John C. Wright's Journal

Christmas reading by our Friendly Neighborhood Christmas Celt!
NATIVITY by John C Wright

This is a A Tale for Christmas Day. It was first published in THE BOOK OF FEASTS AND SEASONS — Tales Inspired by Feasts and Fasts of the Calendar published by Castalia House (November, 2014).

Nativity

“Mr. Went, if you could visit anyone in the world, any time, any place, who would you go see? Oh, not for a long time. Long visits are never permitted. But just for a moment, just for an embrace, a long look, no longer?”

His words were not in English, and I did not speak any modern Romance tongues, but he must have been a priest or a scholar, because he and I could make ourselves understood to each other in Latin and in Greek, two living men with two dead languages in common.

I was not sure where I was. The streets in these ancient cities are narrow and crooked, and they don’t put the names on street signs.

The stranger in the top hat and long coat did not linger to hear an answer. Now he paused to listen to some children singing carols — I remember they sang O Come Emmanuel, but the words were not in English — while waiting for me to climb the alley. I had stopped.

It was not that I was tired, it was just that I was used to the broad and flat streets of the Midwest, so, to me, the sight of a cobblestone street turning into broad stairs for part of its climb was a novelty. It was, no doubt, a street older than my whole nation.

I wanted to make a comment to my wife, but she, of course, was not there. In my pocket was a small Christmas gift for her, wrapped in gold paper. I had put it in the pocket of the dark and formal coat I donned for the funeral. I had intended to leave it at the grave, but the idea of bright, cheery, frivolous colors of wrapping paper beneath the granite headstone, on the darkness of the newly-turned earth, seemed unbearably hateful to me.

And I still wanted to make a comment to her, share my thoughts, share my life. And I could not. So I had paused, wrestling with the aching emptiness inside me.

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This vignette also appears in THE BOOK OF FEASTS AND SEASONS Tales Inspired by Feasts and Fasts of the Calendar, Castalia House (November, 2014). It was first published in Dappled Things, Mary Queen of Angels, web publication, (2009 issue). 

Not quite science fiction, but not mainstream either. 

On the People’s Business

By John C. Wright

I was passing through one of the poorer sections of the country, going toward the capital.

Travel was difficult. There was occasional rail service, and overloaded trains (their roofs overhung dangerously with half-naked children, calm-faced mothers bent beneath drooping bundles) clattered their smoky way through narrow cuts and under stunted bridges—but no buses were running. To go from one tattered train station to another, one walked or hitch-hiked. Despite the recent violence here, people with cars (Europeans, shop owners, or Party Members) nearly always stopped, and nearly always made a detour if you were in need.

A man who owned a laundry drove me all the way to the train station, rushing with mad haste across rutted and potholed roads, chatting and laughing the whole time. In return I paid the overweight guards at the checkpoints their bribes. I gave him my bottle of aspirin for his sick wife: he seemed to think all Europeans were doctors. Despite the desperate poverty of the land, the people seemed cheerful, full of life. To my human eyes, there was nothing to condemn.

I first noticed the angel across the platform when I went in to buy my ticket. Admittedly, the sight made me nervous.

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Razorfist on Sargon of Akkad’s gag order from Patreon.

Before you ask, yes, I am looking into alternative funding platforms. I don’t want to give these people another dime, much less a cut of the money donated freely by generous patrons.