It’s been a few weeks–sorry, I was off at our cabin, both working and playing, and couldn’t keep my regular schedule. More & photos about that later this week, because today is Book Quote Wednesday! See more authors’ quotes on the same word, ‘please,’ by following the #bookqw hashtag on twitter.
It’s #bookqw and ‘please,’ my heroine wants safety from weird magic!
More from this scene from the start of Chapter 3 of The Witch of the Meadows:
Weoo-weoo-weoo. The kite’s call sounded over and over while the ground slowly rocked to a halt. The bird, the lack of rain, the rough bark digging into her fingertips…even with her eyes closed, Fern knew she’d made it to the woods. Soaking wet.
So that part had been real.
Please let me still be on the isle.
She released one arm to swipe aside the strands of hair stuck to her cheeks and looked around. The murky magic was gone. The tree she clung to grew just inside the woods’ edge, and—thank goodness—the Meadows lay back the way she’d come. The ground didn’t look quite right, like puzzle pieces not aligned.
At least it wasn’t dropping into the sea.
Fern tried pulling her feet free of some scrubby bush. Her right ankle was stuck and numb. It didn’t hurt, but it was super cold, colder than the rest of her. She couldn’t see what held her trapped, and a buzz of panic rose, intensifying her struggle. She put more muscle into it and felt something pulling on it, on her.
Fingers tingling, she clutched the tree, using it and all her strength to haul her leg free. It was like dragging a bag of mulch. Her numb foot was coated in murky slime. Strings of it stretched back to the bushes, pulling at her like a bungee cord.
She scrunched to the tree, got a better hold on it and looped one arm under her leg to hold it against the slime’s pull. I just need to lose the shoe. No way was she touching the slime, so she dug her heel in and wiggled. The laces were tight. A stick to loosen them would help. She reached—
“He wouldn’t be wrong, so she has to be here,” said a male voice. “Keep looking for a gap.”
Fern sat up fast. The slime yanked on her leg, nearly jerking her free from the tree. She held on. No one was in sight, but she heard erratic breathing between the kite’s weoo calls. Leaves rustled from two different directions as something moved closer… A guy crawled into view. Her breath caught, and he pivoted, close enough to touch if her arm hadn’t been around the tree. His rusty-red hair fell in curling waves around his face. Freckles dusted his cheeks.
“Hey, lass, there you be. Raven?” he called over his shoulder. “This way.”
For a moment, she just stared, because—geez—one second she’d been alone, and the next here was this big guy. He looked in his late teens, with green eyes and an accent. Scottish, or Irish, she didn’t know, but he wore some kind of traditional clothes, a pullover shirt with laces at the neck. He crouched on his heels, taking her in from wet hair to her slimed foot.
“Ach, that’s nae good,” he said.
She shivered. Think. His arrival isn’t so different from how I got here, so he’s likely a neighbor of Gran’s and not dangerous. But her pounding heart didn’t believe that. Despite what she’d promised Mom, she struggled to get both feet beneath her in case she needed to defend herself. The muck pulled back, harder this time. Her grasp on the tree slipped to fingertips caught on the bark.
The guy lunged and wrapped a large hand around her free wrist. “Do’na let the rip take you in!” He grabbed her other arm, too, and hauled against the slime.
An unstoppable tremble coursed through Fern, which had nothing to do with her wet clothes. She seized his wrists, found a root or something to brace her left foot against and shoved with everything she had toward this freckled stranger who had become her lifeline.
~~~
If you’ve enjoyed this excerpt and want to grab it elsewhere than ‘zon, do it this week. I plan to take it down from other retailers and enroll in Kindle Unlimited for a 90 day period to give those readers a chance to enjoy the story.
Add it to your GoodReads shelf!
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