I’ve been working on the Cracolnya story, as much as I can–mostly cleaning out the typos and first-draft awkwardness that I usually don’t bother with until later, but work on when stuck.\u00a0\u00a0 And I’ve been visiting various forums where I’m registered but where the old computer system had become incommunicado (“your browser is out of date; please update to the current version…”)\u00a0\u00a0 So there I was on Book Country, where I’ve dabbled in advice to those who ask for help with something, and decided to post a bit of dialogue, as the forum leader suggested people do.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s only fair that you folks get to see it too.<\/p>\n
This is the beginning of the story, and is set in the town where Cracolyna (the family name) grew up.\u00a0\u00a0 He was “Oktar” as a boy, the closest Common-speakers could get to the horsefolk name.<\/em><\/p>\n “Again?” Oktar’s mother glared at him. “Bloody nose, black eye, shirt torn, a complaint from the judicar–you’re a disgrace!”<\/p>\n “They said we were dirty stinking horse–” he paused; the word they’d used was forbidden. “–droppings,” he finished.<\/p>\n “You should ignore them,” his mother said. “They are ill-bred; you should not dirty your hands with them.”<\/p>\n Oktar’s hands, bruised and bloody as well as his nose, were at his sides, half-hidden by his long horsefolk shirt, but he knew she knew.<\/p>\n \u201cWho hit first?” she asked.<\/p>\n “Tam Togirdsson.” He touched his nose.<\/p>\n “And you did not duck away. And you hit him–”<\/p>\n “The others were already hitting me.”<\/p>\n “Well. Come and I will clean your face.”<\/p>\n During that painful process–for she insisted on scrubbing out every raw scratch–Oktar took no heed of her words, but went on thinking how he would get back at Tam and the others. It was not his fault. It had never been his fault. He could not help having a horsefolk name, a horsefolk face, living in the neighborhood where the small group of horsefolk in this town lived clumped together for protection. He’d never stolen anything, but if one of the others stole a fruit from a stand in the market on the way home from the grange, he<\/em> was the one accused. He’d never lied…well, almost never…but he<\/em> was the one called a liar, if another boy wanted to make trouble. Which they mostly did.<\/p>\n “There,” his mother said finally. His face stung with her scrubbing. “And now you will stay inside until your father comes, and he will deal with you. You are beyond a woman’s strength to beat.”<\/p>\n His father. O Mare of Plenty, if his mother would not merely switch him with the horsetail that hung behind the kitchen door…if she actually meant for his father to punish him…he counted up the days in his head. Yes. He was indeed six days past the divide his father had set, and thus…<\/p>\n “You will polish every pot in the kitchen,” his mother said. “And then the floor. And there is no supper for you, until after.”<\/p>\n After what, he dared not ask. Oktar is clearly a boy estranged from his culture of descent, and marginalized in his culture of adoption…the townsfolk have scant respect for the horsefolk beyond their ability to train horses and maanage horses.\u00a0\u00a0 For one thing, they smell different., so they’re considered dirty (and given their habit of sewing themselves into their winter clothes for the winter…yeah.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For another, they spoke a language no one else understood, and learned as little of Common as possible–though Oktar, as a child, has learned Common and rather despises the family members who barely speak it.\u00a0 He has not learned any more of the horsefolk language than he had to.\u00a0\u00a0 He is very different from the adult Captain Cracolnya, who has made a success of himself in the Duke’s Company, speaks all the languages he needs fluently (including a fair bit of Pargunese),\u00a0 and is considered a fine upstanding member of the Company, the equal of other captains.\u00a0 Except, to me, he always seemed a little remote…withholding himself and his backstory and his ambitions, if any.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first hint of those was his one snappish remark to Arcolin (startled Arcolin, too…it was not typical of Cracolnya.)\u00a0\u00a0 It was a hint to the writer that maybe, at last, this character was willing to have a story told.<\/p>\n When I decided to look back into his life, beyond adulthood, to see if I could figure him out, the angry youngster burst out immediately.\u00a0\u00a0 Angry, frustrated, seeing no good future for himself, resentful of his family for putting him in an impossible situation (as he sees it) , refusing to be either a good horsefolk son or a good townsfolk boy.\u00a0\u00a0 He doesn’t even ride a horse.\u00a0 Yet.\u00a0 About to become a major liability to the horsefolk community in that town, and to himself.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m beginning to find out more about the family–the grandfather who was kicked out of his tribe for being a source of bad luck (he has a withered arm caused by…something, I can’t yet see it…that convinced the tribe he had to go.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He took his son and his son’s pledged bride with him.\u00a0 Grandfather is the very conservative, old line horsefolk guy…he knows all the culture, speaks the secret language of horses,\u00a0 and though he had to make the move, he has never given in a fingersbreadth to townsfolk ways beyond absolute necessity.\u00a0\u00a0 Oktar’s parents are the bridge generation–they learned the local language, though with an accent; they get along as well as horsefolk can with the townsfolk; they sent Oktar to the grange with other kids in the hopes he would fit in.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are 8-10 horsefolk-related families living in the same small neighborhood,\u00a0 assimilated in varying degrees.\u00a0 But they all “look like horsefolk”\u00a0 to the townsfolk and are–like it or not–socially isolated.\u00a0\u00a0 Besides the look and the smells, townsfolk believe that horsefolk’s secret horse language allows them to control others’ horses, including make them act up (thus needing a trainer’s services) and stealing them away.<\/p>\n The story…wants to be a story (which is good) and the young Oktar Cracolnya is a viable character.\u00a0 But.\u00a0 This was intended to be a novella, something 30K or less, to be a bit of backstory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And I’m 43oo words into it and have covered only three days.\u00a0 The story needs to cover a quarter to a half year, and by extrapolation…either I leave out a lot, or it’s going to be a lot longer than 30K.\u00a0\u00a0 So far, the kid’s been purged, stuck on a horse led by his grandfather, and taken out of town before dawn.\u00a0 He has no idea where he’s going or even where he is (by the time he can see any distance, they’re out of sight of the town.)\u00a0 He’s fallen off, gotten wet, discovered that grandpa expects him to survive on a handful of raw oats once a day, fallen off again, been hailed on by a storm he’s afraid his grandfather called down to punish him.\u00a0 He’s sore, hungry, scared, miserable…but he’s not thinking about how to get back at the gang of boys who beat him up.\u00a0\u00a0 He has more pressing problems.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Out here, knowing the secret horse language can save your life, but he’s ignored everything grandpa tried to teach him, until now.\u00a0\u00a0 The horses–the one he’s riding and grandpa’s–listen to grandpa, who says that Oktar would know if he only listened.<\/p>\n I know some of what’s coming, but not all of it.\u00a0 It feels bigger than a novella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been working on the Cracolnya story, as much as I can–mostly cleaning out the typos and first-draft awkwardness that I usually don’t bother with until later, but work on when stuck.\u00a0\u00a0 And I’ve been visiting various forums where I’m registered but where the old computer system had become incommunicado (“your browser is out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-2279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snippet","tag-snippet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2280,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions\/2280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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