The Incurable Caress

By Jon Jacks

As a Wé Nun, Gytha has been raised to aid the transformation of warriors into wolves, bears and boars.
She lingers on the borders between the realms, ensuring the darkness doesn’t completely overwhelm the battling men.
But the Caress is forever whispering to her, coaxing her into using her powers for her own ends.
And when she completely slips over the border, the lure of the darkness is more powerful than ever...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Dec 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463328033

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The waters swim about the boats as if either alive, or alive with all manner of unimaginable creatures.

Huge humps of water rush past the low-hulled boats, threatening at times to swamp them. They could be mistaken for the swelling waves of unusual currents, only they follow no regular pattern, serve no will but her own, if needs be ominously circling a boat before, at last, and thankfully, leaving.

But then, anyone first sighting the boats as the high, arching heads emerged from the white mist would also mistakenly swear they were a flock of dragons, the steady rise and fall of their wings accompanied by little more than the sound of parting waters.

The soul of each dragon is its men, for just as she needs them to grant her movement, they depend upon her to protect them.

And one of those dragons is different to all the rest.

For the makeup of her soul contains a girl.

*

Gytha was more far seeing, more wary, than even the wide eyes of each dragon ship; especially when she was asleep, as now.

For she’d taken wing, flying on ahead of everyone else, seeking out any ships of the Usurper King who might give warning of their approach.

Naturally, the ravens, still tightly cooped up in their cages, had been appalled that she’d apparently taken on their role of searching out land.

‘So you hate us every bit as much as Noah did!’ Wé had hissed as Gytha had spread her vast, white wings in preparation for taking off from what laughingly passed as the ship’s deck.

‘I no longer know of this Noah,’ Gytha had sighed resignedly, accepting that her beliefs had been shaken long ago, perhaps never to be restored. (Even her newly learned principles were obviously mocked by many, going by the naming of these malicious ravens!)

‘He sent out our forebear long before any dove!’ the other raven, Wyly, snarled with the venom of a creature raised to distrust man. ‘And all so he could take the raven’s wife as his own!’

Gytha had ignored them, realising such deeply imbedded resentments could never be eradicated by her own apathetically weak arguments.

Once in the air, she could briefly forget the simmering anger that was not simply tainting but also seeping into all things. A refreshing wind momentarily blew it from her mind, her senses, her flesh.

Untouched by this higher breeze, the mist lying below her spread out everywhere like an eerie sea, the odd patches where it cleared rising like islands amongst it all.

It could be a mass of clouds that had descended towards and enveloped the earth. Or it could be that she was flying higher than she supposed, passing soaring mountain tops.

Either way, she was grateful that – in her own particular way, naturally – she’d effectively left the claustrophobic confines of the ship behind her for at least a while.

It was good to be away from the stench of men.

*

Chapter 2

The ship, so small, so crowded, so damp – so filled with the swelling sweat of unwashed men, who strained each day at the oars, or fought with the billowing sail, only to have no choice later but to sleep where they’d worked – hardly seemed capable of dealing with these shallow waters, let alone be capable of taking on the raging waves of the oceans.

Unlike the ship Gytha had recently arrived on, personally belonging to King Sweyn of Denmark, this ship of Asbjorn’s, his brother, was in a sorry state too.

Although numbering three hundred ships, and backed by the forces of the earls still rebelling against the Usurper King, the original invasion force had fared badly in a land deliberately laid waste, ensuring there was little food to be had. Asbjorn had eventually accepted payment from the Usurper to leave, only to remain moored in the river for months, awaiting King Sweyn’s arrival.

King Sweyn had been welcomed by the rebels, especially when he’d more or less declared his brother to be a traitor for taking the false king’s gold; and yet he’d put Asbjorn in charge of this attempt to secure and then launch an attack from the island of Elig.

Unlike the princes, her far more naive brothers, Gytha suspected King Sweyn’s purpose, even though he was their cousin.

Unlike their poor dead father, the king disposed by the Usurper, King Sweyn had a royal lineage.

He could quite easily take the throne for himself.

*

The island was much easier to find than Gytha had feared.

It was not only of a much greater size than she’d imagined – with the monastery at Elig surrounded by more than enough land to support an army – but it also rose up out of the mist every bit as clearly as it stood out against the shallow sea.

Swooping low across the farmed land, Gytha took care to draw as little attention to herself as possible, not wishing to discover what might happen if someone fancying a tasty meal attempted to bring her down with a swiftly aimed arrow.

Not that the rebel forces holding the island faced the starvation suffered for so long by the Danish fleet.

The soil was quite obviously extremely fertile, providing harvests more than capable of sustaining a large population. There were vineyards here too, while sizeable herds of cattle, sheep and pigs were in abundance. Game of all kinds flourished in the forests and the island’s surrounding reed marshes, and the supply of fish was guaranteed in an area so awash with streams, rivers, and wide sheets of open water.

Here, of course, the sea didn’t completely envelope the land, yet it was an island nevertheless, for it was otherwise surrounded by bogs and unstable ground crisscrossed haphazardly by every kind of waterway. The few narrow causeways running like wavering threads winding their way through all this had been blocked with peat bulwarks, any one of which was obviously easily defended by even the smallest unit of armed men.

No armed warriors could safely navigate such treacherous ground, least of all the heavy cavalry forming the backbone of the Usurper’s army.

Even to Gytha’s untrained eyes, Elig island appeared to be the perfect place to launch the new invasion from.

But whose claim to the throne would the invasion be backing?

Gytha wouldn’t dare to hazard a guess.

*

Goodwin, Gytha’s eldest brother, still presumed the throne was rightfully his.

But on the death of their father five years ago, the earls had immediately hailed Edgar Aetheling – a boy of seventeen, just like Goodwin – as their new king.

King Sweyn’s fleet had earlier aided Edgar’s rapidly failing cause, while her exiled brothers’ two unsuccessful invasions had been supported by the armies of King Diarmait.

When Goodwin and Edmund had finally fled to Denmark, they hadn’t received the warm welcome that Gytha, along with her grandmother and aunt, had received earlier in the year.

But then, despite the first brief joys of reunion, even Gytha had found it hard to warm to her brothers’ aggressive demands and arrogant airs.

They’d changed so much since she’d last seen them; and Gytha instinctively feared that it was a change engendered by more than just the agonising frustration of losing so many battles.

Every time she took on her guise as a swan, she found it harder and harder to resist the caressing voices in her head, promising her so much, so much power.

How much harder must it be to fight those impulses when your familiar is a wolf?

*

Chapter 3

Hidden beneath the thick veil of low-lying mist, the fleet of small ships was far harder to find than any island.

Fortunately, as they’d promised earlier, each dragon head was calling out to her in a song not unlike that of the whales.

It whistled through the reeds like a stiffly unrelenting wind. It reverberated and echoed off the firmer slices of land.

Gytha swopped low once more, only this time she was instantly enveloped by the damp, motionless mist. Completely sightless, she was now entirely dependent on the song to serve as her guide.

The muddy waters flashing beneath her at great speed were so close she could have landed on them with nothing more than a flick of her wings. A filthy brown, the waters offered back no reflection, no sense of refreshment and replenishment.

They rippled still with the coils of serpents rushing about their own business.

Ahead, the first of the dragon heads abruptly emerged from the mist.

‘Hail Princess Gytha!’ the dragoness called out, obviously recognising the girl despite her transposed form. ‘I’m glad to see your safe return!’

‘Good morning Thorgerd!’ Gytha gleefully cried back, preparing to rise up, to closely skim past the