CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002430
THE DINNER DANCE MURIEL AND HAIL
A sudden vision of Hail and herself with a tribe of red haired hellions caused her to burst out laughing.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002440
JOAN, BREVE, NELL, ERIK, MAYBLOSSOM
“You have to be Folk now, especially for Breve who will grow up Folk.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002450
EVE DINNER AND THE DANCE
Will insisted Pearl dance with him. “To make up for deceiving me,” he explained with a chuckle.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002360
RAQUEL (20) APPRENTICE SEAMSTER
“It’s a pleasure to be sure,” said Iris, “but I’ve had eight and it can sometimes be overratet.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002370
BENJAMIN (42) + IAN (14)
Benjamin had always wished to be a craftsman.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002380
PHŒBE (45) SMOCKER
One thing she excelled at was looking after a man in bed.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002350
NIGEL (32) PROTÉGÉ

Dabchick laught, and said, “That’s the most oblique way of saying I’ve big breasts I have ever hearet.”

Campion laught too, and said, “It’s not enough to have them. You have to know how to deploy them too, and I have no worries there.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002300
CATHERINE (39) LÆRER DAIRY CRAFTER
“Do you have any others, Mistress, besides the one you carry under your heart?”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002310
WINIFRED (33) SOAP CRAFTER
“Unless you can guarantee someone who won’t sleep with my mother I’m not interested.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002320
DOMINIQUE (38) SEAMSTER
Dominique had protested as the swell of her large breasts crested the bib top

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002330
FERDINAND (47) WOODWORKER
Ferdinand was forty-seven with two failed marriages behind him.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002270
AFTERNOON MURIEL (26) HORSE TACK MAKER
She considered it to be a pity Gavin was gay and in a stable relationship.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002280
RAQUEL (20) LÆRER SEAMSTER
The day she left school she left home. She didn’t bother to tell her mother

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002290
GRACE (26) KEEP COOK
She didn’t realise how desperate the kitchens were to recruit crafters of any level of ability.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002200
GINA (36) DAIRY MANAGER
“What! You want a lecture on what I know of milk and what I have done with it‽” asked Gina.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002210
REDHEAD WITH NO NAME (15) HURDLE MAKER
I want to marry. You’re going to tell me it’s very cold out there and without a placement I shall die. Is that it? May I leave now?”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002220
JESSICA (16) BEE KEEPER AND CANDLER
A long time ago a famous bee keeper said, “Bee keeping is best left to the experts: the bees.”

“I always collected wild vegetables to eat. Milk thistle and the like. They used to be eaten in this country too before folk got wealthy and started calling them weeds. Back home a lot of folk can only dream about being what folk over here call poor. I’ve always collected road kill. It’s just cheap meat and Vince the Mince(3) saves all sorts for me. Stuff other folk won’t eat or stuff he has to spend time on to sell, Breast of lamb, trotters, heads, shin beef and oxtail before some idiot celebrity chef told every one they were good to eat and the price went through the damned roof. Sweetbreads and other offal, he’d just sell to me cheap rather than having to do anything with them. I never told Elle’s mum she was eating sheep head pie just said it was mutton, that sort of thing.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002120
JANET (63) SEAMSTRESS
“Make your decision, you have ten heart beats, the orgy or the men at the camp.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002130
VINCENT (45) LATHE LAST MAKER
“Were I seeking a man I should have maekt sure of him before he left this chamber.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002140
DOUGLAS (52) MOONSHINER
“Would you like to organise a whisky making arrangement as a trial?”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002150
ALEC (60) WELL DIGGER
“Alice is a good woman, but she’s met her match in Alec.”

I’m Anna, a conjoined twin with my sister Anna, but her name is mine spelt backwards.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002040
RELIGION - HAWS AND WHORES, MYLAR (28)

“It was as if he had hit a cobb’s web, and the man must have been dead before he hit the floor. Brock telt me he didn’t mean to kill him, he was going to braek his arm so he couldn’t hurt Lianna any more, but the man movt and taekt the blow at the base of his neck.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002010
BROOK AND HARRIER, CHERRY (8L) & ABBY (5)
Harrier knew Brook loved their boys, but naytheless, she desperately wished a daughter.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002020
SELENA (22) BORAGE (10L)
She had agreed to nurse a little boy estimated to be ten lunes old and recently named Borage.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00002030
GROWING UP FIONA (14) FERGAL (14)
At twelve she was three-quarters of a foot taller than any of her peers and bothered by her size.
WARNING Sexually explicit.

“Holy Mary mother of God!” gasped Pat as he downed Sasha’s Bulgarian spirit which was stamped Plum Slivovitz over the label. “That makes Sean’s poteen seem positively refined and ladylike.”

The others seemed to be in agreement and Sasha asked, “I take it then if I get the offer of any more I accept?”

“God yes,” said Gerry. “Just not too often. I really don’t want to get used enough to it to say I like it.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001450
IF THEY WERE MINE I SHOULD - GEORGE (12)
Neither Mari nor Ford nor indeed any other had suspected Minxie was pregnant, and George explained, “There’s just a little bit more of her, just here. Isn’t there, girl?”
.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001500
THE CRUIT - MORGELLE (13)
“Tune it, Morgelle, and play something for me, aught, aught at all. I have never hearet it playt.”
.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001550
NO NEED FOR POLICEMEN - LUKE (34)
“You will not be able to attract a woman of the Folk if you are not prepaert to be a father to her children, or at least have children with her.”
.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001600
PROBABLY AT SCHOOL - ERIN (34)
Looking at herself in the mirror, for the first time in years she felt at peace with herself.

.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001400
DIFFERENT PLACES, DIFFERENT TIMES
AFTERNOON - WAVERLEY (11)

Late one Saturday night in the new year, Jonnie had been working, and Mr. E. was taking him back to the hostel when he heard over the radio, “Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite! Yanky forty-six is in front of the Square Edward and one of the bros has a knife at his throat. Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite! Yanky forty-six is in front of the Square Edward and one of the bros has a knife at his throat.” He knew dynamite was the drives’ emergency call for help, though he had never heard it in use before, and wondered what was going to happen, if anything.

WARNING – This is a disturbing account of child abuse. It is based on a reality many would prefer to pretend didn’t exist. The language used in this chapter is the language that would have been familiar to and used by Waverley which is very different from that used by Bling and Suzie in the last chapter.

The Minehead ambassador was blunt. ‘Hand over our citizen’s sperm in perfect condition or the catalysts won’t be arriving at all.’

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001150
THE ANGEL OF DEADTH
AFTERNOON - INCOMER CAMP - KYLE (29)

That’s how it works here, you help us, we help you, you hurt us, we kill you. It’s simple, straight forward and easy to understand.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00001100
THOMAS SPAEKS – 0001100
AFTERNOON - INCOMER CAMP
“Better to let my staff kill them now, Thomas. It’ll be less trouble at the far end of it.”
~o~O~o~

NOBODY’S FOOLS – 00001120
AFTERNOON - MERCEDES (29)
She hurried there with her feet barely touching the ground, her heart was singing for the sheer joy of being alive.
~o~O~o~

THE MILKING OF THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS – 00001135
AFTERNOON LLYLLABETT (38) AND YOOMARRIANNA (42)
“Look at those poor animals, Yoo. That’s wicked. They must be in terrible pain. This is not a good place we have come to.”

“Her conversation was curiously, completely literal. All figures of speech, metaphors and use of idiom went completely over her head, and she never used any. I know she only read non-fiction and not much of that deeming most non-fiction to be implausible. She described newspapers as lies and fantasy and didn’t read them. I never saw her reading any of the magazines in the waiting room here. I know she’d never been to the cinema nor a stage production, and perhaps most curious of all that she said she had hated listening to stories as a girl. That was the only time she ever referred to her life as a child.”

This tale was inspired by a comment made by ‘Outsider’. Thank you, Dave.

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00000700
PREGNANT WITH ATTITUDE
HELEN AND THE CAMP (28)

“You are mothers to be.” Gosellyn had explained, “To the Folk, both you and your unbirtht are precious. Don’t be surpriest if you receive an offer of marriage from someone you have never met before, and don’t reject it out of hand. Say you will consider it, and then have spaech with one of us or a member of the Master at arms office if you need advice. We have a lot of men who loes their wife to the fevers a year over. Their year of mourning is now over, and many are seeking a wife and a mother for their children. Your pregnancy makes you very attractive and desirable as a wife to our men, and you will be well come to their families, kin, clan and kith. The Folk value a mother and her children.”

CASTLE THE SERIES – 00000650
KILLED WITH A SPADE
INCURSION AND FORENOON LLYLLABETT (38) AND YOOMARRIANNA (42)

Yoomarrianna heard her screams and ran to the barn to see his wife struggling on the ground as a stranger was attempting to rip her clothes off. He picked up the nearest tool to hand, a spade he used for chopping fodder beet which was as sharp as a razor on all three edges after his morning’s work sharpening tools, and hit the man with it’s edge in the middle of his back. Llyllabette’s struggles pushed the screaming man off her and Yoomarrianna hit him again with the spade.

CASTLE THE SERIES - 00000600
THIS ISN’T THE HOSPITAL IS IT?
INCURSION AND FORENOON - MERCEDES (29)

By this time, Mercedes was so disconnected from the world she rarely did more than sit in the empty flat staring at nothing. She had tried to explain how she felt and why to her doctor, but he barely listened and told her she was suffering from depression. He’d prescribed her tablets saying, “These will help you to cope.” There was nobody she wished to speak to, and nothing she wished to do. The tablets, when she took them, disconnected her even further from the world. Eventually, she stopped taking the tablets and could no longer be bothered to eat. She would have died, but for the chance visit of an old acquaintance who called an ambulance. She had been a patient in the psychiatric hospital for four months when she awoke on Castle.

CASTLE THE SERIES - HUNTERS OF THE FAR NORTH - 00000550
THE FELL PRINCIPLE

28th of Towin Day 1

Chaunter beckoned Waxwing over to her and asked quietly, looking across the cabin at Flame staring at naught, “How is she?”
Waxwing was the closest they had to a healer, she’d had the emergency healing training, but she was no more skilled to deal with Flame than the others. “She has fully recovert from the deepcaltth, but she is still too deeply shockt by the loss of Irune to be reacht yet. Perchance, Gosellyn or Campion could reach her but…” Waxwing’s words trailed off as she thought of Flame, the young woman who had only just reached agreement with her wife Irune on the voyage north and who had lost her love within a tenner. “Ceël keeps spaeking to her. Neither of us is sure how much contact is being maekt, but Ceël keeps spaeking of Irune’s children and how much they will need her. Her eyes flicker when she hears the names of the children, but that is the only sign of contact so far.”

CASTLE THE SERIES - INCURSION 568 - 00000500
TEN BELOW
DAY 1 - THE INCURSION OCCURRED AT 11:46 LASTNIGHT 27th of Towin

.

Three hundred or so persons from various places and times on Earth arrive on Castle, and they must begin life anew or die.

Though there are numerous prequels and pages of explanation in my manuscript that occur before this, Hwijje and Travisher and First Incursion were examples of prequel chapters and I am currently working to make the explanations suitable for posting, this is where the series begins. Marcy, chapters 1-6, was posted out of order, early, in order to provide some story first, so that the explanations make sense, even though it would be done the other way around in printed format.

Where necessary or possibly helpful to some, there are notes at the end on word usage.

CASTLE THE SERIES - 00000015

The story starts in the year 568 after the Fell Year and these 10,000 words or so are not essential reading to enjoy, if you so do, the story. However, much is clearer if you have read them, for they explain what the Folk know of themselves, and to some extent how they think. They also explain some of their history and the structure of the castle they know as the Keep and their nearby settlements. If the language is difficult you have my sympathies, but I’m not going to change it.

I have provided explanations of word usage at the end and will continue to do so as long as I keep posting. If I get that far I shall post the more technical appendices later, things such as the linguistic conventions that govern the language (and the irregular forms), the calendar, tables of sunrise etc., and if I can work out how to do it the maps and schematics for the Keep too. If you don’t like it, and it is a matter of taste, all I can suggest is that you read something else. However, constructive criticism and suggestions are welcome. I may ignore them, but naytheless they are welcome.