The Suppressed Verses

Selection from Kay Nielsen illustrationMandine de la Royaume has pulled off an almost impossible feat: suppressing the utterance of part of a curse. Curses require the channeling of a substantial torrent of power, more than the safe magic of the North-lands — patterning — permits. A curse is incantatio, and its casting causes the curser to become a troll.

Mandine had been a troll for decades before her troll-disease stole her sanity, and her skill as an incantatrice has only grown. Her curse is potent, but even potent curses have loopholes. Hers is no exception. Nornally these loopholes must be specified in the doggerel poetry that comprises the waste (in addition to searing orange light) accompanying incantatio. The latter half of Mandine’s curse was swallowed by her will and her strength. Her cursee, Prince Kellor, must seek his freedom by guess, since he has heard no more than a snippet of the conditions for his release.

If you have not read Troll-magic, read no further in this blog post! Spoilers follow. But do come back after you finish the novel. How Kellor seeks his solution is fully explored in his tale, but the suppressed verses themselves do not appear. Kellor’s courage and ingenuity are much more relevant to the story than the arcane magic that creates his challenge. Thus the appearance of the swallowed stanzas here in my blog: a treat for the loremasters and aficionados of appendices among us!

A bear no more, speak the last words that are thine.
Bid thy maiden farewell, she has cause to repine.
When an hour is done, search the sky for my sign:
My chariot arrives, thy will now is mine.

The maiden has failed, thy will’s bound to my need.
Can the curse be unraveled, the prisoners freed?
Seek the ways out of bondage, take heart and take heed:
My throat strangles freedom, swallows all in greed.
Yet a path lies open, awaits song and deed.

Excavate and reveal the corpse without breath,
Merely wood carved in likeness of chilly death.
Bring the children before their mother’s gagged wrath.
They call, “Mama!” She speaks and leaves the Lainkath.
Her escape heals her mate, pacing his split path.
Sundered soul and flesh rejoin in this aftermath.

East of sun shall maiden seek, and west of moon,
Cair Seila, lost palace, the site of my tomb.
To Cymbre she shall give three gifts, ask three boons:
Gold apple, awareness, heart of choice in life’s loom;
Gold carding comb, sorting — order prevents ruin;
Gold spindle for spinning, shaping her life’s doom.
For each gift: one visit, dawn to stroke of noon,
Chances to preserve thee from thy fate as groom.

Wedding pomp and splendor fling chapel doors wide:
The maid plays music, thee walks toward Cymbre’s side.
Tears drown the player’s cheeks, loss and sorrow’s tide.
She cedes all claim on thee, weeping beyond pride.
Hears thee speak thy vows to take Cymbre as bride,
To love the troll-daughter, as her husband to bide.

Cymbre speaks her vows: no words thee looked to hear,
No promise of love, no oath to hold thee dear.
Unforeseen reprieve! She breaks the bonds of fear,
Not spouse, not betrothed, mere brother free and clear.
Saved by her gift along with all thee name peer.
No prisoners remain: Mandine’s curse barren, sere!

For the spoken verses, see Mandine’s Curse.

For more about the world of Troll-magic, see:
Who’s Who in Troll-magic
Families in Troll-magic
Bazinthiad’s Fashions
Bazinthiad, A Quick Tour of the City
Magic in the North-lands
Magic in Silmaren
Radices and Arcs
Mandine’s Curse
Character Interview: Lorelin
The Accidental Herbalist
What Happened to Bazel?

 

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Mandine’s Curse

Kay Nielsen illustration from East of the Sun and West of the MoonMagic is perilous in the North-lands. Draw too much power through your radices, and you have left the safe byways of energea. You are using incantatio and have embarked on the road to troll-disease. It’s a fine line to walk, especially if performed under stress!

Mandine, the troll-witch in my novel Troll-magic, has crossed that line. And she has lost her sanity. As her cruel plans come adrift, she resorts to a curse to achieve her victory. A curse is the most extreme form of incantatio, requiring tremendous power. As in most incantatic magic, the better part is wasted, vented as acrid light and doggerel poetry. The greater flow of energy results in a greater flow of waste as well: thus the lengthier verse below.

The stanzas of Mandine’s curse appear in Troll-magic as fragments. I present them here in their entirety. If you haven’t yet read Troll-magic (what are you waiting for? go read it!) you may wish to skip this blog post. (Grin!) It reveals few details, but it does outline the extent of the hero’s challenge.

I curse thee now: take the beast’s shape!
Wild fur so white;
Ebon eyes, keen sight;
Razor claws, such might;
Fanged jaws, iron bite.
North-bear by day, yet a man by night.
Labyrinthine thrall, just one veiled escape.

Not ’til a maiden shall freely chose
To share thy bed with never a ruse,
One year and a day. No time to lose,
Thee must wake each morn to rise and woo.

Spiral out the curse to light and hold
Thy friends, my foes, who thwarted me of old.

Lock motherly healer in Lainkath deep,
Silently serving on quiet feet,
Voicelessly present, the halls to keep,
Hidden from sight, mere breezes to greet.

Graveside be false flesh, corpse unbreathing,
Simulacrum pure, truth concealing,
Buried in state, her children weeping.

Split fatherly patterner, flesh from soul,
To wander pale, ghostly garbed, unwhole;
His flesh to pace Mandine’s north atoll,
His soul to walk his own homely hall.

Yet if the maiden who shares thy days
Should leave the task but done partway,
Or if she who bides thy sheets by night
Should see thy man form in some strange light,
Then thy doom be surely sealed; thy fate:
A bear no more, but Cymbre’s mate.

Curses are comprehensive in nature and include any loopholes or escape routes in their descriptions. This is inconvenient, to say the least, for the curser, but handy for the accursed. Mandine’s curse is no different. However, she managed to achieve something unusual through sheer determination: silencing the utterance of the verses describing the loopholes in her curse. Kellor (her cursee) has never heard them. Next week, you may read the suppressed verses here!

For more about the world of Troll-magic, see:
Who’s Who in Troll-magic
Families in Troll-magic
Bazinthiad’s Fashions
Bazinthiad, A Quick Tour of the City
Magic in the North-lands
Magic in Silmaren
Radices and Arcs
The Suppressed Verses
Character Interview: Lorelin
The Accidental Herbalist
What Happened to Bazel?

 

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Going Up Like Smoke?

photo looking out the front doorThink of your house as a chimney.

Cold air seeps inside under the front door and the back. Cold air creeps through any breaks in the insulation on the outer walls. Cold air gathers atop the foundation wall where the floor joists rest.

Once within, the cold air warms and rises. Rises to the ceilings, rises up the stairwell, and then soars out the attic fan or the gable vents. Whoosh! There’s a draft, a current, to pull more chilly air in at the bottom. Which warms and rises and leaves.

That’s how a house without air sealing works! It’s not the way to stay warm in winter. Sealing the leaks in a building’s envelope is more critical than beefing up its insulation. A house with no leaks and little insulation will stay warmer than one with lots of leaks and lots of insulation.

(Yes, it’s late fall as I write this, and today was cold, so I’m focused on heat. But air sealed houses retain their cool air in summer better, too.)

My house was built in 1949 and featured lots of leaks when we bought it. Heating it in cold weather cost a fortune! My husband and I added insulation to the crawl spaces under the roof, and that helped the rooms immediately under the roof feel cooler in summer and warmer in winter. But our utility bills remained high.

We signed up for a mini energy audit offered by our electricity provider and learned both why and what to do. More than anything our home needed air sealing. And there were some simple ways to improve its leaky state.

 

photo of air sealed fanThe first step was closing off any upper escape hatches for warm air. Without that suction, less cold air would be drawn into the house. For us, this was the whole house fan at the top of the steps. All the insulating in the eaves had also air sealed them. We just hadn’t finished the upper level job when we left the fan as we found it. And that one opening was ample as a chimney top! Whoosh!

There are expensive covers you can buy to seal off whole house fans, but we opted for the cheap solution: insulation panels of rigid foam secured by painter’s tape. Not elegant, perhaps, but neat and functional.

 

photos of air sealed leaksThe next steps involved locating all the undesired air intakes. All our exterior doors featured gaping cracks between door and threshold. The water and gas supply pipes displayed daylight shining through their holes in the basement cinderblocks. The dryer vent, likewise. And all the electrical outlets on the outer wall acted as conduits of cold air from outside to inside.

 

We used sprayable foam to seal the pipes.

 

We used calk to seal the dryer vent.

 

The front, back, and basement doors received bottom sweeps. Plus the front door, cut extra high off the floor by the previous owners to clear what must have been a very plush carpet, is reinforced by a sort of “pillow” designed to block draughts.

 
 
 
 

photos of air sealing an electrical outletWe sealed the electrical outlet boxes like this:

 
 

1 • Flip the circuit breaker for the outlet to off (or remove its fuse, if you have a fuse box). If your screwdriver should slip, you don’t want it slipping into a live socket!

 
 

2 • Remove the old cover.

 
 

3 • Place a special insulation pad over the gaps around the outlet. These may be purchased in a hardware store. Don’t jury rig your own with styrofoam trays or something else which might be flammable. Live electricity is close to the pad – don’t risk a fire!

 
 

4 • Replace the standard cover with a child safety cover. The sliding protectors not only keep little fingers out, they stop airflow!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our energy auditor also recommended we seal the gap that most older houses have above the foundation wall. The floor joists rest there, and only one thin 2×8 separates outside from inside. Sealing the joist area is more involved than all the other projects I’ve described, so it’s still on our to-do list. I sealed one of those cold-air pockets this afternoon, and took photos, so you can see how the project goes. It is something a home owner can do him- or herself.

 

photos of the process1 • Gather your tools: utility blade, old bread knife, goggles, gloves.

2 • Gather your materials: rigid insulation, paper for a pattern, spray foam.

3 • Use the paper to make a pattern. I merely folded and taped mine, fairly roughly. Then I traced it onto the rigid insulation.

4 • Cut 2 rectangles of rigid insulation and check the fit. Mine were initially too large, so I had to trim them. Twice! You definitely don’t want to be trimming after you’ve started spraying foam. The utility blade worked fine for my first cut. Zoop! Snap! Done! It kept catching after that and giving a very jagged edge. The old bread knife worked really well. (Really! Weird, huh?)

5 • Put on the goggles and your gloves. I wondered if I really needed all the protective gear. I did! All the photos I’d seen of the procedure in a DIY book made it look neat and tidy. And the spray can featured a lovely trigger. How messy could it be? For a non-pro: very messy! The foam emerged from the nozzle in unpredictable spurts. It dripped and occasionally went wild. The nozzle fell off once between spraying sessions, and I had to attach the oozy straw to the dispenser. I ended with spray foam all over my gloves, some on the wrist cuff of my new sweatshirt, and one far-flung gob on the drawer of the tool chest! Wear the gloves and the goggles. The foam is not benign on the skin or in an eye!

6 • Spray the corners of the “box” at the end of the joists with foam.

7 • Place the first rigid insulation rectangle; the foam will harden in a few minutes and hold it in place.

8 • Spray the edges of the rigid insulation where they meet wood.

9 • Place the second rectangle of rigid insulation and spray its edges.

10 • Keep going with the next joist over! The spray foam is best used all in one session of DIY. It clogs the dispenser, if it sits unused for more than 2 hours after the first spray. And once it clogs, it’s done.

This afternoon’s sealing session went pretty smoothly, despite the mess. My photos show that my work is definitely not neat. But it’s not a Jackson Pollock painting either! I’m thinking we should move the complete project higher among our priorities. It might take a weekend, but it won’t be hard.

In the meantime, how is our house performing? Are our energy bills still going up like smoke? Well . . . no. Or, at least, not right now. The cost per BTU may keep shooting for the moon, but the January bill after our air sealing was $100 less than the previous (un-air-sealed) January. And it wasn’t because the weather was warmer. That particular month delivered extra snowfall and extra chill. So even the simplest air sealing projects paid big dividends.

Have you tackled any energy-efficiency projects on your home? Were they challenging? Easy? Did your bills go down? I’d love to hear about your experiences.

For more on green living, see:
Green Housekeeping
Grass Green
Permaculture Gardening

 

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The Carrot Un-Recipe

photos of the whole processI love raw carrots, but I like cooked carrots even more. I didn’t eat them often, because of all that slicing and then all that standing over the steamer on the stove top. A few months ago, my kids’ liking for cooked carrots inspired me. If they’ll eat their veggies without complaint, by golly, I’ll cook carrots. But there had to be a better way.

The trick, for me, was bite-sized chunks (not coin-sized slices) and oven baking instead of stove top steaming. The result . . . I find I prefer them to the steamed variety! The flavor is more intense, less watered down.

Baked Carrots

10 large carrots

1/3 cup butter

7” x 11” glass baking dish

Scrub the carrots well, then peel them. Carrots, unlike many other vegetables and fruits, do not store the majority of their nutrients in the skin. Good stuff spreads bountifully through the entire root.

Cut off the tops and discard. Slice the carrots into bite-sized chunks. This goes so much faster than slicing them into coin-sized rounds. You’ll be amazed.

Use a small pat of butter to grease your baking dish. Toss the remnant in with the rest of the butter stick and melt. Place the carrots in the baking dish and drizzle the melted butter over them, coating their surfaces well.

Cover the dish and place in a 350F oven.

Bake for 1 hour.

Be careful removing the cover. The steam contained within is very hot and can burn you.

A Word About Butter

Old-style margarine was chock full of transfats. We now know that transfats are so injurious to the human body that there is no known safe level for eating them. (Talk to the actual fats researchers. They know!)

Enter new-style margarines with “no” transfats.

But . . . there is a big but. Actually three but’s.

First, if the amount of transfat in the margarine is below a certain level, the manufacturer is allowed to claim zero transfats on the label. But that legal “zero” is not what you and I mean by zero. And given how harmful the transfats are, I want that zero to mean literally none at all. It doesn’t.

The second problem is more obscure. It has to do with polyunsaturated fats. (Margarines are made from polyunsarurates.) Until the modern era, humans ate very few. They occurred naturally in grains and cheese and meat and fish, but constituted less than 4% of of the calories ingested.

The process by which we switched to eating nearly 30% of our calories from polyunsaturated fats owes more to corporate greed (a lot of money to be made in corn oil) and political interference than good research. Political correctness may demand we consume corn oil and safflower oil and such, but this political correctness does not dovetail well with good health! Our bodies weren’t made to handle the load.

The third issue with polyunsaturates concerns the manufacturing process. The oils are processed at very high heats. Because polyunsaturates are very fragile, they break down easily. Becoming rancid under the high factory heat, they smell and taste so awful that no one would put them anywhere near the mouth! So the manufacturers must then use harsh chemical scrubbers to remove the odor. Some residues of the chemicals remain in the oils.

Do yourself a favor: cook with butter and extra-virgin olive oil.

 

More Recipes
Sauerkraut
Sautéed Eggplant
Coconut Salmon

 

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Star-drake is Live!

Dragon profile against starry night skyGefnen – troll-herald and hound for Koschey the Deathless – hunts life across the moors of the far north.

Not deer, not pheasant, not meat for the table. His master eats choicer fruits.

When the piercing scent of youth tingles his senses, Gefnen focuses his chase. The prey – a boy – lacks guardians strong enough to best a troll. Swift triumph awaits.

But other seekers tilt the chances of this game. Spirit of storm, poignant memories of a sea-prince, and something more ancient than memory or the wind shape the looming tumult.

Gefnen hunts victory, but a darker victory hunts him.

Star-drake is now available in electronic bookstores.
Amazon I B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords I Sony

 

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Mistakes, Missteps, Shady Dealing, & Synchronicity

Four more of my favorite fiction reads by four of my favorite authors.

profile with battle sceneDoes one small error in judgment lead inevitably to worse? To the worst mistake of all? On home ground, Barrayar, Miles Vorkosigan learns of loss, redemption, and the resilience of the essential self while tracking a wily traitor through a maze of smoke, mirrors, and memory.

Memory at Amazon

Memory at B&N

 

 

Bren Cameron, the paidhi, and his elite bodyguard, JagoTwo species – humans and the native atevi – share a world: uneasily, ever on the brink of war, never with the resilience to weather abrupt changes. A special mediator – the paidhi – serves as interpretor for all communication between the two cultures. When the space craft that originally left the human colonists on the planet unexpectedly returns to the skies, it disrupts the fragile status quo.

Will human arch-conservatives ally with the ship folk to prevent atevi access to space? Will atevi conservatives start a genocidal extermination of the human colony? Will the ship captains play both planet-bound factions against one another? Bren Cameron – the current paidhi – must rise above mere linguistics to interpret essential truths between all three sides. Can he keep the peace without betraying his own humanity?

Invader at Amazon

Invader at B&N

 

Space yacht amidst balloonistsCaptain Heris Serano and Lady Cecelia Marktos team up again to ferret out corruption – this time at the highest levels. Their threat to state secrets triggers swift reprisal and a desperate confrontation with the vulnerable essence of being human. How much can one lose and still retain it? And when the one oppressed by the many fights back, how much of the universe will she change with her perseverance?

Sporting Chance at Amazon

Sporting Chance at B&N

 

 

Chaos theory image of butterfly plus blond tressesSandra Foster works in R&D at HiTek studying fads. HiTek management wants to know how to start them to make scads of money. Sandra would prefer to know how to combat them: why do people forsake the brains nature gave them to follow the Pied Piper of fashion, folly, and prejudice?

Interdepartmental meetings and sensitivity exercises mix with mis-delivered mail and a million-dollar grant to generate break-through’s both scientific and personal. With unique wit, Willis ridicules corporate culture, pop culture, and human blindness while exploring individual integrity and the notion that losses combine together to generate ultimate gain.

Bellwether at Amazon

Bellwether at B&N

 

For more of my favorite reads, check these posts:
Beauty, Charm, Cyril & Montmorency
Duplicity, Diplomacy, Secrets & Ciphers
Courtship and Conspiracy, Mayhem and Magic
Gods & Guilt, Scandals & Skeptics

 

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