It’s been awhile since I posted something that was NOT a review, and this particular post is something special to me…
It’s always been a dream of mine to write my own book and I have been occasionally working on this one. I’m beginning to get a little more serious about my writing and making this book thing happen, and I wanted to share the second draft of my first chapter and get some content feedback. I already had the opportunity for Adrienne Young (squee!) to give me notes, but I want content feedback from the world beyond.
The second chapter is well underway and goes back a few days from the first to give some background on the main protagonist and where she comes from. I will provide that when I have the first draft done as well, and maybe a few more after that.
Thanks in advance and I hope you enjoy 😉
(TITLE IN THE WORKS) BY S. L. WOLF
Chapter 1
Isa walked as silently as she could through the darkened wood, her path lit only by the eerie light of the full moon. The cool wind whispered gently through the leaves, caressing the skin of her face with icy fingers and seeming to murmur her name as it passed. She inhaled the intoxicating scent of decaying leaves and night air laced with woodfire smoke and the barest hint of tallow, bracing herself and steeling her soft heart for what she might have to do.
She was getting close.
Removing the hood of her cloak so it wouldn’t obscure her vision, she tightened the strip of leather that bound her dark brown hair and double checked that her hunting knife was strapped to her hip in its crudely crafted leather sheath. She made sure it was not hindered by the knot of her dark, worn skirts where she had tucked them into her belt to keep them from dragging through the dry underbrush that blanketed the forest floor.
Adjusting the knot a bit, she looked down to check that no more than a sliver of her skin was exposed above her worn boots. Anything more would be a pale target set against the dark of backdrop of the forest. She couldn’t allow anything to give her away.
She still remembered new leather smell of her beloved boots when her parents had proudly gifted them to her during the Harvest Festival two years prior. The embroidery was once a pattern of intertwined tendrils in deep forest green and bright sky blue which traveled up the sides of the laces and curled around each calf, meeting at the back of each beneath subtly-stitched red songbirds. She had worn them every day since, the leather softening over time and forming perfectly to her feet and calves like a second skin.
Although the brightness of the red songbirds were now faded, she still knew they were there. She prayed silently that they would help her feet move swift and sure. Taking a deep breathe, she tried her best to put aside her fear and anxiety and pressed on.
She crept closer to the source of the woodfire smoke. She could now see the flicker of firelight through the trees and hear the cadence of chanting voices interweaving with the sounds of the forest, the rhythm matching that of her pounding heart. She removed the wooden bow at her back and nocked one of the arrows carved from a stick of rowan wood with fetching made from a blue-black raven’s feather. She hadn’t always been the best with it and hoped that fate would guide her arrows straight and true.
Her sister’s life depended on it.
Although the village elders often told stories of the witches of the wood, it had been so many years since a girl had been taken that many thought it had been a tale left in children’s ears at the hearthside to scare them. Her own parents, who were seen as superstitious people by many of their fellow villagers, had often told their three girls that their minds need not be occupied with occultist frivolity, and would often shut down the mere mention of them. The same parents who left cream out for house faeries, refused to travel if they thought they may find themselves at a crossroads at night, and kept a stock of rowan wood arrows with iron tips on hand.
“Just in case.” Her father would say to her and her two sisters whenever they asked, often punctuating it with a tap on the nose.
Although they never clarified the ‘why’, Isa knew the superstition behind the materials they were made from, materials meant to harm magical beings. It’s the very reason she now had a quiver full strapped to her back, something she had never thought would happen even a few days prior to now.
Three days had passed since her youngest sister, Lilliana, had disappeared from her bed in the middle of the night. The only clue left behind had been a strange note written in charcoal on an impossibly large and already crumbling autumn leaf: We will return the last in exchange for the first. You have until the peak of the Full Moon’s Rise.
She was moments away from the time when the moon would reach its apex. Silently, she slipped between the trees toward the source of the fire’s glow and chanting voices, concentrating hard to not to make too much noise in the undergrowth.
She finally came upon a small clearing and quickly dipped behind a large forked tree at the edge. Looking through the opening formed between the twin trunks, she surveyed the almost primal scene before her.
Women ranging in age and in various stages of undress danced around a large bonfire set in the center, the sparks from which looked like fireflies racing toward the starry sky. A hodge-podge of candles in various colors and sizes—there must have been thousands—rimmed the edge of the clearing. The women, their feet and arms moving in a rapturous dance, sang ancient words that seemed to bend the very fabric of the night itself. The haunting melody was intoxicating, pulling at Isa’s every bone and sinew, coaxing her to join in. It took her all of her control to keep herself still.
Occasionally, one of the many women—there had to be at least twenty–would break from the group and dance toward one of four tables stationed evenly around the circle at what seemed to be the points of a compass. They would feast upon the various food and drink, using their hands to tear off bits of meat from bone and flesh from fruit. The tables were practically groaning beneath the weight of the fare laid out upon them.
The table to the west held foods she recognized, such as bright and shining apples of various hues, flaky fall pastries, and a whole roasted pig, things she had partaken of herself only three days ago.
It seemed like an eternity.
The tables to the east and south bore strange, bright fruits and glistening, juicy meats that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Globes of orange and large, spiked fruits that were split in half, the light dancing across the golden meat within, as well as a bowl of oddly bright green berries that seemed to glow on their own. There was also a roasted bird that she had never seen before that was similar to a rooster, if a rooster could reach the size of a boar. The bird had a strange bright-blue comb atop its head and its beak was a strange green that she had only ever seen on spring saplings.
As her gaze travelled to the final table to the north, she felt her heart stop in her chest. Not because of the table itself, which appeared to be forged from ornately twisted silver strands and surrounded by a light dusting of snow. Not even because of the elaborate and beautiful cakes that bookended the surface next to steaming roasts and bowls of sugar plums would put even the best royal baker to shame. It wasn’t even the ethereal light that seemed to surround it. It was because of the small and happily swaying little girl who sat at the center of the table in a throne-like silver chair upholstered in purple velvet, the dark color turning her bouncing golden curls into a beacon.
It was Lilliana.
Seeing her sister snapped her memory back to when she had discovered her sister’s empty bed after coming in late from the first night of this year’s festival, the imprint left from her small body still warm to the touch, and that dreaded leaf on the pillow where her small, blonde head had dreamt its dreams.
Seeing her here and now, seemingly unharmed and well taken care of caused an overwhelming flood of relief and fear to course through her, followed swiftly by a cold wave of resolve. No matter what happened tonight, she would make sure Lilliana made it home safe. Even if she had to trade herself to the Dark Protector to do it.
Always Lost in Words 