaris shoved thought-memory away, buried deep, heard a hitch in breath, footsteps moving closer in a slow pain-shuffle and opened her eyes finally as she shifted position. Clothing had been placed under her head, the smell ill-washed and sharp, her knives shifted in position – all three found, none removed – and the small glow light she'd found not longer after she started being a runner was sitting up on a shelf in the small room, the light of it a washed-out yellow hue she'd never seen before.

The boy whose hiding she'd invaded was crouched down, watching her in still wariness. A mess of filthy bandages and queer glittering eyes studied her warily; his cloak was gone, source of the smell behind her head, though strips of it were wrapped about his lower right arm. She wouldn't have put his age past her own but it was always hard to know in the city. The weirding could twist ages, make years bleed away. If it could happen, the weirding could do it: that was the only law everyone agreed on. And even those scoured by the weirding had no desire to face it again, no matter how close to the stone bedrock of the city they had to hide from the eyes of others. Which explained him, but nothing else.

The room whose window she'd leaped into was large enough to hold the two of them in comfort. The wood was old city, solid and well-built leavened by occasional streaks of odd colours, stones and minerals left over from the weirding passing through it over the years. No door remained into the rest of what had probably been a home but neither was there a clue Almaris could see to explain that. The weirding wreaked what it did and all that was left was to cope with the world it left behind.

She sat up, palming the knife stolen from what had been a kitchen in the red square of the city. It had been a kind of miracle: for two days the weirding had boiled over one area in sights and sounds and smells that seemed scarcely anything at all and when it left not a person had been touched but every other thing had turned a bright, brilliant red. Everyone had fled it, waiting for the second shoe to drop. You could find good things in it, if you were careful enough, and a solid knife was worth at least a life.

"You have a name?"

"Zel." His voice was soft, a little hoarse, but a cough rattled through that. "You?" he said, a bit stronger.

"Amaris." She reached behind her and pulled up the ball of brown that had been the cloak, handing it back wordlessly.

Zel took it, unfolding it with both hands and putting it on. His movements were slow and stiff and a hiss of pain escaped him as the clothing brushed his new-bandaged arm.

She knew she should have left. Asked no questions, trusted to luck and just bolted out the window she'd come in. The first layer of the city was deep-touched by the weirding: no one remained down here by choice, this close to the old stone buildings and canals that had been the city long and ago. The twisted and changed lived on such levels, and worse things beside, but –

the memory of the weirding brushing her reared up; she shoved it back down, held up her knife. "Can I see it?"

Zel blinked, then held out his arm wordlessly. It shook, as much from the offer as the pain, and she moved slowly forward, setting down her knife and peeling back strips of cloak. The skin under it was pale-human but bubbled, like metal rippled by the weirding, and pale pus oozed out even under her light touch.

"What?" she said, not letting go of his arm. Some people's skin could burn, blood eat through wood and even stone. This just smelled of sickness, sharp and sour and he seemed without surprise.

"Being close the weirding hurts." Nothing else. Not how the rest of him must look, how badly such a wound would heal. He pulled his arm back, stronger than she'd thought he was.

Amaris let go. Smart would be going. Smart wasn't last night, fleeing three hunters at random. She hadn't meant to become a runner, but had nothing else she could offer others beyond the passing of messages. You don't last six months as a runner without getting some flow: people wanting things, the curious, the hunters for talismans. A Merchant Lord's interest, if the silent one a month ago had been anything to go by. Even luck couldn't last against all that.

She rubbed her left arm, stood. "Stay. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Zel said nothing; she left the globe behind, the only thing she could say to the wariness in his eyes, and slipped out the window before he could ask questions she didn't want to try to answer.

Weirding: City & Inhabitants

The city is not structured in any way that can be called sane. It's all old stone and waterways with wooden structures built over and around it like a human's bird nest built on stone trees. The old stone can blunt the power of the weirding, some of it simply so twisted the weirding can no longer touch it. A few old stone towers still stand and in them the Merchant Lords live and dine, their wealth bought at awful cost of life and limb by both their kin and those who work for them. For to trade beyond the city is to brave the weirding in the wild and not even magicians do that alone any longer.

The few magicians that live in the city have their own towers made of glass and dreams,forged from shadows and death. No one enters them for they can call the weirding up and set it upon those who would harm them and all are old, as much wracked by age as by the weirding. Some are not even human at all now and others have become monsters that dwell in places even shadows fear to tread.

Below them are weirdcasters, those sensitive to the shape and motion of the weird but wise enought to not desire being a magician. The more human one is, the more work one gets though the profits are meagre as most are snatched up by Merchant Lords to work for them. It is easy to claim to be one, harder to survive even if you are one. Screw up and you risk behing engulfed in the weirding to become a weirdling, a creature once human that draws the weirder to them: they are often killed upon sight.

They are artisans and traders in the city, but most work in service to the Merchant Lords. The average citizen lives in the absconded parts of the city where the weirding thrives and lives are pretty much struggles to survive. Those whose families succeed are Citizens. Everyone else is a scavenger living on the fringes of the world like boils on the arsehole of humanity, as one wag put it some years ago.

Among the scavengers of the city is Ardyn, young and grim for it who serves as a runner between places and has lasted six wearying months at it with a small hidey-hole to call her own and little else beside. At least one Lord Merchant is after her services with the kind of offer one cannot refuse and a few of her fellow scavengers are determined to claim her for their own, boil her down to the bones and sell her as lucky talismans. As she survived the weirding storm that turned her family into fire-shadows, they are not the first to have tried so but are getting more persistent and luck alone is not the safety one gains from allies.

Chance or something like it collides her life with that of Zel, a boy whose age may be close to her own. The weirding has shattered and scarred him but he, too, is a survivor, and his pain when the weirding comes makes him a weirdcaster of a kind. It's enough for them to survive and begin seeking a way out of their lives, a search that leads them deep under the city in search of answers to questions most are wise enough not to ask.

For this is a world of mysteries and the weirding is but one of those.

The Weirding Roads

And woke up this morning (at 5 am, having gone to sleep at midnight...) with this idea slowly surfacing to rummage through my head. This is the entirety of a novel concept thus far. So far only one character (Zel) has a name and I know it is set in an analogue of Venice. Also, that I might end up working on this rather than a short story in the magician series en route to work today :)

The weirding is a river though it doesn't flow where rivers flow. It is felt as much as seen, shadow as much as breath. Silent as often as it roars. Where it touches, it scars and scours to leave nothing unchanged. The learned call it it magic while the few magicians harness it as one would a river and become awful in the making. Everything it touches changes: things twist and bend in ways the world should not allow, others are made strong in all the wrong places. Weirdcasters who can predict its movements shufle about the city, paid by the rich and connected to warn them when to move, to draw ancient symbols into stone and air that – sometimes, oh, sometimes – blunt the terrible powers that wash through the world like a waking dream to leave nightmare behind in its wake.

It was not always like this. There are still places in the city that the weirding cannot touch, walls in which it flows around. The city was more than this once, more than stone and rivers of shadow-twisted waters, but that was long ago. Now the last of the magicians fight battles to hoard knowledge of times lost and those who can afford their services pay for light to hold back things far worse than the dark. Old charms and talismans still hold some power: bells ring to warn the living, sometimes too late. It is enough to survive in the city, but to leave it, to face the weirding with no protections or warnings, that has created the merchant lords of the city and destroyed so many others.

Which is not to say that one cannot survive in the city. Life, as the Speakers say grimly, finds a way. But even their gods are silent before the weirding and what power they had has long since worn away. It is said that there are no children in the city, and this is a true lie. For there are the young, but they scramble to survive as much as anyone else, as thieves who steal to feed their hunger or runners who dash messages between places of the city, trusting to luck as much as skill.

Zel is such a runner. Half a year, as summer flees to winter, and she has survived the city after the weirding swallowed up her family. Some consider her a talisman and wish to steal her fingers for wards, others wisely call it luck and wait for it to run away and leave her. She is a survivor, in a city littered with the same, and thinks nothing more of it it until she runs into  thief changed by the weirding whose pain offers hope and sets them on a path for something better and perhaps to roads more dangerous than even the weirding has prepared them for.