Ripppples

By Jon Jacks

Four rings of a prophesised seven have already been created, granting each wearer power over water, earth, air, or fire. As Orthia’s realm is besieged, she realises she must seek the fifth ring. But the last of the smiths famous for creating the rings is no more, leaving only a daughter, Bougenes. Besides, what will the fifth ring be made of...?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Apr 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005872816

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

A son of the legendary, lame smith has much to live up to.

(And as for a daughter, well…but Bougenes is fated to appear later.)

Kadmilos, whose name means ‘round shield’, felt he was destined, then, to create a protective ring, one surpassing all others in its ingenuity and power.

But what should such a ring be made of?

How should it be forged?

Then one day, as he dipped a rod of blazing hot iron into his pail of cooling water, he saw the ripples rushing out from the centre.

Ripples that were quite substantial in their abruptly enforced solidity: even seemingly retrievable, with a swift dip of his tongs.

Seemingly.

Yet if metals could be withdrawn from stone; then why not a ring from water?

*

Chapter 2

All that was left of the realm of Echion was a delicately white throat of soaring, snow-clad mountains; the ‘Dragon’s Tooth’, ringed by four far more formidable, far more avaricious kingdoms.

The king of one possessed a magically forged ring of water granting him power to conjure up storms.

The king of another wore a ring that made the earth itself tremble.

The ring held by the third king could bend the very air itself to the advantage of its wearer.

The fourth king safely wore a ring of flames, for fire obeyed his commands.

Slowly, they had each devoured whatever they could of Echion over the years, being careful only to avoid angering the other kingdoms: for they naturally feared pitting one magical power against another, as no one could be sure who’d prevail.

No one dared risking the animosity of the other three by taking over the towering realm, which overlooked all others.

Its own magical attributes, although insubstantial compared to the powers granted to the wielders of the rings, were also nevertheless desirable; a ram who gifted a wool of gold, Echion’s sole source of income, and the Necklace of Harmony, granting its bearer an enviable beauty and semblance of youth.

Indeed, it was sourly rumoured that Echion’s queen was surely easily old enough to be the king’s mother, hence the trouble they suffered when it came to producing a heir to the realm.

They might well have had no children at all if the queen hadn’t wisely spared a sparkling fish that had somehow become trapped in the courtyard’s fountain. It granted her three eggs, leading to the birth of the most beautifully identical triplets – each one, of course, being a girl.

Still wishing for a son, the king had followed an old woman’s advice to let an angry dog bite him.

The result was a girl once more, albeit one who seemed more at home in the forest than at any ball or courtly event.

Naturally, no one was interested in marrying her.

But as for her three sisters; well, it was now quite obvious that Echion’s king and queen were incapable of giving birth to a prince who would inherit the realm, and so the surrounding kings were eagerly vying to make them their queens.

The elegant neck of Echion would bow at last to a new ruler.

‘Unless,’ the queen adamantly declared to her daughters, ‘a new, fifth ring is found!’

*

But did such a ring, a fifth ring, actually exist?

Indeed, the real question was: could it exist?

What could it possibly be made of to grant it powers overshadowing those of the other rings?

Every adventurer sent out on a quest to find the ring returned – if he returned at all – with nothing but ever more confusing tales of how the existing four rings had come to be formed.

But what use were such tales, Queen Polybea fumed, when they contradicted each other in specific details, or suffered from mistranslations as their telling crossed borders? Illustrations on ancient pottery supposedly gave extra clues, yet she herself had seen renderings commemorating comparatively recent events that transformed defeat in battle into victories.

Tales, myths and fairystories were of no use to her.

There was one thing that most tales appeared to agree upon, however.

The smiths who’d created each of the four rings were now dead.

And the last of their line was a daughter…

Which meant there was only one conclusion Queen Polybea could arrive at.

She needed more time…

*

Chapter 3

Queen Polybea demanded gifts for her daughters that would prove which of the kings were their most ardent suitors.

From the king who could control water, she asked for a cloak of fire.

From the king who controlled the movement of the earth, she expected a gown of rippling air.

The king who effortlessly bent the air to his will must create a garment like a living garden.

While, naturally, the king who wove fire was required to provide a chemise that fell away from the shoulders as a cascading waterfall.

At worst, the queen reckoned, the ambitious kings would have to put aside war-like intentions and collaborate if they wished to produce such remarkable garments.

For marriage, she realised, wouldn’t solve Echion’s problems, so much as transform their nature.

With little more than minutes separating the birth of her three daughters, each king would be tempted to question the legitimacy of any inheritance.

And then, of course, there was also the fourth king to consider, the king who’d fail to woo any of the three eldest daughters…

If only Orthia, the fourth and youngest, had been born beautiful…

*

The woods were the most beautiful place on earth, Orthia thought, gleefully glancing everywhere about her as she elatedly ran along the track lazily winding its way through the soaring trees.

No one else thought this way about the forest, of course.

They regarded it as being wholly wild, untamed – dangerous.

No one in their right mind ventured into the woods unless they absolutely had to.

‘Where are your sisters?’ the fish would ask Orthia as she sat by a sparkling pool. ‘We have so much to tell them!’

‘They’re preparing to be married,’ Orthia would sadly reply, ‘and no king would marry a girl who sees the wood as a home.’

‘Then tell them not to marry the king who controls the waters,’ they advised one day, ‘for he diverts streams on a whim, with no care for the damage he causes.’

‘If the king produces the requested marriage cloak of fire, then I’m afraid they’ll have no choice…Besides, I’ve heard he uses his command of the storms to irrigate the land.’

‘Yet he can’t restore those who are already dead…’

‘And remains unwilling to help anyone who refuses to show him allegiance.’

‘But you’ve just pointed out why my sisters can’t refuse his offers of marriage: his Minotaur–helmeted men are unstoppable whenever he conjures up storms against their enemies.’

‘Kadmilos the smith is to blame,’ one of the patiently bobbing fish replied, the slight fluctuations of his fins sending out ripples across the pond. ‘He cut off the head of the great serpent Ai NOmrAH, simply to find out the secret of making a ring of water.’

‘Then he’s much to answer for,’ Orthia sternly declared, putting aside the admiration she felt for a smith who could solidify the rippling of water. ‘But how could such a thing ever be made?’

The fish swapped puzzled glances.

‘We’ve never quite understood that ourselves,’ they forlornly admitted.

*

Chapter 4

King Thyestes couldn’t even begin to fathom why the queen brooded and worried so about who would inherit their realm.

It would pass to a daughter, Antheis presumably, as she was the oldest of the three if by only a few minutes. And it would be her son who would ultimately rule.

‘And don’t you think the kings will argue over those very minutes you deem so