Ann Chatham

Make a donation

Click the PayPal button to sponsor Ann Chatham by making a donation to Clarion West:

Excerpt

I was eight years old when the king’s son came. It was Martha’s day home, so Mother laid the bread to rise and wiped her hands in her apron when we heard the knocking. I watched from the kitchen doorway as she unbolted the big front door and so I saw how the man in the fur trimmed cloak looked at our house, as if we were living in a chicken yard. He didn’t look that way at Mother, though.

Ned came up then and gripped my skirts with a hard little tug because he wasn’t too steady yet when he tried to stand still, and we watched the man telling Mother to come away with him. He stood there in the middle of our front room and said a lot of fancy words that only Mother understood, and she stared at him with her face pale and angry and her floury hands as tight in her apron as Ned’s was on my skirt, but she didn’t argue. It wasn’t until she nodded without saying anything and turned to us that I saw there were soldiers standing outside the open door.

She came to us and knelt down to kiss Ned and brush the hair back from face, and then she put her hands on my shoulders and gripped hard. “I have to go now,” she told me. “Put the bread to bake, and look after Ned and your father for me, love.”

“Don’t go,” I said, knowing already that she did not want to, and that I couldn’t stop her.

She shook my shoulders gently, and then let go. “I must. You can’t say no to a king’s son, Meg.”

Bio

Writer, crafter, naturalist. Fan of Write-a-thons and other external motivations. I have no actual affiliation with Clarion West, but I wish I'd known such things existed a decade ago.

Publications

At present I have a couple of short stories that can be found at Daily Science Fiction and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.


Writing Goals

My writing goal is at least 1,000 words per day or two to three hours of revisions


Website

thanate.dreamwidth.org


Back to the main Write-a-thon page.