Weaving the Times: A Sequel to Out of the Roons

By Isobel Raven

WEAVING the TIMES is set in 3022 in a world governed by the Magnificent Noo Wld Reepublik uv Aezhu and de Amerikez, also called "The RAA." The only permissible language is Inglish. Loyel Sitizenz dare not question the rools and regs of the RAA.

Hom, our hero, knows that the RAA lies to the people. He feels called to sort the truth from the lies. Twelve years old, he sets out with Great-Uncle Mungo to see the world. After Uncle Mungo dies, Hom journeys alone until his boat is beached on an island where the RAA seems to have no presence.

Hom, now a young man, writes stories of his travels in an ancient university library. Phineas, a one-time student, provides ink and paper.

Phineas has stories too. From these, and from stories told in McGivers Pub, Hom learns that the RAA has occupied this island, taken what they wanted, and destroyed what they didn't. When the RAA returns, the dignitaries and their armed entourage are routed in a highly satisfactory way. "Galubrious!" says Hom.

The book has a deliriously happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228881162

Isobel Raven

Isobel Raven remembers World War II (When are we going to win, Daddy?); Dior's "new look" (a feature of my Grade 9 wardrobe); "the Pill" (free love and then AIDS); Y2K (a Chicken Little thing, for sure); and, since 2000, the maelstrom of doom and gloom.She completed a BA at Western University and an MA at UBC. After retirement, winning an honourable mention in a short story contest caused Isobel to say, "I got this!" and begin writing in earnest. Undaunted by the lack of any more easy successes, she published The Future of Fonics, a non-fiction work, in 2005. A Flower for Allie: Country Stories, City stories followed in 2010, and Out of the Roons, the precursor to WEAVING the TIMES, in 2019.

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Weaving the Times

Copyright © 2022 by Isobel Raven

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-8115-5 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-8114-8 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-8116-2 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Introduction

Dedication

Part I – Alone on a Beach

Part II – The Library

Part III – Travels and Tales

Part IV – Suspicion

Part V – The Calm

Part VI – Return of the RAA

Part VII – D58.8.8

Part VIII – A Beginning and …

Acknowledgements

Introduction

WEAVING the TIMES is a story of stories. Stories told by firesides and over a pint in the pub. Stories written by a young man who feels he must write what he has seen. Stories older than history, stories not yet selected and compressed into history. WEAVING the TIMES is an unfinished story, as the hero’s quest isn’t yet accomplished. The boy who wanted to see the world is distracted by a new challenge. Life is like that.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the late Katherine Barber, editor - i n -c hief of The Canadian Oxford Dictionary and The Canadian Oxford Thesaurus, two volumes that I kept close at hand as I wrote. Without them, WEAVING the TIMES could never have been compl eted.

PART I

Alone on a Beach

The gale had raged for three days. Hom lay exhausted in his tiny boat. The sail flapped; the lines whipped, the boom swung. With grinding crunch, the wind beached the craft, throwing its occupant to the rock -s trewn shore. He lay half in, half out of the water, gas ping.

His fingers clutched spasmodically, then grasped a stony ridge. Finding successive ridges, he inched his way out of the waves onto the field of gravel and rock that passed for a beach in this forlorn place.

Hom knew he had two choices: die here of starvation and exhaustion, or move.

He decided to move.

He stood. He breathed deep. He found strength to make his way among the rocks to the grassy field beyond. Here the rocks, half-buried in soil, spoke of a sea that had once extended to the cliff above. They stood harmless, sheltering clumps of early flowers not like any Hom knew.

He knelt to examine them, to judge if they might be edible. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d eaten strange stuff. His eyes delivered no warning. But he trusted his nose and sense of taste much more. The flower and fleshy stem smelled only of the sea. The pointed leaf was faintly bitter. Not too bad. He ate another.

The wind had abated. Hom crawled to the lea of a sizeable rock. He would wait for any ill effects of his dietary experiment. He opened his backpack, hoping to find the contents in good shape. Yes! The porgel lining had done its job. The rough cotton singlet was quite dry, as were the very old RAA-issue pants. He pulled the dry things on and laid his wet garments to dry on the rock along with his sleeveless coat of animal hide. He shook the water out of his worn sneakers, turned them upside down, and hoped that they might dry too.

Tails of cloud still raced above, but the sky was blue as ever the sky can be. Hom was not surprised. He was used to sudden changes in weather.

The leaves seemed to have gone down well, so he ventured a small meal of the plant’s short stems, garnished with bitter leaves. He judged the season to be early spring. Not good foraging yet. Maybe better beyond the cliff.

He sat on the rock, looking out to sea. The sun was low in the sky and would soon set in a display of rose and gold in a bank of cumulus cloud. The west wind, friendly now, caressed his wide, brown brow. It dried his black hair which he wore plaited in a long braid.

Always good to me, the west wind, Hom thought. Right from when I was a kid setting out with Uncle Mungo. Then why did it blow up a storm and shipwreck me here in this ungalubrious place?

As he watched, the waves, gentle, but inexorable, washed the remains of his boat out to sea. Guess I’m here for a while, he thought. Tomorrow I climb the cliff.

It was a cold night and bitter beside the sheltering rock. The wind blew up a powerful surf whose rhythm, far from soothing, reminded Hom of his losses—Gran and Boat, his boyhood pals, and most of all, Mungo, his uncle, friend, and guide on the journey that had thrown him up on this unfriendly shore.

At dawn, Hom repacked his belongings. He made another meal of the little plants: flowers, stems, and leaves He donned the damp coat, and picked his way among the rocks to the foot of the cliff that loomed black and forbidding.

Here were no flowers. Just jagged rocks, some of considerable size. Hom could spot them easily in the gloom. Not so the smaller ones that tipped underfoot and threatened always a turned ankle or a bashed knee. The cliffside remained in darkness, though the sky showed streaks of light.

Hom began to see what he was up against. A sheer cliff of burnt-brown, layered rock. No steps hewn in this rock. Not a foothold anywhere. No sign that anyone had ever scaled it or scrambled down its face.

He made his way along its base, and as the light improved, saw encouraging signs: a projection where one might get a hand-hold; a trough where a foot might cling. Still no sign that any climber had preceded him.

Here! Here where the cliff sloped away at its height, instead of glowering over his head. Here where a few sturdy shrubs forced their roots into the rock face. And a projection within arm’s reach seemed formed for human hand.

Hom took off his coat. He stuffed it in his pack. He grasped the hand-hold, found a footing and heaved.

Nerve and brain resolved. Muscle and sinew worked. Bone and joint complied. Foot by hand by foot, Hom clawed his way up the cliff-face. Nearing the top, bereft of any other hand-hold, he was forced to grasp a stringy bush, knotted and thorned. A doubtful friend in his extremity. If it failed. . .

Stringy, but strongly rooted. A survivor. It held.

Hom flung himself onto the gravelly slope. He lay there, safe, trembling and heaving. Sunlight at last! It poured down on his prostrate body. OK. He would be OK.

The sun was nearing its apex when Hom gathered himself to move on in search of food. Once he had cleared the thinly covered rock, Hom found a countryside teeming with growth: grass and bushes wreathed in vines; trees of many kinds, some in new leaf; a few more early flowers. Yet there were no cultivated fields, no flocks on the hills. No people.

Wild animals abounded. Hom startled a doe who stared at him unafraid before leaping away. He glimpsed a gloss of fur as something slipped into the underbrush. Among the trees he heard the chirping and liquid calls of many birds.

And on a derelict fence, a tabby cat so like his old pet, Roon, that Hom thought he might dare to stroke him. If only he had a bit of sausage to entice him. But the cat regarded him with hostile eye. It hissed at his approach. Hom let him be.

It was after he met the cat that Hom found the deserted town. A street with empty shops, their doors ajar and the shelves stripped. Houses with curtains still dangling in the windows. Beds with mouldy mattresses and the odd discoloured pillow. Furniture, deteriorated beyond any usefulness. Bare cupboards. The people seemed to have fled with whatever they could carry.

Hom saw the reason for their flight. Not far away a blackened structure brooded over the empty town. It was not a tower, but more like a humongous jug, wide at the bottom with a stumpy neck. Heavy scaffolding still rose beside it. Though he had never seen one of these before, he recognized the thing for a nuclear installation. Uncle Mungo had come upon a scene very like this one on his travels a long time ago. Uncle said that when one of these blew, the land around it was poisoned for eternity.

For this reason, Hom didn’t look for food here. But he must find something soon. He shivered, so dug out his coat and put it on.

The place of rampant growth gave way to rolling hills. Hom topped a rise and, west wind at his back, stopped a moment to take in the scene. If anyone had been in the green valley looking up, they would have seen a young man’s figure outlined against the sky. Tall, vigorous, a man in his prime. But they would have been wrong.

Hom’s head was swimming. He felt faint with hunger. He had no plan. He did not trust his own senses.

Especially when he saw, or thought he saw in the hillside opposite a large mound with a door. An old-fashioned half door with iron hasps. A little window of many panes, and a beehive under it. Beside the door, an old woman with a basket of apples.

Hom shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but the vision persisted. He stumbled towards it. An apple. What he would give for an apple!

He collapsed at the feet of the woman and knew no more until he came to on a pallet inside the strange dwelling. The woman was spooning porridge into his mouth and speaking softly to him in an unknown tongue. Hom did not know the words, but he knew the sound of kindness.

Porridge and a cup of goat’s milk had remarkable reviving powers. Hom sat up to examine his surroundings. The dwelling was indeed dug out of the side of the hill. Its walls were shored up with stone and timber. A stove in the centre sent up a pipe through the ceiling. The crackling fire was heating a kettle which soon whistled cheerily. The woman, perhaps not so old, but weathered and brown, sat nearby on a wooden stool. She poured the steaming water into a teapot. An extraordinarily large, black teapot.

That’s it, said Hom. You’re the old woman who lived under a hill. And since you’re not gone, you live here still. And that’s your teapot.

Oh, said the woman. You don’t know the old tongue. You speak the Inglish. You’re from away.

Is that a bad thing?

We do not like strangers. They have done us no good. Her Inglish was stilted and stiff in her mouth.

Then why did you feed me? I might have conveniently died on your doorstep.

The woman laughed. Not convenient at all. I would have had to bury you.

Hom accepted her reasoning. Yeah. But I thank you very much for the porridge. It seems to have magical powers.

So, what about my teapot?

"It was in the picture. In Gran’s old Mother Goose book. The verse said:

There was an old woman

Lived under a hill

And if she’s not gone

She lives there still.

And you have the same teapot. It was outside the door in the picture, which made no sense. But you didn’t expect sense in Mother Goose."

The woman poured two cups of strong, black tea. This is a teapot from the Grand House. See? She pointed to a coat of arms still visible on the side of the pot."

Your family lived in a grand house?

So I’m told. But they were servants. The Grand Family left the house and everything in it, they say. Frightened to death of a sickness that struck down their children.

I’ve heard of a sickness like that. But in a country far from here. It kills the kids and makes the parents panic.

So the servants did what they wanted with the grand belongings. The teapot survives.

How long ago was that?

She looked at him strangely. His question seemed out of place to her.

Time is dead, she said. It has no relevance here.

The conversation was over. Hom felt that he was not exactly unwelcome, but out of place. He should go. He left the woman on her stool, silent and apparently no longer aware of his presence.

He looked back when he had walked some distance along the valley floor. He saw no door in the hill. No beehive. No pipe out of the roof. No smoke ascending.

Hom chose to walk with the west wind at his back. There were flocks of sheep and goats on the green hills, but he met no shepherds. At the top of a rise, he looked into a deep valley hidden in mist.

Out of the mist, a square tower rose, wreathed in cloud. It disappeared. Hom thought it might have been a mirage when it reappeared more clearly than before.

Hom stepped down into the swirling mist, the tower his only guide. The ground beneath his feet was pocked with treacherous hummocks clothed in long grass. He stumbled over them, the grass slashing at his ankles. The tower, which hadn’t seemed distant, kept reappearing well beyond him.

Darkness fell, and with it Hom’s hopes of reaching his goal. His meal of porridge and goat’s milk, so long past, could not sustain him now. He struggled on, and the ground under his feet was even more unfriendly—swampy, with hostile trees whose roots rose up to trip him.

Hom’s despair slowed his feet until he stopped. He stood, breathing slow, waiting for some sign of relief.

It came. High up in the distant tower, a light. A window! As he watched, the little light wavered in the mist. It looked sometimes like two faint beams with spots of colour. Then it all but disappeared. A faltering beacon.

Hom didn’t question the beneficence of the light. Though it might just as well have led to his destruction, he followed it with his accustomed confidence that things would be OK.

The light led him through a sleeping town to a doorstep in the base of the tower where he collapsed. With his last strength, Hom battered the door and it opened.

PART II

The Library

Hom dipped his pen in the pot of ink Phineas had provided. He squared up his little pile of yellowed paper, some brown and broken at the edges. Hom suspected that it pained Phineas, the keeper of this ancient library, to sacrifice the fly leaves of even the most obscure and unintelligible volumes in the vast, mouldering collection. The shelves rose on either side, tier upon tier, crowded with volumes collected from the earliest centuries of book -m a king .

The table where Hom worked was a long black walnut plank, and his chair was of the same wood. In a time barely remembered, students must have worked in this quiet ambience, reading, writing, preparing for examination. Students who preferred the physical book to its online counterpart. Students who liked to work alone rather than in colloquies.

Feeling encouraged by the ghosts of these long-gone students, Hom began to write:

When Uncle died, my heart broke. I lay beside his body on the cold, grey rock of that godforsaken place for hours or days maybe, unable to lift my head.

Why did he have to die here, in this desolate place where there wasn’t a patch of soil where I could bury him? We had crept into the shadow of this massive grey block, half-quarried from the rock around it. I’d tried to keep the two of us alive with spoonfuls of water from a trickle that seeped from the side of the quarry. It was enough for me, but I couldn’t save Uncle.

Hom fingered the little curve-handled spoon that he kept on a thong around his neck under his singlet. It was there with the coin from the old country and the small wood carving of a dove’s wing. These were his amulets, his connection with his old life with Gran.

The place seemed totally dead. Browned bushes and grass still stuck up between the stones and cracks in the quarry wall. The skeletons of dead trees lined the horizon. Five pillars stood far away. One still had its capstone. The others were broken off like jagged teeth. I wondered about the devastation. Did it happen all at once or bit by bit for a long time?

Hom paused, recalling the scene. In the margin, he sketched four broken pillars.

In the most desolate places, there is life: insects, lichens, moss. I had learned that on my journey with Uncle. I roused and looked about for some way to survive.

Uncle was my Uncle Mungo, son of my great-Gran, brother of Gema, who was my grandmother. He was taken away from Gran for military service on his eighteenth birthday. He never came back until the day of Gran’s execution by the GNWRAA. That is, the world government, which we call the RAA.

Uncle and I have journeyed wherever the wind took us in the time since that day. About ten years, as measured by the earth’s journey around the sun. The RAA changed the way to measure days and months a while before we left. The time in RAA years is probably different. But it doesn’t matter. Not here in this place where there’s no sign of the RAA. I judge it’s the year 3032 or thereabouts in the old system.