It’s #BookQW and I’ve been making ‘short’ work of my WIP this spring. If you’ve read The Witch of the Meadows, come root for Salm, a wizard from my Windborne world who is getting his own story.
And here’s more of the scene:
The magic built across the water, red, gold, blue, green and every shade between slipping over the rolling surface of the Irish Sea, and Salm wished he were a part of it.
Instead, he was tethered to captaining his family’s schooner—at magical anchor along the outer edge of the Windborne fleet circling this spell. Not an effective way to impress a lass. At least not Luna.
Atop a deckhouse, she sat with her sister and his, her fluff of tight, white curls captured beneath a broad sunhat that she’d magicked in place, the lacy hem of her gauzy blue top fluttering around her linen trousers.
Spells, she looks so good. Even cocooned in a lifejacket, like everyone onboard.
She turned and flashed him a smile, her pale gray eyes hidden behind sunglasses, but her cheeks lifted, her head tilted impishly—
Oh Orb, had he pushed that thought to her?
Aye, he had. He grinned back, and stopped short of waving. He’d learned that lesson a year ago after hailing her in the village. It was months before she’d acknowledge him again, and weeks before learning that her pale coloring garnered enough extra attention.
Enjoying yourself? he asked her.
Quite.
Now they had this, thought-speaking, one of the benefits that’d come with merging their energy so bloody well that he wanted to announce the magical achievement to every wizard he knew.
But he didn’t dare. Luna might be willing to merge magic, and do other things that set his magic looping his channels, but she wouldn’t pre-bond with him. That was a naggingly significant detail they had to work out. If either of them slipped up, if anyone saw the depth of their merging, if they figured out the extent of all the interactions they’d had outside a sanctioned Windborne bonding agreement, if her father caught wind—that would certainly be the end of the best thing to ever happen to him.
Salm gripped the helm wheel. So, today it’d been enough that she’d agreed to come on aboard to watch the wizards from his home enclave on the Isle of Giuthas turn out to repair a rip in their island’s shielding. He should have asked her to sit closer to the helm, but—
Folks cheered, and he jerked his gaze back to the sea. Energy coated the water. Eight Guithas wizards set it to spinning within the loose circle formed by four fishing boats at the cardinal points and four sailboats filling in at the ordinal. There was nae any other way to secure a rift along an ocean boundary but to sail the wizards out to it to conduct their spells from boats. Too dangerous to have wizards flying at the same time they were exerting vast amounts of energy to control and break up rip energy.
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Thanks for reading! If you want more from this world of winged wizards, check out The Witch of the Meadows page.
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