Krista Perry wrote:
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And, after yet another eternal delay, here's the complete Part 23
of Hearts of Ice. Woo-hoo! ^_^;
You want to talk delays? I'm going to have to put up a list of
'excuses' on my webpage because of all the things I've been doing
instead of fanfiction :P
Thanks to my pre-readers, in no particular order: Alan Harnum,
Avatar, Gary Kleppe, Karaohki, Louis Philippe Giroux, Mark
MacKinnon, Michelle Thatcher and Ryan Chang. Your feedback has
been greatly appreciated. :)
*sniff!* I used to be a prereader - oh wait, that was when I actually
sent you regular C&C :P
Good to see this chapter, though :)
Specific comments first, then a few general.
------------------------------------------------
Hearts of Ice
Part 23: Dragon
by Krista Perry
------------------------------------------------
(snip of really good R&A scene...)
Fear was a strange thing, Nabiki realized, as she followed
Kuno closely through a night-shrouded copse of trees, keeping her
eyes fixed on his shadowed form ahead of her. She'd never
realized before just how many different ways there were to feel
afraid. There was the blinding white, almost detached terror of
seeing the thread of your own mortality slide along the razor
edge of death.
*Yeah. Been there, done that.*
And then there was the fear she was feeling now - not the
raw terror of before, but more of... a thick dread... a kind of
breathlessness, as if her lungs were full of lead; a tightness
through her shoulder blades, like taut piano wire. As if a
threat was still there in the writhing darkness of the living
forest around them, but lurking just... out of sight...
...or waiting for them at the end of the trail...
I really like the description here.
*Please, Ranma. Hurry and come back and defeat Cologne
*before* we reach the campsite...*
It was a selfish thought, she knew. Cologne had something
terrible planned for Ranma; something insidious. And the old
ghoul had seemed pretty damn confident that her final card in
this game of desperation would be powerful enough to make Ranma
abandon Akane and the rest of them, and willingly spend the rest
of his life as a deferring, subservient husband in a hard-nosed
^^^^^^^^^
"deferential" would probably work better
matriarchal society. So whatever it was that she had planned had
to be bad. Very bad.
(snip)
She eyed Kuno speculatively. First, being able to follow
little more than a deer trail in near pitch black, and now this.
Kuno was turning out to be even more useful than she first
thought. Certainly more useful than *she* was feeling at the
moment, which is why she found it so odd that he would look for
her approval when he was clearly the one with the understanding
to deal with their current situation. "So, you learn all this
forestry stuff when you were a little Samurai Scout?" she asked
dryly.
"Yes."
Nabiki blinked as she caught the underlying smile in his
voice. Then her mouth quirked up at the corner in response.
She still wasn't sure what to make of this new side of Kuno.
He was much more quiet, for one thing. Introspective, even.
When he did talk, he still sounded a bit like an anal-retentive
literature student,
Hey! you got something against us anal-retentive literature students?
(snip)
The questions, which echoed the ones in her own heart,
caused an old familiar calm to settle within her. Nabiki felt
her down-to-business mask fall into place with an almost audible
*snap* as a fiery anxiousness rose within her chest, burning
^^^^^^^^^^^
"anxiety," methinks
through her frozen, incapacitating terror.
She looked at Kuno with a stoic, half-lidded gaze. "Let's
find out," she said.
That was all the urging Kuno needed. He immediately turned
and began to slash a trail through the choking foliage towards
the sound. Nabiki followed.
As they made their way through the dense forest, she noticed
that the fresh spring growth of the surrounding foliage... was
covered in a thin layer of white frost. The frost glinted in the
brief patches of starlight that managed to struggle through the
tangled, leafy canopy overhead. With each step they took towards
the piteous sound of the Snow Woman's quiet sobs, the temperature
seemed to drop, and the frost seemed to thicken around them until
each brush of a leaf brought with it the sensation of ice melting
against warm skin. The frozen ground crackled beneath their
feet.
Nabiki wrapped her arms around herself and tried not to
chatter.
Gradually, she began to see a soft blue glow filtering
through the darkness of the winter-shrouded thicket before them.
Each frost-layered leaf and branch seemed to catch the ghostly
light and hold it within each crystal, so that they seemed almost
luminescent in and of themselves. A thick white fog crept across
the forest floor, cold tendrils writhing about her ankles.
They were making their way through enchanted, crystalline
scenery straight out of a fairy tale, and Nabiki would have found
the sight almost beautiful, were she not so anxious to find the
source... The eerie bluish light was a welcome guide, making
Kuno's job of creating a path much easier, and Nabiki suddenly
found herself stepping quickly to keep up with him.
"stepping quickly" sounds awkward to me: maybe just "hurrying"?
They emerged abruptly into a clearing, and they both
stopped, amazed at the sight before them.
Everything was covered in gleaming ice. Sheets of it
covered the ground, the rocks, the plants...
The Snow Woman knelt on the frozen ground, her head bowed as
she wept, her long white tresses flowing around her like water.
The soft blue glow that lit the clearing emanated from one
slender white hand that was pressed against the invisible barrier
of the Ancient One's Mountain... only the barrier was no longer
quite so invisible, for it was now covered with glittering
patches of frost that seemed to hang in the air like motionless
ice spirits.
Not to be nitpicky, but "like motionless ice spirits" doesn't do much
for me as a simile...
Scattered on the frozen ground around the Snow Woman's
shuddering form, large jagged shards of a shattered mirror lay
glinting in the starlight.
Not to be even more nitpicky, but I'd think the starlight would be
pretty negligible compared to the Snow Woman's glowing blue hand that
guided Kuno and Nabiki through the woods... :)
Nabiki and Kuno stared, speechless.
The Snow Woman slowly raised her head and looked at them,
her smooth white face, etched with resigned misery, flickering
^ dump this comma
with brief surprise at their intrusion.
< "You," she said softly, hoarsely, looking at Nabiki. "I
know you. You are Akane's sister..."
Nabiki stepped forward hesitantly, swallowing against the
sudden dryness in her throat. "Yes," she said. "Where is she?
Is she safe?"
"Safe?" came the lifeless reply. "Oh, no, no... Not safe,
not now... I tried to stop her... I tried to reach her first so
that she wouldn't see... but the dragon's barrier... He wouldn't
let me through..." Her free hand strayed to the slivers of glass
that surrounded her. "And... my mirror..."
(snip)
The Snow Woman sagged suddenly, reaching out with a white
hand to touch a shard of mirror lying on the frozen ground beside
her. "I saw it with my own eyes..."
I would either have her only touch the mirror shards once, or make the
second time *less* descriptive than the first, maybe even add in an
"again" - somehow it doesn't seem to work the other way.
Nabiki shook her head forcefully, as if doing so would
somehow erase the horror of the Snow Woman's revelation. "But...
the blood spell... Ranma broke it..."
"Yes. With his death," the Snow Woman whispered.
Nabiki stared at the Snow Woman in white-faced silence as
she suddenly found herself wondering how her little sister would
react when she found his body...
Kuno spoke from behind her, his voice low and intense.
"There *must* be some way to get past the barrier."
The Snow Woman turned on him, clenching her fists. "Do you
think I have not tried?! I have summoned all my power, weakened
though it is by this warm season, even calling upon the lingering
memory of winter from the earth for strength... and I can do
nothing! I have even pleaded for help from the foreign gods of
this land, but they answer me with silence!"
No adequate response came to Kuno's mind. He could only
stand, looking at the pale, beautiful woman of legend, helpless
and immobile, his mind numb and reeling at the news of Ranma's
death. The "foul sorcerer Saotome," the bane of his existence,
who had kept his True Loves from him for so long...
I find the sudden switch to Kuno's POV very jarring, after so much
Nabiki; I would keep it in Nabiki's POV, or start a new scene here, with
a bit more transition. Also, the following scene where Nabiki is doing
most of the talking makes the Kuno POV kinda muddy, so you might want to
save the scene/POV switch until after that bit of conversation.
(snip)
The Snow Woman frowned speculatively, and she straightened,
rising gracefully to her feet. The weary resignation in her
countenance slowly faded as a new spark of faint hope glinted in
her frost-blue eyes. "Yes," she murmured. "That would indeed
level the playing field..."
This feels a bit too colloquial for the Snow Woman - especially since
sports involving "playing fields" were a Western import to Japan.
Kuno watched the eerily-calm exchange between Nabiki and the
Snow Woman with growing unease, and cleared his throat. "Even if
by chance the old woman does know the secret to pass the barrier,
how can we force her to reveal it to us? I do not think she
would help us... *especially* if she were defeated."
This bit here might be a better place to switch to Kuno's POV; you could
easily work in his musings from earlier to this section, and you've got
most of his *observations* about Nabiki from here on.
(snip rest of scene)
Akane had lots of practice when it came to entering the
domains and habitats of preternatural beings, so she wasn't all
that surprised when, as she stepped into the absolute darkness of
the Ancient One's cave, she felt as though she were passing
through a whispery-thin membrane, moist and fragile, like the
surface of a soap bubble. It allowed her to pass, flowing around
her without breaking, springing back taut and whole behind her.
And then she was inside the cave, with Ranma standing next to
her.
*Did you feel that?* she wanted to ask him, but before she
could... she saw the cavern.
They stood for a moment in stunned silence as they stared,
wide eyed, at their surroundings.
^^^^^^^^^
wide-eyed
"Whoa," Ranma finally said.
"You said it," Akane breathed. "I guess I won't need to use
my battle aura after all."
The cavern was, as she expected, immense. It reminded her
"had expected"
of the inside of the Tokyo Dome, only... bigger. However... the
rounded walls and ceiling were formed of perfect, unnaturally
smooth pearl-gray stone. And, embedded within the stone....
thousands upon thousands of large, tear-shaped gems lined the
cavern, shining with faint golden light, suffusing everything
with a soft, warm glow.
You tend to have a very "ellipsis-heavy" style, and normally it works
just fine, but I think in this paragraph, it ends up feeling a bit
awkward. I would cut out all of the ellipsis, except *maybe* for the
"only... bigger": "The cavern was, as she had expected, immense. It
reminded her of the inside of the Tokyo Dome, only bigger. The rounded
walls and ceiling were formed of perfect, unnaturally smooth pearl-gray
stone. And embedded in the stone, thousands upon thousands of large,
tear-shaped gems lined the cavern, shining with faint golden light,
suffusing everything with a soft, warm glow."
(snip)
Another somewhat less-disturbing discovery was that, while
Akane had faint shadows spread about her feet like flower petals,
due to the thousands of glowing stones that surrounded them, he
remained perfectly shadow-less. Creepy.
...How many glowing stones were there? Thousands, you say?
But seriously, I really like the flower-petal shadows :)
"So," he said with forced casualness. "You've come across
something like this before? Something looking different on the
inside than it does on the outside?"
This is separated from Ranma's "odd look" by so much prose that it
doesn't feel connected the way it should. You might want to consider
moving Ranma's musings about how awful he looks to bring these two bits
closer together.
(snip)
Akane was about to respond, when she caught a glimpse of
movement out of the corner of her eye. Ranma noticed it the same
moment, because they both turned towards it simultaneously.
The "because" feels out of place here - there's no real causality. You
can fix this by saying "Ranma *must have* noticed..."
Something was moving towards them through the shadows of the
willow grove less than twenty meters away.
"Akane." Ranma hissed the warning through clenched teeth.
She nodded, and hastily knelt down, gently laying Ranma's
body on the grass before reaching back to draw her sword as she
stood in a ready stance. Ranma stood next to her, anxiously
wishing he could do more than just stand by helplessly if they
should be attacked by whatever creature a dragon would leave to
guard its lair...
They watched the figure emerged from the shadows of the
^^^^^^^ emerge
trees... and they both blinked.
It was an old man, stooped with age. He wore long
nondescript brown robes, and his gray hair was pulled back into a
ponytail at the base of his neck. His long, thin mustache hung
nearly down to the end of his beard, which was tied neatly at the
end with a short piece of string. He paid them no heed, but
instead, walked slowly over to a bed of pale blue irises, knelt
down, and with great care, began to pull weeds, placing them into
a small cloth bag that hung at his waist.
This last sentence has *way* too many commas. At the very least, take
out the ones after "instead" and "care."
(snip)
Before Ranma could say anything, Akane stepped forward to
stand next to him. "Please, Ancient One," she said, fighting off
a wave of uneasiness as she looked in to the ethereal depths of
^^^^^ "into"
the old man's eyes. "I... I am willing to pay the blood price,
in exchange for your help." She took a deep breath as she saw,
in her peripheral vision, Ranma's head swivel towards her, his
eyes wide with shock. "Whatever it takes," she whispered.
(snip)
"Xi Wang Mu was impressed by the love and devotion this
mother had for her son, but told her that her elixir could only
grant immortality to the living, not restore the life to the
^^^ cut this "the"
dead. At this, the woman wept greatly. Xi Wang Mu took pity on
her then, and told her to go to each house in her village, and
speak with each family. 'If you can find one person who has not
been touched by the death of a loved-one,' she told her gently,
'I will bring your son back to life.'
(snip)
"And after she had listened to each story, and received her
last answer, the woman despaired, for she knew then that there
was no soul on earth who had not been touched by death in some
manner. And yet, the knowledge also brought her comfort, for she
understood at last that death is no respecter of persons, and
comes to all, male and female, old and young, bond and free."
^^^^ "bound"?
(snip)
And then, something the Ancient One said penetrated through
^ "had"
the numbing fog of grief in her mind...
(snip)
Ranma was instantly in the old man's face, his nose scant
millimeters from the old man's as he glared into the glittering
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is a bit repetitive. Maybe just "away"?
void of his eyes. "Yeah," Ranma said, his voice quiet and
intense, "but could he do it? Is he one of the gods who can
reignite the spark of life? Could he really bring me back from
the dead?"
(final snip)
Well, a good chapter, of course. (Even if it's not done yet...) The
scene with the dragon/old man in the garden feels rougher than the rest
of the chapter, and could probably use some tightening up; you rely a
bit more on common sayings/cliches ("Rearing its ugly head" etc.) and
less on the evocative & original description that is generally the
highlight of your writing - and that you use to good effect in the
earlier parts of the chapter. There is, probably a bit of recap that you
might want to remove later - it works now because we're getting the
story in serial format, but when it's all been released and is archived
on your page, you can probably cut down on it in rewrites, because
people will be able to get the whole story at once :)
Hope my comments are understandable with the large amounts of snippage;
my email program can only handle so much text in the body of as email.
BTW, i just (well, within the last month or so) read your Inu-yasha fics
(having received some of the manga for Christmas, at last!) - once you
finish HoI, you do plan on writing more, right? :)
Bridget
who may write something herself sometime soon... Really!
--
"I choose you - PIKASPEW!!!"
Jamie to 2 month old daughter Madeline,
shortly after being spat up upon...
_______________________________________________
Come and see the fanfics and food of
Bridget and Jamie Wilde!
wildeman@psn.net
http://www.psn.net/~wildeman/