Posts Tagged ‘JASPER’S PROMISE’
Quick Hits: Jalen Hurt, Damian Lillard, and A New Chapter of My Novel “Jasper’s Promise,” too!
Folks, earlier this week news came out that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurt has deep vein thrombosis and multiple pulmonary emboli. (More than one pulmonary embolism, in short.) Worse yet, the blood clots were in both lungs, not just one…and I know from personal experience that healing up from just one is a chore in and of itself.
In my case, they found the pulmonary embolism while it was resolving. They said I was very lucky to have survived it on my own. No one knows for sure what set my pulmonary embolism off, but there are multiple possibilities that start with Covid, Covid, and Covid. (The resolving pulmonary embolism was found in February of 2020, IIRC. We did not yet know that Covid was in the United States as of then, nor did we have any way to test for it, much less to treat it. To my mind it remains the most likely possibility by far.)
Anyway, in Jalen Hurt’s case, he played a game overseas in London, meaning he had an overseas and lengthy flight when he did not yet know he had any health issues going on, then played the roughest American sport we have, and only then was diagnosed with both deep vein thrombosis and the multiple pulmonary emboli.
In some ways, Hurt is much luckier than I was. But in others…this could’ve gone really bad, really fast. People with DVT have to take extra care on flights from what I recall. And people with any blood clots or pulmonary emboli have to take blood thinners until the blood clots are gone. Worse yet, unless you are a pro athlete like Hurt or Damian Lillard, you are likely to be on them the rest of your life.
(Yes, I take blood thinners. I wish I didn’t have to. Moving on…)
Speaking of Damian Lillard, he recently said that when the Bucks waived him about fifteen months ago that he was not only shocked, but it was extremely frustrating for him to deal with. This does not surprise me. Lillard is a human being. He did everything he possibly could to help the Bucks while he was in Milwaukee, coming back much more quickly than most people from a blood clot in his leg, only to then tear his Achilles tendon in the playoffs. He had bad luck, yes. But he also had a lot of heart, and I know I’m not the only fan who was not just shocked, but disgusted and frustrated when Lillard was waived.
In a way, I guess it was a good thing, because the Portland Trailblazers immediately re-signed Lillard (he was drafted by them and played many years with them before being traded to the Bucks) even knowing he would be out the entire year due to needing to heal from that surgery to repair the Achilles tendon. This means he gets to see his kids far more often (he’s a devoted dad, and more power to him), as they live in Portland and go to school there. He’s getting paid twice, once by the Bucks, once by the Trailblazers, and because of how the Bucks waived and stretched his contract, Lillard will eventually get more money than he would’ve otherwise just from that contract alone.
It still was a shocking and senseless act. Lillard is going to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer in the Basketball Hall of Fame someday. He was a great teammate. He was and is a phenomenally good man, did a lot of quiet charitable things from what I could tell (I always like that; while it’s good if players do any charitable things, I think it is better if the star’s name is carefully kept out of it), and Milwaukee fans appreciated him — so much so, when he returned with the Trail Blazers last year, albeit injured, the fans gave him a raucous standing ovation.
I think that tickled Lillard. (If he ever reads this, “tickled” is Midwestern slang for a woman of a certain age, namely me, meaning “very appreciative” and maybe even “making someone else smile.”) He may not have realized the Bucks fanbase was very much against what the Bucks leadership did.
And ultimately, the whole “waive and stretch” thing didn’t even help, because the Bucks missed the playoffs, Giannis ended up traded to Miami along with Bobby Portis, and now the Bucks get to start over with a bunch of young, green players and a younger, possibly hipper coach.
I don’t know why the Bucks GM Jon Horst still has his job. I do understand why Doc Rivers is gone, though I don’t think he was the major problem. Ultimately, it is up to the GM to get the right players to fit into the team as it stood, and that just did not happen last year with the Bucks whatsoever.
My hope this year for Lillard is that he’ll score fifty or sixty points on the Bucks once he’s healthy enough to do so. That he’ll get to enjoy many things with his kids that he wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t been waived. And that he’ll always know that he has fans in Milwaukee who saw what he was doing and deeply appreciated it.
Now, it’s time to give you another chapter of my soon-to-be-released novel, JASPER’S PROMISE (written by permission in author Christopher G. Nuttall’s Schooled in Magic universe). Previous chapters are to be found here and here.**
Let’s get on with the show!
Excerpt starts:
Chapter Six
I’d tossed and turned all night on that huge bed. I had no idea what I was getting into, and I was suddenly afraid I’d be sent away, rather than taught as my mother had wanted—and as I needed.
In the morning, I went to eat in the mess hall, which is where the Gorgon found me.
“Finish your breakfast,” she said with a smile. If you could ignore the snakes on her head, she was a very pretty woman. I knew she was way out of my league, though…she’d gone to Whitehall, for pity’s sake, and was a confidante of Lady Emily herself. I resolved right then and there to treat her at minimum like a friendly older sister…or if I was fortunate, like the teacher I needed so badly but never had.
I choked down my last few bites, then followed her down a series of long halls. Just when I thought I was truly lost, we came to a big, open room filled with books—“Not heirlooms,” the Gorgon said, laughing, when I asked—and three people. The first, a man perhaps seven years older than me, introduced himself as Lord Caleb, one of the members of the Heart’s Eye Board of Directors. The second was a hard-eyed woman, not in her first youth; I guessed she was probably Administrator Irene. The third was a young man who was almost too beautiful for his own skin; I wondered idly if he’d used his magic to permanently make himself look that way (as I felt no hint of a glamour). He was introduced as the Head Librarian, Jayson, also a member of the Board of Directors.
“We’re here,” the older woman said, “because you told my assistant the Gorgon that you had a rare talent—that for the teleportation of small items. We would like you to demonstrate that for us now.”
I bit back a sarcastic retort, something along the lines of, What do you think I’m doing here?, because I could tell this was a woman who was not to be crossed. Her aura of power was formidable, and I definitely didn’t want her dismissing me right away for refusing to do her bidding.
Instead, I said, “I’m happy to do so.” I walked around the room, looking for a good place to stand where the book I intended to teleport shouldn’t hit anyone in the face. I worked best with line-of-sight, I told them, as I found a good place. There was a loose-leafed spiral notebook—must be one of those new inventions, I thought—that didn’t look too heavy.
Before I could get too scared, I closed my eyes and concentrated. I did my best to “feel” the book, asking it without words if it would come to my hand. Then I opened my eyes, gestured…and the book was in my hand.
Almost immediately, a bad headache hit me. I staggered to a chair the beautiful young man—Jayson?—pulled out, and handed the book to Administrator Irene.
“You can do this often?” she asked.
“Yes, but at a cost,” I admitted. “My mother had hoped that someone here would be able to help me refine this talent, as well as teach me a number of spells, as she didn’t know many.”
“Which spells do you know?” the Gorgon asked, after looking to Irene for permission.
“I can hide myself in the shadows, if I concentrate hard. I can bring light to my fingers, though that’s not a spell. I can tell if someone’s telling the truth; Mom had a cantrip for it, and I seem to have a talent for it. I also know how to purify water so it’s safe to drink. But I know no transmogrification spells, not even the one that turns other students into frogs. Most of the basic spells have never been taught to me, as my mother didn’t know them. I am eager to learn them, though, and will do whatever remedial study you ask me to do in order to stay here and learn magic to the limits of my ability, in order to do good in this world.”
Caleb frowned, but lightly. “I know someone who can help.”
“Your brother?” Irene asked.
“Yes,” Caleb agreed. “He taught quite a few students with, shall we say, sketchy magical backgrounds in Beneficence when he broke his arm and couldn’t go back for his sixth and final year at Stronghold, and he found he had a gift for teaching. I believe he’d come here, if I asked…though we may need to ask his fiancée, Alba, if she wants to accompany him. She has some magical gifts, though she’s nowhere near as formidable as her mother—”
“I’ve met her mother. Only Lady Barb was a tougher Mediator than Alba’s mother was, in her prime. Even now, I wouldn’t want to cross her.” Irene puffed a laugh, which lightened her expression considerably. “But Alba’s welcome here, of course. She knows some interesting things, you’ve said, about plants and how they grow and actually have magic, or can be imbued with such. She’d be an asset even without your brother Croce.”
As they discussed this amongst themselves, I realized that I’d won. My teleportation talent was rare enough they were willing to take a chance on me.
Someone was willing to teach me, even knowing my sketchy magical background. I could stay at Heart’s Eye, and learn…maybe, down the line, I could even work with the nonmagicians. Surely a few of them had to be nicer than my stepfather. (Right?)
My mother’s dream would come true.
My dream, too.
But before I got too euphoric, I asked Jayson if there were books I could study before Lord Caleb’s brother, Lord Croce, got there.
“I can find a few, sure,” Jayson said easily. “Read them in the Library, and no one will ever know you’re brushing up on the basics.”
I must’ve looked startled, because Jayson added, “Magical students are famous for their pranks, and some can be quite…I won’t say vicious, exactly, but maybe exacting? They view being pranked as a rite of passage, and while I don’t agree with this—”
“Neither do I,” Irene said. “But it’s ingrained in a lot of them. It’ll take time to root it out, so it’s better to prepare you for what you’re likely to see in order to become the man—the magician—you were born to be.”
She stood up, extended a hand, and said these magic words: “Welcome to Heart’s Eye University, Jasper. May you find joy in your studies here.”
I eagerly clasped her hand, and believed I was truly on my way to better things.
But of course it didn’t turn out to be that simple…because if it had been, maybe I wouldn’t have shifted to bullying in order to protect myself.
And maybe, in that reality where everything went smoothly and no one ever pranked anyone else, I’d never have turned into Jasper, that ass, rather than “Jasper, a young man with an unusual talent and a willingness to learn everything put in front of him,” which is what I had been hoping for.
But that reality was not this one. As I was about to learn.
The hard way.
#End Excerpt
I hope you enjoyed that chapter. And I very much hope you will enjoy the rest of JASPER’S PROMISE, which will be out before the end of the year…and maybe before Thanksgiving. (We’ll see.)
—
**The reason I put these three subjects together is, I survived my pulmonary embolism. Jalen Hurt survived multiple pulmonary emboli. Damian Lillard fully recovered within a few months — something almost unheard of — from the blood clot in his leg and hasn’t had a recurrence since.
You can keep going with your life even after extremely difficult things happen. Even multiple difficult things. It’s not easy, many times we’d rather not be having to deal with all this adversity (regardless of what that adversity is), but the important thing is to keep going.
If it takes a little longer, so what?
Cover Reveal for Jasper’s Promise, Plus Three More Chapters…
Artist Brad Fraunfelter created this awesome cover for my forthcoming novel JASPER’S PROMISE, written by permission in Chris Nuttall’s Schooled in Magic universe, with a foreword from Chris himself.
I’m not great at showing off covers, as I don’t deal much with pictures. (I hope I sized this properly.) But I am happy to have this cover, as that’s exactly what I was thinking about with regards to Jasper, my main character, and his later love interest, Talinda. Jasper is studying healing, and that is exactly what he’s doing there — healing, not studying. (Minor joke there.)
As to why? Take my word for it that Talinda needs his help, specifically, in this one case due to a unique ability Jasper has that no one else seems to have.
At any rate, the last time I posted, I put up chapters one and two of JASPER’S PROMISE. I’m about to put up chapters three, four, and five…and I do hope you’ll enjoy them. (All of these chapters are meant as “teasers,” also known as things to whet the reader’s interest.)
Make sure to hit the back arrow if you haven’t yet read the first two chapters of JASPER’S PROMISE, then dive into the next three chapters, below.
…and away we go!
Chapter Three
The stagecoach, as my grandma had said, was just down the street. I was heartened to see that it was driven by someone I actually knew, a guy named Warren who had often spent time with Grandma Hannah playing cards or enjoying a good, home-cooked meal. (Sometimes, he even brought food that he cooked himself, and he was at least as good of a cook as Grandma was. Not that I’d ever admit that, even under torture. My grandmother had her reputation to worry about, after all.)
“Glad to see you, Jasper,” Warren said, doffing his cap. “Hop on. Or you can ride in the carriage, if you like.”
“No, I’d rather be up with you and the horses, providing David doesn’t see me.” I did open the carriage up, though, and stored my two bags—the food, and the clothes and books Grandma had given me—inside.
Warren understood, fortunately. “If I see him, I will pretend I didn’t. And if he tries to flag me down, he will regret it.” He patted his pocket, where a smaller version of Grandma’s blunderbuss seemed to sit. “Now, let’s go.”
Once I was up next to him, he clucked his tongue at the horses, and they set off at a steady pace. I didn’t know much about horses. But these seemed well-matched, and they had a flowing gait I could only admire. “How did you find four horses to work so well together?” I asked, trying to make conversation.
“These four were put up for auction by a guy with less sense than Goddess Anujit gave a gnat,” Warren told me in disgust. “I was fortunate to be there. He had gambling debts, I think…I paid him a fair price, and have used them ever since.”
I hadn’t known that Warren had ever driven a carriage before. I guess I’d just seen him as my Grandma’s friend, and the rest didn’t matter…I was fortunate, looking back, that Warren was the carriage-driver as it’s possible someone else wouldn’t have waited until I got there before setting off.
“Hannah told me you’re going to go to a new school, something called a ‘university,’ somewhere near a desert,” Warren said, his eyes not moving from watching over the horses. It was a bit past midday, the air was a bit cool but pleasant, without much in the way of wind.
“It will be a big change,” I told him. “I didn’t know anything at all about this place, Heart’s Eye University, before both my mother and Grandma Hannah told me about it.” I realized I was taking a lot on faith, but I didn’t want to examine things too closely just then. Or I might just have Warren turn around and take me back, which would be a betrayal of the promises I’d made to both my mother and my grandmother.
“I’ve heard that a lot of the New Learning has come from some of the teachers there,” Warren said, skillfully continuing to drive the horses. The terrain wasn’t all that bad, but it did have boulders studded here and there, so the track wasn’t always steady. “I hope they’ll figure out soon how to properly grade roads. You will ask them if you get a chance, won’t you?”
I agreed that I would. And I could see why he was worried, too. A less skillful driver than Warren was could’ve easily broken an axle or foundered one or more of the horses on this trail, as it wasn’t much more than a goat track.
We came to a bigger-sized town, and Warren stopped at a place he seemed familiar with. No one was there, which might’ve been just as well…no one to see where we went, if nothing else. He went into a local tavern to get a few provisions, and gave them to me, these being three hearty beef sandwiches with a slice of good, well-aged cheddar cheese on each. “Take these on the train with you.”
“Thanks!” I didn’t know why I deserved such largesse, but before I could ask, he’d gone on.
“You’re a growing boy. You need more than just what your grandma sent along, no shame to her.” He had a twinkle in his eye, which was both reassuring and disturbing at the same time. I didn’t think I wanted to know what he was thinking about, if that makes any sense.
After driving through the two additional towns, Warren drove straight up to the train depot. That was still a fairly new place at the time, as steam trains had only been in existence as far as I knew for five, maybe six years, and of course it took time to lay tracks to make those rides possible. The railroad had only put in a line to this town, called Trenton after its founder, in the last several months…the depot was made of white clapboard, but I didn’t need to go inside as Warren handed me a ticket and pointed me to the right train.
“This should get you to Heart’s Eye, son,” Warren said. “Go now, and be sure to write to your grandmother on occasion. I’ll be waiting for your news, too!” He smiled, a bit cheekily, as I got my belongings out of the carriage, then he doffed his cap again, bent from the waist in a manner that was oddly formal, then straightened up and clucked his tongue at the horses again.
I watched as he drove away, then went to the train he’d indicated. A man was checking tickets, and I presented mine. “This is the train that will take me to Heart’s Eye University?”
“To Heart’s Ease, anyway,” the man said, thawing fractionally.
“What’s that?” There was no one else behind me, so I felt reasonably safe in asking a question. I also used my magic to sense whether or not the man was telling the truth, for good measure.
“It’s the town outside of Heart’s Eye, and it grew up because of the school there. I don’t know much else about it, except that after Lady Emily beat the necromancer who’d taken the place over, people came back and got the town back up and running.”
The man was telling the truth as he knew it, which was comforting.
“I can see why they’d fled,” I ventured. “No one wants to be anywhere close to a necromancer if they can help it.” I felt like shivering, but refrained.
“Lady Emily fixed it, all right and tight,” the man said. “Now, it’s time to get going…take a seat anywhere you like, and when we stop for a break, I’ll let you know.” He also informed me that there was a privy on the train, but that he hoped I’d not have to use it.
After I thanked him, I went to sit down. I knew the train trip would take several days, minimum, but it was heartening to know that they knew where we were going, and that neither my mother nor grandmother had been misled.
I wonder, I thought. They’ll train me? Me? Why?
Yet I’d promised my grandma, and promised my mother herself, that I would go and do the very best I could to get the training Mom had lacked. No matter how worried I was about what would happen when I got there, I needed to put that aside…and as the miles went on, and as we first went up one mountain, down another, into a valley, then up onto a plain, I did my best to calm my nerves.
The stops we had along the way, I used the way the man (called a “porter”) had suggested, carrying my belongings with me as I went, just in case the train started up again without me.
But I was fortunate. The porter looked out for me, letting me know when we were within a half a day of Heart’s Ease, the town outside Heart’s Eye. I went to use the privy, which stank as much as I’d feared, but it did have clean, running water. I used the water purification spell, too, just in case, before I cleaned my face, hands, and neck as best I could (as everything else was covered, I didn’t have to worry about that). I also put on my best outfit, a cambric shirt with a bit of Mom’s whimsical embroidery around the cuffs (why she liked yellow sunflowers, I’ll never understand, but they reminded me of her) and a pair of tough denim pants of a dark blue indigo. They fit well, because I’d only had them for maybe a month…
The longer I thought about it, the more planning and forethought I saw in my mother’s decision. She wanted what was best for me.
Now I had to go convert on my promise. And hope that it would be possible, as anything else would be unthinkable.
oOo
Chapter Four
The porter, who’d since told me on the several-day trip that his name was Dave (like my stepfather, but as unlike the man as it was possible to be, thank goodness), came to let me know the depot was within sight. I appreciated that, as there were a lot more people on the train than before…at the last stop, at least fifty people had boarded, most with a hatbox and a suitcase in hand.
Dave must’ve known I was nervous, because he blurted out, “Son, you will do just fine here. There’s all sorts of opportunities for a young man with ambition here. And I sense you have that.”
Startled, I looked at him again, trying to figure out if he had magic or some other talent that I wasn’t aware of. As far as I could tell, he didn’t.
“How—Why—What do you mean?” I stammered.
“A young man doesn’t come from so far away unless he has ambition,” Dave said comfortably. “And not much in the way of prospects where he initially came from…am I right?”
I nodded, but didn’t go into any of my story. It wasn’t proper. And if I tried to tell him, I might break down in tears, something not befitting under the circumstances..
“I wish you the best of luck and every happiness,” Dave said with a big smile.
I didn’t know what I’d ever done to warrant that smile, but I smiled back, tentatively, and thanked him. Then I waited in a line until I had disembarked, and saw the many carriages and conveyances waiting there—one had two big wheels on the back, a bigger wheel on the front, and space for several people to sit along with the driver! It seemed to be steam-powered, unless I missed my guess, and I couldn’t help but stare at it in astonishment. In addition, they seemed to be constructing even more train tracks, possibly going up to Heart’s Eye University itself soon…but for now, this was all there was.
There was no way I was going to use that strange wheeled-thing, not now anyway, because I had to conserve money. I’d long since eaten the excellent beefsteak sandwiches, eaten most of the cheese my grandma gave me, and also ate some raisins, though I still had some left of both for another meal in case I couldn’t afford anything else. I had no idea what the prices were here, and couldn’t assume that things would be cheap just because the tuition at the university was said to be free.
After walking in the same direction a number of other young men and women, hatboxes and suitcases in hand, were going, I came along a row of what seemed to be boarding houses, or perhaps a type of inn. I used my nascent magic to see if any of the homes had a welcoming aura, and found that four of them had a warn-off (Don’t touch! Danger!) for whatever reason, but two others seemed worthy of consideration. The first was at the beginning of the row, while the second was at the end…and I could see in the distance what I took to be Heart’s Eye University: a massive school, one that could hold hundreds of people if not even more than that, and it even included a castle with a moat! Most of it seemed made of brick and mortar, with newer, wooden buildings popping up here and there as needed. Several areas seemed to have new construction going, too…there even were barns, which presumably held animals, and grain silos, too! This had to be the right place.
You might be wondering why I didn’t go straight up to the university as the others I saw seemed to be doing. Well, they’d been on the train far less time than I had. They might not be as tired…or maybe they already had instructors that had agreed to take them on.
I felt it was far too risky to do that, because if I did, and if I wasn’t at my best, how could I make a good impression? As it was, I had to find out what was what in a hurry, get the lay of the land (as the saying goes), and also get out of the heat, as it was true that Heart’s Ease, like Heart’s Eye University, was on the edge of a searing desert.
When I walked into the inn I chose, the temperature dropped immediately, enough so I was comfortable and no longer sweating. A clerk at a nearby desk chirped brightly, “New in town?” She gestured to a pitcher of water.
“Yes, actually.” I used my magic and sensed the water was good, so I poured some of the water out into a nearby waiting glass. It was cold and took the grit out of my throat. “My name is Jasper, and I’m here because I am looking into applying to Heart’s Eye’s university.”
“Really?” she asked. Then we haggled over the price, until I gave over a single gold coin. (I was surprised it wasn’t more. I still had more than enough to buy any book I wanted or another night at the inn if I needed it, so I was happy.) She had me sign something she called a “register of guests,” and told me that dinner would be available in a few hours.
I thanked her, went to the room I’d been assigned, and cleaned up using the warm water jug and a hand-towel the inn provided. I sat down on a hard, but comfortable chair, and tried not to think about Mom, dying at home, or probably already dead, with Grandma having to arrange a funeral (as I was sure David wouldn’t do it, the old skinflint).
At dinner, which was a midday meal here (rather than the later time I was used to back in Newtown), there was a lively conversation, first about a musical production held elsewhere in town (something called a “revue,” I guess; a bunch of different singers and actors doing all sorts of different things), then about goings-on at the university. My ears perked up as I heard reference to a young Gorgon woman, and I heard the following:
“It’s weird to be in a store with that Gorgon, you know?” a youngish woman said, sitting alongside the man I thought was probably her husband, as they held hands and seemed to dote on one another. “I kept expecting her to turn me into stone!”
“She doesn’t do that,” a bluff, hearty, older man put in. “She’s the Administrator’s apprentice, so she is. The last thing she wants to do is alienate the townspeople!”
Then the conversation turned to other things, and I tuned back out again.
So, the head of the university was called an administrator. The young Gorgon woman was her apprentice. And it was widely known as to who and what she was…this had to be the person I should approach, as maybe she’d understand exactly why I’d come here, her being the only Gorgon I’d heard reference to whatsoever, living and working among others who weren’t Gorgons.
Yes, she had to be the person to approach. And if nothing else, I told myself, I won’t mistake her for anyone else.
On that note, I went to my room, laid down on the bed, and slept for at least fourteen solid hours.
oOo
Chapter Five
When I got to the university, proper, I saw many people bustling around. There wasn’t an official greeter; in some ways, there didn’t seem to be an official anything. I wandered around, seeing various outbuildings, all sorts of different places being constructed, and knew that couldn’t be where I needed to go. But after some searching, I found a long, low building that seemed to be where newcomers were supposed to go. I walked in, and saw I was in a fairly large chamber with several entrances and exits. There were chairs and benches dotted here and there, and there were staircases going up one side and down the other…it was most confusing.
Eventually, though, I spotted the young Gorgon woman I’d heard about the day before in the inn, and because I knew that the Gorgon was highly placed at Heart’s Eye, she should know what to do with me.
I walked up to her, bowed as my grandmother had taught me, and said, “Madam Gorgon, I am Jasper. I’ve come for teaching, as I have magical gifts but don’t know how to use them very well.”
The Gorgon looked surprised but made a motion with her hand to continue.
I took a deep breath and went on. “My mother was a magician. She was the first in her family, but she was cast out. Only her mother, my grandmother, was willing to help, and they both moved to a town far away from their family. Mom died recently, and her dying wish was for me to come to Heart’s Eye and get the training she, herself, didn’t have that she so desperately wanted.” I wasn’t sure why I was giving the Gorgon so much of my truth, but I wasn’t about to stop now. “I admit I haven’t been to any of the magical schools, and I’m about fifteen years old.”
“I’d have guessed you for at least eighteen,” the Gorgon said in a soft alto voice. “But please, do go on.”
“I have two talents and know a few scraps of spells, but I learn quickly and adore reading.”
“Emily would love you,” the Gorgon mused.
Emily? Lady Emily? The Necromancer’s Bane? Even I had heard of her—but the Gorgon had continued.
“What do you want to do with your life?” she asked.
“I want to live well, treat others with respect, and find a way to help people like my mother, so they don’t die in childbirth.”
The Gorgon raised her eyebrows, impressed.
“I don’t know if I have any healing talents because my mother didn’t have any of those spells. What I know I can do is light up my fingers and teleport a book from across the room.”
“The first, most of us can do. We magicians, I mean, as there are nonmagicians who also study here.”
Yes, my grandmother had told me that. But she went right on.
“The second, though…would you be willing to demonstrate it for me, after some food and rest? There are a few people I’d like you to meet, later.”
I willingly agreed, and she brought me to a well-appointed guest room of sorts. It had a big, wide bed with fresh and clean sheets, more pillows than I’d ever seen on a bed before (I’d only had one when I’d stayed the night before in Heart’s Ease, and it was a thin rag at best compared to these bounteous pillows), and there was a private bathroom off to the side with clean running water. It even had both hot and cold water, something the Gorgon murmured was due to nonmagical engineers.
After giving me some chits for the evening and morning meals and reminding me to follow the arrows to find the mess hall, she promised to find me in the morning so I could demonstrate my book-teleportation talent.
I tried not to be nervous, as I settled on that big, wide bed. It had springs and was very comfortable…I’d never before felt the like. Wealthy people in our part of the world had featherbeds, and those who weren’t as wealthy or who had a skinflint stepfather like mine made do with scratchy straw-filled ones. But this bed was a revelation…and maybe even a warning.
What could my talents possibly do here, in a place swimming with such luxury that they willingly gave anyone who showed up a lovely room like this?
End Excerpt
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading the chapters and seeing the excellent cover artwork, too. I’m sure I’ll be back fairly soon to show you a few more chapters.
“Jasper’s Promise,” Snippet One
As promised, folks, here is a snippet from my soon-to-be-forthcoming novel, JASPER’S PROMISE, a novel I wrote in Chris Nuttall’s Schooled in Magic universe with his permission and active encouragement.
A quick summary…(these things are hard for me, but I’ll do my best): Jasper, a fifteen-year-old youngster, loses his mother to childbirth, but before she dies, she tells him about the new university at Heart’s Eye, a community near the desert and one at least five or six days by rail travel away from Newtown, where he, his mother, and his odious stepfather live. There, Jasper can get the training in magic his mother never received…he promises to go (thus the name of the book), to do his best, and he finds his talents and starts to learn about who and what he truly is.
Now, without further ado, here’s Chapters One and Two of Jasper’s Promise:
OoO
Chapter One
My children, we must start my story when my life was at its absolute worst.
My mother was dying; she knew it. She’d tried to birth a baby that was way too big for her, and the experienced midwife (who had a hint of magic talent in her blood) was already out on another call. My mother, Eve, was bleeding to death, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’d tried.
My grandmother was not present as my stepfather didn’t want her there. This had caused all sorts of consternation in the family. But eventually my mother acquiesced, providing the midwife was sent for.
It didn’t do any good, as I said. And what’s worse, my stepfather wasn’t even there to help…though in one way, I guess that was a blessing as I was able to get away from him (finally).
Where was he? At the bar, of course, celebrating the impending birth. He was no help.
Then again, he never was.
My stepfather, David, was a terrible person. He abused me every day. Mom would send me out on errands as often as she possibly could, along with sleepovers at my grandma Hannah’s place, but somehow, David found a way to be cruel and cutting whether he raised the strap to me or not.
Why did Mom marry David? I don’t know. Yes, after my father died, she must’ve been in a bad state. Yes, as the first-ever magician in her own family, her siblings were not comfortable with her, and had sent her away…and yes, she’d been unable to get the proper training, so all she’d learned were scraps of spells. David owned a green grocery, so was reasonably prosperous; more to the point, as my father had died in one of the endless wars long before I became rational or reasonable—that is, before I hit the age of seven—she’d been alone a long time. What she knew was barely enough to keep her out of the gutter, and me alongside her. She knew she needed to give me a proper upbringing…but David almost killed her several times and beat me so badly on more than one occasion, all my grandmother and the local midwife could do was give me painkilling potion and tell me to rest.
Hannah was my mom’s mother, and had disagreed with her own family over the treatment of Mom. She had brought some wealth into the family, carefully hoarded, when she’d married, and when they sent Mom away, Hannah went with her. They’d settled in a dusty town near the Badlands, a place called Newtown that had only been in existence for a few years. Newtown was reasonably fertile and could grow its own food, but it was not a prosperous enough place for bandits to bother us and seemed a perfect place to try to make a new life. Hannah managed, partly because she was quiet (though never mousy) and people tended to overlook her. But Mom suffered for many reasons until David showed up. Hannah never trusted David, even when he brought Mom flowers and candy and took her out to expensive restaurants. (“Something in his eyes,” she told me later.) But Mom was smitten, and as I said before, she also was desperate. She hated being a leech on her mother (though Mom was working as a scribe, the Scribe’s guild said it was fine and dandy for men to be paid three times as much as women for far less work, so Mom never could get out of what sometimes was called “genteel poverty”), and she wanted, somehow, to send me to one of the magical schools.
Yes, I tested for magic early. I lit the ends of my fingers, somehow, so they looked like fireflies; I also could teleport a book or scroll from across the room, providing I really wanted to do it. (The latter exhausted me for hours, after. I had no idea at the time how much mental energy I was putting out, much less the fact that most magicians could not do what I could do, even if they’d been sent to school early.) Mom regretted not getting the right training for herself, though Hannah had of course offered to pay Mom’s way (why Mom had to be so stiff-necked, I’ll never understand), and wanted to do things in the right order: Marry well. Send me off to school to get the best possible training for my magical gift. Then live peacefully and enjoy life with her second husband.
None of that happened.
Yes, she married. But David was a tight-fisted man, and he had a violent and unpredictable temper. Sometimes, he got mad at Mom for not saving money; other times, he got mad because Mom did save money. (“Don’t you trust me to provide?” he’d ask her after he’d hit her so hard, the bruise on her cheekbone looked purple.) The money was not there to send me to Whitehall, or Stronghold, or any of the others. So he said.
Mom was outwardly meek, but inwardly something had stiffened. She wanted me to be properly trained. She didn’t want my magic to get so out of control that I inadvertently became a necromancer. (We had no idea how necromancers came to be, but we had some vague notion that it was due to a power imbalance.) So she started squirreling money away, giving it to my grandmother to hold, in the hopes I’d be able to go somewhere, even at a later age than most, for training.
When she swelled in pregnancy after eight years of marriage, my stepfather rejoiced. He stopped hitting Mom for the duration. (He hit me all the more, of course, but I bit my lip and endured.) He had high hopes for a son—“One that’s good, not like you, you worthless piece of crap, Jasper”—but of course he’d have to take what he got.
At any rate, when Mom realized she would not survive childbed, she called out to me. (Fortunately, David was still at the bar.) I ran to her; I loved her so much, even though I never said it. “Mom…are you all right?” I asked, knowing she wasn’t. Her overall coloring was bad; she’d gone greenish, somehow, and the blue veins stuck out in her face and neck…she’d lost a lot of blood, I thought, remembering what my grandmother had told me about pregnancy and confinements. And her hair, once her crowning glory, had dulled so much from its original bright red-blonde that it looked like mud, which couldn’t be right, could never be right.
“I will be, soon,” Mom said breathily. “Our ancestors will see me safe, I’m sure.” Then, she struggled, until her voice became her usual one again: calm, measured, and matter of fact. “Son, you need to leave now. You can’t help me, here. You shouldn’t stay, either, for obvious reasons.”
I gulped and nodded, but Mom wasn’t finished.
“Your grandmother has something for you. Then, you are going to head to Heart’s Eye.”
“What’s that?”
“A different type of magical school,” Mom said, gripping my hand with as much force as she had…which wasn’t nearly enough. Still, I was riveted. “They want magicians and nonmagicians to work together—”
“Mundanes? Like David? Yuck!”
“Or like your grandmother,” Mom said, steel in her voice. “Even so. They train people to do all sorts of things, and they’ll help you get the skills you need to live a better life, far, far away from David.”
“You’re sure I…can’t help you? With my magic?” I’d do anything for Mom. Even use my unpredictable magic, if it worked…
“Healing spells are some I never got a chance to study. They won’t work right for me. That’s why I never taught them to you…but son, my time is about to run out. You must leave now.”
I kissed her on the brow and hurried out. I hated having to leave her there. But she’d asked me to go to my grandmother’s house; if that was her last wish for me, I damned well was going to follow it.
I went out through the kitchen door as the cook had already gone home. I hoped I’d avoid David, as he and Grandma didn’t get along, but knew I’d be all right once I got to Grandma’s house because Hannah had one of those new blunderbusses everyone was talking about. That was a type of “gun” – I’d never heard that word before Grandma told me about it—that would shoot David at close range and not miss. While I hated my stepfather and didn’t think the world would mourn him at all, I didn’t want Grandma to get into any trouble, which she might if she shot and killed David. Thus my caution.
As soon as I was out, I realized it was twilight. Good. Easier to hide in the shadows, especially with one of the scraps of spells my Mom had known and had taught me. The toughest thing about using that spell was to stay calm. It was a misdirection spell, and it would not work if you were overly nervous, anxious, or worried. (Later I found there were other versions of the spell that would, but I did not know them at the time.) I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other until I was at Grandma’s door.
I knocked…then Grandma opened the door and said, “Jasper! It’s about time!”
Chapter Two
My grandmother bustled me inside and had me sit down. Small, but mighty of heart, she did not mince words. “Your mother isn’t well,” she said, reading the information off my face.
“No, she’s not. And the midwife is out of town doing Goddess-alone-knows-what, while David is drinking in the bar, toasting the other idiots,” I said with disgust. “I didn’t want to leave, though…I wanted to help her!”
“She knows that,” Hannah, my grandmother, said with infinite gentleness. “She had a premonition, Jasper. She knew she’d not survive this birth, one way or another. And she also knew that you must leave this place to get the training you need…the training she, herself, was not able to get.”
“Why aren’t you with her now?”
“I need to give you a few things, and then I’m going over there. With my blunderbuss, if you must know,” she said with a slight smile.
That made sense to me. David was no threat to her, that way.
“Here,” she said, handing me a bag full of coins of various types and denominations. “This should get you to Heart’s Eye.”
“What’s that? Mom said something, but I didn’t understand…why should I go there?”
“It’s a new type of magical school called a ‘university,’ and they take everyone, magicians and nonmagicians alike. They’re trying to build something new. They don’t charge for learning, either, the last I checked.”
Interesting. They could train me? But I had another question for her, as before my mother had mentioned it, I had never heard at all of Heart’s Eye. That meant it must be very far away. “Where is it?”
“It’s in the desert, kind of,” Hannah said. “I have only heard of it. Never been there. But it’s said to be on the very edge of a desert.” Then she handed me another bag full of cheese, raisins, and bread. “This should help you on your way. The less food you have to buy, the better off you’ll be when you get there. Be wary of any food that’s given to you and use the water purification spell my daughter taught you.”
That was one of the few full spells Mom knew.
She then handed me yet another bag filled with my clothes—I didn’t know how she’d grabbed them without me noticing—and a few of my favorite books, before saying, “Now go, grandson. There’s a stagecoach down the way that’ll take you to the nearest train station.”
“But that’s three towns away! How can I—”
“I’ve already paid,” my grandma said. “Go. Now.”
I went, but my heart was heavy. I couldn’t help my mother, who would die…my grandmother was going to be the only one at my Mom’s deathbed…and I felt like a complete failure.
Yet they believed in me, or at least that I deserved a chance to become something else, something other than what I already was. I had to go and try.
But that didn’t mean I liked it. And I wasn’t going to pretend I did.
OoO
So, there you have it. What d’you think so far?
I’ll be posting more in two days. Until then…go, Brewers, go!
