More Bev Cooke

If you enjoyed Bev’s guest blog entries last week, check out the first chapter (and a glowing review) of her book, Feral, here.

And on Bev’s blog today are some pictures of Gidget, one of her cats.

The End

Well, I hoped you liked the stories of my adventures. I had fun writing them, and Minou sat on my desk most of the time I was posting, overseeing my work and demanding his time in my office chair.

For real? Well, Minou really does have a folded over ear - it was the result of an operation when he was younger, for an infected ear, and the vet messed up a bit. It looks really cute, honestly, and he knows it. And I have looked for the pictures, but somebody has borrowed the CDs they’re on and I can’t find them. So you’ll just have to pop over to my blog and take a look at the only one I could find! Everything I said in the first post was definitely true. Except (maybe) the bit about being a recluse upIsland.

The rest? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not telling.

I enjoyed my time here almost as much as I enjoy writing - so check out my books: Feral, coming from Orca in April; Keeper of the Light, out from Conciliar Press now, and Royal Monastic, due out in August, also from Conciliar.

And hey, I just got a new idea for an outhouse - the Ninja Turtles outhouse. I can’t wait to start digging!

Narrow Escapes

Those Ninja guys might be strong and quick about getting out of ropes and locked rooms, but they sure aren’t smart. They took me away, tied Gidget, Minou and me up, stuck us in the trunk of a car and put us in the room I’d put them in. I could see how they escaped - they’re great lockpicks, I’ll say that for them, and they can hide drills like nobody’s business. And they took the time to boobytrap the place I’d put them.

So here we were, Gidget, Minou and me, all tied up - trussed like a Christmas turkey is the expression, with lead weights on our feet, hands and backs. A bare room - nothing in it but grey smooth concrete walls, floor and ceiling. A rectangular crack where the door is, with no locks showing (but now there was a big spot of new cement where they’d chipped the concrete away to get to the lock, and then refilled it. Neat and tidy, they are, but not smart.) So we’re lying on the cold concrete floor, and Minou is plenty miffed, I’ll tell you. Not only did they take him away from his dinner, but they ruffled his fur all over the place while they tied him up, and they made fun of his turned over ear. Little did they know! That’s when the seawater started seeping in from the walls. It ran down the grey cement, making interesting ribbons and trails of darker grey, and it smelled of kelp and salt and iodine. For a long time, all that happened was that the walls and floor darkened down as the water seeped into the concrete and made it wet. Then the water started puddling on the floor. First in the corners, and then the puddles started growing. At the same time, the seeping increased - it was a flow - a little flow, granted, but we could see the water trickling down the walls, and the puddles were growing faster. It wouldn’t be long before they joined up and we’d be lying in icy cold seawater.

Gidget went ballistic - she hates water with a passion and being all tied up wasn’t doing anything for her mood either. Minou growled at her and started twitching his ear. I was trying to stay calm, and see if I could figure out what knots they’d used, and if I could untie them. If I was very lucky, which was unlikely at this point, they’d have used the Witches Conundrum, and if it’s done right, it’s impossible to get out of (because the more you try to loosen it, the tighter it gets) Gidget eventually calmed down and started rubbing her bonds against the concrete - it wasn’t totally smooth, and she might be able to wear the rope through (one of the advantages of politically and ecologically correct Ninjas is that they won’t use anything but natural fibres, and while hemp rope is strong, it doesn’t stand up to being worn against rough surfaces very well. Not as well as nylon or the other artificial fibres.)

All this took time, and the water kept rising - and it was flowing faster and faster, too. My hands were wet, which made it harder to figure out the knot, and Gidget and Minou climbed up on me to try and stay dry. As the water level rose, I shoved myself up to a sitting position, and then had to kneel in the centre of the floor with the cats perched on my shoulders. Gidget had gotten some of the rope worn, but not enough, and Minou’s ear was tired from all the twitching, so it was looking grim.

The water was at my chin. I shuffled over to the wall, and braced myself against it, then tried to get to my feet. Yeah, if it didn’t work it was just postponing the inevitable, but it gave me a few more minutes to work at the knots. I coughed and shivered - the water was cold, and I was tired and hungry, and it was, at this point, a toss up between hypothermia and drowning. Gidget’s moaning and complaining wasn’t helping my peace of mind, either, let me tell you.

But I kept working. The water rose - from my ribs to my collarbone, to my chin. Finally, I managed to loosen the knots, and I untied the cats. Now this is what I mean about the Ninjas not being smart. Anybody who builds an escape proof room has to know that sooner or later, they might end up in it - so you build in an escape hatch, right? Right. But they hadn’t found it, or even realized that it would be there. Now I had to see if the escape hatch had taken water damage - when I built the place, I sure hadn’t expected it to flood, so . . . we might still be in for the greatest adventure.

I dove under the water, and by feel (have you ever opened your eyes in saltwater? I don’t recommend it), located the escape panel. Sure enough, the water’d seeped into the cover, and it was a real pain to get open. I had to come up for air five or six times. The activity warmed me up, though so the hypothermia wasn’t as much of an issue.

I finally got it open, and we were sucked down into the tunnel, swept along and deposited in the secret hallway of my cabin. I just hoped the Ninja’s weren’t there. It would sort have spoiled the surprise - the cabin was pretty wet when I finally got the door open. But they weren’t. They’d somehow figured out that the plans were under one of the outhouses, and Minou eventually located them at the throne of Henry VIII. Stupid ninja’s! Not gonna put ‘em there. The three of us overpowered them and I buried them in the oldest but still used outhouse of all - the Buffy Room.

I’m back home now, after having moved the plans (they are no longer buried under one of the outhouses), and after a very, very, very long bath involving lots of disinfectant, and another long hot soak with a lot of bubble bath and scented bath gel and shampoo, Minou, Gidget and I are taking a well deserved rest. Tomorrow we’re leaving.

Where? Oh, somewhere.

The Ninja spies

Okay. So they’re gone. Whew! And I’m back at home, with the cats (I’ll try really hard to find the photos tonight). I still don’t know where they were from even though they told me. (The Ninjas, I mean, not the cats. I know where they’re from.) I didn’t believe them. Their accents weren’t right and the way they used the language (not English, something else that I’m not allowed to tell you) told me they weren’t from where they said they were.

So, they came back yesterday and took me outside, walked me down to the beach and made Gidget, Minou and me dig. You ever tried digging in dry sand? Not fun. I mean, I’m used to digging - when I’m up Island (or off Island) I dig for hours a day and my calluses have calluses, but I gotta tell ya, by the time we finished, we’d turned that beach over - there was sand and shells that hadn’t seen the light of day for at least 20 million years, I swear. Found a nice sand dollar, though, and some great beach glass, and a couple of those Japanese fishing floats, and a couple of interesting specimens of seaweed. Beachcombing can be fun! As long as you’re not digging too.

I kept asking them what they wanted, but they just kept telling me I knew and if I didn’t cooperate, I’d find myself in the depths of a dungeon that even Vlad the Impaler wouldn’t have dreamed of. And then they told me that they knew I was the super spy that had stolen the plans to the super secret thing I still can’t tell anyone about, and then they made us dig some more. So that was what they wanted - the plans to the super secret thing.

Don’t know how they found out that I was Super Spy - that secret was supposed to be buried deeper than the Marianas Trench. In fact, I think that the documentation was buried there. Anyway, they never asked me where the stuff was (sorry, I still can’t tell you what it was), but thought they knew. Once they’d given up, we went back to the cabin and they made me cook them dinner, and threatened that if I didn’t tell them where the plans were, they’d torture and kill us all - slowly and painfully. I was pretty scared, so I picked Gidget up and cuddled her, and then Minou jumped up on my lap and demanded equal time. Then they jumped down and demanded to be let out.

I started dinner (spaghetti with a meat sauce that’s been handed down 8 generations) and as I was opening the bottle of wine (Veuve Cliquoet Chianti, 85) the cats came back - all covered with sand and leaves and dirt. I don’t know what they’d been doing, but they sure had fun while they were doing it. I cleaned them off while the wine breathed and the sauce bubbled and the water boiled. I made the Ninja’s prepare the salad.

We had dinner, but I wasn’t allowed to have any of the wine - the greedy Ninja’s drank it all. About an hour after dinner, they all fell asleep, and I tied them up and put them in the car trunk and drove to a secret location. Once I was there, I locked them into a special room and left. Now I’m home. And that adventure is over.

See, what those Ninjas didn’t know was that when you mix the seaweed I found on the beach with some of the leaves that Minou and Gidget brought back in with them (on purpose - while I was petting them, I whispered to them to go out and get the leaves), and put it in wine, it produces a really strong sleeping potion. Those Ninjas are going to sleep for three days.

And they won’t die, either. If they think very hard about it, and they work really hard, they can untie themselves, and the room they’re locked in can be opened, if they are patient and think outside the box. The only trouble is that they’ll have to be able to hold their breaths for a fairly long time. It’s at the bottom of the ocean, off the coast a ways.

Oh, and the secret plans? They’ re buried under one of the outhouses I use. I have several. There’s the Louis XVI, and the Art Deco, and the Elizabethan and the Star Trek and the Matrix and the World War I & II. And those are only the ones I finished. One of my hobbies is decorating outhouses. If those Ninja types want them, they’re gonna have to dig for them. But they don’t know which out house it’s under. Hope they have fun.

Tomorrow I’ll post the pictures of the cats. Promise.

Oh, wait - I hear something! Hang on.

. . .

. . .

Oh, no! They got out! They’re better than I thought - they’re breaking in through the basement. They’ve

The Golden Cats

So, yesterday I said I’d try and post a photo of the cats, but I haven’t found one yet, because you see, I ran away again and am in a secret location up Island (or maybe off Island) where I’m being my other self of the smelly gold prospector. The cats are with me. They like helping me dig for gold. So we are in my run-down ramshackle cabin in the middle of this forest that’s ninety miles from nowhere, except that it’s close to the sea. And in the middle of the night I hear this stealthy rustling sound, and thumps and bangs. Gidget climbs under the covers, and cowers down by my feet. Minou perks up his one ear (he can’t perk up the other one), raises his head and realizes that somebody or something is out there. Figuring he might have a new worshiper or fan, he pads to the door and meows, but the banging and thumping keep going. I’m cowering under the covers, with Gidget - let Minou look after the bear or the raccoon or whatever it is.

Except that I start hearing voices. Now that’s a relief. It’s not a hungry grizzly bear (do they even live around here? I dont’ know!) or a frustrated raccoon who can’t get into my garbage. It’s people. I can talk to people.

So I get up, put my dressing gown on and open the door just as two guys, who were dressed like hi-tech ninjas, and are now dressed like hi-tech ninjas who’ve been mauled by a bear, a ticked off raccoon and about thirty three miles of bush and low slung tree branches burst into my cabin. I’d have yelled at them but they were carrying a lot of what looked like weapons.

Ooops, have to go. The guys are coming back. For hi-tech ninjas, who specialize in silent stuff, they sure make a lot of noise! More later! And I will look for the cat pictures!