Untold Podcast

Six masked bandits chase down a lone postman in this steam-punk western tale.

untold_podcast_-_in_the_bag.mp3 File Size: 10760 kb File Type: mp3 Download File (Right Click to Download)

I ain’t done a blamed thing wrong.

Not by my accounting, anyway. That’s what I keep telling myself as I urge my branter on through the woods. Trud, he’s a fine mount, with a chestnut hide, mane black as the sky above us, and twin horns all pearly white. Seven foot tall and ornery to boot. He’s got two huge legs that come up to my chest when I’m standing beside him—‘cept right now they pound the ground as we race between lodge pole pines.

The shouts ain’t far behind.

The messenger pack slaps against my back. My hand traps it, shoves it back.

When I signed up to carry for Sawtooth Parcel & Letters there weren’t a soul who told me I’d be shot at for riding post. The bullet hole letting air through my jacket told otherwise.

It is time for young Mesh'iel to receive her new forms from the Shaper. Will the Shaper choose pleasings forms to take on, or doom her to take on the forms of  grotesque creatures?

untold_podcast_-_forms_of_destiny.mp3 File Size: 28148 kb File Type: mp3 Download File (Right Click to Download)

When nature’s time comes round
Seek the Shaper’s guiding hand.
Three true forms will be presented,
To these forms your life must yield.

In the stillness of the night,
Under the Knot’s ever-shifting light,
Mark the ground with the Shaper’s seal,
And await your forms of destiny.

The rhyme tumbled through Mesh’iel’s mind, her lips silently forming each syllable as she knelt in the meadow. Prickling knees gnawed at her focus, reminding her that she had been in this position for hours. She hopped onto the balls of her feet and rubbed her hands over her dimpled knees. A quick glance ensured that her movements had not disrupted the pattern of the Shaper's seal she had laid out in the meadow using white river mud.

Despite the protection of seven good fairies, the newborn Princess Daylight is cursed by an evil swamp-fairy to never see the sunrise. There is little hope that her curse will ever be broken.

No house of any pretension to be called a palace is in the least worthy of the name, except it has a wood near it--very near it-- and the nearer the better. Not all round it--I don't mean that, for a palace ought to be open to the sun and wind, and stand high and brave, with weathercocks glittering and flags flying; but on one side of every palace there must be a wood. And there was a very grand wood indeed beside the palace of the king who was going to be Daylight's father; such a grand wood, that nobody yet had ever got to the other end of it. Near the house it was kept very trim and nice, and it was free of brushwood for a long way in; but by degrees it got wild, and it grew wilder, and wilder, and wilder, until some said wild beasts at last did what they liked in it. The king and his courtiers often hunted, however, and this kept the wild beasts far away from the palace.

One glorious summer morning, when the wind and sun were out together, when the vanes were flashing and the flags frolicking against the blue sky, little Daylight made her appearance from somewhere-- nobody could tell where--a beautiful baby, with such bright eyes that she might have come from the sun, only by and by she showed such lively ways that she might equally well have come out of the wind. There was great jubilation in the palace, for this was the first baby the queen had had, and there is as much happiness over a new baby in a palace as in a cottage.

But there is one disadvantage of living near a wood: you do not know quite who your neighbours may be.

untold_podcast_-_little_daylight.mp3 File Size: 51332 kb File Type: mp3 Download File (Right Click to Save)

Credits: "Little Daylight" by George MacDonald (Originally published in At the Back of the North Wind, 1871) "Fly" by Paeter Frandsen , Spirit Blade Productions (Appearing in Spirit Blade: Special Edition, used with permission) Sound Effect Attribution: henderda, Dynamicell, ERH, Corsica_S , HerbertBoland, fogma, RHumphries