Echoes in a Hollow Space

1. Let me Thread you a story…(1-24)
2. Rikiki Rocks, just outside town in the Rokoko Valley, is a special place.
3. The stones there have all kinds of fantastical shapes. There’s Old Man Mammoth, a massive piece of elephantine-shaped granite.
4. And Donut Rock, a modern name for a big circular thing with a hole in the middle. Local tradition says if a woman wishes to conceive,
5. she should pass through the hole in that rock under the light of the full moon. That’s why it’s also known as Mother Rock.
6. There’s many another fanciful shape with fanciful traditions, and I could spend days describing them all. Maybe I will someday.
7. But one thing to know about Rikiki Rocks is that sometime in the way back when somebody carved pictographs on ‘em.
8. These pictures show warriors, hunters, shamans, prey animals and such like. Some have red ochre added to the grooves.
9. Folks do say as how these rocks are sacred to the local Kintache Indians. Yaku Ravenwing, the Kintache story shaman, agrees.
10. Yaku’s legal name is Arturo, but nobody ever calls him that. Yaku means “blue tongue” in Kintache and he really can talk a blue streak.
11. One time when he was storytelling at a Kintache powwow, some folks swore they saw blue flames sprouting from his mouth.
12. Like any good narrator, Yaku swears his stories are mostly true so when he says Rikiki Rocks are not to be messed with, people listen.
13. No one in Portalville would ever desecrate them, but we do get the occasional drive-by tourist that can’t help themselves.
14. Yaku tells about two such good ol’ boys driving through from Talladega on their way to California.
15. They took a rest break at Daisy Mae’s Snack-a-Round out on Route 40. She had a picture of Rikiki Rocks behind the bar.
16. These boys asked about ‘em and Daisy Mae all innocently said how proud people were of ’em in these parts.
17. Well, you know, the devil is in some folks, and that ain’t no lie, no matter what else may be a story, no matter what else you believe.
18. These boys got a notion to go out to those rocks and add their names to ‘em. Stopped by Pedergreen’s Hardware for spray paint & chisels.
19. Way Yaku tells it, when they got to the rocks weren’t another human around ‘cept the hunters, shamans & warriors on the pictographs.
20. Guess they didn’t notice the sasquatch taking a rest beside The Bigtoes, some Rikikis shaped like 5 giant toes sticking out of the sand.
21. Sasquatch don’t usually get involved in human affairs, but those rocks is sacred to them, too. Yaku says Sasquatch took care of things.
22. Sheriff Limonada found the boys’ car abandoned near the Rikikis but didn’t never find a trace of them boys.
23. So I asked Yaku how he knew the sasquatch took care of them boys if nobody else was around?
24. He just grinned his big ol’ grin. “Sasquatch told me, of course.” Weren’t but a trace of blue flame & smoke on his lips when he said it. 

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.
 
You can read the entire Portalville saga (so far) at  https://pjthompson.dreamwidth.org/1672524.html

This story can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

This story can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me thread you a story…(1-20)
2. Sheriff Rosa Limonada came to us by way of Texarkana where she worked as a deputy in a little town named Spoot.
3. The sheriff she worked for had nothing but high praise for her. Said she was the crucial factor in solving their La Llorona murder case.
4. She’s fit in well in Portalville and been a fine sheriff to us. She has this special power to quell magic. Mostly, she doesn’t use it.
5. But if somebody is behaving bad magically, the sheriff can hawk up a metaphorical anti-magic spitball and launch it into their face.
6. Do no harm is taken seriously ‘round these parts, and the sheriff enforces it—in the nicest possible way.
7. If some of the young ‘uns get a little too rowdy with their mischief spells on a Saturday night, Sheriff Limonada knows how to calm ‘em.
8. She’s mostly live and let live when it comes to magical working. If you do no harm, you’ll never hear from her.
9. Most folks do as they will and harm none, but once in awhile someone gets out of hand or really full of themselves and needs quelling.
10. Mostly, though, the sheriff uses her powers for the more sinister characters that slip into town.
11. The last one was a skinwalker straight out of Uintah County in Utah. Was bothering folks’ cattle something fierce.
12. Borrowing folks’ faces, too, and walking around like it owned the town. When it took the form of Mayor Begay the sheriff took action.
13. Like a scene from one of them Old West movies, with the skinwalker standing at one end of Main Street, the sheriff at the other.
14. The skinwalker reached out its hand, fit to steal the sheriff’s face or soul, and Sheriff Limonada drew her gun.
15. The skinwalker laughed, a sound like rocks grinding together, cuz skinwalkers can’t be harmed by bullets.
16. But the sheriff marshalled her resources and yelled, “Kapow!” at the thing as she launched her anti-magic.
17. The skinwalker’s laugh turned to a shriek like ice ripping through a steel hull and it disappeared in a fiery ball.
18. Took a helluva lot out of the sheriff, all that energy, but the critter ain’t never been back, so Sheriff Limonada did a real good job.
19. She said it made an interesting change from wrangling drunks and setting up speed traps.
20. All things considered, though, she hopes she doesn’t have to face one again soon.

This story can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

1. Let me Thread you a story… (1-11)
2. A big orange blob parked itself in the town square. Just appeared overnight and plugged up the fountain something fierce.
3. Trapper Bruce poked it with a stick & it blatted something that sounded like “Sad!” then barfed chicken fat out of one of its orifices.
4. Sheriff Limonada suggested taking a flamethrower to it, but nobody had one of those, so a mob with torches formed up.
5. I don’t really hold with mobs carrying torches myself as many an innocent creature has been declared a monster by them.
6. But this blob gave off a foul odor of corruption & kept getting bigger, spreading all over the fountain and the park benches around it.
7. It exploded soon as the first torch hit it. Guess it wasn’t much more than a giant gasbag filled with grease. Burned real good.
8. The fountain ain’t never going to be the same, though. The nymphs who frequented it have been debauched & are quite traumatized.
9. They had to go to Aunt Cozy’s Soothin’ Shack for some deep soothin’. Don’t know if they’ll ever return to the fountain.
10. Only one happy about the situation was Natty Knowles who owns Spic n’ Span Like It Never Happened Cleaning Service.
11. One of his biggest jobs in recent memory. I hope we’re all done with explosive orange blobs.

These tales can also be found on Twitter: @downportalville

1. Let me Thread you a story… (1-12)
2. Ned Riskom said as how he’d seen a leshy down Woodward Lane way. He’s usually sober as a church mouse. Not like him to spread tall tales.
3. Then again he did once say as how he’d met the Queen of Sheba coming out of Bar-Bar’s Ice Cream Parlor & that sounded a bit off the mark.
4. Bar-Bar herself didn’t mention the Queen. Then again, Bar-Bar once served a cone to Vice President Gilroy and didn’t know him from Adam.
5. Vice President Gilroy allowed as how he’d never tasted finer rocky road in his life. Nice man. Him and his puppy, Adam.
6. We’re always glad when Big People come through to visit us Little People. Makes us know we’re not totally alone out here on the fringe.
7. So, back to Ned’s leshy. Trapper Bruce went down there to check things out but Woodward Lane can sometimes be downright weird.
8. By the time Bruce got there, the elms had crossed the lane to have words with the oaks and there was an all-out tree war going on.
9. ‘Spose one of them tree-shaper leshies could have had something to do with that, if more than one of them was walking Woodward Lane.
10. I hear they fight to protect their territory. And they can take the shape of anything. Nobody remembers elms on Woodward Lane before.
11. Bruce hightailed it out of there cuz the branches was flying like javelins & he didn’t fancy getting impaled for somebody’s else’s war.
12. Ain’t none of us worked up the nerve to go down thattaway to see how the chips have fallen. Like I said, Woodward Lane is weird.

These tales can also be found on Twitter: @downportalville

"I know that the whitethorn is always associated with the sioga.* That's why 'tis called the fairy tree. But 'tis the lone whitethorn in the middle of a field that's the dangerous one. There was a reason why that was left there, you see. No one but a fool would interfere with that.

"I s'pose, if a fairy is molested, if you go tampering or meddling with 'em, well, they'll retaliate. 'Tis only kind o' natural, retaliation when you're interfered with. Nearly everyone in Ireland is aware that it isn't the done thing. Was never the done thing. The most ignorant people in Ireland, people that were illiterate, wouldn't bring a thorn out o' them forts."**

"Country people...would laugh....' 'Tis only children believe in them old stories, that old kind o' nonsense.'

"And yet, later that same night, in the pub, when all the laughing and mocking is done, the serious talk will begin, hesitant at first, then more freely, until at last, many pints of Guinness later, even those who mocked earlier in the night will finally—and not for the first or last time—admit that, yes, 'There's something there, all right. Petey (or Johnny, or Paddy or whoever) is not liar, whatever else he is.'

"And in such unpromising companies, by not retreating from impending scorn, ridicule, I have very often come away with a completely different knowledge of people I thought I knew before.

"And such confrontations have, I think, brought to the surface for some of those mockers, too, something deep, something that may have been forgotten in our hurly-burly world of 'acquire, have, experience, spend'...a lifting of a corner of that veil that separates us from a world that is right beside us, but for most of us as far away as Heaven...or Hell! "