Coracles!

                              

                   

                      

            from Peter Faulkner’s Website      

When we catch up with William in the second part of Fly Out of the Darkness he is in a little round boat that doesn’t fit him, knees uncomfortably up to his chin. His problem is that it is made to his friend Marion’s measure; she has given it to him to escape from their enemies who are hot upon his trail. These Crocodile Militia are notorious for their wickedly constructed boats, prows carved like snarling crocodiles and sharp knives set along their keels to slice anyone trying to elude them.  I invented those cruel boats; coracles, on the other hand, came to me ready-made.

            That’s why using an invented world rather than an historical setting is so much fun: I get to take what I like from history and make up the rest!  It all began when I was brooding about self-sustaining communities. Surely, as in the case of Native Americans on our continent, there had once been sustenance enough for all in England’s green and pleasant land? How had they gone from self-sufficiency to wealth so concentrated in the hands of the few that many poor went starving? Had it always been that way? The history of the fen dwellers’ resistance, with their intrepid Fen Tigers pitting themselves against Merchant Adventurers and Dutch Engineers (they were actually called that)  for hundreds of years before their marshes were finally drained, gave me both my setting and my plot for The Marshlanders Series.

         I wanted to invent a world for my Marshlanders in order to create a swift narrative line uncluttered with historical detail.  Besides, I had spent so many years canoeing and kayaking marshes and rivers in the United States that I didn’t want to limit myself to either American or English flora and fauna; I wanted to celebrate the beauty and solace of both.

        On two trips to East Anglia I saw a huge, flat, drained landscape, richly arable, but very bleak under a vast, forbidding sky, swept by cold east winds off of the North Sea.   I looked at the hydraulic plans of the Dutch Engineers,  maps of their drastic changes to the landscape over the centuries,  at spinning Jennies and looms, peat shovels and eel baskets, punts from which I would invent the Marshlanders’ longboats and, yes, an exhibit of coracles.

         I stood entranced before the little round boats, made for just one person out of willow that was dampened, bent into curves, and held in place by a seat athwart the middle.

                                                                

                              From Data Wales  

These ancient craft, which Caesar mentioned and which are plied by river and marsh folk all around the world, are covered with animal skins or cloth treated with waterproofing before being stretched over the framework. A coracle can be used for long distance travel, during which the one small paddle is plied in figure eights from the bow; or for netting fish, with the fisherman holding the net in one hand and deftly paddling with the other.

             Eustace Roger’s Coracle

           

There was a personal element underlying my entrancement with little boats.  In 1946, the war over at last and my father able to take the summer off, we lived on a motor boat in the harbor of Southport, Connecticut, moored in an estuary sheltered from Long Island Sound.  I was nine years old, deemed too young for sailing lessons, but I was wakened every morning by the shouts and laughter of sailing classes rigging up their cat boats for racing competitions, which was all, I noticed, that they were used for. These were known as “one-man” craft because the single sail could be easily handled by one child alone at the tiller. I used to sit on the deck munching my breakfast and just longing to sail one of those handy little boats all by myself  into the marshes that lay astern. 

            We had a little dinghy to row ashore and I usually took it to the dock, tied it to a cleat, and sped off on my bicycle for a long summer day of adventure and mischief with my friends.  But one afternoon when there was nobody to play with I took my dinghy the other way, into the salt marsh, moving gently in and out of the reeds  under that comfortingly warm afternoon sun. There were all kinds of creatures to  keep me company: spiders crafting intricate webs between frond and frond; eels going about their mysterious business among the underwater grasses; a soft shelled crab scuttling along the bottom, and blackbirds chortling far above the sedges, bending and swaying over my head.  Best of all,  pervading everything, the most  marvelous aroma of tidal sludge was exuded from great banks of  bluish black mud in  all that heat, acrawl with snails and hermit crabs.   

            So that, too, is where it all began.

“Say what you will about light on the lagoon at high tide, I’ll take a redolent mud flat at any time,” remarks Father Robin toward the end of Fly Out of the Darkness.  “Now that’s the Beauty of Holiness.  When all is said and done, yes, when all is said and done, there is a very great deal that can be said for low tide mud.”

            Did I mention that he’d gotten out there “bobbling and scuttling across the lagoon in a coracle, paddling away for all he was worth”?

             

Fly Out of the Darkness Available as Ebook!

       
In the last chapter of The Marshlanders we left Clare, free at last from the cruelty of Boris, sailing down a bay to take refuge with the Eastern Fisher Folk.  Fly Out of the Darkness, the second volume in The Marshlanders Series, is about Clare's and William's adventures in the north, still pursued by the implacable enemies of their friends and allies. 

I noticed in my fan mail that people are really anxious to read this second volume:

"In The Marshlanders the author has created an entire, detailed world, with a look at all the difficulties and rewards of life in a pre-technical society.  And some of the problems parallel those of our own times! I look forward to the rest of the trilogy!"

         "This is a fine web of a story and now I am fully enchanted! I  hope to read the second and third installments soon."

"From the first, I was hooked into wanting to know what would
happen. The evil was balanced by the good throughout. I particularly loved how the author used history in developing Clare's story~the way of living in the marsh, stories woven into tapestries, and the manner of living together with all of the tensions surrounding the need to cooperate and compete. Her descriptions were vivid. I can hardly wait for the next book!"

   I am publishing this second volume of The Marshlander Series as an inexpensive E book.  It would take another six months to prepare for print publication, and I need to move ahead as quickly as possible with the final draft of my third volume, The Battle for the Marshlands. This is a big book needing polishing up, tightening, and copy editing in its final draft.  My plan is to try for a traditional publisher this time by marketing  it  in the real world fantasy genre.

From the northlands, from Cedar Haven where Clare and William have taken refuge, from Nidden and Dunlin and Twist, the Marshlanders and their allies come together in a final struggle against the merchants, ministers, and military trying to drain the marshes. 

So, enjoy Fly Out of the Darkness by clicking on  www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com    to download it to your Kindle or Nook, I Phone, I Pad or computer, and let me know what you think about William's decision to become a monk, Clare's further sufferings, and the (Panentheistic? Pelagian? Universalist?) theology of my favorite character of all, Father Robin.

I've Found Mother

When I finally got down to the Danner after playing in the grass on top of the cliff until everyone went home, it was early this afternoon. I drank and drank the cool water where it bubbles up from a spring, and then I munched some watercress that was bobbing about. I put some in my pocket, which turns out to be a good thing.
I decided I was not going to spend another night in that damp, dark cave. Where I live, everyone tells you what to do all of the time, and if you play when you are supposed to be doing a chore, Mother or Lizbet or somebody's aunt or granny always sets you right. But there hadn't been anyone around to tell me not to play with a gorgeous brown snail all afternoon, making a nice house for it out of leaves and then letting it go on its way again, and that's what I did until I began to wonder why Lizbet had never come back, like she said she would.
Lizbet is one person who always does what she says she's going to do, so it had to be my fault for staying away from the cave so she couldn't find me. I felt full of badness when I realized that I had been playing again, the very same way I'd been thinking about the potsy and not watching out like I'd promised Mother. I began to feel so full of evil for disobeying both Mother and now Lizbet that I was beginning to wonder if I deserved everything that was happening to me. Maybe I really was a changeling, not a real human being after all.
I had to find Mother and ask her what to do. I knew the way through Twist to the minister's cow barn but couldn't risk going that way because everyone must still be after me. I decided to work my way around by the forest verge. The days are drawing out now, and I figured I could get there before night, but the forest was full of bramble patches and tangled underbrush and it was very slow going. I didn't get to the wheat field until dusk, and then I had a dreadful shock: it had been mowed, and was all in stubble. My cloak was the same color of the sod, though, so I decided to take my chances.
I creeped along the furrows and got to the last row of stubble when a soldier came around the corner of the barn. I lay flat on my face and my heart pounded so hard I was afraid he would hear it. But he just relieved himself against the wall and went back in. I saw a clump of waist high grass the mowers had skipped and got it between me and the barn wall. I put my ear to a crack and listened. I couldn't hear anything for a while so I felt along until I came to a loose board, and widened its crack a little. There was only greyish light in there, but something stirried and whimpered.
I put my eye right up to the board. Some blurs moved slightly. I thought it was the women and their daughters who were captured with Mother. My eyes got better and I could see a girl who was chained to the wall by her waist. She was rocking herself, and humming one of those tunes we sing when the grownups are talking and we want to play. What you do is whisper-sing and when you get someone's attention you toss a bean bag. It goes back and forth, one toss a line, and if you figure your snatch right you can win the came by catching it on the last line. This girl had something like a bag and she was tossing it back and forth between her hands.
I didn't have a bag, but I had a pocket. There was some watercress and the last of my jerky in it. So I ripped out my pocket, put some pebbles in for weight, and worked my arm through the crack. There wasn't room to swing, so I widened the crack with a rock. When I could swing enough to throw I began to sing, then threw my pocket as hard as I could. I heard a soft plop, people talking, and, I thought, the sound of munching.
I had just sat back, very pleased with my cleverness, when I heard hoof beats. I lay on my face in the grass. The lock clanked and the door slammed and the girl cried out as the soldiers dragged everyone out the door.
"On to Breck," they jeered horridly, "an all night walk up the drove will make you look even sorrier, if that's possible. The ministers intend to shame you as a warning about what happens to healers!"
I waited just until the sound of the wagon wheels faded, then I ran along the furrows next to the drove. I just had to keep Mother in sight or I'd lose her for good so I ran and ran but my tum hurt and I was thirsty again and I just fell down the the road crying and I am to weak to get up.

I'm in Trouble!

My name is Clare. I'm lying at the entrance to a cave where I slept last night. I have only one slab of jerky and no water, but I can't go down to the river for a drink because women from Twist, including my friends, are all doing their laundry.
What happened is that my mother got caught by the soldiers and ministers.It was all my fault. She'd asked me to keep watch on a stone wall while she gathered herbs down in the forest. If I saw anyone coming, I was supposed to whistle. But there was this wonderful stone in the dirt just below the wall. It was perfect for a hopscotch potsy because it was flat on the bottom, and I'd lost by just one toss yesterday. I stared at it for a few seconds, then jumped down to get it. By the time I was back up they were half way across the field, and they'd seen Mother coming up from the dell. They grabbed her, and one of them was coming for me, when she said
"That's not my daughter. You can see she's a changling from the way she runs, faster than any human being could ever run."
I realized what she was telling me to do so I ran and ran until they got too close and then I dove into the forest and covered myself with leaves. I was frightened to death, but they didn't find me. I took the long way around Twist and got home after dark. My brother, Roger, was making toast, but when I asked for some he aimed the fork at my throat and said he was going to deliver me over to the soldiers, so I ran out into the square and smack into our neighbor, Lizbet. She brought me to this cave and told me to wait for her here but I'm thirsty and, as soon as the laundry is done, I'm going down to the Danner to get a drink, no matter what!