I still have these for sale on my sale blog.
I have dropped the price by a dollar each. I will be removing these soon if there are no takers.
Thanks for looking!
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Addie Slaughter:The Girl Who Met Geronimo~Book review
Addie Slaughter by Susan L. Krueger, ED.D. ,with Dr. Reba Wells Grandrud
From the Publisher
Indian attacks, outlaws, rattlesnakes, smallpox and blizzards are a few of the true-to-life dangers experienced by Addie Slaughter, daughter of the famous John Horton Slaughter, a Texas Ranger, famed Cochise County Sheriff and an early settler of the San Bernardino Valley in the late 1800s.
My Thoughts
The story of Addie Slaughter is told from the perspective of Addie a young girl living in the late 1800’s. After loosing their mother to smallpox, Addie, her brother Willie and their father John moved to Arizona to purchase a ranch. Addie’s father remarried so the children would have a mother.
Life was not easy and the road to buying the ranch was fraught with hardship and danger, but the Slaughter family did eventually buy their ranch.
This is a wonderful story about a young girl growing up just after the end of the Civil War. The recommended reading level is 9-12. It is fast paced and full of adventure! There are actual photographs of the people in this story throughout the book.
There is also a study guide in the back of the book if you would like to do further research and study.
Addie Slaughter is available for purchase at Five Star Publications.
disclosure: This is a Mamma Buzz review. I received this book from Five Star Publications in exchange for my honest review. No other compensation was received. All opinions in this post and on this blog are my own.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Morning Manna~Book Review
A couple of months ago I received a devotional to review titled Morning Manna by R. Chris Hanks. This is a one page a day devotional that takes you through the Bible in one year.
From the Publisher
In this simple 365-day devotional, Pastor R. Christ Hanks chooses stand out scripture and shares truths in a way that will help you to fully understand and absorb them each day.
My Thoughts
It has been a long time since I have used a daily devotional, other than my Bible. Morning Manna looked as though it would be a great devotional to go along with my daily Bible reading. I was not disappointed. This book takes you through the entire Bible in one year.
Each devotion is one page in length. Day one starts on January 1st with Genesis and goes through December 31st, day 365 ending at the end of the book of Revelation. Approximately 3-4 chapters of the Bible are covered each day. This devotion does not hop around the Bible as many devotionals do.
Each day starts with a Daily Bible Reading. On January 1st you would read Genesis chapters 1-3. After you read those chapters in your Bible you are given Today’s Verse a verse to ponder, memorize or pray about. Finally you come to the study portion of the devotion.
Pastor Hanks provides a rich and meaty Biblical lesson for each portion of the Bible you are reading on any particular day.
In the back of the book you will find an index of topics for quick reference on a particular topic.
This devotional is very easy to read and written in an easy to understand format. You may think that only having one page per day this devotional may not have much to it. Let me assure you that it is very in-depth and will add a deeper meaning to your daily walk with the Lord. It is aptly titled as it is truly Morning Manna to our spiritual journey.
I want to add that you do not have to wait until January 1st to start this book. I started well after the new year and have not felt it was a problem.
I highly recommend this devotional. You will not be disappointed, whether you are a new Christian just starting your faith journey or have been a Christian for many years. This is a wonderful book!
disclosure: I was given a copy of Morning Manna for review purposes as a reviewer for Bring It On Communications. No other compensation was received. All opinions in this post and on this blog are my own.
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Homeschool Mother’s Journal~June 24
In my life this week…
I am continuing to declutter here. This week I have started working on my kitchen counters. They are such a catch all for any and all things. I told Larry the other day maybe I just needed to cut the counter off and then I would not set things on it. Did you all know I am a great piler? Really, it takes certain skill to be able to pile things the way I do. Just let me know if you’d like to hire me to pile your stuff! (you know you wish you had my skills!)
In our homeschool this week…
We are catching up on some units that needed finishing and doing a lot of reading!
Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
we went to our church dinner on Tuesday night. It was a nice meal and we sat with my parents and our best friends! On Wednesday we went to our library’s Peter Rabbit program. It was horribly hot! Part of the program was outside in the Children’s garden. I was a bit disappointed in the program. It was not as nice as those held in prior years.
We did get the pool for the first time yesterday and I have the sunburn to prove it. It seems we will be spending a lot of time at the pool since I seem to have two fish here that love to swim!
We are going to see the Turtlesinger at our library this afternoon if all goes well!
Otherwise we have not seen too many people since my car has a leak and needs to be repaired. We are getting it fixed this weekend.
My favorite thing this week was…
We took a walk on Sunday night. Whenever we walk we take a couple of plastic grocery bags to collect any cans we find. As we were walking along Kaden spied a can that had been run over. It was very flat and you could only see the symbol on the can. He says look a Korean soda can! It was a Pepsi can! He thought the Pepsi symbol looked like the symbol on the Korean flag.
I’m reading…
I just finished reading Breath of Angel and I have to say I really liked this book. It is the first in a series and I am looking forward to future books! I am now reading the Addie Slaughter: The Girl Who Met Geronimo. I am so behind on my Bible study The Ministry of Motherhood
I’m cooking…
I want to do some freezer cooking but I need to do some grocery shopping! I am running out of so many things!
I’m grateful for…
My family and friends. I need to remember to be thankful for them each and every day!
I’m praying for…
Grace…..it seems I need lots of it these days!
A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
Well they are not best friends yet, they fight like cats (Kaden always yells “cat fight” when they start) and sound like a heard of elephants running down the hall. But they seem to be tolerating each other at least some of the time since I found them both sleeping in the same chair together the other day!
To read more journals or to participate click the button at the top of the page.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
First Wild Card Tour~The Blackberry Bush
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book! You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
Summerside Press (June 1, 2011)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Housholder is a philosophical-spiritual influencer, a sponsored snowboarder and a surfing instructor who dreams of making this world a better place. As the senior pastor at Robinwood Church, an indie warehouse church near the beach in California, he can often be found preaching verse by verse in his bare feet. With his increasing desire to change the world around him, he is the director for several non-profit organizations. Housholder loves to travel and is an international conference speaker. He has spoken to groups in Ethiopia, Malaysia, Canada and London and has also been involved with mission trips. He is especially energized by evangelistic work among Muslims. Housholder is an avid reader and carries an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He received his undergraduate degree from Pacific Lutheran University and went on to receive his Master of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Then he spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Universität-Bonn in Germany. Housholder fluently speaks three languages, English, Dutch and German, and enjoys reading biblical Greek and Hebrew.
Housholder and his wife, Wendy, have one grown son, Lars. They reside in Huntington Beach, California. Some of his hobbies include photography and tinkering on his 1971 VW bug.
Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
The Blackberry Bush begins with two babies, Kati and Josh, who are born on opposite sides of the world at the very moment the Berlin Wall falls. You would think that such a potent freedom metaphor would become the soundtrack for their lives, but nothing could be further from the truth. They will follow a parallel path connected by a mistake their great grandparents made years before. Despite his flawless image, Josh, an artistic and gifted Californian skateboarder and surfer, struggles to find his true role in the world. He fears that his growing aggression will eventually break him if he can’t find a way to accept his talent and the competition that comes along with it. Kati, a German with a penchant for classic Swiss watches and attic treasure-hunting, is crushed with the disappointment of never being “enough” for anyone—especially her mother. She wonders whether she will ever find the acceptance and love she craves and become comfortable in her own skin.
Craving liberation, Kati and Josh seem destined to claim their birthright of freedom together. With the help of their loving grandparents, they will unlock the secrets of their pasts and find freedom and joy in their futures. Today, like Katie and Josh, our youth often fall into two different cultures. Josh is part of the “bro” culture which is outdoor-oriented, with sports as a focus, and generally more conservative. Whereas Kati is part of the “scene” culture which is more liberal and indoor-oriented, focusing on music. These cultures are apparent in the novel and can aid in a better understanding of the issues today’s 21st century youth are facing as well as the struggles they have in coming to faith.
Product Details:
List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Summerside Press (June 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1609361164
ISBN-13: 978-1609361167
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
~ Behind the Story ~
Angelo
Think for a moment. Isn’t there a splendid randomness to the way your day is coming together today?
After all, it’s not the big, dramatic things we foresee and expect that make all the difference in our lives. It’s the chance, random encounters—the subtle things that surprise us…and change the very course of our individual destinies.
The Blackberry Bush is a story about awakening to the fullness of this reality.
And you will never want to go back to sleep.
You can call me Angelo. I’ll be the one telling this story. As you and I travel together across generations and continents in a journey that will take just a few hours, you’ll discover not only the gripping stories of Kati, Josh, Walter, Nellie, and Janine but also uncover your own compelling back-story that will change you in ways you can never imagine.
And you’ll never be the same again….
PROLOGUE
1989
Berlin, Germany
Occasionally, out of nowhere, history turns on a dime in a way no one sees coming. Listen…do you hear the sound of jackhammers on dirty concrete?
“Wir sind ein Volk (We are one people)!” A large European outdoor crowd chants this over and over into the chilly November night. “Wir sind ein Volk!”
Thousands of hands hold candles high in the darkening night of Berlin. Throngs of young people with brightly colored scarves crowd the open spaces between concrete buildings. !ere are parties—with exuberant celebrants of all ages—even along the actual top of the wall. Flowers are stuffed into once-lethal Kalashnikov rises. Hope is contagious.
It’s November 9, 1989. The first sections of the Berlin Wall are removed, to mass cheers, with heavy machinery. It seems incomprehensible that a small weekly Monday prayer meeting in Pastor Magerius’s Leipzig, Germany, study grew into the pews of the Nicolai Church and eventually out into the Leipzig city square. !en today, this “Peace Prayer,” figuratively speaking, traveled up the Autobahn to Berlin and converged as an army of liberation on that iconic concrete symbol of Cold War division—with world-news cameras whirring.
Little things can make a big difference. Subtle potency. Gentle power.
“Wir sind ein Volk,” the crowd chants as one. The Berlin Wall—a filthy, gravity-based ring of rebar and concrete, tangled with barbed wire and patrolled by German shepherd attack dogs–has encircled and separated West from East for twenty-eight years. Now it is irreparably pierced.
Unthinkable. No one saw this coming.
Walls are real, you see, yet they always come down. Creation and nature never favor walls. They start to crumble, even before the mortar dries.
*
Elisabeth Hospital
Bonn, Germany
A day’s Autobahn drive from the festivities in Berlin
That same instant, a severely pregnant woman’s water breaks in the tall-windowed birthing room of the Elisabeth Hospital in Bonn, Germany.
Hours later: “Ein Mädchen (a girl)!” Een meisje, translates the exhausted mother with silently moving lips into her native Dutch. Linda, a sojourner in Germany, was born a generation ago in Holland.
Mere blocks away from the birth scene, the mighty Rhine River flows past Bonn on its way downstream to the massive industrial port city of Rotterdam, Linda’s hometown. Only a few hours away by river barge, Rotterdam, Holland, couldn’t be farther from Germany—on so many levels.
The labor has been long and brutally hard. !e father, Konrad, takes little newborn, black-haired Katarina up the elevator to the nursery. On the way up, an old woman in a wheelchair spontaneously
pronounces God’s blessing over baby “Kati” (pronounced “KAH-tee,” in the German way) with the sign of the cross. Kati focuses her glassy little eyes on the woman’s wristwatch.
Konrad is concerned about how pale Katarina is. Was her older sister, Johanna, this porcelain-skinned at birth? Perhaps it’s the thick shock of black hair that sharpens the contrast with her complexion. How will Kati and Johanna get along? he wonders. I guess that will all
start to unfold soon, when they meet each other for the first time.
I won’t be able to protect her, thinks Konrad. Parental anxiety starts creeping up his spine in ways it never did when Johanna, now two, was born.
Perhaps little Kati will need that elevator blessing, he muses uncomfortably.
*
Zarzamora, California
1989
Another Woman With Rotterdam Bloodlines, across the planet in sunny Zarzamora, California, is giving birth at the very same moment (although earlier in the day because of the time difference) to a boy. !e tiny $at-roofed hospital up in the mountains of the Los Padres forest is the port of entry for little baby Joshua.
Janine smiles up at husband, Michael, and takes a first look at Josh, expecting, for whatever reason, to see a pale baby girl. Genuinely surprised—after all, this is in the days before ultrasound was universal—to see a vibrant, reddish-hued boy, she suppresses a giggle of delight, a catharsis of joy after so many miscarriages. What fun they will have together! Will he lighten up her melancholy
disposition, perhaps?
Janine sighs in relief as she confirms to herself, We’re not going to have to take care of him much. He’s going to be okay. I’m sure of it. I can tell.
The trumpets of the practicing local high school marching band waft through the open windows as German-born father Michael washes his son off in the sink of the delivery room. The piercing eyes of baby Josh, almost white-blue, glisten in the overhead lights. They stop to focus on Michael for a fleeting minute, then zero in on some yet unseen reality behind his father’s shoulder.
Shouldn’t I be saying some ancient German words, a blessing or something, while I’m doing this? Michael asks himself.
But he can’t think of any. He is adrift in the flowing current of this new experience.
The marching band plays on outside. Are they really circling the hospital, or does it just sound like that? the new father thinks… .
~ Behind the Story ~
Angelo
I can watch both births as I pick and eat blackberries from the thicket back in rainy Bonn. I smile. Joshua looks so happy to be here. He radiates physical warmth and doesn’t seem to need his blanket. He welcomes the new climate.
But Kati doesn’t like the cold. There’s almost a 30-degree (Fahrenheit) difference in ambient temperature from the womb to the room, and I see her struggle.
And then there’s the brand-new “breathing” thing. How can breathing go from unnecessary to essential in a few seconds? Yet some days we don’t even think about breathing, not even once. Amazing. Joshua’s American birth certificate reads 11-09-1989. Kati’s European one reads 09-11-1989.
How much of their lives are preprogrammed? How much of their minds will be stamped with the thoughts of others? Is life a roll of the dice, or is it a script we just read out to the end? Don’t we all
wonder that same thing sometimes?
As Kati and Joshua start to adjust to life outside the womb, the Berlin Wall continues to crumble to shouts of joy.
I write the names Linda and Konrad in Germany, Janine and Michael in California on the inside of the book cover I’m holding. I always do that, so I don’t get confused about who’s who as I travel
through their stories.
Both fathers, Konrad and Michael, have roots in the Germany that was rebuilding after World War II. Both are self-doubting, somewhat weak Rheinlanders married to practical, sober, very Protestant Dutch women.
Katarina and Joshua are on parallel paths. But only perfectly parallel paths never meet as they stretch into infinity. And since these paths, like ours, aren’t perfect…well, you can guess what might happen in this story.
Kati and Josh, born on one of the greatest days of freedom for all human kind, will grow up snared in the blackberry bush…like you.
But if you dare to engage their story at a heart level, a fresh new freedom might just be birthed in you.
So why not listen to that subtle twitter of conception inside your soul? !e one that says, !is year something exciting is going to happen that I can’t anticipate. And I’ll never be the same….
PART ONE
1999
Oberwinter am Rhein, Germany
Just south of Bonn
Kati
I love looking out our back picture window at the rolling farms. I’m watching for Opa, my dear grandfather Harald, who said he’d be home by 4 p.m. We live at the top of the road that winds uphill from the ancient Rhine River town of Oberwinter, just upstream from Bonn. That’s how everybody here writes it, but they say “Ova-venta.” I walk up and down the sidewalk along the switchback road almost every day.
Our home is perched at the top of the hill with the front of the house facing the street that skirts the skyline of the ridge and the back looking away from the river, out at the plateau of peaceful farms, which Opa says the ancient Romans probably worked.
Opa knows a lot of secrets. If he told me what he knows every day for the rest of my life, he’d never run out of things to say. But sometimes he gets sad. He never likes to talk about how things were when he was my age. His voice starts to sound shaky, and that makes me sad too. I stopped asking him about his wartime childhood a long time ago.
My watch says it’s another hour to wait. Really, it’s his watch, big on my wrist. The leather band smells like Opa. I’m very careful with it since it’s a Glashütte, which is infinitely special.
Sometimes Opa shows me his watch collection from the big mahogany box that’s a lot like Mutti’s (that’s what I call my mother) silverware holder. But the Glashütte was always my favorite, and one day he gave it to me. I’ve worn it ever since.
Mutti was angry at Opa for giving it to me. “It’s worth as much as a car!” she said. But Opa simply smiled. He never minds when people are upset with him.
Opa’s study is a magical place. In the corner is the totem pole he brought home from Alaska. !e wooden desk is covered with a sheet hands with people in suits and, right in the middle, a recent picture of me. !e books on his shelves are in English and German. He has me read aloud from the chair across the desk from his and tells me that I speak English without an accent, just as they speak it in Seattle, Washington, where he worked for a few years. We’re on our second time through Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Opa says it’s a very important book, so I believe him.
Opa is the only one who doesn’t seem worried about me. He never seems worried about anything. I can’t remember seeing him angry. Ever.
I hope he takes me out to his workshop in the shed this evening. It’s my favorite place. My big sister, Johanna, says it’s not fun for girls, but she’s wrong. Opa has hand tools and power tools, and all of them are perfectly hung and positioned. !e shed is as clean as Mutti’s kitchen.
Opa tells me that the Bible says all people have “gifts” from God and that all the gifts are open to girls as well as boys. He tells me I have the gifts of craftsmanship and interpretation. Those are big words, but they make me feel good.
We’ve made and fixed so many things together there. I have my own safety glasses. He lets me run the band saw all by myself. I can tell by looking at his eyes that he knows I’ll be safe. Mutti doesn’t have the same look in her eyes, no matter what I’m doing.
Mutti cuts my hair really short because she’s afraid it’s going to get caught in one of the power tools. I hate how it looks. She also tries, continually, to get me to eat more. She doesn’t like how skinny I am.
Papa works in Berlin. He got transferred there when the German government moved from Bonn after the Wall fell, when I was little. He comes home on the train most weekends. He works for the foreign
diplomatic service, and he told me this month that he might get transferred again soon, and that we might have to move to America. He and Mutti have been arguing a lot about it while I try to get to sleep at night.
I can tell the arguments are bad, because Mutti slips back into Dutch when she gets angry and also when she talks to me and Johanna. Anger and parenting seem to come out of the same place inside her.
Mutti, unlike Opa, loves to talk about growing up, and how wonderful everything was then. It’s fun to hear the stories—and to see her smile while she tells them. We take the train to visit her Dutch parents often. It takes only a few hours to reach Rotterdam. I love riding through Cologne, past the blackened dual-spired cathedral. I have another grandfather in Holland who is kind of funny and crabby at the same time. I only have one grandmother, because my German Oma died of cancer before I was born.
I love Rotterdam. My Dutch grandfather (my other Opa) takes me on bike rides through the tunnel, under the big river, and to my favorite place—the Hotel New York in the heart of the port. He buys
me a chocolate milk every time, and we watch the big ships come and go. He doesn’t like to talk about Germans, even though he reminds me that they built the bike tunnel and highway under the river. Every now and then someone mentions the War. I’ve always known my Dutch grandparents don’t like my father. They say it’s not because Papa’s German, but I think it is. He never comes along on our visits to Rotterdam.
Now I’m looking out the farm-facing window, still waiting for Opa. At the end of our backyard, the blackberry bushes start and wander off into the countryside in lots of directions. I could swear
they get bigger every year. I love to play back there—especially with Johanna. I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t have a few scrapes on my arms and legs from the thorns. !e farmers in the fields work so hard to raise crops, but blackberry bushes grow all by themselves without any help.
I’m getting impatient, so I enter Opa’s study to wait there. In his le" second drawer is his drawing kit. Precise instruments to make perfect circles and angles. Papa tells me Opa designed this house with that kit.
Opa lets me play with everything in his desk. Using the compass, I draw a perfect circle. !en I draw myself in it. I’ve done this so many times. But I’m older in the picture than in real life. And my hair isn’t short. But I can’t stop drawing circles with slightly different sizes. Once I caught myself drawing dozens of overlapping circles around the picture of me. I’m not smiling in any of these pictures. I think a lot when I’m drawing the circles.
To me, getting older just means harder jobs. Johanna works harder than I do, and I know I’ll have to be like her soon. She evenmakes dinner sometimes. Math problems get harder. Books lose their pictures and are more challenging to read. I learn so much better with Opa, because there’s no pressure.
My parents fight about me when they think I’m asleep. Papa was angry with Mutti because she yelled at me about my school grades. Mutti shot back with, “She has to get good grades because she’s not pretty.” My whole body froze in bed when I heard that. I’m not really sure what grades have to do with being pretty, but it’s very bad somehow. I think Papa would like to be more like Opa, but he can’t make it happen.
They don’t know how good I am at English. I speak it a lot better than they do. I have to keep from laughing when they try. There’s an American couple down in the village with a new baby, living in an
old, crooked apartment. I heard them speaking English and jumped in to their conversation. They asked me where in America I was from.
I fibbed and said, “Seattle.”
I think about America a lot. Maybe I could be a different person there.
Johanna’s pretty; even I can see that. It makes people, all kinds of people, happy to look at her, and they look at her longer than they mean to. I, on the other hand, make people nervous. Except for Opa, people don’t like to look right at me.
And everyone always wants me to do better than I am doing. They say it’s because they want the best for me. But it doesn’t feel good. The older I get, the further behind I am. I don’t have enough
friends. I haven’t finished enough homework. My room is not clean enough. I wasn’t polite enough to my parents’ guests. And the hardest of all: people don’t like me enough. It’s really hard work to get people to like you. Or maybe I’m especially easy to dislike.
Opa’s study has a big mirror on the door. Standing in front of it, I’m surprised by how white my skin is. My hair is black, and I have a big nose. Opa says that’s because most of the families in town have Roman heritage, and that I must have ended up with the local hair and nose. Opa tells me this town has been around for at least a hundred generations. We go for walks in the hills around the village, and he shows me where the Roman roads, walls, and vineyards were. How can anyone know so much?
Even better, Opa is the one person who knows me. Last week he brought me a present from Bonn. I opened up the long, little box and removed a black, elegant Pelikan fountain pen. It came with a bottle of ink.
He then pulled out a fresh new ledger. I had to laugh. Opa knows how much I hate math at school. It doesn’t feel real—like somebody got paid to think up a bunch of problems to drive kids like me crazy.
But Opa keeps telling me how important math is for real life, even if I don’t think so now.
For the rest of that afternoon, Opa taught me double-entry bookkeeping in ink. Real-life stuff I can actually use even now, when I’m nine years old, to keep track of the little money I earn and spend. He told me that reckoning in German marks was only for practice, because they were going to disappear in a few years, replaced by the euro.
He also taught me that money is magic, and that if you give a lot of it away to improve the world, you’ll always have more left over than you started with. That’s not what my teacher says about
subtraction, but I know, without a doubt, that Opa is right, as usual. He showed me his accounting books, going back to the 1940s. The numbers got bigger and bigger over the years.
“How does that work?” I asked
.
He showed me the number in a special column telling how much he gave away last year. I gasped, and my hand came to my mouth.
“That’s how,” he answered.
I asked him what I would do if I made a bookkeeping mistake with the pen.
“You won’t,” he said and smiled.
Opa believes in God. My parents are not so sure. !is confusesme all the time. Opa takes me to church on Sundays. We walk down the hill together. He and I are evangelisch—Protestant or Evangelical. It’s hard to translate the term into English. Most of our neighbors in Oberwinter are Catholic. Our stone Protestant church is very small, very old, and musty smelling. !e temperature is always cooler inside than outside. I sometimes fall asleep there on Opa’s shoulder, and he likes that.
The organist is amazing. She plays on national radio. And the organ is very old: 1722 is painted on the pipes. For the rest of my life, I’m going to make sure I can listen to organ music. My imagination
can go almost anywhere when she’s playing. After every Sunday service, the organist gives a little concert from the rear balcony where she sits. We stand, lean on the pews behind us, and watch her. We always clap when she’s done.
Johanna comes with us sometimes, but Opa says it’s important to go to church only when you want to. For whatever reason, Opa and I always want to. Maybe it’s just so we can spend Sundays together, but I know Opa would go even if I didn’t exist. It seems to help him be happy all the time and everywhere. I hope he’ll teach me this magic when I’m old enough.
I don’t understand much about what goes on in church, but I love it when they read the Bible stories for children’s worship, and the littler kids come and plop right down on my lap, as if they belong there. !is Sunday was the story about Joshua and the walls of Jericho. The German Bible says the Israelites were blowing trombones, and Opa’s English Bible says trumpets. Things like that make me think.
I hear the door.
Opa’s home.
Angelo
Think for a moment. Isn’t there a splendid randomness to the way your day is coming together today?
After all, it’s not the big, dramatic things we foresee and expect that make all the difference in our lives. It’s the chance, random encounters—the subtle things that surprise us…and change the very course of our individual destinies.
The Blackberry Bush is a story about awakening to the fullness of this reality.
And you will never want to go back to sleep.
You can call me Angelo. I’ll be the one telling this story. As you and I travel together across generations and continents in a journey that will take just a few hours, you’ll discover not only the gripping stories of Kati, Josh, Walter, Nellie, and Janine but also uncover your own compelling back-story that will change you in ways you can never imagine.
And you’ll never be the same again….
PROLOGUE
1989
Berlin, Germany
Occasionally, out of nowhere, history turns on a dime in a way no one sees coming. Listen…do you hear the sound of jackhammers on dirty concrete?
“Wir sind ein Volk (We are one people)!” A large European outdoor crowd chants this over and over into the chilly November night. “Wir sind ein Volk!”
Thousands of hands hold candles high in the darkening night of Berlin. Throngs of young people with brightly colored scarves crowd the open spaces between concrete buildings. !ere are parties—with exuberant celebrants of all ages—even along the actual top of the wall. Flowers are stuffed into once-lethal Kalashnikov rises. Hope is contagious.
It’s November 9, 1989. The first sections of the Berlin Wall are removed, to mass cheers, with heavy machinery. It seems incomprehensible that a small weekly Monday prayer meeting in Pastor Magerius’s Leipzig, Germany, study grew into the pews of the Nicolai Church and eventually out into the Leipzig city square. !en today, this “Peace Prayer,” figuratively speaking, traveled up the Autobahn to Berlin and converged as an army of liberation on that iconic concrete symbol of Cold War division—with world-news cameras whirring.
Little things can make a big difference. Subtle potency. Gentle power.
“Wir sind ein Volk,” the crowd chants as one. The Berlin Wall—a filthy, gravity-based ring of rebar and concrete, tangled with barbed wire and patrolled by German shepherd attack dogs–has encircled and separated West from East for twenty-eight years. Now it is irreparably pierced.
Unthinkable. No one saw this coming.
Walls are real, you see, yet they always come down. Creation and nature never favor walls. They start to crumble, even before the mortar dries.
*
Elisabeth Hospital
Bonn, Germany
A day’s Autobahn drive from the festivities in Berlin
That same instant, a severely pregnant woman’s water breaks in the tall-windowed birthing room of the Elisabeth Hospital in Bonn, Germany.
Hours later: “Ein Mädchen (a girl)!” Een meisje, translates the exhausted mother with silently moving lips into her native Dutch. Linda, a sojourner in Germany, was born a generation ago in Holland.
Mere blocks away from the birth scene, the mighty Rhine River flows past Bonn on its way downstream to the massive industrial port city of Rotterdam, Linda’s hometown. Only a few hours away by river barge, Rotterdam, Holland, couldn’t be farther from Germany—on so many levels.
The labor has been long and brutally hard. !e father, Konrad, takes little newborn, black-haired Katarina up the elevator to the nursery. On the way up, an old woman in a wheelchair spontaneously
pronounces God’s blessing over baby “Kati” (pronounced “KAH-tee,” in the German way) with the sign of the cross. Kati focuses her glassy little eyes on the woman’s wristwatch.
Konrad is concerned about how pale Katarina is. Was her older sister, Johanna, this porcelain-skinned at birth? Perhaps it’s the thick shock of black hair that sharpens the contrast with her complexion. How will Kati and Johanna get along? he wonders. I guess that will all
start to unfold soon, when they meet each other for the first time.
I won’t be able to protect her, thinks Konrad. Parental anxiety starts creeping up his spine in ways it never did when Johanna, now two, was born.
Perhaps little Kati will need that elevator blessing, he muses uncomfortably.
*
Zarzamora, California
1989
Another Woman With Rotterdam Bloodlines, across the planet in sunny Zarzamora, California, is giving birth at the very same moment (although earlier in the day because of the time difference) to a boy. !e tiny $at-roofed hospital up in the mountains of the Los Padres forest is the port of entry for little baby Joshua.
Janine smiles up at husband, Michael, and takes a first look at Josh, expecting, for whatever reason, to see a pale baby girl. Genuinely surprised—after all, this is in the days before ultrasound was universal—to see a vibrant, reddish-hued boy, she suppresses a giggle of delight, a catharsis of joy after so many miscarriages. What fun they will have together! Will he lighten up her melancholy
disposition, perhaps?
Janine sighs in relief as she confirms to herself, We’re not going to have to take care of him much. He’s going to be okay. I’m sure of it. I can tell.
The trumpets of the practicing local high school marching band waft through the open windows as German-born father Michael washes his son off in the sink of the delivery room. The piercing eyes of baby Josh, almost white-blue, glisten in the overhead lights. They stop to focus on Michael for a fleeting minute, then zero in on some yet unseen reality behind his father’s shoulder.
Shouldn’t I be saying some ancient German words, a blessing or something, while I’m doing this? Michael asks himself.
But he can’t think of any. He is adrift in the flowing current of this new experience.
The marching band plays on outside. Are they really circling the hospital, or does it just sound like that? the new father thinks… .
~ Behind the Story ~
Angelo
I can watch both births as I pick and eat blackberries from the thicket back in rainy Bonn. I smile. Joshua looks so happy to be here. He radiates physical warmth and doesn’t seem to need his blanket. He welcomes the new climate.
But Kati doesn’t like the cold. There’s almost a 30-degree (Fahrenheit) difference in ambient temperature from the womb to the room, and I see her struggle.
And then there’s the brand-new “breathing” thing. How can breathing go from unnecessary to essential in a few seconds? Yet some days we don’t even think about breathing, not even once. Amazing. Joshua’s American birth certificate reads 11-09-1989. Kati’s European one reads 09-11-1989.
How much of their lives are preprogrammed? How much of their minds will be stamped with the thoughts of others? Is life a roll of the dice, or is it a script we just read out to the end? Don’t we all
wonder that same thing sometimes?
As Kati and Joshua start to adjust to life outside the womb, the Berlin Wall continues to crumble to shouts of joy.
I write the names Linda and Konrad in Germany, Janine and Michael in California on the inside of the book cover I’m holding. I always do that, so I don’t get confused about who’s who as I travel
through their stories.
Both fathers, Konrad and Michael, have roots in the Germany that was rebuilding after World War II. Both are self-doubting, somewhat weak Rheinlanders married to practical, sober, very Protestant Dutch women.
Katarina and Joshua are on parallel paths. But only perfectly parallel paths never meet as they stretch into infinity. And since these paths, like ours, aren’t perfect…well, you can guess what might happen in this story.
Kati and Josh, born on one of the greatest days of freedom for all human kind, will grow up snared in the blackberry bush…like you.
But if you dare to engage their story at a heart level, a fresh new freedom might just be birthed in you.
So why not listen to that subtle twitter of conception inside your soul? !e one that says, !is year something exciting is going to happen that I can’t anticipate. And I’ll never be the same….
PART ONE
1999
Oberwinter am Rhein, Germany
Just south of Bonn
Kati
I love looking out our back picture window at the rolling farms. I’m watching for Opa, my dear grandfather Harald, who said he’d be home by 4 p.m. We live at the top of the road that winds uphill from the ancient Rhine River town of Oberwinter, just upstream from Bonn. That’s how everybody here writes it, but they say “Ova-venta.” I walk up and down the sidewalk along the switchback road almost every day.
Our home is perched at the top of the hill with the front of the house facing the street that skirts the skyline of the ridge and the back looking away from the river, out at the plateau of peaceful farms, which Opa says the ancient Romans probably worked.
Opa knows a lot of secrets. If he told me what he knows every day for the rest of my life, he’d never run out of things to say. But sometimes he gets sad. He never likes to talk about how things were when he was my age. His voice starts to sound shaky, and that makes me sad too. I stopped asking him about his wartime childhood a long time ago.
My watch says it’s another hour to wait. Really, it’s his watch, big on my wrist. The leather band smells like Opa. I’m very careful with it since it’s a Glashütte, which is infinitely special.
Sometimes Opa shows me his watch collection from the big mahogany box that’s a lot like Mutti’s (that’s what I call my mother) silverware holder. But the Glashütte was always my favorite, and one day he gave it to me. I’ve worn it ever since.
Mutti was angry at Opa for giving it to me. “It’s worth as much as a car!” she said. But Opa simply smiled. He never minds when people are upset with him.
Opa’s study is a magical place. In the corner is the totem pole he brought home from Alaska. !e wooden desk is covered with a sheet hands with people in suits and, right in the middle, a recent picture of me. !e books on his shelves are in English and German. He has me read aloud from the chair across the desk from his and tells me that I speak English without an accent, just as they speak it in Seattle, Washington, where he worked for a few years. We’re on our second time through Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Opa says it’s a very important book, so I believe him.
Opa is the only one who doesn’t seem worried about me. He never seems worried about anything. I can’t remember seeing him angry. Ever.
I hope he takes me out to his workshop in the shed this evening. It’s my favorite place. My big sister, Johanna, says it’s not fun for girls, but she’s wrong. Opa has hand tools and power tools, and all of them are perfectly hung and positioned. !e shed is as clean as Mutti’s kitchen.
Opa tells me that the Bible says all people have “gifts” from God and that all the gifts are open to girls as well as boys. He tells me I have the gifts of craftsmanship and interpretation. Those are big words, but they make me feel good.
We’ve made and fixed so many things together there. I have my own safety glasses. He lets me run the band saw all by myself. I can tell by looking at his eyes that he knows I’ll be safe. Mutti doesn’t have the same look in her eyes, no matter what I’m doing.
Mutti cuts my hair really short because she’s afraid it’s going to get caught in one of the power tools. I hate how it looks. She also tries, continually, to get me to eat more. She doesn’t like how skinny I am.
Papa works in Berlin. He got transferred there when the German government moved from Bonn after the Wall fell, when I was little. He comes home on the train most weekends. He works for the foreign
diplomatic service, and he told me this month that he might get transferred again soon, and that we might have to move to America. He and Mutti have been arguing a lot about it while I try to get to sleep at night.
I can tell the arguments are bad, because Mutti slips back into Dutch when she gets angry and also when she talks to me and Johanna. Anger and parenting seem to come out of the same place inside her.
Mutti, unlike Opa, loves to talk about growing up, and how wonderful everything was then. It’s fun to hear the stories—and to see her smile while she tells them. We take the train to visit her Dutch parents often. It takes only a few hours to reach Rotterdam. I love riding through Cologne, past the blackened dual-spired cathedral. I have another grandfather in Holland who is kind of funny and crabby at the same time. I only have one grandmother, because my German Oma died of cancer before I was born.
I love Rotterdam. My Dutch grandfather (my other Opa) takes me on bike rides through the tunnel, under the big river, and to my favorite place—the Hotel New York in the heart of the port. He buys
me a chocolate milk every time, and we watch the big ships come and go. He doesn’t like to talk about Germans, even though he reminds me that they built the bike tunnel and highway under the river. Every now and then someone mentions the War. I’ve always known my Dutch grandparents don’t like my father. They say it’s not because Papa’s German, but I think it is. He never comes along on our visits to Rotterdam.
Now I’m looking out the farm-facing window, still waiting for Opa. At the end of our backyard, the blackberry bushes start and wander off into the countryside in lots of directions. I could swear
they get bigger every year. I love to play back there—especially with Johanna. I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t have a few scrapes on my arms and legs from the thorns. !e farmers in the fields work so hard to raise crops, but blackberry bushes grow all by themselves without any help.
I’m getting impatient, so I enter Opa’s study to wait there. In his le" second drawer is his drawing kit. Precise instruments to make perfect circles and angles. Papa tells me Opa designed this house with that kit.
Opa lets me play with everything in his desk. Using the compass, I draw a perfect circle. !en I draw myself in it. I’ve done this so many times. But I’m older in the picture than in real life. And my hair isn’t short. But I can’t stop drawing circles with slightly different sizes. Once I caught myself drawing dozens of overlapping circles around the picture of me. I’m not smiling in any of these pictures. I think a lot when I’m drawing the circles.
To me, getting older just means harder jobs. Johanna works harder than I do, and I know I’ll have to be like her soon. She evenmakes dinner sometimes. Math problems get harder. Books lose their pictures and are more challenging to read. I learn so much better with Opa, because there’s no pressure.
My parents fight about me when they think I’m asleep. Papa was angry with Mutti because she yelled at me about my school grades. Mutti shot back with, “She has to get good grades because she’s not pretty.” My whole body froze in bed when I heard that. I’m not really sure what grades have to do with being pretty, but it’s very bad somehow. I think Papa would like to be more like Opa, but he can’t make it happen.
They don’t know how good I am at English. I speak it a lot better than they do. I have to keep from laughing when they try. There’s an American couple down in the village with a new baby, living in an
old, crooked apartment. I heard them speaking English and jumped in to their conversation. They asked me where in America I was from.
I fibbed and said, “Seattle.”
I think about America a lot. Maybe I could be a different person there.
Johanna’s pretty; even I can see that. It makes people, all kinds of people, happy to look at her, and they look at her longer than they mean to. I, on the other hand, make people nervous. Except for Opa, people don’t like to look right at me.
And everyone always wants me to do better than I am doing. They say it’s because they want the best for me. But it doesn’t feel good. The older I get, the further behind I am. I don’t have enough
friends. I haven’t finished enough homework. My room is not clean enough. I wasn’t polite enough to my parents’ guests. And the hardest of all: people don’t like me enough. It’s really hard work to get people to like you. Or maybe I’m especially easy to dislike.
Opa’s study has a big mirror on the door. Standing in front of it, I’m surprised by how white my skin is. My hair is black, and I have a big nose. Opa says that’s because most of the families in town have Roman heritage, and that I must have ended up with the local hair and nose. Opa tells me this town has been around for at least a hundred generations. We go for walks in the hills around the village, and he shows me where the Roman roads, walls, and vineyards were. How can anyone know so much?
Even better, Opa is the one person who knows me. Last week he brought me a present from Bonn. I opened up the long, little box and removed a black, elegant Pelikan fountain pen. It came with a bottle of ink.
He then pulled out a fresh new ledger. I had to laugh. Opa knows how much I hate math at school. It doesn’t feel real—like somebody got paid to think up a bunch of problems to drive kids like me crazy.
But Opa keeps telling me how important math is for real life, even if I don’t think so now.
For the rest of that afternoon, Opa taught me double-entry bookkeeping in ink. Real-life stuff I can actually use even now, when I’m nine years old, to keep track of the little money I earn and spend. He told me that reckoning in German marks was only for practice, because they were going to disappear in a few years, replaced by the euro.
He also taught me that money is magic, and that if you give a lot of it away to improve the world, you’ll always have more left over than you started with. That’s not what my teacher says about
subtraction, but I know, without a doubt, that Opa is right, as usual. He showed me his accounting books, going back to the 1940s. The numbers got bigger and bigger over the years.
“How does that work?” I asked
.
He showed me the number in a special column telling how much he gave away last year. I gasped, and my hand came to my mouth.
“That’s how,” he answered.
I asked him what I would do if I made a bookkeeping mistake with the pen.
“You won’t,” he said and smiled.
Opa believes in God. My parents are not so sure. !is confusesme all the time. Opa takes me to church on Sundays. We walk down the hill together. He and I are evangelisch—Protestant or Evangelical. It’s hard to translate the term into English. Most of our neighbors in Oberwinter are Catholic. Our stone Protestant church is very small, very old, and musty smelling. !e temperature is always cooler inside than outside. I sometimes fall asleep there on Opa’s shoulder, and he likes that.
The organist is amazing. She plays on national radio. And the organ is very old: 1722 is painted on the pipes. For the rest of my life, I’m going to make sure I can listen to organ music. My imagination
can go almost anywhere when she’s playing. After every Sunday service, the organist gives a little concert from the rear balcony where she sits. We stand, lean on the pews behind us, and watch her. We always clap when she’s done.
Johanna comes with us sometimes, but Opa says it’s important to go to church only when you want to. For whatever reason, Opa and I always want to. Maybe it’s just so we can spend Sundays together, but I know Opa would go even if I didn’t exist. It seems to help him be happy all the time and everywhere. I hope he’ll teach me this magic when I’m old enough.
I don’t understand much about what goes on in church, but I love it when they read the Bible stories for children’s worship, and the littler kids come and plop right down on my lap, as if they belong there. !is Sunday was the story about Joshua and the walls of Jericho. The German Bible says the Israelites were blowing trombones, and Opa’s English Bible says trumpets. Things like that make me think.
I hear the door.
Opa’s home.
disclosure: I was given a copy of The Blackberry Bush as a member of First Wild Card in exchange for posting about the book. No other compensation was received.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
We have a thief!
He has stolen items from me and Justin! Today we caught him in act! Yep caught red handed stealing from Kaden! While we were home! We were even able to get a picture of him while he was just helping himself!
I’m telling you, you need to watch out for this guy! He is bad news! He steals pens, pencils, magnets, stuffed animals, socks and superheros-he stole batman the other day. Poor batman was no match for The Lukester!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Father’s Day Fun!
Sunday our family had fun celebrating Father’s Day! In the morning we went to breakfast at the local diner with my family-my parents, my brothers and their families.
After breakfast we came home and gave Larry his Father’s Day gifts and let him spend the day doing what he wanted too. He took a nap and then went out and painted the window frames! We had planned to go to the shore for the day, but we are having car troubles so we opted to stay home.
Here are the gifts the boys gave Larry.
I used the printables from this site to make these retro soda bottles. The tutorial suggests using the empty soda bottles and filling them with fun treats. Larry loves soda as a treat so we just left the soda in them. I bought a couple of four packs of Stewarts soda, one cream and one black cherry and put two of each in the four pack.
Each bottle was decorated as well and had a little hang tag.
Below are the opposite sides of the box.
We made one for my dad too and that was all root beer. His favorite! The paper I used for his was fish themed.
I decided to try my hand at washer stamping and was very pleased the way these key rings turned out! I also stamped the boys name and year on the back of the large washer. I neglected to take a picture of it though.
We made one for my dad too. I put the year on the front but the smaller washer covers it.
For my brothers I did take soda bottles and washed them out and then filled them with skittles candies for a fun little Father’s Day gift!
The boys also filled out the Daddy and Grandpa surveys I posted about here. They were a huge hit with both Larry and my dad! I think we will make this a tradition and fill one out each year!
Monday, June 20, 2011
First Wild Card Tour~Breath of Angel
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book! You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
WaterBrook Press (June 21, 2011)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Karyn Henley has written over 100 titles, along with being an accomplished songwriter nominated for a Dove Award. She also received a regional Emmy Award as Music Composer for a television special and lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, a jazz drummer.
Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
In Breath of Angel (WaterBrook Press, June 21, 2011), award winning author Karyn Henley brings to life the tale of Melaia, a young priestess who witnesses the murder of a stranger in the temple courtyard. A place where age-old legends recited in song suddenly come to life, in this story of two immortal brothers quest for restoration.
With Angels. Shape-shifters. Myths and stories… Melaia finds herself in the middle of a blood feud between two immortal brothers who destroyed the stairway to heaven, stranding angels in the earthly realm.
Young readers are sure to be intrigued and dig deeper into this make-believe story that explores the payment for redemption.
Product Details:
List Price: $9.99
Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: WaterBrook Press (June 21, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307730123
ISBN-13: 978-0307730121
My Thoughts
This is the story of a young priestess Melaia, who witnesses the death of an angel in the courtyard of the temple where she lives. There is an ongoing feud between two immortal brothers. The angels have been stranded here on earth because the stairway to heaven was destroyed by these brothers.
Melaia becomes a target of the two brothers. She ends up with a group of angels who are trying to restore the stairway to heaven.
I thought this was a great fantasy story! The plot was interesting and the story descriptive. The characters were believable and multi-faceted. However, I really did not find any Biblical truths in this story. The angels portrayed in this story do not resemble Biblical angels in any way shape or form and in all fairness maybe they are not supposed to. God (who is referred to as Most High) is not called upon at all. He seems distant and unreachable. As a high priestess I would think that she would call on her creator for help. This never happens.
I did enjoy this book and would recommend it as a good fantasy read. This is a great story for a young reader however I would be sure to emphasize that this story is pure fiction with no scriptural truths.
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
The prick of the thorn drew blood, but Melaia smiled. The last ramble rose of the season was well worth a pierced thumb. She carefully drew the blossom from the vine that clung to the side of the temple. As she breathed its rich, sweet scent, she sensed someone watching and looked up, expecting to see one of the novice priestesses. She saw only dry leaves skittering across the flagstones of the walled courtyard, along with a black feather, no doubt from a bird scavenging seeds in the woodpile.
Then a haggard young man stepped through the gate, and Melaia drew back. The chill autumn breeze riffled the edge of his dirt-stained cloak, revealing the corner of a journey pack and the hilt of a dagger. Melaia gave him a tentative nod.
“I’ve come—” His voice was dirt dry. He wiped his fist across his mouth.
“I’ll fetch water.” Melaia tucked the rose into her waist sash and headed for the stone urn by the arched doorway. “Travelers are always welcome at our temple. We’ve pallets if you wish to stay the night.” She would have to check with the high priestess, but Hanni rarely turned away weary travelers.
“My thanks,” the man croaked.
Melaia flipped back her loose honey brown braid and dipped a pottery cup into the cool water. “I’m chantress here, always eager to hear new tales from travelers.”
The young man looked too weary to tell tales. Or too ill. His dark-ringed eyes darted from one afternoon shadow to another, and he cocked his head as if he heard something beyond the walls.
“We’re healers here as well,” she offered.
For a moment his wild eyes focused on her. Then he glanced above her head, and his hand went to his dagger.
But he never drew it.
A hawk, larger than any she’d ever seen, shot like an arrow past Melaia and sank its talons into the stranger’s chest. The man’s raw screams pierced the air as the hawk’s beak knifed at his throat.
Melaia stood stunned and speechless. But as the hawk flapped its great wings and lifted the man a handbreadth off the flagstones, her senses surged back.
She snatched a branch from the woodpile and swung it at the hawk. The raptor screeched and dropped the stranger. “Fight!” she yelled at him. “Fight back!”
But it was the hawk that fought, its wings beating at her stick as its claws snagged the man again. At last Melaia struck a solid blow to the hawk’s head, and it skidded sideways. She chased after it, but the raptor took to the air, quickly rose, and soared away over the domed roof of the temple.
Melaia flung aside the stick and fell to her knees by the bloodied man. Then she covered her mouth and swallowed a bitter taste. “Most High, have mercy,” she croaked. Seeing wounds so deep and blood flowing freely, she wasn’t surprised that the stranger’s mistlike spirit had emerged from his body.
As a death-prophet, she could see the shadowy echo writhing around his form as he struggled to live.
“Mellie? Is it safe?” Dark-eyed Iona stood in the temple doorway, holding back the other two novices. At fourteen, she was the motherly one, although Melaia was two years older. Curly-haired Peron, still baby plump at six, peered around Iona, clutching her skirts, while twelve-year-old Nuri broke away from them and ran across the yard, her usual dimpled smile gone.
“Is he dead?” Nuri asked.
“Not yet,” Melaia told her. “Take Peron and fetch a basket of plumwort. And water.”
Nuri stared at the man’s wounds. “We saw the hawk.”
“Go!” said Melaia. “I need plumwort to stanch the bleeding.”
As Nuri dashed away, Melaia wondered why the high priestess hadn’t appeared.
“Where’s Hanni?” she called to Iona.
“Summoned to a birthing. The weaver’s wife.” Iona nervously twisted the end of her black braid.
“Then come help me carry the man inside.”
Melaia hesitated. She was often called to the bedside of the dying to confirm the moment of death, but never had she been required to reach through a spirit to touch someone. Of course, other people did it all the time, she told herself. They just couldn’t see the struggling, mistlike layer. She took a deep breath, grasped the man’s bloodied cloak, and pressed it to the gashes in his chest. His spirit pooled around her wrists, vibrating like a throat quivering with speech.
“Can you hear me?” Melaia asked, keeping pressure on his wound. The stranger’s spirit thrummed frantically, as if he were trying to say something.
“Where’s the plumwort?” Melaia yelled.
Nuri ran across the yard, sloshing a jar of water. Peron trotted behind her with the basket of plumwort. Iona knelt at the man’s feet, her mouth moving silently in prayer.
Melaia reached for the plumwort, but the man’s spirit slid off his body, thinned into a stream, and seeped through a crack in the flagstones. A sudden, grim silence fell over the yard. Melaia shook her head at Nuri and Peron and closed the man’s green-flecked eyes.
Peron stuck out her lower lip. “I was too slow.”
“No, I was.” Nuri’s shoulders drooped.
“No one’s at fault,” said Melaia, but she couldn’t help thinking that the man might still be alive if she had only laid into the hawk sooner. “Let’s get him inside.” She lifted his upper body. For his bulk he was surprisingly light.
Iona lifted his legs. “Starved twig-thin,” she said. “Poor man.”
They carried the stranger to the sanctuary altar, the bier for those who
could afford no better. Melaia took a deep breath, wishing Hanni were there.
“Iona, find me a winding-sheet,” she said. “Peron, go with Nuri. Fetch more
water and scrub the courtyard.”
“But it’s bloody,” said Nuri. Peron wrinkled her nose.
“Would you rather clean the man’s body?” asked Melaia. Nuri and Peron
scrambled out the door. Iona followed.
Melaia gently eased the man’s cloak from his chest and winced, wondering where Hanni would begin. She exhaled slowly. “Start with the easiest,” she murmured.
She untangled his pack from one forearm. As she slipped it free, she noticed the end of a small scroll clenched in his fist. “First the pack,” she told herself, glancing around. Her gaze fell on a shelf of incense bowls. She stashed the pack there, then turned back to the altar-bier and froze.
The stranger’s cloak had fallen back and, with it, a long, white, bloodstained wing.
Melaia’s knees almost buckled. “An angel?” she whispered. It couldn’t be. Angels were found only in legends. Chanters’ stories. Bedtime tales.
Iona’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Do we need more water?”
Melaia jerked the cloak back around the man.
Iona strode in with a bundle of white linen. “Do we need more water?”
“We need Hanni,” said Melaia.
“You look as if you’ve seen the man’s ghost.” Iona looked around. “Has he
returned?”
“Just go get Hanni.”
Distant drums signaled the closing of Navia’s city gates and the change of watch on the walls. On the altar-bier in the temple, the winged man lay serene and clean, covered in white linen up to his chin. Melaia didn’t often sit with the dead, but as she lit the oil lamps behind the bier, she decided that tonight she would request a vigil. She hoped the high priestess would join her, for she had a night’s worth of questions to ask.
But so far, the high priestess hadn’t returned. She had sent Iona back to say
that the birthing was a difficult one and she must stay with it, although she was upset at the news of a death in the side yard. Hanni intended to stop by the overlord’s villa and bring his advisor, Benasin, back to the temple with her.
As Melaia held the flaming twist of rushweed to the last wick, she eyed the three girls munching their supper on a reed mat across the room. With Hanni gone they had asked to stay with Melaia instead of eating in the hearthroom down the hall. She was glad for their company. She felt as shaky as they did, although she hadn’t told them about the stranger’s wings. She wanted Hanni’s opinion first.
Melaia tossed the spent rushweed into the brazier in the center of the room and stirred the coals into flame. For a moment she watched the smoke curl up and drift like a dying spirit out through the roof hole above. Except dying spirits always drifted down, not up.
“I’m saving my scraps for the chee-dees,” Peron said, scooping her crumbs into a tiny hill.
“Fetch your crumb jar from the storeroom, then,” said Melaia. “When you’ve finished cleaning up, I’ll tell a story.”
Peron stared warily at the dark corridor that lay beyond the bier.
“I’ll go with you.” Nuri slipped one of the lamps from its niche. With an uneasy smile she guided Peron to the corridor, giving wide berth to the bier.
Iona stoppered the olive oil. “Peron is telling tales again. This time it’s about two falcons scaring away her songbird friends.”
“She must have been inspired by the hawk in the yard today.” Melaia stacked the empty wooden bowls and glanced at the stranger who should have eaten a meal with them tonight.
“Peron said the falcons were darker than closed eyes,” said Iona. “I can picture that.” Melaia lifted her harp from its peg.
“And they had people hands.” Iona rolled her eyes.
“That I can’t picture,” said Melaia. “Too ghoulish.”
Iona laughed. “With such an imagination Peron will surely become a chantress.”
A shriek came from the corridor. Peron darted into the room, hugging her crumb jar, with Nuri on her heels. Both girls were open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
Behind them limped a sharp-nosed, beardless man wearing a cloak fashioned
completely of feathers—brown, black, and an iridescent blue that glinted in the lamplight. The skin around one of his round gold eyes was blackened, and a scratch jagged across his brow.
Melaia went cold, head to toe. How had the man entered? Had she left the side door unbolted?
Nuri and Peron ran to Iona, and all three huddled by the wall. Melaia stifled her impulse to join them. Hanni had left her in charge, so in charge she would be. She had fought off a murdering hawk. She had prepared a bloody winged man for burial. She would stand up to this intruder.
She strode to the brazier, her hands clammy as she clung to her harp. “This is the temple of the Most High,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t hear the quaver in her voice.
“So it is,” he hissed, limping to the bier. “I believe I noticed that.” “What’s your business here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Surely you’re not the high priestess.”
“She’s the chantress,” blurted Peron.
“Ah. Singer of songs, soother of sorrows,” he crooned.
“If you’re here for our treasury box, take it and be on your way,” said Melaia.
“I have unfinished business with the high priestess,” he said.
“You can find her at the overlord’s villa,” said Melaia.
“No doubt.” With a gloved hand he slid back the sheet that covered the corpse. He smiled at the gashes, then studied Melaia. “Chantress, play your harp for me.”
Melaia gaped at him. “You have no right—”
“Or let me play it,” he said. “The little girl can bring it. The one who feeds the birds.”
Peron’s eyes grew round as the supper bowls, and she shrank behind Iona’s skirts.
Melaia hugged the harp tighter to her chest and glared at the man defiantly, even as she fought back a fear that curdled in the pit of her stomach. How long had this swaggerer been spying on them?
His unblinking gold eyes stared back at her. “I do not take disobedience lightly.” His voice was ice. “Send the girl with the harp or play it yourself.”
Melaia swallowed dryly. She felt her courage fall as limp as the poor stranger in the yard. Keeping her eyes on the intruder, she sank to a bench by the brazier and positioned the harp in her lap.
“Let us hear the tale of the Wisdom Tree,” he said. “You know it, don’t you, Chantress?”
Melaia scowled at him and motioned for the girls to join her. As she fingered
the melody, they silently gathered around, and she breathed easier. Together they were safer, with the brazier as a barrier between them and the bully.
She turned her attention back to the harp, and over the music she spoke the tale.
In a time long ago, there lived a tribal chieftain whose firstborn son was
a wealthy trader, his second-born a lone hunter. Each year at harvest festival, his sons vied to present him with the best gift. The Firstborn always gave perfumes, musicians, slave dancers, the treasures of his trade. The Second-born presented partridges, deerskins, lion-claw necklaces, the spoils of the hunt. But the Second-born thought his gifts paltry compared to those of the Firstborn. So he set out to seek the greatest gift of all.
Far and wide he journeyed, to no avail. At last, weary and discouraged, he lay to rest in the shade of a tree as tall and wide as the tower of a citadel. The Wisdom Tree it was, bearing fruit that granted the eater knowledge and cleverness.
Peron popped her thumb out of her mouth and chanted, “Within this tree stood the stairway to heaven made wholly of light.”
“Exactly,” said Melaia, glad that for the moment the tale was distracting Peron from the intruder, whose gold eyes held a hungry glitter. Melaia continued:
An angel named Dreia, guardian of the Tree, saw the Second son lying there and asked the cause of his despair. When he told his tale, she pitied him and gave him the juice of one fruit. “This will grant you knowledge and cleverness to find the right gift for your father,” she said.
As he sipped the juice, the man’s eyes brightened. “I know the perfect gift,” he said. “A fruit from this Tree.”
Dreia hadn’t intended to give the man a whole fruit. Its seeds were precious, carried by angels into the heavens to plant wisdom trees in worlds among the stars. Yet the man was handsome, his entreaties eloquent.
At last Dreia said, “You may take one fruit if you vow to bring me the first creature that greets you when you arrive home. This I shall send over the stairway as payment. Moreover, you shall return the three
seeds of this fruit, for they are strictly forbidden to mortals. Should you fail to repay your debt, the Tree itself shall exact payment in breath and blood.”
The Second-born agreed to the bargain, for the one who always greeted his homecoming was his old hunting dog. Taking his dog and the seeds back to Dreia would be good reason to see the beautiful angel again. So he carried the fruit home.
While he was still afar off, he saw, bounding across the field to greet him, his young niece. “Uncle!” she cried. “Terrible news. Your old hunting dog has died.”
The Second-born fell to his knees and wept, not for his dog, but for his niece, the only daughter of the Firstborn, now to be payment for his debt.
Melaia paused as the intruder slipped off his gloves. His fingernails were long, curved, and sharp. Talons. Her pulse pounded at her throat. His blackened eye, his scratched brow, his feathered cloak, his limp.
She had met him before. As a hawk.
“Is there no ending to the tale?” He smirked at her recognition of him and stroked the corpse. “I favor endings.”
Melaia felt foggy, as if she were in a dream. She tried to gather her thoughts.
“The Second-born knew only one way to escape his debt,” Iona prompted.
“Yes.” Melaia cleared her throat and forced out the words.
The Second-born knew he had to destroy the Wisdom Tree.
Dreia saw an army approaching, the Second son in the lead, betrayal in his heart. She gathered what angels she could. Some plucked the remaining fruit and hastened over the stairway to celestial worlds.
Others stayed behind to defend the Tree. But these were not warring angels. The best they could do was save some of the wood as the Tree fell and was plundered by men who wanted pieces for themselves.
“That was the end of the stairway,” Nuri said.
“And the end of angels in our world,” added Iona.
“But the brothers planted the seeds of the Wisdom Tree,” offered Peron,
“didn’t they?”
“They did.” Melaia set the harp aside. “The brothers learned that cultivating wisdom takes patience.”
The girls chimed in, “Wisdom, over time, is earned.”
The hawkman hissed. “A pitiful ending and woefully false.” He pointed a taloned finger at Melaia. “Remember this, Chantress. The Second-born abducted his niece and headed for Dreia. But fortune was with the Firstborn, for
I discovered the treachery in time to rescue my daughter. To ensure that the Tree never collected on the debt, I destroyed it. My daughter and I ate the seeds, round and shiny, red as blood. We became immortal!”
“You’re trying to haunt us with our own tale.” Melaia took up a poker and stabbed the coals in the brazier, determined not to show her fear. “There were three seeds.”
“So there were,” said the hawkman. “The third I crammed down my brother’s throat. Now he owes his debt for all eternity. And it is my pleasure to make sure he never repays.” He grinned at the dead man. “Son of Dreia, this night you are destroyed.”
He snatched up the corpse, and its wings unfolded. The girls shrieked and ran to Melaia.
The hawkman dropped the body back to the bier as if it had burned him.
Then he cursed and shoved it to the floor. He scanned the room. “The man
had a pack. Where is it?”
“Maybe he lost it in the side yard.” Melaia felt her face grow warm at the half lie.
But the man didn’t press his search. Instead, he stiffened and stared at the front door, his head cocked, listening. Melaia heard only wind, but the hawkman slowly retreated, tense as a cat backing away from danger. He glanced from the door to the window to the roof hole, where smoke drifted into the night. Then he hurtled toward the brazier, and his body contorted.
All of Melaia’s instincts screamed at her to run, but she stayed her feet, clenched her jaw, and gripped the poker with both hands. As the hawk leaped into the flames, she swung with all her might.
She struck only air as he rose in the smoke and vanished.
Then a haggard young man stepped through the gate, and Melaia drew back. The chill autumn breeze riffled the edge of his dirt-stained cloak, revealing the corner of a journey pack and the hilt of a dagger. Melaia gave him a tentative nod.
“I’ve come—” His voice was dirt dry. He wiped his fist across his mouth.
“I’ll fetch water.” Melaia tucked the rose into her waist sash and headed for the stone urn by the arched doorway. “Travelers are always welcome at our temple. We’ve pallets if you wish to stay the night.” She would have to check with the high priestess, but Hanni rarely turned away weary travelers.
“My thanks,” the man croaked.
Melaia flipped back her loose honey brown braid and dipped a pottery cup into the cool water. “I’m chantress here, always eager to hear new tales from travelers.”
The young man looked too weary to tell tales. Or too ill. His dark-ringed eyes darted from one afternoon shadow to another, and he cocked his head as if he heard something beyond the walls.
“We’re healers here as well,” she offered.
For a moment his wild eyes focused on her. Then he glanced above her head, and his hand went to his dagger.
But he never drew it.
A hawk, larger than any she’d ever seen, shot like an arrow past Melaia and sank its talons into the stranger’s chest. The man’s raw screams pierced the air as the hawk’s beak knifed at his throat.
Melaia stood stunned and speechless. But as the hawk flapped its great wings and lifted the man a handbreadth off the flagstones, her senses surged back.
She snatched a branch from the woodpile and swung it at the hawk. The raptor screeched and dropped the stranger. “Fight!” she yelled at him. “Fight back!”
But it was the hawk that fought, its wings beating at her stick as its claws snagged the man again. At last Melaia struck a solid blow to the hawk’s head, and it skidded sideways. She chased after it, but the raptor took to the air, quickly rose, and soared away over the domed roof of the temple.
Melaia flung aside the stick and fell to her knees by the bloodied man. Then she covered her mouth and swallowed a bitter taste. “Most High, have mercy,” she croaked. Seeing wounds so deep and blood flowing freely, she wasn’t surprised that the stranger’s mistlike spirit had emerged from his body.
As a death-prophet, she could see the shadowy echo writhing around his form as he struggled to live.
“Mellie? Is it safe?” Dark-eyed Iona stood in the temple doorway, holding back the other two novices. At fourteen, she was the motherly one, although Melaia was two years older. Curly-haired Peron, still baby plump at six, peered around Iona, clutching her skirts, while twelve-year-old Nuri broke away from them and ran across the yard, her usual dimpled smile gone.
“Is he dead?” Nuri asked.
“Not yet,” Melaia told her. “Take Peron and fetch a basket of plumwort. And water.”
Nuri stared at the man’s wounds. “We saw the hawk.”
“Go!” said Melaia. “I need plumwort to stanch the bleeding.”
As Nuri dashed away, Melaia wondered why the high priestess hadn’t appeared.
“Where’s Hanni?” she called to Iona.
“Summoned to a birthing. The weaver’s wife.” Iona nervously twisted the end of her black braid.
“Then come help me carry the man inside.”
Melaia hesitated. She was often called to the bedside of the dying to confirm the moment of death, but never had she been required to reach through a spirit to touch someone. Of course, other people did it all the time, she told herself. They just couldn’t see the struggling, mistlike layer. She took a deep breath, grasped the man’s bloodied cloak, and pressed it to the gashes in his chest. His spirit pooled around her wrists, vibrating like a throat quivering with speech.
“Can you hear me?” Melaia asked, keeping pressure on his wound. The stranger’s spirit thrummed frantically, as if he were trying to say something.
“Where’s the plumwort?” Melaia yelled.
Nuri ran across the yard, sloshing a jar of water. Peron trotted behind her with the basket of plumwort. Iona knelt at the man’s feet, her mouth moving silently in prayer.
Melaia reached for the plumwort, but the man’s spirit slid off his body, thinned into a stream, and seeped through a crack in the flagstones. A sudden, grim silence fell over the yard. Melaia shook her head at Nuri and Peron and closed the man’s green-flecked eyes.
Peron stuck out her lower lip. “I was too slow.”
“No, I was.” Nuri’s shoulders drooped.
“No one’s at fault,” said Melaia, but she couldn’t help thinking that the man might still be alive if she had only laid into the hawk sooner. “Let’s get him inside.” She lifted his upper body. For his bulk he was surprisingly light.
Iona lifted his legs. “Starved twig-thin,” she said. “Poor man.”
They carried the stranger to the sanctuary altar, the bier for those who
could afford no better. Melaia took a deep breath, wishing Hanni were there.
“Iona, find me a winding-sheet,” she said. “Peron, go with Nuri. Fetch more
water and scrub the courtyard.”
“But it’s bloody,” said Nuri. Peron wrinkled her nose.
“Would you rather clean the man’s body?” asked Melaia. Nuri and Peron
scrambled out the door. Iona followed.
Melaia gently eased the man’s cloak from his chest and winced, wondering where Hanni would begin. She exhaled slowly. “Start with the easiest,” she murmured.
She untangled his pack from one forearm. As she slipped it free, she noticed the end of a small scroll clenched in his fist. “First the pack,” she told herself, glancing around. Her gaze fell on a shelf of incense bowls. She stashed the pack there, then turned back to the altar-bier and froze.
The stranger’s cloak had fallen back and, with it, a long, white, bloodstained wing.
Melaia’s knees almost buckled. “An angel?” she whispered. It couldn’t be. Angels were found only in legends. Chanters’ stories. Bedtime tales.
Iona’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Do we need more water?”
Melaia jerked the cloak back around the man.
Iona strode in with a bundle of white linen. “Do we need more water?”
“We need Hanni,” said Melaia.
“You look as if you’ve seen the man’s ghost.” Iona looked around. “Has he
returned?”
“Just go get Hanni.”
Distant drums signaled the closing of Navia’s city gates and the change of watch on the walls. On the altar-bier in the temple, the winged man lay serene and clean, covered in white linen up to his chin. Melaia didn’t often sit with the dead, but as she lit the oil lamps behind the bier, she decided that tonight she would request a vigil. She hoped the high priestess would join her, for she had a night’s worth of questions to ask.
But so far, the high priestess hadn’t returned. She had sent Iona back to say
that the birthing was a difficult one and she must stay with it, although she was upset at the news of a death in the side yard. Hanni intended to stop by the overlord’s villa and bring his advisor, Benasin, back to the temple with her.
As Melaia held the flaming twist of rushweed to the last wick, she eyed the three girls munching their supper on a reed mat across the room. With Hanni gone they had asked to stay with Melaia instead of eating in the hearthroom down the hall. She was glad for their company. She felt as shaky as they did, although she hadn’t told them about the stranger’s wings. She wanted Hanni’s opinion first.
Melaia tossed the spent rushweed into the brazier in the center of the room and stirred the coals into flame. For a moment she watched the smoke curl up and drift like a dying spirit out through the roof hole above. Except dying spirits always drifted down, not up.
“I’m saving my scraps for the chee-dees,” Peron said, scooping her crumbs into a tiny hill.
“Fetch your crumb jar from the storeroom, then,” said Melaia. “When you’ve finished cleaning up, I’ll tell a story.”
Peron stared warily at the dark corridor that lay beyond the bier.
“I’ll go with you.” Nuri slipped one of the lamps from its niche. With an uneasy smile she guided Peron to the corridor, giving wide berth to the bier.
Iona stoppered the olive oil. “Peron is telling tales again. This time it’s about two falcons scaring away her songbird friends.”
“She must have been inspired by the hawk in the yard today.” Melaia stacked the empty wooden bowls and glanced at the stranger who should have eaten a meal with them tonight.
“Peron said the falcons were darker than closed eyes,” said Iona. “I can picture that.” Melaia lifted her harp from its peg.
“And they had people hands.” Iona rolled her eyes.
“That I can’t picture,” said Melaia. “Too ghoulish.”
Iona laughed. “With such an imagination Peron will surely become a chantress.”
A shriek came from the corridor. Peron darted into the room, hugging her crumb jar, with Nuri on her heels. Both girls were open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
Behind them limped a sharp-nosed, beardless man wearing a cloak fashioned
completely of feathers—brown, black, and an iridescent blue that glinted in the lamplight. The skin around one of his round gold eyes was blackened, and a scratch jagged across his brow.
Melaia went cold, head to toe. How had the man entered? Had she left the side door unbolted?
Nuri and Peron ran to Iona, and all three huddled by the wall. Melaia stifled her impulse to join them. Hanni had left her in charge, so in charge she would be. She had fought off a murdering hawk. She had prepared a bloody winged man for burial. She would stand up to this intruder.
She strode to the brazier, her hands clammy as she clung to her harp. “This is the temple of the Most High,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t hear the quaver in her voice.
“So it is,” he hissed, limping to the bier. “I believe I noticed that.” “What’s your business here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Surely you’re not the high priestess.”
“She’s the chantress,” blurted Peron.
“Ah. Singer of songs, soother of sorrows,” he crooned.
“If you’re here for our treasury box, take it and be on your way,” said Melaia.
“I have unfinished business with the high priestess,” he said.
“You can find her at the overlord’s villa,” said Melaia.
“No doubt.” With a gloved hand he slid back the sheet that covered the corpse. He smiled at the gashes, then studied Melaia. “Chantress, play your harp for me.”
Melaia gaped at him. “You have no right—”
“Or let me play it,” he said. “The little girl can bring it. The one who feeds the birds.”
Peron’s eyes grew round as the supper bowls, and she shrank behind Iona’s skirts.
Melaia hugged the harp tighter to her chest and glared at the man defiantly, even as she fought back a fear that curdled in the pit of her stomach. How long had this swaggerer been spying on them?
His unblinking gold eyes stared back at her. “I do not take disobedience lightly.” His voice was ice. “Send the girl with the harp or play it yourself.”
Melaia swallowed dryly. She felt her courage fall as limp as the poor stranger in the yard. Keeping her eyes on the intruder, she sank to a bench by the brazier and positioned the harp in her lap.
“Let us hear the tale of the Wisdom Tree,” he said. “You know it, don’t you, Chantress?”
Melaia scowled at him and motioned for the girls to join her. As she fingered
the melody, they silently gathered around, and she breathed easier. Together they were safer, with the brazier as a barrier between them and the bully.
She turned her attention back to the harp, and over the music she spoke the tale.
In a time long ago, there lived a tribal chieftain whose firstborn son was
a wealthy trader, his second-born a lone hunter. Each year at harvest festival, his sons vied to present him with the best gift. The Firstborn always gave perfumes, musicians, slave dancers, the treasures of his trade. The Second-born presented partridges, deerskins, lion-claw necklaces, the spoils of the hunt. But the Second-born thought his gifts paltry compared to those of the Firstborn. So he set out to seek the greatest gift of all.
Far and wide he journeyed, to no avail. At last, weary and discouraged, he lay to rest in the shade of a tree as tall and wide as the tower of a citadel. The Wisdom Tree it was, bearing fruit that granted the eater knowledge and cleverness.
Peron popped her thumb out of her mouth and chanted, “Within this tree stood the stairway to heaven made wholly of light.”
“Exactly,” said Melaia, glad that for the moment the tale was distracting Peron from the intruder, whose gold eyes held a hungry glitter. Melaia continued:
An angel named Dreia, guardian of the Tree, saw the Second son lying there and asked the cause of his despair. When he told his tale, she pitied him and gave him the juice of one fruit. “This will grant you knowledge and cleverness to find the right gift for your father,” she said.
As he sipped the juice, the man’s eyes brightened. “I know the perfect gift,” he said. “A fruit from this Tree.”
Dreia hadn’t intended to give the man a whole fruit. Its seeds were precious, carried by angels into the heavens to plant wisdom trees in worlds among the stars. Yet the man was handsome, his entreaties eloquent.
At last Dreia said, “You may take one fruit if you vow to bring me the first creature that greets you when you arrive home. This I shall send over the stairway as payment. Moreover, you shall return the three
seeds of this fruit, for they are strictly forbidden to mortals. Should you fail to repay your debt, the Tree itself shall exact payment in breath and blood.”
The Second-born agreed to the bargain, for the one who always greeted his homecoming was his old hunting dog. Taking his dog and the seeds back to Dreia would be good reason to see the beautiful angel again. So he carried the fruit home.
While he was still afar off, he saw, bounding across the field to greet him, his young niece. “Uncle!” she cried. “Terrible news. Your old hunting dog has died.”
The Second-born fell to his knees and wept, not for his dog, but for his niece, the only daughter of the Firstborn, now to be payment for his debt.
Melaia paused as the intruder slipped off his gloves. His fingernails were long, curved, and sharp. Talons. Her pulse pounded at her throat. His blackened eye, his scratched brow, his feathered cloak, his limp.
She had met him before. As a hawk.
“Is there no ending to the tale?” He smirked at her recognition of him and stroked the corpse. “I favor endings.”
Melaia felt foggy, as if she were in a dream. She tried to gather her thoughts.
“The Second-born knew only one way to escape his debt,” Iona prompted.
“Yes.” Melaia cleared her throat and forced out the words.
The Second-born knew he had to destroy the Wisdom Tree.
Dreia saw an army approaching, the Second son in the lead, betrayal in his heart. She gathered what angels she could. Some plucked the remaining fruit and hastened over the stairway to celestial worlds.
Others stayed behind to defend the Tree. But these were not warring angels. The best they could do was save some of the wood as the Tree fell and was plundered by men who wanted pieces for themselves.
“That was the end of the stairway,” Nuri said.
“And the end of angels in our world,” added Iona.
“But the brothers planted the seeds of the Wisdom Tree,” offered Peron,
“didn’t they?”
“They did.” Melaia set the harp aside. “The brothers learned that cultivating wisdom takes patience.”
The girls chimed in, “Wisdom, over time, is earned.”
The hawkman hissed. “A pitiful ending and woefully false.” He pointed a taloned finger at Melaia. “Remember this, Chantress. The Second-born abducted his niece and headed for Dreia. But fortune was with the Firstborn, for
I discovered the treachery in time to rescue my daughter. To ensure that the Tree never collected on the debt, I destroyed it. My daughter and I ate the seeds, round and shiny, red as blood. We became immortal!”
“You’re trying to haunt us with our own tale.” Melaia took up a poker and stabbed the coals in the brazier, determined not to show her fear. “There were three seeds.”
“So there were,” said the hawkman. “The third I crammed down my brother’s throat. Now he owes his debt for all eternity. And it is my pleasure to make sure he never repays.” He grinned at the dead man. “Son of Dreia, this night you are destroyed.”
He snatched up the corpse, and its wings unfolded. The girls shrieked and ran to Melaia.
The hawkman dropped the body back to the bier as if it had burned him.
Then he cursed and shoved it to the floor. He scanned the room. “The man
had a pack. Where is it?”
“Maybe he lost it in the side yard.” Melaia felt her face grow warm at the half lie.
But the man didn’t press his search. Instead, he stiffened and stared at the front door, his head cocked, listening. Melaia heard only wind, but the hawkman slowly retreated, tense as a cat backing away from danger. He glanced from the door to the window to the roof hole, where smoke drifted into the night. Then he hurtled toward the brazier, and his body contorted.
All of Melaia’s instincts screamed at her to run, but she stayed her feet, clenched her jaw, and gripped the poker with both hands. As the hawk leaped into the flames, she swung with all her might.
She struck only air as he rose in the smoke and vanished.
Disclosure: I received this book as a member of First Wild Card in exchange for my honest review. No other compensation was received.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Last Minute Father’s Day Ideas!
Here are a few quick Fathers Day ideas I wanted to share with you for Father’s Day. If you are stumped for a gift some of these ideas might help you out!
Here is a fun survey your child can fill out for Dad from The Creative Homemaker! There is also a printout for Grandpa or Papa. I printed one from each of the boys in different colors. It would be fun to print one each year and look back and read the responses!
What about a coupon book? Here is a fun coupon book titled Daddyland from Disney Family.com
Top Pop award on a bottle of Dad’s root beer from 2 Clever Blog.com
Need a card? HGTV has some cool printable Fathers Day cards!
How about a word find card from Paper & Pigtails
These are just a few of the wonderful ideas out there on the internet!
Friday, June 17, 2011
Kaden Creations~Tall Towers
I have posted before that Justin loves to build cities and tall buildings. Kaden is following in his brothers foot steps with his own building creations!
While Justin was building his City of Lights, Kaden was busy building his own tall buildings! Instead of using blocks he used our wedgits set! He calls them tall towers!
He used his head lamp and some other small flashlights to illuminate his buildings!
They looked very cool with the light coming from beneath them!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Announcement about Lego Creation Thursday and other randomness
For the past three weeks we have not been hosting Lego Creation Thursday. I need to apologize to those of you who participate. I completely forgot about it last week! We went to my parents to help them take down a tree in their yard. We were up and out early last Thursday and never gave it another thought! I’m sorry for those of you who were waiting to link up.
I decided that since summer is upon us to put Lego Creation Thursday on hiatus until September. I don’t know about your family but we are out and about much more in the summer and spending less time indoors. Especially here lately the weather had been wonderful here. Not too hot and great for being outside. So Look for Lego Creation Thursday to be back up this fall!
Some other randomness…..
I have been participating in a Bible study over at the Good Morning Girls blog. We are using Sally Clarkson’s book The Ministry of Motherhood and it is good! I am so glad I decided to participate in this! I have been meaning to post about what I am learning but have not had a chance to. Maybe later this week or next week I will get a chance to do that.
I recently discovered Pinterest and can I just say WOW! I love it! It is a really fun way to save all sorts of things you find on the internet. Crafts, printables, favorite blogs. You use pinboards to pin the items you find around the internet! The fun part is you can search other pinboards and repin items to your own board! You can follow your friends and they can follow you! I love Pinterest! I am visual and I love being able to see what I have saved! I have found some really neat things to pin as well!
We’re gearing up for some summer fun here! I’ll be sharing some of our fun ideas and things we are doing over the summer in some upcoming posts.
Along with our summer fun we are reading a few summer chapter books. We are currently reading The Pink Motel. So far we are loving it!
We are anxiously waiting for our community pool to open. It has not opened yet due to repairs that need to be made. We are hoping it will not be much longer!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Summer Fun~Cherry Picking!
Last year we were at a friends house for lunch and one of the things she served were sweet cherries. They were so good and I asked her where she bought them. She said she picked them from our local farm market.
Justin and Kaden wanted to go pick cherries but they were done picking for the year. So I tucked the idea away for this year!
On Monday I asked the boys if they would like to go cherry picking! I received a resounding YES! So we headed off to Mood’s Farm Market to pick cherries! We had a fun morning of picking!
The boys did a fantastic job of climbing the ladders and picking a bunch of cherries! YUM!!!!!
Monday, June 13, 2011
Frugal Summer Fun~Homemade Snow Cones
Summer is coming! We have one more week until summer officially arrives. This past week here in the north east it felt like summer. We had temps in the 90’s much of the week. Thankfully today the air conditioner is turned off and the windows are open and there is a beautiful breeze coming in!
When it is hot we always want something cold to eat to refresh and cool us off! We do have Mr. Softie who comes through our neighborhood just about every night but that can get expensive.
With the heat last week I decided it was time to break out the ice shaver. I bought this a couple of summers ago and it is always a hit with the boys! After all it is way more fun to make your own snow cones than to buy them!
Other than the ice shaver all you need to have on hand is: Ice, cups and flavoring. (I keep lots of cracked ice in the freezer in the summer!) I picked up a pack of Dixie cups with a fish theme on them! They do sell snow cone cups which are very cool but there are so few in a package that the cups were a better buy.
We had the flavors on hand. Ours came from Walmart and Target. You can make your own as well. We will be experimenting with making our own over the summer.
This machine is simple enough that both boys can use it by themselves easily. The blades in the top of the machine are plastic and will not work unless the lid is on as you need to use the lid to make the machine work.
We had three flavors on hand: cherry, pineapple and strawberry (cherry is my favorite)
This year we also added root beer! Which is one of the boys favorite flavors!
The ice goes into the top of the machine. The lid goes on. Twist the lid to turn it on…
and you have shaved ice!
Yum! Which = happy boys!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Branded:Sharing Jesus in A Consumer Culture~Review
Welcome to the Litfuse blog tour for Branded: Sharing Jesus in a Consumer Culture by Tim Sinclair.
About the book:
The church spends $1.5 million for every one new follower of Jesus. Apple sells 26 iPads every minute. What is it that makes Apple so exciting and Jesus so boring? What is it that compels someone to bring their iPod everywhere and their Bible nowhere? In a word: marketing. Jesus is a life-changing product with lousy salespeople-people who are intimidated and embarrassed by the word "evangelism" and who show more enthusiasm for their gadgets than their God. What would life look like if we stopped mass-marketing Jesus and started marketing our faith like Nike and Apple market their products--sharing relationally, from person to person? Using examples from these and other successful companies, author Tim Sinclair challenges Christians to throw out their casual attitudes toward faith and sign on for a marketing campaign for the Savior. Written with the wit and wisdom of an experienced marketer, Branded peels away the feelings of fear and encourages readers how to share their faith in ways that are honest, authentic, and, most importantly, effective.
My thoughts
I was not sure what to expect before I read this book. We as Christians mass market Jesus in order to reach unbelievers and win them to for Jesus? We market Jesus as if He were a product?
This thought had really never occurred to me. I have never considered my faith a product to be sold. But I guess in a sense that is what we do.
The problem is our marketing techniques are outdated, old fashioned and dull. We are not attracting believers to Christ with our bumper stickers, our blogs, our tweets or our facebook status.
Quote from the book:
We put Jesus saves bumper stickers on our cars so we don’t feel as bad about driving 80 miles an hour down the interstate. We listen to Christian radio during our morning commutes so we don’t feel bad about watching Desperate Housewives the night before. We post uplifting churchy things on our facebook pages so we don’t feel bad about routinely belittling our kids.
Ouch. Ever been there? I have.
I’m not a pushy in your face type of Christian (or at least I don’t think I am), I’m pretty quiet, but yes I have posted quotes from the Bible on my facebook page and most Sundays I post a Christian song on my blog and even talk about my faith on my blog at times. Am I winning anyone to Jesus? I’m not sure. Is that why I post them? I’m not sure about that either. The question I ask myself is am really living my faith?
Branded has really made me stop and think? What type of Christian do I want to be? Someone who talks about my brand of Jesus or someone who lives out my faith each and every day. One on one with the people I encounter and the people I love? Or someone who just wants to “preach” at others?
again from the book:
Many Christians give the impression that God is like a genie in a bottle. The Big guy in the sky that holds “our get out of hell free” card.
God is a healing God. But that does not mean He’s going to heal you.
God is a giving God. But that does not mean He’s going to pad your bank account.
God is a loving God. But that does not mean He’s going to take away all your problems.
God does not promise health and wealth. Christian’s do.
We are lying and our lies aren’t attracting people to Christ; they’re pushing people away.
Wow. So true!
How do I want to live my life? As a Christian? Or as a follower of Jesus.
Branded is an easy read at 145 pages including a study guide in the back of the book. Tim Sinclair his wit and modern day examples such as Google, Starbucks and Apple to show how our things do not matter. What matters is how we share Jesus and how He has branded us and changed our lives forever. This book will make you stop and think. How do you want to share Jesus?
Tim Sinclair is a radio personality on one of the top Christian morning shows in the country, Mornings with Tim and Pam. For over a decade, he has been helping radio stations and various other businesses creatively and effectively market themselves. His award-winning productions have been heard on more than 2,000 radio stations worldwide and recent clients include McDonald's, Word Records, Moody Press, and the country's most-listened to Christian nonprofit radio station KSBJ/Houston. Tim has written for CCM Magazine and the Huntsville Times. For more about Tim, please visit his website, http://www.tim-sinclair.com
Kregel Publications is sponsoring a $50 Amazon.com giveaway!
About the Giveaway!
To enter all you have to do is send a tweet (using #litfuse) about Branded or share about it on Facebook! If you tweet we'll capture your entry when you use @litfuse. If you share it on Facebook or your blog, just email us and let us know (info@litfusegroup.com). Easy.
Not sure what to tweet/post? Here's an idea.
TWEET THIS: Branded by @timjsinclair - Jesus is a life-changing product with lousy sales-people! @litfuse http://ow.ly/566nr
FACEBOOK THIS: Branded by Tim Sinclair is a compelling look at what Christians can learn from companies like Apple & Starbucks about sharing their faith! Jesus is a life-changing product with lousy sales-people! http://litfusegroup.com/blogtours/text/13338985
disclosure: I received a copy of Branded as a Litfuse blogger in exchange for my honest review. All opinions in this post and on this blog are my own.
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