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    Godspeed
    Godspeed
    Godspeed
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    Godspeed

    By A.E. Dooland

    4.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The ghost of a pious woman has some unfinished business she needs to complete, and only two heathens - a grumpy necromancer and her jolly berserker wife - can help her.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA.E. Dooland
    Release dateOct 31, 2020
    ISBN9780994177964
    Godspeed

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    Reviews for Godspeed

    4.5/5

    4 ratings3 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I don't really care about Orla's story because I already know she will forgive everything and fly to heaven (that's how all the feel-good story is).

      I wish the book can focus more about Ingrid & Golde.
    • 4/5
      Don't let those cuffs on the cover fool you. This book is not about kink. Think of the chained spirit Jacob Marley and you're more on the mark.

      I was really delighted by this novella because it was absolutely unique, bittersweetly enjoyable, and such a well told story. It also landed several really good jokes that made me smile and made my heart spillover with warmth.

      The story is told from the point of view of Orla, a woman who's died prematurely, leaving her husband and two young daughters behind. She was completely in love, felt blessed, and happy in her life but, after her death, she's yet to pass on. She hangs in perpetuity until much later she finds herself chained to a curmudgeon necromancer, Ingrid, and her jolly barbarian of a wife, Golde.

      The charm of the story comes from the interactions of Golde and Ingrid on one hand but the oomph of the story is delivered in Orla's journey to her final resting place.

      The novella does have a handful of grammatical issues here and there (missing a word or the wrong word is used) but the power of the story should override that shortcoming. A.E. Dooland is a true story teller and, for those who have read her "Under My Skin" series, understand what a talented author she is and the breath of fresh air she brings to the writing scene.

      Recommend.
    • 5/5
      Very different, and lets you wonder about the potential resolution until the end...

    Book preview

    Godspeed - A.E. Dooland

    GODSPEED

    Copyright © A. E. Dooland 2020

    First published on aedooland.com

    All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above and excluding ordinary retail purchase from authorised distributers, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

    This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this story, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

    ISBN: 978-0-9941779-6-4

    Cover art by K. Morris. http://kmchro.com

    A short, multi-part commission for the very patient and very benevolent Ben, who asked for: 'How about something about a necromancer getting annoyed at having to resurrect her berserker girlfriend after her heroic and tragic death in every second battle?’ I took that idea and ran away with it!

    GODSPEED

    ---

    While I was alive, I thought my life was special and unique. My husband and I had the sort of love that bards sing about, we had two beautiful little girls, and enough food on the table for all of us. Truly, I thought I’d been blessed by God.

    Since my death, however, I have come to see how very mislead I was.

    I died as anyone might have back then: of pneumonia. It was an irritating little cough at first, at the back of my throat. I had a headache the next day, and a fever the next, and before long my husband was scooping me off the floor of our chicken coop and carrying me indoors to the bed. The doctor came, put leeches at my feet and wet towels on my forehead, but it was to no avail. That night, they woke the town priest from his bed to read me the final blessing for my Last Journey.

    As if standing at the foot of my own bed, I watched my breathless body shudder and fade from life as my husband—my beautiful Jerrik—sobbed and held it: the empty vessel that had once been filled with the woman he loved.

    My children were too young to understand, and so in the morning, they asked for me. My sister (who let her in my house?) hugged them and told them I had gone away and wouldn’t return. They cried for me too, and I cried for them, for Jerrik, and for the life I’d lost just as it had really begun.

    Time slips past when you’re dead—a minute, a year, they feel the same. My lovely Jerrik grieved. I have no idea how long as the many nights and many tears blended together. I lay beside him in our bed as he hugged my pillow and cried into it. I spoke to him, but he didn’t hear. I wrapped my arms around him, but he didn’t feel them. He just cried, half-whispering, half-mouthing my name over, and over, and over: Orla, Orla, Orla… He couldn’t hear my answer.

    Night after night, month after month, I watched my little girls wandering around the farm looking for me, waiting at the window for me to return home along the road, asking Jerrik when I’d be back.

    But my sister; my sister, I seethed to watch her. I’d never told anyone she was allowed back in my house, what cheek she had to be there after my death when I couldn’t drive her out! She did cry a little—crocodile tears, no doubt—but she stopped sooner than Jerrik did. Much sooner.

    Then, I watched her slipping into my house more and more. ‘I thought everyone might be hungry,’ she’d say, bringing in the World’s Most Perfect roast chicken. ‘I thought my nieces might like some new clothes,’ she’d say, bringing in horribly expensive Sunday dresses. Little by little, hour by hour, she crept into my house. Over how long, I don’t know. I watched my so-called loving sister’s comforting hugs linger on my husband more than they should. I watched her eyes dip to his broad chest, I watched her stay more nights, more days, to ‘take care of the children’.

    I watched my sister, my own sister, kiss my poor grieving husband, comforting him with her lips and her body, and—to my horror—I watched him let her. I watched him forget my pillow. I watched him reach out to her at night when he had bad dreams. I watched her belly swell with their child.

    I watched her continue my life. My life, the life I’d lovingly built with the man of my dreams, I watched my sister slip into it perfectly like a hand into a glove, just like she always had to everything of mine.

    There are no words for the pain of it. I had no body of my own to claw at, no throat to scream with, no knees to sink to. Just writhing, twisting, searing pain that filled my being—whatever my being now was—and when I wailed it was some sort of deep, existential noise that cut through realms and sent my poor tom cat rushing under the dinner table.

    I don’t remember much more than that, not much at all. I was suspended somewhere, missing my Jerrik, missing my babies, and knowing deep in my tortured, twisting soul that they no longer missed me. Coiling, spiralling, aching and hating, until I was wrenched downwards, forwards, and hurtling through space and time.

    It all stopped abruptly with a thud, somewhere in a thick pine forest.

    I was still. It was quiet.

    Morning mist hung around me, and there was snow beneath my feet. That was odd in itself: I had feet? I looked down at them, confused. They extended down into the snow, glowing in a faintly ethereal manner, but holding form. The nightgown I’d died in hung about my knees as well, thin and faded. In this weather, I should have been bitterly cold wearing just this, but I wasn’t. I was still uncomfortable, but I couldn’t determine the source of my discomfort.

    It might have been because of how exotic the land around me looked. I was somewhere in the north, I thought, somewhere in the mountains. Far off in the distance I could see smoke drifting upwards into the air and hear the clash of battle.

    I felt very here. After so long of feeling anchorless, drifting through time and space, the feeling of time slipping through my fingers had very suddenly ended. Finally, I felt each second comfortably. Was I in Heaven?

    This wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined Heaven to be like—I thought I was supposed to be surrounded by everyone who’d loved me and passed on, with all the most delicious food I could eat, warm and content forever. Standing here, I wasn’t cold, but also I wasn’t content, and I couldn’t see anyone I loved.

    I also thought Heaven was somewhere you needed to reach, not somewhere you arrived at right after death. I’d heard the priests talk many times of a soul’s Last Journey: the longest, most important journey one makes after

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