Original Writing by Robert Leigh Angus

          Desert Boy was thirteen when his father died of the pox, and his mother passed when he was still a baby at her teet. He lived in a cabin at the edge of town and helped Day Bringer with her daily chores. The People of the Book were kind to him, and gave him everything to make him comfortable. He was welcome at every table, and even had earned a horse of his own.     Two years on, he still sat with Mama Moon once a week to learn the letters and read from the books. He loved the stories, even though he did not understand many of the words. He understood that elsewhere in the world there may not be People of the Book, or those who still shared lessons and stories from the histories.     Desert Boy watched as the carriages and horses drew away from the valley, cresting the hill as they passed the river, rounding beyond the Redwoods to the West. He watched for a few minutes more, and then continued gathering what could be gathered, ur...

  Mama-Moon-Mask was among the eldest of the valley. Her stories were often told to the children during the earliest part of the day when older folk went for chores and younger folk stayed to learn.     Mama Moon, as we called her, was one of the aged few who had a head full of grey, and a wise smile. She knew how to make the finest of breads and the sweet sauces and spiced berry wines which were shared at the quarters of the year. She taught all how to carry on the traditions of the valley peoples. She was also a skilled healer of both animals and people alike.   Mama Moon lived through decades of hardship, when the sickness came and left and came again, reaving the old and the youngest of kin, only the heartiest of stock were able to live past the groaning disease that tore through families. Many droughts, many floods, and many raids. But no war. Not until now. She had recalled stories that would come from travellers of villages razed to the ground, entire crop...

  Tall Man we called him. Tall-Man-On-A-Hill was not that tall. Tall Man saw things that no one else saw. I don’t mean spirits, although some would say that were true. Tall Man could see the way behind us and before us, and sometimes within us. Tall Man was able to see what others could not see.   It was the dawn of the first day of the diaspora, and Tall Man looked back at the valley he was leaving behind. The children mostly lay in the wagons with their mothers gathering them under blankets and near their breasts to keep them warm.   Men and women pulled the carts filled high with sacks of dry bread, and barrels filled with water. Nothing seemed to be left behind for the enemy. All they would find were empty houses, and what we could carry was enough to last us several days, if we were conservative.   There were to be no fires. There were to be few tracks. We swept the ground behind us. We covered over the dung. We rode single file.   Tall Man knew we ...

  Part One WAR COMES   DULL KNIFE   The sun caught up to us. It had been riding behind us since we started off into the sunset, and we were heading west, towards the glistening red clouds off in the distance. Riding in the darkness was the best and only way to escape our fate, to be captured or killed, our families to die with us. We knew they were coming, and we were not willing to become a part of their war. Better to leave off now with our heads and our lives intact. Our generation is one with knowledge. We knew that the world was once so much more sophisticated than it is now. We have been in a dark age for a millennia, cities overgrown with trees and grass and wildlife flourishing where once mechanical vehicles roamed. The towns and cities all but vanished in the breakdown of a lost civilization, thousands of thousands dead – some say thousands of thousands of thousands. I have never known more than 500 people in my life time – our tribe and those we trad...

( Excerpt from "Dull Knife's Story) Bone Face, a simple reader, stayed with the cattle, old folk, and the treasury of knowing left behind by the ancients. He stayed near the surface, keeping an open ear for any who might happen upon the hidden entrance to the caves, and an occassional eye to the slits between stones, hidden behind tall grass and disguised as the warrens of ground squirrels.  Bone face helped to dig miles of tunnels under the plains, stretching as far as the eye could see, secret passageways, shared only by those who understood that once, in this valley, and under these fields, there once existed ancestors whose roads reached lands far beyond imagining, and whose towers climbed high into the skies, cities spreading far and wide, and could be seen far across the land, for what could be days of travel. These were ancients with methods long lost, whose carriages moved faster than any living creature, and whose wonders allowed their people to fly through the skies ...

  A Joycean’s Interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” Back in 2004/5, Dr. Vladimir Orel, who was at that time engaged in teaching English Literature at Mount Royal College (Now University), tasked his students with writing an interpretation of Jabberwocky. My wife at the time, former spouse now, his student then, previous to his occupation as my once upon a time business partner and best friend, wrote her own interpretation, and I, the smart-ass that I am, offered up my own, alongside an invitation for our families to enjoy a weekend together at the Calgary Zoo, so that we could get to know each other. I received an A++. She received a B-. What follows is not the essay that I wrote back then, as it has since been lost, a victim of circumstance. It is, instead, an attempt to revisit that time, when life was good, and the forewarning concerning the Jabberwock in my own life went unheeded. A time also a victim of circumstance.   ‘Twas Brillig, springtime, when ...