ACCLAIM FOR Scott Zachary’s

THE LEAST OF THESE “This is a beautiful and well-told story. The writing is lyrical, and the characters are well-developed and realistic. 5 out of 5 stars.” —Lauralee Jacks,

History from a Woman’s Perspective Review “Zachary vividly brings post-Cromwell Ireland to life, showing us both the human cost of hatred and the human capacity to love long after we have closed ourselves off from the world.” —Moira Katson, author of

The Light & Shadow Trilogy “Writer Scott Zachary has created contemplative look at a dark period of Irish history that we don't often see. Gone are the trappings of nationalism and ego and instead we have a contemporary story of people, of culture, and the struggles to live together.” —Ken Mooney, author of Godhead “Scott has given me a reason to care about a little group of Irish travelers. This is a solid little story that I would happily recommend to anyone.” —Alexander Nader, author of

Beasts of Burdin “A compelling, well-crafted story of love, loss, and redemption…a novella to savor.” —Susan Spann, author of

Claws of the Cat, a Shinobi Mystery

AL S O B Y SC O T T ZA C H A R Y

Gossamer Wings and Other Stories

S C O T T Z A C H A R Y

T h e

LEAST o f

THESE

~

M A L A H A S P R E S S

Copyright © Scott Zachary 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. ISBN: 0-615-90676-1 ISBN 13: 978-0-615-90676-8 Text set in Foundry Caslon Cover photograph by Stasi Albert Interior illustration by Brina Williamson Designed by Savage Jester Productions Printed in the United States of America First Edition, 2013 Malahas Press, Redmond, WA

for Marion

and in memory of Tamara

true angels

in a world of angels all too few

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Woelf Dietrich, Brandon Henrie, Moira

Katson, Sarah LaFleur, Alexander Nader, Kacy Nielsen,

Christopher Smith, and the entire Williamson clan of writers

for their vital feedback during the development of this story.

I would also like to thank my editor, Tammy Salyer, for

wrangling my creative grammar and punctuation into

submission; Susan Spann, for kindly providing invaluable

legal advice; and, most of all, my wife—best friend and

critiquer par excellence—for rallying my flagging spirits when

the words wouldn’t come, and for holding the house together

when they did.

T h e

L E A S T o f

T H E S E

Lady Gregor c. 1709

~

MOLLY SWEPT THE LAST of the dirt off the stoop and wiped

her hands on her apron. She frowned at the grime coating the

rough-hewn walls of the large manor and the army of weeds

beginning their annual invasion into the garden.

Those tasks would have to wait.

For now she forced herself to be content with a clean, well-

swept doorstep. It was a token of the fraying dignity she

clung to, and made the poverty seem less real. Father Roark

might call it pride, which, as everyone knew, was a sin.

She reminded herself to ask him about her potentially

sinful doorstep sweeping after mass that evening.

Leaning the broom against the doorframe, she pulled her

threadbare shawl tighter around her shoulders, adjusted the

simple coif that covered her tightly braided, silver-streaked

hair, and picked up her basket. With a quick tug on the latch

to make sure the door was closed, she set off down the long,

winding carriage run that led to the main road, walking

slowly along the edges of the ruts and doing her best to keep

out of the mud and cowpats. The cloudless sky shone with a

2 S c o t t Z a c h a r y

brilliance appreciated only by those who live in lands

blanketed, more often than not, by heavy gray clouds. Distant

hills glimmered like an emerald scarf thrown lazily across the

horizon. It was a glorious day, but Molly felt no joy in it.

There was very little that she found joy in at all.

She wondered idly if apathy to the glory of God’s creation

was also a sin. She would have to ask Father Roark about that

one as well.

The light afternoon breeze kicked up a faint odor of wet

earth and apple blossoms as she passed by the garden. An old

tree sat wearily, its boughs dusted with small, snowy flowers.

Molly picked her way toward it, collecting a bouquet as she

went. At the foot of the trunk was a small pile of stones,

blackened with years of moss and lichen, adorned with a

simple cross carved from the heartwood of an oak. She laid

the flowers on the tiny cairn and crossed herself.

Kissing her fingers, she touched them to the smooth bark of

the tree tenderly, and the breeze brushed the pink-tipped

blossoms against her cheek in reply. She smiled sadly. The

blossoms would never bear fruit. As if in sympathy, since the

day she had buried her stillborn twins under it, the ancient

tree had been as barren as she was.

The empty place inside her no longer ached, but somehow

T h e L e a s t o f T h e s e 3

the nothingness that she felt was worse. It was a stony, bare

patch of ground where no seeds of joy could find purchase. It

was as barren as her womb, as barren as the apple tree.

Her husband had been patient and gentle with her sadness

at first, but when she failed to conceive another child, her

grief became too much for him to bear, and he retreated

further and further from her: first into drink, then into

brawling, and eventually into gambling and debt and the

good Lord knew what else.

The other women in town said that it was God’s punishment

for marrying a Protestant. Father Roark promised she would

heal from the loss if she poured herself into the service of

others—and she tried—but often she felt there was nothing

left to pour. The well was dry.

Molly gave the old tree one last reassuring pat before

continuing back towards the main road. She passed by empty

fields—brown scars on the land—patchy with hoar and thin

clumps of weed. Some had been intentionally left to lay

fallow; others were neglected for wont of labor. Many lay

barren and torn, even now, from the hooves and fires of

conquest and rebellion.

When she had been a small girl, Molly’s father would take

her along this same road in a fine carriage. She would wave to

4 S c o t t Z a c h a r y

the men and women in the fields and throw sweets to the

children and laugh, thinking nothing of the morrow or what

it might bring.

Innocence is wasted on the young, she mused.

The sound of a horse neighing broke her reverie, and Molly

turned to see a small group of travelers on the road making

their way toward town. A simple cart, piled high with bundles

and baskets led the group, pulled by a mountain of a man.

Copper kettles, tin pots, and brass pans hung from the sides,

jangling as the cart ambled and creaked along the ruts. A frail

young woman sat on the driving board, holding an infant, and

several young children walked wearily alongside, splashed by

the muddy wheels. A large draft horse with a patchy coat

trailed behind, favoring its foreleg.

Straggling in the distance, an assortment of families

followed, some pulling handcarts, most laboring under the

heavy loads of their few worldly possessions.

“Top of the morning to you, madam!” the man shouted

when he spotted Molly, waving his wide-brimmed hat at her.

He put the cart down gently and stood panting, a toothy grin

shining through his ferocious red beard. Molly approached

the strangers warily.

“And the rest of the day to yourself,” she said.

T h e L e a s t o f T h e s e 5

“We are making for Kilcurry. Is it far?” The man mopped

his brow and squinted at her.

“Not far at all,” Molly replied. “I am headed there myself.”

She could not remember the last time she had seen walking

folk—the Pavee, as they called themselves—not since the

English had driven them out decades ago. Honest, God-

fearing people thought them little better than beggars and

thieves. Most of her neighbors thought less of them than that.

This particular group looked half-starved, many with a foot

or two dancing dangerously close to the grave.

“Although, you might want to consider passing through,”

she added. “People here do not take kindly to traveling folk.”

The man considered this for a moment and looked back at

his lame horse. He shrugged. His wife said something to him

in a dialect peppered with so much slang that Molly found it

incomprehensible. The man shrugged again.

He turned back to Molly. “Seems to be the way of things, I

fear, but as you can see, I am in need of a farrier, and we could

sorely use provisions.”

“Strangers they do not like,” Molly said, “but coin they do.

They will take your money same as anyone, I would expect.”

The man exchanged a worrisome look with his wife. “Ah,”

he said to Molly. “Coin we might be short on—” He paused

6 S c o t t Z a c h a r y

before adding hastily, “But we are no beggars—we have many

skills that would be worth trading.”

“I doubt they have much want for a tinker’s skills,” Molly

said. “But you are welcome to try your luck.”

The man hefted the cart and dug his boots into the muddy

ruts. With a grunt and a mighty heave, he started the wheels

moving and pulled it up to where Molly stood.

“The name is Ward, Sean Ward.” He motioned with his hat

toward the cart behind him. “My wife, Aideen, and our

treasures.”

The children looked at Molly sideways, mischievous eyes

glinting through the road dust and grime caked to their faces.

“I am Lady Gregor, but you may call me Molly—everyone

does.”

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Sean began to

pull the cart beside her and looked out across the muddy

brown fields. “Tell me, who owns this poor patch of God’s

Earth?”

“My family,” she replied, following his gaze. “Or we did, I

should say, until Old Noll stole it from us.”

Aideen spat on the ground at the mention of Oliver

Cromwell, the long dead and much despised Lord Protector

of the old Commonwealth.

T h e L e a s t o f T h e s e 7

“Cromwell forced our fathers off the land they worked

too,” Sean said. “And so, we wander.”

“You were lucky to stay on the land,” Aideen added. “Most

landowners wouldn’t have permitted that.”

“Oh, it was no luck,” Molly replied. “We were driven away

like everyone else, and our land was given to an enterprising

Scotsman; but I came back when I was grown and convinced

his son that he could not live without me.”

Aideen gave her a sly nod. “Sharrk girl. So this is still your

land, after all, ain’t it then?”

“Yes,” Molly said, unable to suppress a thin-lipped smile.

“I suppose it is.”

Sean considered this. After a moment he said, “I cannot say I

would enjoy being fixed to one place, whether bond or free.”

Molly snorted. “You mean to say you prefer this life—on

the road day and night without hearth or home? Exposed to

the elements year ’round? There is something to be said for

four solid walls and a dry roof!”

“This is my home,” Sean replied, looking out across the

horizon. “My palace walls extend beyond the hills; my

ceiling, the heavens; and my bed, the heather.”

“Very poetic,” Molly said. “And yet, to be driven from

place to place, with your wife and children in tow? Despised

8 S c o t t Z a c h a r y

and hated by all?”

“You country folk and we Lucht Siúil will ever be at odds,”

Aideen said. “Freedom is always hated by the slave.”

Molly clucked her tongue. “A slave now, am I?”

Aideen shrugged.

“What she meant—” Sean hastily added.

“I know what she meant.” Molly held up her hands to stop

his apology. “I am not offended. There is space enough in this

wide world for the both of our kind to live in peace. I

remember what it means to be persecuted, even though I fear

many have forgotten.”

“If only others could see things the same way,” Aideen said,

“and not treat us as feral animals; as something less than

human.”

“It is the way of the world,” Molly replied. “It has ever been

so and ever shall be. Man cannot tolerate another man simply

following his own God-given conscience.”

“I think, my new friend, that you are more like us than you

realize.” Sean winked at Molly and laughed into his beard as

he muscled the cart forward.

As they walked, he recounted tales of their travels, full of

joy and hardship, of friends and loved ones rounded up by

English soldiers and shipped off to labor in distant lands, of

T h e L e a s t o f T h e s e 9

children lost in the night. He told stories of heartache,

punctuated by wonder—of druid circles built by giants and

secret caves hidden by white-tipped waves as tall as

mountains. For Sean, every storm cloud had a silver lining,

somewhere, if you looked hard enough.

Molly found their company an unexpected relief to the

tedium of her daily routine and was disappointed when her

own small village—with all of its charming delusions of

grandeur—came into view. To hear the townspeople speak of

Kilcurry, one would think it was Belfast. In reality, it

consisted of little more than a drafty old church built out of

the ruins of an ancient fort, a decrepit public house reeking of

cheap liquor, and a small cluster of homes and shops perched

haphazardly on a low hill overlooking a modest river.

“God be with you,” she said when they entered the village,

directing Sean to the stables near the public house in the main

square.

g END OF SAMPLE h

Available Exclusively on Amazon.com November 15th 2013

Scott Zachary

THE LEAST OF THESE

Scott Zachary is the author of the dark speculative fiction

collection, Gossamer Wings and Other Stories. A builder of

Internet-things, he lives with his wife on a small plot of

poorly tamed wilderness in the Pacific Northwest,

surrounded by three delightfully unruly children and a

menagerie of small animals.

ALSO BY Scott Zachary

GOSSAMER WINGS A N D O T H E R S T O R I E S

“This collection is like a genre snack mix—a little horror, a bit of sci-fi, a few ghosts, a sprinkling of humor, all seasoned with a lot of heart and a clean story-telling style that binds them all together. And, like a good snack mix, I found myself wanting more after I was done, tipping up the bag and shaking loose any remaining crumbs.” —Amy Severson,

featured in 100 Doors To Madness,

An Epic Horror Anthology From the dystopian underworld of a dead planet to the mist-shrouded rainforests of the Pacific North-west, whether orbiting a derelict space station or trapped in a haunted animal testing laboratory, the thirteen bite-sized tales in this collection of Scott Zachary’s best drabbles, flash fiction, and short stories from 2012 have a little bit of something for everyone.

Available Exclusively on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5QUL8G/