Week in Review 2

By Anne B. Walsh

Throughout 2015, science fiction and fantasy author Anne B. Walsh has continued her tradition of posting flash fiction on her blog, Anne's Randomness, once a week on Fiction Friday or Made-Up Monday. Now all those posts have been compiled into one collection, including the full-length version of Anne's retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Most Incredible Thing", which was posted across eight weeks, making it the longest Fiction Friday piece ever!

From Fairy Tale Fridays to Madcap Mondays, the tales in this collection are suitable for any day of the week. Travel back in time with the Chronicles of Glenscar on Thunder Thursdays, to another world with the Tales of Anosir on Trycanta Tuesdays, or even into the greater galaxy on Spacebound Saturdays! When and where will you end up? Pick a page, any page...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne B. Walsh
• Release date: Nov 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311274977

Anne B. Walsh

Anne B. Walsh was telling stories about magic and intrigue from the time she could talk, but it took her twenty years to realize she could make a living at it. Her first novel, historical fantasy "A Widow in Waiting", has its origins in a PBS special which changed her life; her second, family-focused fantasy "Homecoming", takes its inspiration from some of her other writing; and her third, soft science fiction "Killdeer", stems from her constant interest in the ways in which the future and the past coincide. Anne lives east of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with one roommate (Krystal), two black Labs (Buddy and Brando), and two black cats (Starsky and Hutch). Sadly, their Cane Corso mastiff, Bruce, passed away in mid-August 2013, and their first cats, Poppy and Sesame, who helped inform Anne's first collection of short stories, "Cat Tales", passed out of their lives after an accident on Christmas Day 2013. No one ever said life was fair. Anne's parents and siblings live two hours north of her, otherwise known as just far enough away. She has also been writing Harry Potter fan fiction for more than ten years and is known best in that genre as the creator of the "Dangerverse" alternate universe (which inspired "Homecoming"). Beyond writing fiction, Anne's preoccupations include reading fiction; singing anywhere that will have her, including her church and local galas; theatre, especially musicals; all forms of cooking; and her family and friends. Within writing fiction, her preoccupations are much the same, meaning most of her stories involve loving families, delicious food, and good music. Consider yourself warned. A number of projects continue to need Anne's attention as she writes her original novels. Among these are her ongoing fanfiction works in various fandoms such as Harry Potter and Frozen, and the themed fantasy anthologies she co-authors with her friend and fellow author Elizabeth Conall.

Book preview

More daily fiction

from the blog of

Anne B. Walsh

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Anne B. Walsh

The stories included in this collection have previously been published as Fiction Friday or Made-Up Monday posts on the blog called Anne’s Randomness, housed at annebwalsh.com/blog.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Spacebound Saturdays: the greater galaxy of Killdeer

But, My Darling, When I Think of Thee

Stefan’s Answer

Fairy Tale Fridays: all things once-upon-a-time

The Tale of the Three Sisters

The First Sister

The Second Sister

The Third Sister

The True Knight

Ashes, Ashes

The Bargain

The Clumsy Servant

The Most Incredible Thing

Thunder Thursdays: A Widow in Waiting and more

Where Your Treasure Is

So Shall Ye Reap

The Prophecy

Worldview Wednesdays: life with a side of levity

The Experiment

Door. Latvian Door.

Mr. Latvian Door and The Assistant

The Visible Royals

Trycanta Tuesdays: from the world of Homecoming

We Come in Peace

The Searcher

Madcap Mondays: silliness in story shape

Daniela’s Curse

Mirror, Mirror

The Highwayman

Also by Anne B. Walsh

About the Author

Dedication

To everyone

who is still reading Anne’s Randomness,

with thanks.

Foreword

My mind has taken me to some weird, wild, and wonderful places in the year 2015, O readers. Sometimes it even consented to let me put them down in words, so that I could take all of you along. A great deal of the time, it didn’t want to, but with some help from outside sources I’m starting to get it back under my control, so we’ll see what 2016 brings in terms of actual writing production…

But, as I said last year, that is a story for another day.

You may have noticed an uptick in my twisted fairy tales this year, both on Anne’s Randomness, the blog, and in my 2015 holiday collection, Masters in This Hall. One of the three pieces in Masters is an invented folktale, and another intertwines a fairy tale with its sci-fi narrative. As for the blog, out of thirty-three weeks’ worth of posts reprinted here, sixteen of them are listed under Fairy Tale Friday, while seventeen are not. I’ve found a writing niche I like quite a bit, and where I dare to think I’m good.

This doesn’t mean I’m stepping away from my two established fantasy series—far from it. The Tales of Anosir already had a fairy-tale basis (thus the series title), and there are plenty of the aspects I love in the Chronicles of Glenscar as well. It has, however, been hard for me to get into anything long-form this year, as it was last year.

I won’t bore you with all the reasons why this year has been tough. If you read the blog, you already know about most of it, and probably in far more detail than you needed. Suffice it to say, life can be very painful, and carelessness can wound even deeper than intentional hurt.

Throughout this entire year, I have wanted, over and over again, to crawl under my bed, curl up into a ball, and wait until all the problems go away. And every time I feel that way, I stomp my feet and pout over the unfairness of the universe, and then I say a prayer, grumble and snarl a little at God, and go find something to eat and something to do. Because the problems can find me wherever I’m hiding, but it’s harder for them to get at me if I’m busy solving them.

A few notes on the stories that may otherwise be confusing to you:

In the Thunder Thursdays section, So Shall Ye Reap is a reprint from last year’s original Week in Review, because it makes an excellent bridge between Where Your Treasure Is and The Prophecy. You may also want to reference Qui Sola Ambulat from Cat Tales.

The two middle stories in the Worldview Wednesdays section are a series of riffs on a joke started by my younger sister, who likes to try out accents on the family, and continued by my younger brother and me. Olaf the Super-Pup is based on a Pekingese puppy that my brother discovered in a basket outside a church this past January (since adopted by another family and renamed Bumble, after the monster from the Rankin-Bass Rudolph).

We Come in Peace, in the Trycanta Tuesdays section, is a fairly direct sequel to Nor Earth Sustain, by Elizabeth Conall, which was a contribution to In the Bleak Midwinter, my 2013 holiday special. Characters used with permission.

In the Madcap Mondays section, Mirror, Mirror is probably the first real horror story I’ve ever written, so read only if you are ready for spooky images and ideas.

And that, O readers, is just about that. Thank you once again for your year’s worth of attention, and please enjoy this collection of the 2015 Fiction Friday and Made-Up Monday posts. Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and I’ll see you next year!

Anne B. Walsh

November 24, 2015

Spacebound Saturdays:

the greater galaxy of Killdeer

But, My Darling, When I Think of Thee

Amanda sat on her grandparents' terrace outside the city of Mersey, gazing up at the starry night. Two solid points of light moved steadily through the sky, starships in orbit around the world known as Liverpool, where she'd been born and which she would shortly be leaving behind.

I miss you, Mother, Father, she murmured into the soft night air. I wish you were here. But you're not, and Grandmother and Grandfather are, and that's the problem...

Centuries had passed since the human race had left its original planet, and a wide swath of the worlds of the greater galaxy had been settled, often by groups seeking to maintain particular traditions. Some of these were harmless folkways, manners of dress or dietary habits that had their roots in ancient days. Others, though equally ancient, were arguably less benign.

'You're to be an ornament to our home, my love,' Amanda mimicked her grandmother's fluting tones, as best she could for the snarl trying to rise in her throat. 'That's all you need to be, until you become an ornament to your husband's home, as is proper.' She rose from her chair and began to pace around the terrace. It's not that I mind the idea of having a husband or making a home. But the husband and the home would both have to be the ones I wanted. Mother and Father would never have forced me into anything, but they died before I was of age, so by Liverpool's law, Grandmother and Grandfather have the right to marry me off as they please!

And what her grandparents pleased, as Amanda knew well, was to offer her hand in marriage as a signing bonus to the captain-owner of the Yankee Clipper line of starships, which offered fast passenger service around the worlds of the greater galaxy (often named after cities, states, or provinces of the original human world, as her own home planet had been). Her grandfather's business, Princes Shipping, was mainly cargo-based, so the merger he'd proposed between the two lines would be beneficial to both.

The trouble is, I know too much about crew conditions aboard those ships. What does it say for the man who will be my husband tomorrow morning, that he treats his workers so shamefully that only the desperate sign up to crew his ships? Amanda leaned against the railing, staring up into the night again. And what does it say of me, she wondered aloud, more softly than before, that I knew someone that desperate, and loved him?

Before the flood which had claimed her parents' lives, Amanda had lived with them in a little house in the country. She'd known her grandparents were rich, but no questions of inheritance had arisen at that point, since her father was their younger son. Another younger son, this one of a neighboring family, had been her constant playmate until others in their little circle of friends had jokingly nicknamed them Dai-Manda.

He was a fine pilot, so he would have been making enough to support us both by the time we came of age to marry. Amanda's hands tightened on the wood of the railing. We didn't count on my parents dying. Or my uncle, which left me as the only heir to Princes. And we certainly didn't think my grandfather would tell lies about my Dai until Yankee Clipper was the only place he could find work! 'To save you from him, my precious girl.' She mimicked her grandfather's smooth, unctuous tones now. 'To keep you from breaking your heart over a plausible young scoundrel, and ruining the chances I can give you.'

Fury rose in her heart as she thought back to the snatched parting between herself and her beloved those three years ago, to