Guest Post: Mannah Pierce
Title: Cast Adrift
Author: Mannah Pierce
Published: May 8, 2015
Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
Buy Links for Cast Adrift and Foothold
Link to author's page:
www.mannahpierce.com
I would like to
thank Autumn for inviting me to post on her site. I have written an
‘omake’ – a short scene that is not included my novel Cast
Adrift or its sequel Foothold but
which features one the characters.
Tart
by Mannah Pierce
Ean was helping
Granny Mary make apple tarts. These days that meant Granny Mary sat
in her rocking chair and issued instructions that Ean no longer
needed. Ean was fine with that. It was difficult for Granny Mary
since her eyesight been had become blurred by cataracts and her hands
had been twisted by arthritis. The least he could do was be her eyes
and hands to make the apple tarts that everyone at Madame Lucy’s so
enjoyed.
He wished he could
do more; get rid of her cataracts and buy her painkillers that worked
better than willow bark tea. Neither was going to happen. On Nova
Tremaine only the wealthy had access to operations and apothecaries.
Granny Mary would become less and less mobile, less and less useful,
until she was carried off by some infection or decided that her life
was no longer worth living and overdosed on laudanum. Then she would
be buried in the small orchard with Ean’s mother and all the others
going back to Madame Lucy herself.
Ean hoped Granny
Mary didn’t go senile, like Granny Una had. He did not think he
could bear that. Granny Mary had always been so sharp. It had been
Granny Mary who had insisted that his birth be registered and that he
go to school, even though that had meant paying the registrar and
finding the five pennies a day for the teacher.
At fourteen, Ean now
knew that registering his birth had been critical. Babies like him,
born out of wedlock, were never registered by the mother. They
vanished. The luckiest babies were claimed by childless couples and
passed off as their own children. Next best was being left at the
orphanage. Then there were the men who bought children, even
newborns; Ean shuddered to think what happened to those babies.
Perhaps the women who hid their pregnancies, smothered their babies
and buried them were better mothers than the ones who allowed their
babies to be sold.
Ean knew that the
couple who lived in the blue house over the hill had wanted him. He
wished he didn’t, but once you knew something like that you
couldn’t forget it. His mother had told him when she had taken too
much laudanum. According to her, she had kept him because she had
loved him too much to give him up.
The couple who lived
in the blue house had three children. One was older than Ean and two
younger. Once Ean’s mother had said what she had, Ean understood
why none of the three looked in any way alike and why no one ever
mentioned it.
He could have been
one of those three. One, the boy, had gone onto the Lyceum. There was
talk of him going further, of him going to University.
If his mother had
given Ean to the couple in the blue house, Ean could have studied to
be a teacher instead of being told that it was pointless him taking
the entrance test for the Lyceum because bastards were excluded.
Ean chopped the
apples, threw the chunks into the bowl of salted water and made
himself listen to Amelia, Kate and Ann, who got up earlier than the
other whores. On mornings like this, when Else, the cook, was at the
market, they liked sitting in the kitchen with the grannies.
Usually Ean went to
the market with Else to carry the bags. Today Else had told him to
stay home. Ean had no idea why.
Amelia was talking
about The Spacer, so it was well worth listening. They had never had
a spacer as a john. Ean had never even heard of another spacer
leaving the spacer quarter of the city. He had walked in the day
before and politely asked if he could be with one of the ‘ladies’
for the afternoon. Madame Jan had given him the album but he hadn’t
really looked at it. Instead he had said he wanted someone
experienced, who was kind and willing to listen. Madame Jan had
picked Amelia.
According to Amelia,
The Spacer had taken a bus out of the city because he had wanted to
combine visiting a ‘courtesan’ with walking where there were
trees and grass. Ean tried to ignore all the details; Amelia liked
talking about sex and had no inhibitions, which made her popular with
the johns. In between, Ean learnt that The Spacer’s name was Vic
and that he had been kind.
Ean had managed to
get a glimpse of Vic the Spacer as he had left. He was the tallest
man Ean had ever seen and broad across the shoulders, even for his
height. He had walked really smoothly, in a weird way it had looked
like he was dancing rather than walking.
“He said he would
tell his crewmates about us and one of them might visit,” Amelia
finished. She looked over at Ean, who had finished preparing the
apples and was working on the crumb for the pastry. “Did you hear
that, Ean?”
“I heard,” Ean
confirmed. “I hope anyone who visits is as nice as Spacer Vic.”
Read Cast
Adrift to learn more about Ean. Visit www.mannahpierce.com
to learn more about my imaginary world of the far future where
spacers trade between the stars.
Mannah Pierce has been building her imaginary interstellar world of the far future story by story for four decades. At the age of fifty she decided to try sharing it with readers online and then, five years later, spurred by the diagnosis of a life-limiting illness, she wrote and had published Cast Adrift, her first fiction book.
In the everyday world, Mannah Pierce was a scientist and teacher but now works for a charity. She has been married for over thirty years and, predictably, likes cats.
Read more about her journey as an author: http://www.mannahpierce.com/blog.html.
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