Dancing Jax. Robin Jarvis

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      For my mother, who loved dancing.

      Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can do so much worse. I used to take words for granted. But words hold tremendous power. Arranged in the right order, they can make you cry with laughter or understand a stranger’s pain. And yet it only takes one to hurt another human being. In some countries there are laws against the use of certain words, and that’s a good thing. Those words are charged with hatred and need to be locked away until they and their power are forgotten.

      The same is true of books, only more so.

      Some books are harmful, even dangerous. They twist people’s minds and feed the darkest recesses of the human soul. They should be banned or destroyed. This is a story about one of them, written by one of the most evil men ever to have lived. I hope there are enough of you left out there to read it and believe and resist – before it’s too late.

      Martin Baxter, yesterday

      Welcome, sacred stranger. Enter the magickal Kingdom of the Dancing Jacks, with a brisk step and blessings upon you. Your place at Court is reserved and your presence long anticipated. Within these rousing pages, rewarding new friendships await. You are warmly invited to learn our ways and stories. Walk and play with us, repair by our fires and share our dreaming and restorative pleasures. Herein lie the understanding, acceptance and belonging you have so yearned to find. Join us, cherished reader, and escape the travails of those earthly measures that daily erode your humble spirit. Come to us – we shall coddle you, safe and close.

      So mote it be.

      Austerly Fellows, Imbolc 1936

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      The dance will go on…

      Addicted to Dancing Jax?

      The Wyrd Museum, Book One: The Woven Path

      The Wyrd Museum, Book Two: Raven’s Knot

      The Wyrd Museum, Book Three: The Fatal Strand

      Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Chapter 1

      Beyond the Silvering Sea, within thirteen green, girdling hills, lies the wondrous Kingdom of the Dawn Prince. Yet inside his White Castle, the throne stands empty. For many long years he has been lost in exile and thus the Ismus, his Holy Enchanter, reigns in his stead — till the day of his glorious returning and the restoration of his splendour evermore.

      THE DOOR SHIVERED. One more powerful kick and the lock ripped from the rotting frame.

      It burst inward with savage force. Splinters and crackled paint exploded into a large, deserted hall and decades of dust rose up in a dry cloud. For the first time in too long, fierce daylight bleached its way in and insects clattered their escape over bare and lifting floorboards.

      A pair of greedy eyes darted round the empty house as the man leered across the threshold.

      “Nice one.”

      Dragging the back of one grimy hand over his mouth, he stepped inside and the glittering dust whirled around him.

      “Damp and the urination of rats.”

      He was describing the stale must of the house, but the description suited him just as well.

      He was a wiry stoat of a man, dressed in scuffed jeans and a torn biker jacket that had known three different owners, in almost as many decades, before it had come to him. He liked that it had a history and often claimed that it owned him, rather than the other way round.

      His face was always alert, never still – feral and filthy and hostile. The skin that clad it was white and clammy and poorly nourished. When other substances were available, food was spurned by Jezza.

      Even now his nicotine fingers were trembling and twitching. It was half eleven in the morning. All he’d had was a can of Red Stripe and that was only because he’d finished the last of the stolen vodka the night before.

      Behind him a female voice asked, “Was this worth our last spit of petrol then?”

      Jezza’s magpie eyes danced over the dingily patterned wallpaper that ran up the stairs to the landing. It was blotched here and there with black mould. The house was a big one and must have been impressive in its Victorian heyday, but now it was dark and damaged through years of neglect. Yet the man knew there were treasures to be harvested.

      He was determined to gut the place and make a few quid. There was a bloke in Southwold who paid cash without questions for this salvage junk. Original fireplaces were bloody good money. If they’d already СКАЧАТЬ