Neid-Fire

By Caldon Mull

Corentin and Armel are cousins on a gap year to spend the summer months cleaning up their Great-Aunt's Farm in the Brittany Forest. Helen has been asking the men in her family for years to come through and tend to the acreage, but their local family feud in the South African Wine-lands has interfered with her wishes. The young men return to their ancestral home to discover their strange past. There appears to be much forgotten from the family's history and the cousins soon begin to evaluate their new lives, juggling a future as a Vintner or any other career in the land of their birth against their prospects in the Old Country. As the summer months pass, Corentin and Armel begin to experience things that they would not have thought possible as they adapt to their new circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silver Bark Books
• Release date: Apr 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9789526500492

Caldon Mull

Caldon Mull is the pen name of a veteran storyteller with continent-spanning work experience consulting for the financial and military sectors. His work includes his primary series the 'Sol Senate Cycle' and his time-tripping fantastika series 'Agency Tales'. He is best known for supporting Games Master Content for the GENCON, UPCON, Oubliette and ICON game and comic conventions but is lesser known for his more edgy literary Fiction.His genre-skipping Fiction work has received 'honorable mention' over the years beginning with the 1986 Q2 Writers of the Future contest and from the SFSA Nova Award over later decades. His shorter works have been published in Omenana, RPGA Network and the SFSA Probe magazines. His longer works have been published under his eponymous Caldon Mull brand and by Sera Blue Publishers. He is currently resident in Finland with his wife and many cats.

Book preview

Neid-Fire

by

Caldon Mull

Copyright © 2018, 2023 by Caldon Mull

Published by Silver Bark Books

at Smashwords

Publisher information

Silver Bark Books

Linkorinne 5 A2

Espoo, 02630

Republic of Finland

Credit section

Copyright © 2018, 2023 Caldon Mull

Cover art copyright © 2023 by Silver Bark Books

All Rights Reserved 2nd Edition

ISBN 978-952-65004-7-8 (softcover) Print Edition

ISBN 978-952-65004-8-5 (PDF)

ISBN 978-952-65004-9-2 (EPUB)

2nd Edition License Notes

Neid-Fire... is a work of fiction, any resemblance of any character to any person, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Neid-Fire

About Caldon Mull

Other books by Caldon Mull

Connect with Caldon Mull

Acknowledgements

This work is dedicated to firefighters, paramedics and other care volunteers who put their own lives in danger to save others.

It seems absurd at the switch in narrative between a service that is lauded when provided for free… and in practice is denigrated, neglected, and then paid minimum wage for the most part.

Decades of neglect is a result of a series of deliberate, planned decisions on behalf of the authorities. It seems absurdist to me to continue this trend in the face of climate instability and climate change.

To my wife and my brood of cats, my family, and my friends; and to coffee. I love you guys!

Neid-Fire

The little red car wheezed up the hill, its’ tiny three-cylinder motor buzzing as Armel shifted the gears down yet again to round another sharp bend. Corentin cringed as his cousin’s beefy, sweating forearm dragged against the outside of his thigh yet again. He sighed in resignation, both of them were large young men, and the tiny car left no space for comfort on the long trip on the winding road through the forest.

Outside the open windows and beyond the range of the fully engaged fan, the Breton Forest breathed and sweltered almost as if it were a living thing intent on, and actively relishing, their mutual discomfort. Corentin squirmed as sweat trickled into the crease of his buttocks. It had been eight hours since they departed South-Hampton port on the ferry, and he was past done with this leg of the trip. There seemed to be no way that he could avoid rubbing against Armel, no way telling whose sweat was which after all these hours.

Corentin fiddled with the plastic vent on the dashboard, but the fan simply wasn’t going to alter his level of discomfort.

Armel had never been small-talk-chatty even as a boy, growing up on the winelands farm together. That was before the big family split, before Armel went away to the big city and before the long, cold silence between their families.

Ten years later, there was much of Armel that Corentin didn’t know at all. Their re-connection was a very recent and whirlwind event.

Corentin groaned, Are we…

Don’t finish that sentence, Corentin. Armel growled, slipping another gear to wind up a switch-back We’ve been ‘almost there’ the last five times you’ve asked. We’re not far now, we’ll get there when we get there.

The sun was low in the sky as they pulled up the dirt road off the pass. The forest hugged the sides of the twisting lanes so close that Corentin wound up his window to stop stray branches from swatting at him on the way past, his skin sticky where it pressed against Armel as he wiggled in his seat.

Dude! Armel complained as the biscuit wheels of the Citroen skidded on the pebbly surface and he fought for control of the vehicle while Corentin bobbed and twisted.

The low-eave stone building was set off the top of a small plateau, the highest point around; the cleared area around the house big enough to store farm implements. The other buildings around the farmhouse were likewise constructed of stone, topped by corrugated iron roof, some with heavy wood doors shut against the sinking sun; others had open arches of heavy stone lintel. Armel drove the car into the nearest open arch big enough.

I can't believe this took so long. Corentin groaned as he exited the passenger door and pressed his fists into the small of his back. Or that France is so hot or so dry this early in the year. I mean, it's only Easter and it’s already over thirty degrees all day long. He swung his arms in the gloom of the barn. The little car pinged and popped and groaned quietly as it started to cool down, its’ suspension creaking as Armel squeezed out of his seat.

Really, Corentin? Armel cricked his neck and looked around the shed, We’ve been in the country for a few hours, how would you know what the place is like? Armel grabbed his hamstrings and bent forward slowly against the cramp the little car had squeezing him into. This gap year with you in France wasn’t my idea, and if our great-aunt Helen wasn't footing the bill for both of us, I wouldn't even be here.

It was my twenty-first birthday present from her. Corentin scuffed the uneven stone floor with his sandal. It looked like the stones were fitted together like a jigsaw, rather than with mortar. He squinted at the flagstones; he wasn’t sure how anyone could do something like that. She needed someone from the family here for this summer. Corentin sighed, "Inventory and upkeep is what she mentioned to my Dad, and there is a village crew for the buildings but nobody on the acreage. After mom died, I wasn't doing