Aoife, The Queen Maker - A Halloween Story
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admonition ! All of my writing is intended for adults over the age of 18 ONLY. level may contain strong or even extreme sexual depicted object. All citizenry and events depicted are fictional and any resemblance to soul living or idle is purely coincidental. Actions, billet, and responses are fancied ONLY and should not be attempted in real life.
If you are under the age or 18 or do not sympathise the difference between fantasy and realism or if you reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal territorial dominion that prohibits the indication of acts depicted in these stories, delight stop reading immediately and motivate to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first century.
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It was wickedness and low temperature and rainy and lonely as I drove north on a lilliputian secondhand two lane highway that wound its twisted way through the timbered foothills. The reason I was in my car driving 90 Admiralty mile in the middle of an Oct night was because a man whom I had never met, doctor Nathaniel L. Sorensen, had summoned me to his end bed.
That may vocalize like an odd way of putting it, but it is exactly what his grandson, Earl, told me when he called me just before ten o'clock tonight. `` W, '' he began, `` I have a very strange favour to ask of you. My grandfather has asked me to call you. He says to separate you that he is dying tonight and he is summoning you to his dying bed because you are the only one who can understand the account he has to tell. Is there any way you can hail up here ? ``
Earl was a rather famous astronomer and professor. Like his grandfather, he spent his nights staring at the welkin - well, actually, in Earl 's case, he was usually looking at monitors that gave him a numeric or ocular representation of what his jumbo array of radio telescopes were seeing as they gathered information from the skies. His grandfather, affectionately known by his match as `` Night Sky Nate, '' had actually spent many, many nighttime staring through the eyepiece of monster telescope located on distant mountaintops all over the world.
What the elder Dr. Sorensen had to tell me, and why he thought I was the only one who would understand, was a complete enigma to me. I had never met the man. I had never spoken with him. I had never communicated with him in any way in my entire life. I knew of him only as Earl 's grandfather.
Earl and I had become friends when we met on-line in an electronics discourse forum. We were both concerned in remote electronic control tour. He was, of course, interested in ameliorate ways to curb his telescopes. I was interested in better ways to ensure ... shall we say, more than matter to view of human doings. One of my avocation is diverse electronic device that stimulate the trunk for the function of hurting, pleasure, or control.
One session, Earl asked me outright what I actually did with some of the control circuits we discussed. I told him, `` You would be shocked ... pun intended. ``
He answered, `` You would be surprised what it takes to shock me. '' And then added `` ... pun understood. ``
He then asked me to meet him in a private Old World chat room and gave me a link to a room on a dissimilar web situation - a site that I knew well. The confab room localisation was on a very individual BDSM situation that catered to the taste perception of those who liked mechanical partial tone to their thralldom and discipline
In answer to my un-asked question, he typed, `` I spend my biography looking for convention in the sky. I recognized the pattern of your spot - what abbreviations you use and do n't use, matter like that. The same figure shows up on several sites under various different login names. ``
I made a mental note of hand to myself to calculate into mode of masking that weakness in the futurity, and met him on the new site. It turned out we had more in common that just an interest in control circuits. Earl became one of my very discreet customer. He was also a big fan, and sometimes helpful editor program, of many of my stories. Evidently he must throw said something about me to his gramps, because now the dying Dr. was summoning me to his death bed to hear, and perhaps compose his story.
What a super-intelligent, apparently prudish astronomer who spent most of his life staring at the stars might birth to say that I had n't heard many sentence before was a mystery to me, but deep in my gut I had a feel that this mystery was well worth exploring.
When I got to the hospice building succeeding to the infirmary, Earl met me at the door. He said flatly, `` Nate says he is going to die tonight. '' Then he shrugged and added, as if in account, `` It 's his birthday. The doctors do n't recall so, but his father predicted his own destruction, and so he thinks that he knows when he is going to die also. He says tonight is the nighttime. ``
Since I was entering a hospice surface area, I was expecting to chance a very frail and decrepit old man, but when I stepped into to the room, Dr. Sorensen was sitting up in his bed reading an old theater journal. `` seed in W, '' he greeted me. `` You are probably wondering why you are here. ``
'' That is more than an understatement, '' I replied.
He motioned me to a president that had been placed at his bedside, closed the notebook computer, and folded his hands over the cover as it lay on his lap. `` Let 's Menachem Begin at the beginning, shall we. ''
He looked and sounded just like a college professor about to get down a talk. I should n't give birth been surprised at that. He had, at one meter, been a very prominent prof as well as a illustrious astronomer.
'' Actually, let 's bulge out before the source, '' he corrected himself. `` My father was born on Apr 20, 1909. In shell the significance of that date escapes you, that was the day that Alex Haley 's Comet passed nearest to the earth. He died on February 9, 1986, again as Haley passed close to the world. He always said that he was going to accompany Mark pair 's object lesson and 'come in with the comet and go out with the comet .'He did. ``
I must let looked somewhat disconcert, because he looked up at me and added, `` It 's all region of the story. Be patient. I 'm getting to it ... I 'm getting to it. ``
He smiled, took a deep breath, and started anew. `` I was born on October 21, 1930. The significance of that particular date, of which I am surely you are unaware, is that ... ''
I interrupted him and finished his sentence with `` it is the peak of the Orionid meteor rain shower. ``
It was his turn to bet surprised. `` A scholar of the stars, are we ? ``
'' No, '' I answered, `` but Earl is never available from October 19 through 23 because chucks of old comet are falling out of the sky. ``
'' All comets are old, '' instructed the secure doc, `` they are the left-over debris from Creation. And the chucks do n't fall out of the sky, the earth merely passes through the comet 's track of detritus. The particular comet that causes the Orionids is none other than my father 's old admirer, Haley, itself. '' He laughed as he added, `` That means that I am a chip shot off my father 's comet. ``
His laugh soon dissolved into a coughing fit. When it subsided he continued, `` I came in with the chips and I am planning to go out with the chips. The cancer doctors say I have another few week or even months, but tonight is as good a night to die as any other, and I might as well continue up the family tradition - - - but low gear I have to recount you my taradiddle. ``
He paused. But this time he did n't joke ..., and he did n't cough. Instead he went very smooth with his eyes taking on a very, very far away look. I had seen that spirit before - usually in combat old-timer. Psychiatrists call it `` the thousand mile stare. '' Whatever retentivity was flashing through his mind was very powerful and highly traumatic. It was very quite in that way as we all waited for him to pause the silence.
After a few consequence, he sighed, took a deep breath, and continued, `` I need to tell you some things about the arrows from Orion 's bow that I have never written down for anyone except myself ... '' He held up the notebook. `` ... and I have never shown anyone this field daybook - not even Earl. No one would have believed me, and if I had ever published any of this, I would cause been laughed out of academia. ``
'' Earl has shown me some of the things that you write. '' He looked at me over the top of his glasses. His middle were now a very hopeful blue. `` I think you will realise ... and I am for sure that you can tell my fib to the earthly concern. I no longer care what my fellow professors think of me. They can put it down to death-bed insaneness ... .. but it is the truth ... .. the absolute, god-awful, source-of-myth-and-mysteries truth. ``
He paused to open up the subject field journal that was again resting beneath his handwriting. `` W, I want you to throw this when we are through here. Everything is written down in it ... even the original Erse. Maybe you can pass it on to individual who might be around in 2025, or even 2063. ``
He again looked at me over the top of his spectacles and raised his eyebrows as if to ask if I was ready. I nodded and he began, `` On my nineteenth birthday, October 21, 1949, I was stationed overseas with the navy as - what else - a weatherman. My sake was astronomy, not weather forecasting, but the dark blue had enough navigator and as the recruiter told me, 'Stars do n't affect ships at sea, storms do .'They wanted violent storm security guard, not star gazers and my enlistment choices boiled down to being a weatherman or a ship 's James Cook. ``
He gave me a very wry grin. `` I have always been a terrible cook, but I can show a thermometer with the easily of them. A stop in the Navy would pay for college, and besides, it was right after the war and the potation was still in place. They had n't drafted anybody since '47, but I figured it was better to eat United States Navy chow chow for a few years than endangerment being drafted into an infantry squad if thing heated up with the Russians or somebody else. ``
'' In any case, everything worked out pretty well. I ended up with a soft post on a hillside in Ireland near Birr Castle. The Earl 's great observatory had been dismantled during 'The Great War ,'but it was still a place racy in history for someone like me who was interested in the superstar. ``
He looked down a bit sheepishly. `` I 've never told Earl where his name came from. I wanted him to be named after the man who designed and built the great Birr castling telescope and first saw test copy of volute extragalactic nebula. But I could n't remember the proper figure of the third Earl of Rosse. So, when my girl was considering what to call her first son, I suggested 'Earl .'''
He looked up at the ceiling as though he was watching the distant galaxies in his mind. Then he shook his head as if to exculpate his thought process and make for himself back to the submit. `` Anyway, there I was hell dust dab in the heart of the Emerald Isle with not a unit lot to do except take temperature and barometrical reading material a couple of times a day - and there were four of us stationed there to do that. I made a lot of shortsighted day head trip around acres to kill time and learn more about the Kelt. ``
'' In a slight, topical anaesthetic museum in a nearby town, I came upon some Gaelic manuscript that the proprietor said talked about the Orionid meteor showers, or as the Celt called them, 'The pointer of Orion .'I took it into my straits to translate those documents and spent well-nigh of a month 's pay to buy mellow character transcript of the archetype. ``
'' Gaelic is a hellish spoken language with too many letters and not enough words to really gain sense in English language, but I did my dependable with a lot of avail from a yoke of local Irish scholars. What intrigued me most was a admonition I found buried in the textbook that said not to go walking on the fen during the shooting star shower because 'when an arrow from Orion 's bow falls to the background at mid-darkness on 'Dark Night'the doorway of the top executive manufacturing business will open .'''
'' At least, that 's what I thought it said. A local student, who had been teaching me Gaelic, told me that 'King Makers'should be 'Queen Maker'because the Celts did n't have Riley B King. They had poove - Queens known for their beauty and their daring and their physical ability. Brave general who had won great battles would be rewarded with a night or two in bed with the Queen. That not only served to furnish incentive to the general, it also provided brave gentility stock for future tense Queens to rule over the Celtic folk. ``
'' This same student assured me that 'Dark Night'was a reference to Shavnah. If you transliterate the word from Gaelic into English letter of the alphabet, you end up with Samhain, but he was adamant it was pronounced, 'Shavnah .'He was especially adamant that Gerald Gardiner had gotten it legal injury when he pronounced it 'Soween .'''
'' Shavnah is the pilot basis for what eventually became Halloween. It is the night of the world-class night of the moonshine following the Autumnal Equinox. My tutor noted that the Romans took the holiday back with them after they ALMOST conquered Ireland around 45 CE. They moved it to Nov 1, and the night before became known as 'All Hallows Eve ,'or 'Halloween .'In today 's calendar, Shavnah is somewhere in the first 21 days of Oct, not on Oct 31. ``
Dr. Soren Peter Lauritz Sorensen paused to let all that information sinkhole into my very confused skull. `` In 1949, my birthday ..., and the peak of the Orionid meteor showers, fell on Shavnah, as it did in 1968 and 1979, and will again in 2025 and 2063. '' He gave me a very mysterious smile and went on, `` I was back on those hillsides in '68 and '79, but I will have got to miss 2025. ''
Another shake of the head brought him back to his story. `` In '49 it was a very light up, very dark nighttime, and the meteor display was phenomenal. Looking up at stars that you would never see in the light pollution that exists today, I could clearly see the full outline of the mighty hunting watch and watch as pointer after arrow seemed to leave his bow and flash across the night sky. Then one of the 'arrows'fell to earth not more than a few yards from where I was standing. I 'm sure that it was nil more than a mite of dust or a very lowly pebble by the prison term it hit the ground, but that close, the instant was nearly blinding. ``
'' As my optic began to readjust to the darkness, I thought at first that the flash had damaged my retinas. I was sure that something was ill-timed with my imagination because I could not believe what my eyes showed me. Standing there before me was the most beautiful cleaning woman I had ever seen. She was tall, with a body any Olympic athlete would die for. Her deep-copper-colored hair wounding around her eubstance nearly to her feet. Her nipples were bright pinko, and stood blind drunk and erect in the cold, night air. The fuzz between her pegleg was a brighter shade of copper-orange and curled tightly against her cleft. ``
'' I shook my caput as if to exculpate an odd hallucination, but the nude char remained standing before me and began to approach me. As she walked slowly toward me, she said softy, 'There is not much time. The threshold remains unfold only for a short while. We must make a faggot before the DOE dissipates .'At least, that 's what I think she said. She was speaking a very unknown form of Goidelic, and I had enough hassle trying to understand the local variation. ``
'' She pulled me into her implements of war and began tugging at my clothing. Soon we were both lying naked on the spongy dirt of the Irish fen. Our love fashioning was frantic, she, from a pauperism only she could realize, and I from my lust for her nearly perfect body. In just moments we were lying still, entangled, breathless, sweaty, and spent. ``
'' 'We have made a fairy ,'she said to me. 'Now we can subscribe to our time and truly enjoy each other. You may call me Eve .'I did n't get word until later that Eve was spelled A-o-i-f-e ''
'' We made know all dark. I was 19, and that was possible for me then. In the morn, we returned to my apartment together. I was shirtless, she was wearing nothing but my shirt and coating. It was scandalously myopic for that day, but would not even be noticed today. I was n't certain how I was going to explain her to my roommates, let alone to Mrs. O'Malley. ''
'' Mrs. O'Malley, our landlord, was an extremely fastidious, little old Irish whisky lady who 'did n't put up with any devilment in her topographic point .'She was sitting on the movement porch as we came walking up the path. ``
'' I was still trying to figure out what to say when Eve spoke to her in Erse. Mrs. O'Malley 's eyes went panoptic and she crossed herself rapidly respective times. 'Of course, favorite ,'she answered .'I will put you up in the scanty way until we can make the arrangements for the hymeneals .'''
'' As Eve walked up the steps and went into the house, Mrs. O'Malley pulled me aside and said to me in her heavily lilted English people, 'So, Nate, me boy, you just had to go wandering on the fen on Dark nighttime when the arrows were shooting, did ye ? Well, the door opened for ye, and you were chosen. Now you 've gotten yourself a queer Maker for a wife. Aoife tells me that the Queen has been made, but understand this : You be good to her, and the leprechauns will begrudge your lot. You treat her ill-timed, and you will envy those in the inscrutable pit of hell .'''
'' I was deeply in lustfulness, if not fuck for Eve. Mrs. O'Malley 's words overcame any hesitancy on my part, and I answered her ,'I love Eve. Of class I will marry her, and I would never treat her faulty .'''
'' Mrs. O'Malley answered, 'Aye, you will splice Eve. She will wait for you and you will wait for her. That is foretold in the sensation and written in the stones. But I was speaking about the Queen. You love her and raise her right or my tone will chase after you down when I 've gone beneath the sod ..., and you will see a side of me that no one above the putting green has ever seen .'''
'' I married Eve about six calendar week later. A very aged priest conducted the observance far out in the countryside in a very old church that seemed to be almost in ruining. I expected something close to the church 's standard marriage ceremony, but instead of the regular Word, he used a very, very old leather bound volume that appeared to be written totally in ancient Goidelic with expatiate calligraphy on every Sir Frederick Handley Page. He spoke most of the service in that Sami, strange form of Gaelic that Eve had spoken and I had bother following a lot of it. When we got to the vows, he repeated each command in English for my benefit. ``
'' 'Eve ,'he said, 'you have come through the door and chosen this mortal man. Will you love him in the time you have together and wait for him until the pointer call him place ?'''
'' She answered, 'Aye .'''
'' 'Nathaniel ,'he said to me, 'you have been chosen. Do you accept your chosenness ? Do you prognosticate to persuade the Queen to her pot and erotic love and protect her for as long as you live ? And do you prognosticate to wait for Eve until the night on which the arrows call you back so that you may be together forever ?'''
'' I answered, 'Yes, I do ,'but I really had no idea what in the the pits he was talking about. None of it made sensation. I just assumed that they used some unusual, ancient marriage ritual in that area. ``
'' I found out what it all meant the following July, when Earl 's mother was born. '' Dr. Sorensen 's middle clouded as he continued. `` Roisin was to be our simply minor. Eve died in childbirth. Or at to the lowest degree that 's what the doctors said. Eve had told me a few days before, with bust in her heart, that after the tike was born, she would have to be going home, but she would await for me there as she had promised. Her grave is on that hillside where I first met her. By her request, it is marked only by the Oxalis acetosella and wild flowers of the heath. ``
His vox was thick as he continued, `` I raised rose on my own - not easy for a man going through eight or so years of college to get a doctorate. She had a torrid spirit that matched the color of her hair, and in another age, in another piazza, could very well possess become a true fairy. ``
'' Instead, I made sure that she was properly educated at the best colleges and universities in the world. She lives out east and is now the fountainhead of one of the top lot 500 companies. The president in her situation is a design based on the crapper of the Celtic Queen, Medb, a mythical warrior fagot of ancient Ireland. A portraiture of Medb in to the full battle armor knack behind her desk. I do n't know where she got that painting, but the artist painted Medb to look very much like Eve. ``
Another looking at at me over his trash, `` It would appear that the CEO 's of our large companies are the Kings and Queens of today and rose has fulfilled her destiny in today 's world. ``
Then he slumped slightly forward. It was as if he had expended the conclusion of his get-up-and-go telling me of the queen regnant maker and the Queen he helped to bring into our world. He said softly to no one, `` Our slight Rose has become a poove. ``
We could almost see the life flowing out of him. With great effort he raised his head. `` Tell my narration, W. Tell it so people will believe. Tell it so someday on an Irish Gaelic fen, another fagot Maker can step into our cosmos and a right man will be waiting. Maybe she can stay longer for him than Eve did for me. Tell my taradiddle. secern the floor of Aoife, the tabby Maker and tabby rosebush whom she brought into this Earth. ``
With that his head lolled fully forward. Almost coinciding with his final Son, the room was filled with a photoflash of light accompanied by a loud knock just outside the window. A nurse came rushing into the way, `` Is everyone all right ? '' she asked. `` You wo n't consider what just happened. A low shooting star hit the ground right following to the building. I was afraid it might consume broken the window, it was so close. ``
'' Everything 's amercement, '' I answered. All eyes followed mine as I looked back at the bed, `` That was just the threshold opening so Dr. Soren Peter Lauritz Sorensen could go back to a hillside on the heath to be with his love Eve. ``
We all stood around in the room silently as Earl softly said his final adieu to his grandfather. about of what he said was too quiet for me to get word, but at one point I could clearly him say, `` I should have believed you, gramps. We could have gathered the whole family to be here tonight instead of just me. But I guess you wanted it this way. I hope you told W everything you wanted him to say. ``
When he was finished and we were all starting to go out the door, I paused and turned back to the bed. I addressed the torso lying in the bed, but I was actually speaking to a tone that was probably now walking the heath in Emerald Isle with the woman he had loved - and waited for - his entire life. `` Do n't worry Nate, '' I told him, `` I will order the world the fib of Aoife, the world-beater Jehovah. And if I am still above the sod, I will be on the fen that surrounds Birr palace on Dark Night in 2025. I know that I will be too old to be chosen - if I had ever been worthy of that - but maybe, just maybe, the door will open near me, and you and Eve can tell me to a greater extent of the story of the Queen-makers. ``
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END OF chronicle
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