To exorcise the first person present tense from my brain, I sat down and wrote a few paragraphs in it. Overall, it was a good exercise. It helped me make peace with the tense. And when I needed a short story for my short story class, it gave me a nice starting point. However, the ending is rather…open-ended. I happen to like the possibilities of it, but I thought I should warn you.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, part one of Terra Obscura is after the break. I hope you like it.

“Curiosity is a sin, and sinners burn in hell.” Elder Parson’s weak-voiced words are not a threat, or a promise, but a warning, wavering like notes from a reed flute on the winter wind.

I’ve been caught again, looking at the world beyond the wall. When I turn to face the old man, I press my back against the weathered, rough-hewn wood and use my body to hide the place where I scraped out the filling of frozen mud between the logs.

The peephole is no larger than the circumference of my smallest finger, but it opens another world to my eye. It is like something I saw, an ocean and some years ago, before the war and the plague and the resulting wave of religious fervor that swept my countrymen by the thousands to this foreign shore.

The king—the old one, the heretic whose name we have since blacked from our books—allowed a group of natural philosophers to build a windowless room at the university. The room was shut of all light, save for a pinhole on the southern wall. And where the light from that small hole shone against the opposite wall, an observer could behold an image the world outside—but it was pale and upside down, a phantom of the truth.

A camera obscura, they called it. The darkened room.

I remember the camera obscura as I hide my sorry little peephole behind the limp sweep of my faded skirts. It may seem a silly, petty thing to keep secret and thus risk the stocks, or worse, but the chink I’ve made in the wall reveals a wider world than the one in which I’ve spent my days and nights for nine long months.

For me, there has been only the settlement, muddy and cold, colored with weathered browns and blacks and grays. Beyond the settlement, the land is vast and wide, an endless stretch of uncharted wilderness, the mysteries of which most maps only dare imply with a dark wash of ink and the scrawled legend: Here be monsters.

Within our wall, we are small and weak and safe. Our faces are whitened by short days, and even shorter rations. Our cheeks and hands have been made rough and red by wind and work. We wear dingy white linens and faded black clothes. We have nothing healthy, crisp or pristine, save our immortal souls.

Or so the elders tell us, at each morning’s Meeting.

I do not know if I believe them now—or if I ever did. They say the world beyond the wall is wild, wicked and untamed. But their pronouncements seem as washed out and wrong-sided as an image wavering on a darkroom wall. Beyond our pale of weathered wood and dried mud stretch vast snow-covered fields, sparkling crystalline and perfect in the winter sun. At the fields’ end, the forest looms dark green on the horizon, with the red sunset blazing above. And beyond the forest lies the bright blue sea that stands between here and Home.

There is no freedom here, save the freedom to repent, to toil, and to die. At Home, our packed and teeming capital had long ago outgrown its walls. It stank of sin and sewage; of death and life. It sprawled across the land like an algae bloom in a stagnant pond, consuming the countryside with the insatiable appetite of progress.

There was money to be made and rent to be paid; there were so many bodies, few people worried for their souls. So long as a man professed his loyalty to both God and king, none would question the beliefs he held in his heart.

I know I am too young to wax wistful for the world that used to be, except that I have seen a king killed at the order of his people. I have seen plague, fire, and war. And I have been brought across an ocean for the dubious privilege of helping construct God’s kingdom on Earth.

“…God’s kingdom here on earth!” Elder Parsons is shouting. Little flecks of spittle hit my cheeks, they have turned cold from an instant’s travel through the chill, dry air.

“I pray one day you will find some measure of the penitence and peace your mother has found within these walls.

“You are but lately come to us.” Parson’s voice is fuller than the one he first used. He knows how little difference his lectures make to me, but he is speaking for the audience of black clad colonists who slow at their tasks to watch us from the corners of their eyes. “You do not know what hardships were suffered by those who built this wall to keep us safe within. You do not know what manner of beasts roam without.”

“Wolves,” I say, “I heard one howling a few nights past. It did not worry me. My father’s mother lives at the edge of the woods, back in the Old Country. She told me wolves are skittish and wary with people.”

“Wolves,” Parson proclaims, drawing the word out, letting his tongue linger over the “l” and pressing his teeth deep into his lower lip to pronounce the “v”. “They will hunt you in the night and pounce upon you when you tire of running. They will use their heavy paws to force you from your feet. They’ve sharp claws to rend your garments and bare your flesh for their hungry mouths.”

His beady eyes shine with a zealot’s relish. He spares no detail in his description of the indignities I will suffer as I am eaten alive. He’d the same happy look at Meeting yesterday when he described the agonies of witches on the pyre, and a week before that when he told us tales of sinners burning naked in the pits of hell.

Parson says his soul is bound for heaven, but I think he loves his tales of hell too much to leave them behind. In this heaven, Parson once told me, man shall know no suffering, nor appetites of any sort. He shall be cleansed of every imperfection; he shall shed every memory of his life on Earth.

I do not think Parson will enjoy his heaven when he gets there. It will seem cold, indeed, without his tales of Hell to keep him warm.

After some minutes he concludes his ecstatic diatribe. “You may now ask me for the Lord’s forgiveness, child.”

I recite the words I’m meant to say. I denounce myself for a sinner. I am prideful and iniquitous, headstrong and hell-bound. Oh, yes. I implore the Elder to devise some act of contrition that will punish my body and purify my soul.

“You must take up the dying,” he tells me. “Four weeks of work, from sunrise to sunset, pausing only for Meetings and meals. Begin immediately.”

*************************************

Continued in part 2.

Terra Obscura is the short story I wrote for the class I took. I’ll run it in three parts, starting Tuesday.  Nieves, the sequel to Ember, is nowhere near finished, and won’t be for quite a long time. But I loved the photo so much, I just had to play around with it.

No, I haven’t gone all money-hungry. IT’S FOR CHARITY. For charity, people. Here’s how it works:

1. Starting Wednesday, November 28th, you send me an email naming an amount you’d be willing to donate to Mercy Corps charity. (bettiesharpe at gmail dot com)
2. I will post the highest bid for each day on this blog–no names, just bid amounts.
3. The highest bid I receive by 12:00 pm Pacific on Wednesday, December 5 2007 wins.
4. You, the generous winner, go to the Mercy Corps site and donate. You choose which program your money goes to. Crisis in Sudan, Cyclone Victims in Bangladesh, Where Most Needed–pick whatever program moves you. You’ll also get the tax write-off )
5. When you donate online, choose the option to donate in honor of someone. Enter “Ember”, and have it sent to my email: bettiesharpe at gmail dot com.
6. Once you’ve completed the donation, save an electronic version of your web receipt and email it to me. The web receipt will not list your full credit card number, but it will list the amount you donated and your address (same as if you won a book in a contest, and you had to send in a mailing address). I’ll treat this information as confidential and will delete the file after I’ve seen it.
7. I send you a copy of the full PDF of Ember–weeks before anyone else will read it, and you (the generous winner) get to join the small and select club of fabulous people who have been kind enough to read Ember in its entirety: Jodie, Bam, Kate R. and My Mom.

But wait! There’s more! Along with your early copy of the Ember eBook, you’ll get:

• The smirky satisfaction of knowing what’s going to happen before almost anyone else does.
• The the warm glow that comes from helping fellow human beings who are in need.
• An income tax deduction in the amount of your donation.

But I thought you said Ember was free?
Ember is free. I wrote it intending for it to be a free eBook, and it will stay that way through the end of its run on The Serial, and for the foreseeable future on my website.

Why Mercy Corps?
Because 90% of the money you donate to Mercy Corps goes directly to charitable work around the globe. Because they fund a wide variety of innovative programs. Because they need to feel better after losing the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore.

If I win the auction, can I taunt other readers? What about spoilers?
If you win the auction, you can taunt to your heart’s content. Taunt early and taunt often, but DO NOT reveal any spoilers.

The pawnbroker used a short stepladder to reach the silver-framed photograph I’d asked for. He held it two-handed as he stood atop the ladder and didn’t let go, even when the ladder wobbled as he descended to the floor.

He let loose a shaky rattle of a breath when the slick soles of his scuffed loafers settled on the beige-flecked tile of terra firma, but he kept the frame clasped to his chest. Like it was worth something. Like it wasn’t just some cheap family tchochke great aunt Amity’s junkie nephew had stolen and pawned to get a fix.

In this neighborhood, the drugs changed, but the story never did.

“How much?”

“It’s hard to say.” The pawnbroker scratched his liver-spotted scalp with one careful finger, as if he still had hair and was afraid of messing it up.

“There’s a tag on it, ain’t there?”

He flipped the frame over and squinted at the yellowed bit of paper pasted on the black cardboard flap stand. The old man squinted at the hand-written price, but I could read it just fine.

“Fifty cents. I’ll take it.”

“Not so fast.” He held out a hand, like the Supremes telling me to Stop! In the Name of Love, but he couldn’t get his knobby elbow straight. The palm of his big-knuckled hand was crisscrossed with more lines than a Los Angeles freeway map.

I wondered if he’d ever had his palm read. I imagined the fortune-teller—some turban-topped charlatan with kohl gumming up the wrinkles round her rheumy eyes, and a sham accent that sounded like a cross between Bela Lugosi and Pepe LePew.

“You vill die young,” she would have said, her smoker’s wheeze adding a shadow of death to an otherwise rote recitation of impending doom. “I see it in your lifeline, yes?” She stabs her stubby finger into the center of his hand like she means to pound it through to the table beneath. “Very short.”

He would have laughed it off. I could see him as a young man, thick hair slicked back, blue eyes bright with confidence—no, arrogance. He would have been a looker. Before his wrinkled lids started to sag like curtains falling on an empty stage, he would have had bedroom eyes.

He would have been the kind of man who made you think he could see through your clothes when he looked at you across the room. And then the flash of smile, the slow wink when he caught your glare that made you think he was mischievous instead of perverted. That made you think it might not be so bad if he did see you naked.

He still used that look now, only it didn’t work with wrinkles and false teeth. He’d given me that look when I walked into the store, and I’d curved my hand into a fist at my side because I’d wanted to slap the smile off his face. Stupid old perv.

But then I’d seen the photograph, faded gray in a tarnished silver frame. It was sitting in a decade of dust on the shelf above the brass-backed cash register. I’d asked for it, and held my breath as he’d hobbled up the old stepladder to retrieve it.

Which brings me back to now. And the old perv telling my tits—and, by association, me—that the price was higher than what the tag said.

“Five dollars.” His hand still wavered in the air above the counter, like he’d forgotten it was there.

“Nah-uh.” I shook my head. “State law says you got to charge the prices as marked.”

“I haven’t hand-priced a damned thing in this store for twenty years. The price on the tag’s just out of date.”

“That’s your problem. I’ll give you fifty cents.”

He raised his chin so he could look up at my face from beneath those hound-dog wrinkles. “What do you want it for, anyway? The frame’s silver-plate, and the people in the photo are ugly.”

“Some salesman you are.”

“Just curious.”

I shrugged. “I’m a writer. I collect things—pieces of other people’s lives. It helps me imagine stories.”

“And this picture?”

Too late, I saw where he was going. “It’s interesting.”

“Is it worth a thousand words?”

“I try to stay away from clichés. Bad for business, you know?”

“Like writer’s block is bad for business?” His cloudy eyes narrowed. “You’re out walking after dark in this neighborhood. It snowed last night, and the wind is cold enough to freeze the slush to solid ice right now. It’s a good night to be inside, writing.”

“It’s invigorating. I like the cold air.”

“And the crime.”

“That, too.”

“Come off it. You want the picture or not?”

“Sure.” I reached into my pocket. “Here’s fifty cents.”

“Nah-uh.” The non-word negative sounded strange coming out of his mouth. Childish, and just a little mean. “Words are tough to come by right now. How much would you pay for a thousand ‘em?”

I pulled out my wallet and slapped down a five. “All right. Five dollars.”

He just let the bill lay there like the half-dead rat a cat brings in when it’s feeling generous and wants to share. The cat thinks it’s impressive, but all you can think about is the best way to get the rat into the trash without touching it.

“Ten dollars.”

I glanced over at the photo. A stern-faced mother with a fresh permanent in her graying hair and a too-tight rayon dress stared out of the frame like a Vaudevillian staring down a heckler. A little girl with a square jaw sat in a wicker chair beside her. The girl was an unwilling, unlikely Shirley Temple; sturdy and solemn, smothered in bows and ruffles, her thin hair tortured into limp curls.

There was a story here.

I slapped down another five and snatched the frame.

“A thousand words,” he yelled as I rushed out through the grubby glass door and into the cold, dark night.