This Side of Wind: Stories

By Dean Shearer

Acclaimed author Dean Shearer draws on his library of general and fantasy stories to produce this magical collection, This Side of Wind. 

This Side of Wind collects twenty of Dean's bestselling short stories, fairy tales, and poems. The collection opens with "Peter the Toller," a "golden legend" from the Middle Ages which chronicles the life of one particularly nasty tax collector. The collection ends with "Chocolates and Roses Are Not For Men," a story of a man and a woman, an angel, and chocolate. And the eighteen stories in between are just as magnificent. 

Step into the Wind and discover why readers never forget this collection of wonders. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean Shearer
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215808122

Dean Shearer

Dean Shearer is the author of many fictitious works such as The Cat, The World is Magic, and the short stories series Selah, the Universe. He wishes there was more to say about himself (he likes studying religions and walking barefoot and reading and writing in multiple genres and reading and writing a lot) but there's just too much to say.

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THIS SIDE OF WIND

A COLLECTION

DEAN SHEARER

This Side of Wind

Copyright © 2023 by Dean Shearer

Cover and layout copyright © 2023 by Dean Shearer

www.deanshearer.com

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All right reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CONTENTS

Peter the Toller

A Right Fine Broad

The Sea

John the Good and Just

In Time

Homecoming

All Is RIght

Izzy’s Freeze

Father

The Case of the Kitty-Clawed Blues

In the Park

The Lady of Apples and Roses

Lady Wisdom

Cop-A-Mouse

The Editor

Scars

Bark!

A Mortal Just Like You

Solider of the Light

Chocolates and Roses Are Not For Men

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Also by Dean Shearer

About the Author

The idea that

stories have a mind of their own

isn't that crazy.

PETER THE TOLLER

Sometime in some city you’ve never heard of there was a tax collector named Peter who was very rich. The poor would come to the gate outside his house, and ask him to throw something through the bars for them, anything, even just a crumb. He threw them something through the bars alright: a fist, as heavy as a sack of pennies. If they did not leave after that he would hop the gate and chase them, screaming after them to never come back, I tell ye, never come back again!

The poor stopped coming to his gate.

There was a poor man who one day had a very bright idea. Snickering, he said to his friends, What will ye give me if I get of him an alms this day?

His friends just looked at him. Ye won’t, was all they could find to say.

The poor man went to the rich man’s gate, and demanded of the rich man alms. At which point the rich man reached for something to throw at the poor man’s head. But he came up empty-handed. He couldn’t find anything to throw.

Leave me alone right this instant, beggar, said Peter to the man on the other side of the gate. Then added, desperately, Or else.

No—not till ye give me an alms, said the poor man. Then added, desperately, Or else.

So it was a standstill.

Then something happened. One of the rich man’s servants happened to walk by with a basket of rye-bread. Give me that, said the rich man Peter, and snatched a rye loaf from the basket and threw it through the bars at the poor man’s head.

The poor man took the loaf, and he ran. He ran very fast. He ran very fast until he reached his friends.

Straight from the hands of Peter, he said to them, and, panting, tossed them the loaf.

Two days passed. Midway through the second day Peter the tax collector became sick. He was likely to die. He lay on his bed to sleep, and he had a vision. In the darkness there was a balance, made of brass, empty on both sides.

Men emerged from the darkness, men with skin as black as tar. They gathered up Peter’s wicked deeds. They dropped them into one side of the balance.

There were men who stood on the other side of the balance. They wore robes as white as snow, and their faces looked sorrowful. They did not move.

Then one said, Truly we have nothing to put in the other side of the scale—except a single rye loaf given up to God. On accident.

They put the loaf into the balance, and the balance tilted. It seemed to Peter that the balances were even.

Then the men in white told him, Increase and multiply this rye loaf else you’ll be handed to these fiends, and gestured to the men as black as tar, who had teeth as long and sharp as razors. Peter awoke with the words still ringing in his head.

If one rye loaf, he said to himself, given to a beggar on accident benefited me this much—well then, how much more would it have helped me if I had given up all my goods on purpose!

The next day—he was still sick—Peter went on a walk along the seaside, clothed in his finest clothing, which flapped like a sail in the damp and salty wind. A poor sailor who was completely naked saw him, and seeing by his clothes that he was rich, said to Peter,

For the love of God, I beg you, cover me with clothes!

Peter, remembering the vision, took off clothes, and gave them to the sailor—at which point the sailor darted off to the market and sold them for a handful of gold.

Peter blinked, puzzled.

Peter sighed, distressed.

Peter went home, depressed. He was in fact so depressed by the whole situation that he didn’t eat anything for dinner that night. He lay down in bed, body heavy, mind all the heavier.

A salty wind blew the curtain of his window. The moonlight was blue and cold on the bedsheets. Peter coughed, rolled over into a little ball.

I am so useless, he said to himself, that the poor man didn’t even thank me.

Then he gave a great trembling sigh and went to sleep.

That night he saw a man who shone brighter than the sun. Peter had to squint to see him clearly. The man had a cross on his forehead, and he wore the fine clothes that Peter had given to the naked sailor.

Why weepest thou? the man asked Peter.

Peter told him what had happened.

To which Our Lord replied, gesturing down at his clothes, Knowest thou these clothes?

Yes, said Peter. I know them.

And Our Lord said, I have been clothed with these clothes since the time you gave them to the poor sailor. I thank you, Peter, for your goodwill upon seeing me naked, and for covering me when I was cold.

Then Peter awoke, his throat sore. God bless the poor, was all he could find to say. He sat up in bed, feeling inspired. Then he croaked, I swear to the God Alone Who Lives that . . . if I live through this sickness . . . I will give away everything, everything I have or could ever own and forever onward live as one of His poor men!

Something changed. His eyes widened.

Hello, he said to the room, to test his voice. Then, By God! I could screech like a cat and even then my throat would be smooth as silver! He hopped out of bed, testing his strength. Good as new!

So he gave all his goods to the poor. Then he called to him a man who he trusted very well, and said to him, I have a secret to tell you.

Yes? said the trustworthy man, leaning in.

Don’t look so interested, so gossipy—whatever. Because if you tell this secret to anyone I’ll sell you to the heathens.

Oh no, sir, confided the trustworthy man. I would never.

So Peter gave him ten pieces of gold and told him to go into the city and buy some clothes that a merchant would wear. And after that come back to me, chain my wrists together, and sell me to some Christian man. Take the money and give it to the poor.

Oh no, sir, pleaded the trustworthy man. I could never do that.

To which Peter replied with the evil eye.

Why do you look at me that way, sir? said the trustworthy man.

Because I’m seeing how much you’d go for to the heathen men.

So the man turned merchant bound Peter’s wrists in chains, dressed him in vile rags, and took him down to the market, where he sold him to a money-changer for thirty bezants. He then took the bezants and distributed them out to the poor just as Peter had commanded.

As for Peter, he was bound and put into a kitchen to do all the foul and stinky work. This caused him to be despised by all the other servants, who liked to smack him upside the head with rolling pins and such and call him a fool. Lucky for him, Christ often appeared to him and showed him his clothing and the bezants and in this way comforted him.

And the Emperor and the others were very sorry for the loss of Peter the Tax Collector, for he had been exceedingly great at his job.

Well it happened one day that some noble men of Constantinople came to the city where Peter was, to see some holy places. Peter’s master, upon meeting them, invited them over for dinner.

It was a wonderful dinner. There were fish, golden and flaky and fragrant. There were meats of all kinds—sausages and beef cuts, whole roasted chickens and hens. There was just about anything you could ever want. It was all there.

Peter also was there, serving the dinner and stooping over ever so often to refill the men’s glasses with wine. One of them studied Peter with squinted eyes. Then he said,

"Hey, mm I just drunk er don’t he