Wester: The Artful Rat: An Easter Fable

By Carl A. Posey and Robin R. Posey

For most of his life, Wester’s biggest problem was finding food. Living as he did, in the high mountains, near a mining town, he had two main options: scavenge in the dump by the creek, or take his chances in the fancy house on the hill. And so, waking up very hungry as the early spring sunshine warmed the earth ar

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Elizabeth Ann Wadia
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780996517720

Book preview

ALSO BY

Carl A. Posey

Kiev Footprint

Prospero Drill

Red Danube (Dead Issue in UK)

Benchley's Chip

Bushmaster Fall

Red Man's Will

Shot@Dawn

Last of the April Ten

COPYRIGHT © 2019 CARL A. POSEY AND ROBIN POSEY

ISBN: 978-0-9965177-2-0 (E-BOOK)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS WORK MAY BE REPRODUCED BY ANY MEANS WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT FOR SHORT PASSAGES USED IN CRITICAL REVIEWS.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL EVENTS, PLACES, OR PEOPLE LIVING OR DEAD IS ENTIRELY COINCIDENTAL.

ARTWORK © 2019 CARL A. POSEY AND ROBIN POSEY

DESIGN BY MICHAEL HENTGES

Always P

FOREWORD

While he wrote Wester many years ago, my father didn’t tackle the illustrations until quite late in life. The last time I saw him, we talked a little bit about me finishing the illustrations he began – all were inked, several colored – and I jumped at the chance to share some of the load, but also as a way to keep him closer for a little bit longer.

Without him around to see the final product, or steer the work through the water, I circled the project in much the same way Wester circles his creative issues – very slowly, without a clear vision of what exactly the process was going to look like. At last, however, as with Wester, I found a happy contentment in the work.

I love all of my father’s books, but Wester: The Artful Rat, is special to me. And as such, I’d like to dedicate it to his memory, and to his refusal to stop working even as the Darkness that Comes for Everything came for him.

Robin Posey

Seattle, June

2018

IT WAS A DREAM WESTER often had, especially in winter. The dream began as nothing more than a troubling sense that something, he knew not what, was not as it should have been. But then his sleeping self realized that somebody else, some thing , an unwanted presence of some kind, had entered his burrow. And as his dream unfolded, the shadow seemed to spread through his underground home, seeping past the narrows, where the entrance pinched in enough to discourage foraging hunters. The darkness flowed into the larger chamber where he lived, and Wester’s feet began to twitch, wanting to break away in a run, his long whiskers trembled, and finally, he, the dreamer, felt the actual touch of the intruder…but no one was there.

Now children’s voices drifted into Wester’s dream, voices faint with distance, but real enough to wake him, to rescue him from his agitated sleep. He shivered with relief, opened his dark eyes, and sniffed with his pointed rat’s nose. His round rat’s ears aimed this way and that, hearing everything.

Water ran nearby. Wester could hear it overhead and off to the north, where a creek, charmed by winter into ice many months ago, now ran with clear, cold water. Wester shut his eyes and imagined the creek spilling out of the mountains to draw its snake-like curves across the meadow. Indeed, water seemed to fill the Earth. Wester heard it trickling, dripping, splashing, flowing everywhere around him.

Beyond the children’s voices and the water sounds, the air danced with the sharp songs of birds, the whir of stirring insect eggs, the pushing of roots along the roof and walls and tunnels of his subterranean home.

And, yes, there was an intruder after all, but not an unwelcome one. A narrow shaft of light stabbed like a needle down through the thick, warm air of the burrow, to form a golden puddle on the littered floor. Now, as the puddle grew, it lightened the dark walls and corners of the place, illuminating Wester’s most cherished possessions: old bones and a few bright buttons, shredded paper, threads and strings, spent matches, the stem of a pipe with an intoxicating scent, the remnants of who-knew-how-many meals, a silver buckle. Wester’s heart warmed.

He watched the sunbeam creep across the floor and listened to the Earth revive. The sun is back, he whispered.