[My new novel, Diamonds in the Cave, is available to download on Amazon Kindle.
For a sample of where some of the main characters have come from, a short story which will be serialised over the next few weeks. This one focuses on Minna’s future love-interest, Günter and his origins.]
The Choice—Bits
Short Story: Black Forest…in Bite-sized Bits
Bit 1: The Centripetal Force of Günter
Herr Crankendinger cracked the switch on Günter’s open hand. The lad, fourteen years old, the in-between of boy and man, clenched his teeth. He locked eyes with the scowling school master. Günter had the urge to snigger. Not a good urge to have when the school master is beating his hand. Günter pushed down the bubble of snigger rising from his beating chest. His stomach churned, and all fizzed up, the snigger with a mind of its own, rumbled in his throat and then slipped out of his curled mouth.
‘Dumkopf!’ Herr Crankdinger screamed. He hammered the boy’s palm again and again. ‘You will learn!’
‘Aber, the water in the bucket is held by centripetal force, not magic. The man at the Show is not the devil.’
Herr C’s face glowed red and his ice-blue eyes bulged. He stomped his one foot and peg-leg (a casualty of the Thirty Years War), and cried, ‘Heretic!’
In the candle-lit chapel, thirty-nine pairs of eyes stared at their castigated classmate, and the owners of those eyes froze on their cedar benches. One boy in the back row tittered.
Encouraged by the titter of support, Günter continued, ‘Gravity, have you not heard of gravity? Have you not heard of Isaac Newton?’
‘Oaf!’ The teacher pointed at the door. ‘Witch! And don’t come back! Your education is finished. Understand?’
‘Never learnt anything here,’ Günter muttered as he strode between the rows of school boys towards the heavy doors made of oak.
He pushed one open, squeezed through and then bolted. Pigeons fluttered as Günter ripped through the town square, of the small village in the Schwartzwald (Black Forest). First flush of spring made Günter a bundle of nervous energy, especially when he saw three milk maids delivering their buckets full of cow juice to the stalls in the square. He looked at the blonde triplets in their puffy cotton sleeves and blue pinafore dresses, and he stumbled on the cobble stones.
The girls sheered away from him.
‘Oh, keep away from the plague,’ one said loud enough for him to hear.
‘Ugh, he smells like cow dung.’
‘No one would want to marry him.’
‘All he attracts is bugs and flies.’
And the three girls giggled.
‘You’re no beauties yourselves,’ Günter muttered as he dug his hands in his pockets. He didn’t care it was bad manners to dig hands in pockets. Too bad, he thought, then tramped up the hill to his home.
On the way up, Günter glanced in a pond. His nose like the Blauen-Hoch dominated his dusky face, and pimples gathered in clumps like pine trees on his high forehead, square chin and of course, his mountain of a nose. He pulled his thick dark curls over his face to hide the awkward ugliness, and then with his head down and hands buried in his pockets, Günter shuffled up to his home presiding over the village, a mansion crumbling with neglect.
How long before his home looks like those Roman ruins down the road? Günter wondered. Another victim of the Thirty years war that had dominated life in the 17th Century. So close to the sanctuary of Switzerland, and yet…his father had to go and join the cause. So did his older brother Johann. How could Günter as a boy keep the house and home together?
[…to be continued]
© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2018; updated 2025
Feature Photo: Black Forest © L.M. Kling 2014
***
Fresh off the virtual press,
The next in the War Against Boris Series — Diamonds in the Cave
Discover how a community of kind, charming 19th Century Wends turn into a blood-thirsty mob baying for the burnt blood of “witches”.
Check out my new novel, click on the link:
Diamonds in the Cave
Or for more Holiday Reading…
Go on a reading binge and discover the up close, personal and rather awkward relationship between Günter and that nasty piece of cockroach-alien work Boris in…
The Hitch-hiker
See how Boris seeks revenge in…
Mission of the Unwilling
And the Mischief and Mayhem Boris manufactures in…
The Lost World of the Wends…
Tru-Kling Creations 