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SALUTATIONS BLOGGER.

Been a while hasn't it?

Yes, I missed you too.

(But now is not the time to weep salting teers over my absence!)

Actually I'm posting with an actual reason, ( I pause respecfully to get you time to compose your surprised expression)

Recently I rented the movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (It's fantastic, I give it five rubber chickens)

Anyway about a week ago I picked up my laptop to do a little fanficking. Needless to say the moving stuck with me so much that I jotted down a little drabble about the hyperthetical of if Quatermain had some illegitimet( not the write spelling, I'm sure) daughter.

And it pretty much snowballed from here...

Here is what I have written so far...

***

My story started, as some do, with a death.

(The problem with this death however is that the person didn't stay so for very long.
But I digress.)

The demise that started it all, was that of my estranged father, the Noted Hunter and England's greatest hero Allan Quartermain, stories of his adventures had captivated English boys (and girls) for years.
Growing up the only things I knew about him were gained from those same stories. Needless to say I adored them.


We lived in Africa for the most part, my mother and I. She was our villages midwife and school teacher to the children that lived there(including myself). Every night, she used to read me from the various volumes I had aqumulated about Allen Quatermain's adventures, ( I couldn't read fluently at the time, still relying on mother to help me with the 'big girl' words).

She did have a beautiful voice though and sometimes (if I were especially good) she would even tell me stories of her own time with Quatermain. Those are the ones I liked the best, at the time I was particularly partial to the one where she, my own mother, had taught him to shoot long range, although I hardly dared believed it.

As a child I used to day-dream about Quatermain coming back to mother and I, whisking us off with him on one of his adventures, perhaps to revisit King Solomons' mines or to take us away to somewhere exotic like Egypt or Australia.

Often when the village got a new visitor I would race down to see them, half convinced it was going to be him, of course each time I was bitterly disappointed.

Actually one of those visitors was an Artist, Peter Helsque. He was old ,balding and slightly surly but always willing to listen, he and I took a liking to each other immediately. I remember he painted the most beautiful water-colour landscapes. I was mesmerized by them, and even in my seven year old ignorance I knew painting was something I wanted to be able to do. Moved by my enthusiasm or rather my ability to sit absolutely still for long periods of time, I was the only person he would paint (much to my youthful pride).

I was very sad to see him leave. One of my most distinct child hood memories is crying into my pillow the night he left, clutching at the small set of water-colours that had been his parting gift. I had cherished it for years.

Shortly after my thirteenth birthday, my mother decided to teach me to shoot, (just as she had taught My father! Needless to say I was ecstatic). I'd been asking for years to be taught, almost ever since I had been told the tale of how Mother had Originally met the Great White Hunter (Catching his eye, by taking out a fleeing Bandit at a thousand yards. 'How romantic' I remember thinking at the time. Admittedly my idea of romance is a little askew, perhaps this is why?)


Though I didn't want to learn because I wanted to kill ( At that point, I used to feint at the sigh of blood, and visibly blanch when I saw the dead carcasses of the various Animals strung up to be stored in our meat safe), I wanted to learn because I knew that Quartermain would be more likely to let me join his adventures if I could make myself useful, and at the time being able to shoot seemed like the way to do it.

It was hard though, at first I was horrible at it. Mother said I had a natural eye for the target, but I tended to rush the shot and forgot about the recoil (Earning myself some nasty bruises in the process). But I was resilient, and by my fortieth I was proficient enough to at least hit my target at a decent range, most of the time.

Although nowhere near the expertise of my mother, ( who to this day remains the best markswoman I have ever seen.) She was also the smartest, kindest, most astoundingly beautiful person I have ever known.

I miss her everyday.
* * *
Our life went along at quite the normal pace, all the while I was growing into a young lady, or so I was told. We had been on trips to England over the years visiting family and the like, (not for very long of course)

My mother missed Africa too much, always eager to get back home she said, which to me always seemed odd. She was born in England it was were she grew up, when I pointed this out, she only said enigmatically 'Ah but home, Dear, is where the heart is'.

To me London always seemed exciting and new, and to be honest next to the hustle and bustle of city life the tedium of the little village where I grew up seemed almost unbearable.

Later that year, seeing my restlessness upon returning to the village my mother proposed that I be enrolled in a finishing school for young girls in England (The very same one she, herself had studied at as a youth) for the purpose of teaching me to be a lady.

Obviously I jumped at the chance. I had just turned fifteen when I left Africa, a wild girl from the dark continent. My mother had visited me every chance she got. Nevertheless I missed her terribly. (And after a month of being in england continually, I longed for home. But I stuck it out determined to become a proper lady,)

I returned to Africa permanently three years later, at 18, every inch a proper English lady, Well not quite - I was a work in progress. But It was getting there.

During my time in England, I took a more pro-active approach to my father, I reasoned that waiting all those years for him to find me hadn't exactly payed off, so I was going to find him. It took me the best parts of two of those years, writing polite but strongly worded letters to various publishers (those whom I knew had anything to do with the Quartermain books) around Europe. Finally I found him.

He had been in Africa, the entire time. For Nine years infact. (And yet never once Visited Mother or I)

My last year in England was spent burying any love I had ever felt for the Great White Hunter, Allen Quartermain.

When I returned home, to Africa, I never spoke of him to mother again. I still drew of course, and took up shooting again, although not hunting. I was never the hunting type.

I'll admit I was somewhat out of practice, but similarly to reading or writing the skill never really leaves you. My mother was ecstatic to have me home, though she looked smaller and more fragile then I remembered. But we were happy.

And then news of Allan Quatermain death was brought to the village. And the adventure that I had so craved for years began.

I accompanied her to the place of his burial, although not to the grave site itself. No, Instead I watched from a safe distance, as the humble funeral took place. Their were few people there, mostly old hunters past their prime and a small group almost all dressed in black. I barely even paid them attention. My mother laid her flowers quietly, mourning him in her own way and left.
That night there was a terrible storm. Worse then I've ever seen, Macumazahn, the headman of our village (and good friend of the family) later remarked that it was not natural.

I barely paid him any attention so pre-occupied was I with my own thoughts. As I, Just like my mother mourned the passing of Allan Quartermain. Though not as a daughter does a father, because he wasn't. No, I mourned his legend, his stories. Because they were all I really knew about him.

Shortly after the storms, Mother fell Ill, Fatally. I tried almost everything to help her, getting the best doctors in from both London and Paris, I don't care to bore you with the gory details but essentially they all said the same thing. That Mother only had a limited time left, she had a horrible fever and was in terrible pain.

Odd though it may seem that for all their qualifications from the most prestigious collages in Europe, it was actually the Shaman from the village over that provided the herbs necessary to alleviate her suffering, although no cure.
Basically all that was left to me was to wait for her to die, all the while I could almost feel my heart breaking.

Not surprisingly, (as she was always a fearless old thing) mother didn't seem particularly worried or afraid, in fact she was her usual laughing bubbling self though I could see her getting visibly thinner everyday.

We had many guests over that week or so, mostly mothers' pervious colleagues come to pay their respects while she was still alive. Which made me realize that I didn't know much about her life before my birth, aside from the parts that involved Quartermain.

After that week was done, and all the visitors had come and gone, the house was quiet And I made my resolve to spend as much time with my mother as possible.
* * *
"Read that last paragraph again, Would you Anna Dear" asked Mother, her voice slightly rasping.

"Of course" I replied, withdrawing my hand from her own, in order to turn back the page, and then subtly slipping it back again,

"So grouped, the curtain calls upon Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Whether it ever rises again depends upon the reception given to the first act of the domestic drama entitled. Little Women" I puzzled over why she liked that particular paragraph so much, or even that particular book. I didn't care for it myself. No, back then I'd have much prefered to curl up with a good Adventure Novel.

Mother leaned back and sighed happily, closing her eyes. I watched her fall into a light slumber stroking her fingers comfortingly as she slept. Her skin pulled slightly taught over her face, making her look almost skull-like.

I felt my chest give a painful throb, a pain I had been feeling increasingly over the past week. Blinking back tears (it wouldn't do to have Mother wake to find me crying), I lay my head on her bed wearily and closed my eyes.

* * *
I must not have been asleep for long before I awoke because it had barely begun to get dark. My legs were stiff from kneeling on the hard floorboards, and as I blinked sleepily in the slight gloom I began to have the strange sensation that something was amiss, not wrong precisely, just out of the ordinary.

As I stood moving my legs slightly in order to get the circulation flowing again, I looked around the room. It doubled as both a study and sitting room. Mother was lying on a plain but comfortable lounge placed opposite the desk and book cases which were the rooms only furnishings.

I noted that it was quiet, extremely quiet. An anomaly in the African Savannah, where some sort of noise can always be heard.

As quickly and quietly as possible, I went to my mothers room and removed her prized hunting rifle(christened Mather after my deceased Grandmother) from her case, she gleamed slightly as I hefted her out of the darkness of her home and into the half-light of the late evening.

I strained my ears for any sound to alert me to an intrusion on our property. I knew that I was being slightly paranoid. And more then likely our visitor ( if there were any at all) would be some sort of larger predatory animal, which in any case meant keeping a weapon on my person would probably be to my (and mothers, of course) best interests.
However it seemed my natural paranoia served me well in this instance, as my straining ears caught the sound of light footsteps on the porch outside, had I not been listening for such a noise I doubt I would have heard it.

My hands shook as I approached the door where I assumed the intruder would try to enter (mother never locked it, as theft was unheard of in our village). My legs felt unusually weak as I readjusted my grip on the rifle (shooting at a painted target on a tree was one thing, while locking pistols with a possibly armed assailant quite another.)

I heard another creak as the person edged slowly and with much stealth towards the door I was but a mere foot away from. My plan at that point was to thrust the rifle threateningly in the face of the intruder as they opened it and demand to know who they were and what their business was, looking back I can see how some could say it was more then slightly flawed, especially in light of the events that followed immediately after.
My breath caught as the barely audible footsteps stopped, and the handle of the door turned, with excruciating slowness.
****

Duh, Duh, duh!

Yes I know, I'm a literary genius in the making.

Personally I think it's a bit long, and I'm not sure if a want to pursue it, I don't think I'll have the time too really what with school about to start and all that. But we shall see, we shall see.

Untill our next meeting.

I remain in all things your most humble servant

- me

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