Yesteryear Fiction

The War Of The Roses
By E.S. Wynn


The end of all things did not come with ice or fire. The end of life, the overnight fall of mighty empires that had stood strong, unconquered for a thousand generations did not come on the heels of a biting winter or a scorching summer. It did not rise from the loamy earth like the claws of ravening, risen dead. Neither gods, demons nor witches brought it, nor devils or their unseen sicknesses blowing on chill night winds. It began instead with only a single drop of blood, a single prick from the thorn of a rose.

The first reports came by runner from Kedralium, wove such horrifying stories of men consumed by lashing, hungry vines that whole kingdoms sealed themselves off from the world, built mighty walls to keep out the possessed they feared so much. Not long after, more runners came, then refugees fleeing from Fyadu, Gyrjak and Halvdor, men and women screaming in terror, begging to be let through gates that would never again be opened. When the last of the Eastern empires fell, all eyes turned to the peninsula of Majabez, turned to the copper city there, the gateway to the West that had stood resolute for ages beyond reckoning. Troops from every Western empire surged to support Majabez's towering walls when the first reports came, the first sightings of warriors wrapped in vines, their pitted armor studded with the vibrant blossoms of blood-red roses, but all arrived too late, and only a few, a very few, escaped to return home with news of the fall of the copper city.

Within days, the rose-men, the warriors of a dozen nations possessed by the vines and blossoms that drove them mad, drove them into a berserk rage were at the gates of the first of the Western empires. Yalidthan fell immediately, then Ulare, then Opatne. Like an island amidst the surging tides of a violent, stormy ocean, Kakythara stood almost a week under the constant onslaught of the rose men, finally fell as food became scarce and her soldiers began to succumb to fatigue, unable to keep their tireless enemy at bay. Commoners fled West as quickly as they could, gathered in massive caravans and wagon trains that bypassed whole cities, whole nations, but by the time they reached the sea, the rose-men were already upon them, and the last of the Western empires, the coastal kingdom of Barbaradne, fell in the span of just a few short hours.

Few of us have survived this holocaust, this War of the Roses, as some are calling it, and each of us only by taking to the sea. I've heard reports of refugees fleeing further west, seeking out islands and undiscovered continents where the rose-men have not yet sewn their venomous seed, but the most telling reports come from the skirmishers who hunt along the coasts, picking what they can from the ruins of abandoned villages. For weeks, it is said that the rose-men have thrown themselves into the surf like fools, whole hordes of them, but also that even as the tides throw most of them back to shore, some are dragged out to open water, float until they come together in tiny, viney barges.

Already, at least four ships have fallen to the thorns of these floating rose-men, and the vessels that trade fresh fish for fresh water and stolen, half-rotten fruit are becoming fewer, more skittish and wary when they do appear. There is no way to judge whether any of us will survive, or when the last of our kind might be consumed by the plague of the roses, but the captain and the emaciated crew that were kind enough to take me aboard the day before Barbaradne fell are looking more and more often to the abyss of open ocean to the west. Some of the other refugees say it is only a matter of time before we turn and take our chances amidst the unknown. Others even support the idea.

And yet all of us, all of us are wondering, even if we do find land, even if we do find a whole new continent beyond the endless bosom of the sea--

What is to stop us from being devoured by the rose-plague when the first of the infected washes up on the sands of that distant shore?


- - -
E.S. Wynn is the author of over fifty books and the chief editor of Thunderune Publishing.

Flowers
By Earl S. Wynn


Day after day, he traded flowers of glass for flowers of meat. Elegant, painted, glittering and beautiful, the flowers he grew sprouted from shards, rose up from the wet earth like tiny slivers of hope, blossomed in the cold fog of morning. With practiced patience, he broke off their thorns, let them chew through the skin of his fingers as he pushed the little barbs into the mud one by one, sang the prayers that would bring new flowers in the coming morning. Some days, only a few would sprout. Some days, thousands. Somehow, it was always just enough.

She came every morning, spread the petals of her finest, fleshy flower so that he could see inside the blossom, marvel at its complexity, the warmth, the wetness of the ovules within. Some days, she would bring just one flower. Some days, she would bring three or four. Somehow, it was always just enough.

Then, one day, there came a morning when a shadow passed over her garden. The flowers of meat that she had so carefully cultivated refused to grow, hung their heads and closed their petals with the stress of the season. Dutiful, she gave what she could to the man who grew flowers of glass, but eventually even the few blossoms she forced from the earth ran out. Dutiful, the man who grew flowers of glass began to give her his blossoms on credit, smiling patiently as she explained that a huge harvest was coming, that times were slow and that she would make it all up to him soon. Slowly, dutifully, he began to starve, thinned steadily until he was nearly a skeleton. Still, he agreed to give his flowers to her on credit. Still, he agreed to take her word that a grand harvest was coming.

Then, one day, there came a morning when the man who grew flowers of glass didn’t come. The woman who grew the flowers of meat called for him, searched for him, cried out for him, but he was gone. In her hands, she cradled a soft, small blossom of meat, the first to sprout from her garden for a long while, but no matter how much she searched, how much she prayed and called, he wouldn’t come.

Day after day, she returned with more and more blossoms. Only a few at first, then dozens, hundreds, but the man who grew the flowers of glass never came. Dutiful, she came every day, brought every flower she could coax from the earth in the hopes of trading with the man again, but day after day, the place where they met only gathered more dust.

Then, one day, there came a morning when she found a note, a simple letter from the man who had grown flowers of glass and so dutifully offered them on credit. In rosy, soft-petalled words, he stated that he had found another gardener to trade with, that the woman who grew flowers of meat was released of all obligation and that he bore her no ill will.

In her hands, she cradled thousands of tiny, fleshy blossoms. Her huge harvest had finally come, but still she cried, because now she knew that somehow, it would never be enough.


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E.S. Wynn is the author of over forty books.

ARKENSTRIDE
Episode 1: Shades and Seers

By E.S. Wynn

The Mars Manuscripts(A Sample)
By E.S. Wynn

Ice and Fire
By E.S. Wynn


When you press your ear to the breast of the marble god with the icy-throated howl, the wisdom of the future comes echoing through, soaking into your skin, muscles, bones. There is no fire in the future he screams, only biting frost, only cruel ice, but in his mind’s eye, you see the secret his very existence so completely hides. Those who seek the fire will only find it in the hearth, in the darkness. There, chained and gagged, lays a god wrought from pure, polished bronze, a god whose silenced cries would sing of things his eyes have not set upon since his soul was bound and forgotten.


- - -
It calls. I wonder at the sanity in my answer.

Master of Demons
E.S. Wynn


To be a master of demons, one has to command fear. Demons are born of fear. They are born of wild, unbridled terror, and like beasts, they prey instinctively upon the weak.

To be a master of demons, one has to be solid as a stone, a weighted anchor in a stormy sea.

You have to wear the demon, be it, see it, embrace it, let it sink into your skin. You have to keep focus, be a wall against chaos, the order, the conscience and drive within the demon. You have to have the courage to fill yourself with that power but be solid against the urge to prey upon the weak, to inspire fear and obliterate all who rise against or run from you.

Demons can be powerful servants, powerful guardians, but remember always that they are wild passions born of fear, never to be disrespected, never to be trusted completely.

Never to be left to fester alone in the darkness.

To be a master of demons, one has to be the master of oneself. One has to recognize and possess fear, walk within terror and remain undisturbed, be the rock within the flame.


- - -
Thus does God walk, for demons are the servants of God, and the good master never walks in fear of his servants.

Marks
By E.S. Wynn


“These runes will protect you.” The sculptor whispers as he chips glyphs into her skin. “These runes will be your power, the light to wrap around and carry you.”

She winces under each blow of the hammer, but her body stands still as stone. A single cold tear tracks a frozen trail down her smooth cheek. The sculptor raises his hammer again.

“Bear the marks, child.” He breathes. “Each blow you bear carries you a step closer to the sun’s glorious light. You are fire, you are alive.”

And suddenly, as he chips the last glyph,

She is.


- - -
E.S. Wynn believes that anyone who tries can do anything.

Spirit Train
By E.S. Wynn


The spirit train goes to nowhere now, stops at yesterday on the way to the station between before and after. The tracks whistle and hum with the singing tones of old iron ground thin to skeletal rails, and the faces that stare waxen and pale from rippled windows whisper silently, blankly, breathing the words that only death has an ear for.


- - -
E.S. Wynn spends his time climbing a stairway to heaven.

Sacred Geometry
By E.S. Wynn


Draw a point.
This is the condemnation of the soul.
Draw a line.
This is the division between life and death.
Draw a circle.
This is the nature of life.
Draw a circle within a circle.
This is the nature of time.
Step into the circle within a circle.
Walk along the line.
Stand upon the point.
Look up from the point
To the stars.
Know who you are.
Know who you are.
Know who you are
And know that this can always be changed.


- - -
E.S. Wynn believes in fluidity of movement. Freedom is the goal, art is the purpose, and life follows as it can.

Writing Between
By E.S. Wynn


These are the moments where we sneak poetry into stone, sneak edges of words into coffee and cigarettes, the brick wall recline and dour desk stare of empty mornings. These are the seconds of flash in a stale, artless world where we pretend to work or watch the work of the momentarily diligent from a more real world of sonorous rhyme, bright color and the gentle, meaningful strokes of chosen tools.


- - -
E.S. Wynn hasn’t quit his day job. Not yet.

Final Word
By E.S. Wynn


The sword feels heavy in my hands
I don't care.
I know what I have to do
I know what it means
The sounds of screams
Still echo in the caverns of my mind
One word lingers,
Final:

Go.


- - -
E.S. Wynn was once captured by gnomes and held hostage until a ransom of five dozen blackberries was paid for his release.

Villain
By E.S. Wynn


And now, I play the villain.

Here, atop the hill of my dreams, I watch as the blazes rage, set and dancing with demonic fervor as they spread across reality, lick at the canvas edges of the sky. The things I love never last much longer than a few moments before I cross someone all too keen to burn them down out of petty spite, imagined wrongs.

So now, I play the villain. I rise-ride on an ebon horse with a gauntlet that is all blades and crystalline pain. I reach for my ink-wet weapons, rise, rise and tear an obsidian swathe across the sky. To be a villain is to refuse to be a victim when playing the victim is to be the humble and forgotten hero, stalwart shield of the people facing no enemy from without but unwavering under a tide of backstab hatred-spit. To be a villain is to strike and crush oppressors who move under the lie-guise of light and right with a single, sharp, and unflinching blow. It is the path of the true justice, anger harnessed and rode hard into the heart of the matter of most importance, the course of a sword forced into the wronger’s breast
to the hilt.

And as the role has been wrongly cast for me, I play the villain. I ride, I rise,

And I take no more.


- - -
Anger is a tantalizing muse.

Flying
By E.S. Wynn


Flying over the water for the first time, I can’t help but smile.

Winds sing along the cables, flex through canvas wings. I see her raven-black hair spilling out into the wind, long and flickering. She smiles down at me. Her long, golden fingers release my wings, and then I am gliding, gliding.

On long, elegant black wings, she soars off into the endless heavens, laughs in a wind of pure joy. The cables are tight. The water flashes cool below, endless as the sky, and where they meet:

That’s us.


- - -
E.S. Wynn knows a thing or two about the sky.

Control
By E.S. Wynn


When the last piece of technology built to censor the free speech of the masses was done away with, the masters who controlled the flow of ink and page turned to magic. One by one, men of power changed the messages within films and books, glossing new graphics into magazines and games. Greed and power worked steadily at the foundations of art, eroded the classics, replacing the strokes and words of artistic elegance with the images and touches that fed their own agendas. Eventually, even the words that moved from mouth to ear were changed as they hit the air, leaving all of entertainment an advertisement, all of speech a slogan. No one noticed as art deflated under the heel of progress, breathed a silent, wilting scream from the distant edge of a forgotten roadway.


- - -
Duchamp. Now there was a man.

Shifts
By E.S. Wynn


The destruction of magic left mankind floundering, lost. We had become so dependent upon the workings of the aethers, on snapping our fingers to summon food or grow crops, to gods walking our very streets, bestowing favors, that the notion of a life without magic never occurred to most of us. We had become so used to these things, so dependent upon them that when they all suddenly left us, we were lost. Barbarism came quickly, almost reflexively, and soon we returned to a new dark age where only those men who could master the sacred arts of technology that had once been dismissed as blasphemy and the idle dreaming of idiot minds could rise again to godhood.


- - -
We think we know so much, but indeed we know so very little.

Beyond Humanity
By E.S. Wynn


The touch of life, of rain that lingers on your fingers as we make love in the ruins of civilization is like a sweet promise running across my cheeks. You breathe my name, and in your breath I taste flowers, jasmine and lotus. Sweat mixes with dust, and as we move, the earth embraces us, feeds us with her life, her touch. Nature reacts in turn, and suddenly the ruins, the dust and the desert of humanity’s folly falls away, swallowed into a sea of rainwet green. Reality contracts as we slip into the in-between together, and then we are stars, points of light riding the wash of the ether deeper and deeper into the womb of creation– one soul, one star, one light bringing life back into the dead world that those who lived before have left us.


- - -
When humanity finally goes the way of the dinosaurs, it will be the posthumans, Homo Superior, who will make love on the ruins of their fallen ancestors.

Seeking
By E.S. Wynn


When love comes and rain falls as easily as tears, you will find her standing upon the mountain with a pair of tablets in her hand. Upon these tablets will be the word of the Goddess, the will of the very universe, and within them, the secret of life rendered in sweet crystal. One of these tablets she will place under her tongue, and the other she will offer up as a key to the great beyond. Mystery will shed its significance and leave only an unmarked husk of the world to rot silently into dust. Consciousness will break apart and release as heat, borne on the wind while others postulate its fate.


- - -
You touch, you breathe, you move. Try to see beyond, and in the concrete wind of oblivion, you will know true terror.

Dreams of Sand and Solace
By E.S. Wynn


The rhythm of her feet in the sand is what keeps me alive. The cinnamon rise and fall, the darkness veiled in every shift and shiver. The rose of her lips whispers sweet, waterless words, fills my dreams with the scent of rain, haunts me as I make my way through the medina to see her. Like a mirage, her veil falls away in my mind, and on our wedding night, I press her into golden sheets as soft as layered honey, taste the nectar of desert flowers. In my dreams, there is nothing between us, and I often wonder, when she catches my eye in the throes of the dance, if she has the same dreams that I do.


- - -
E.S. Wynn is a simple man. He doesn't like complications. The same in music. He likes what is natural. Weave what the music demands, and he’ll try to do his best.

Her Dance
By E.S. Wynn


When she dances, the world moves, picks up speed. Time comes alive, dances with her, around her, and in the moment, even the light seems to take notice.

When she dances, people notice each other, meet, and fall in love. Life senses her every move, brightens, opens, blossoms.

And when she stops, the whole world seems to take a breath, to smile and slouch. Life sleeps, time takes a restful pause, and in the stillness, even hate and darkness seem to falter, fade.


- - -
See the tapestry of life and weave it with the knowledge that the loom belongs to all of us.