I’m away this week–without a laptop!–and, at this posting, the word of the week for #BookQW (a Twitter book teaser hashtag) hasn’t been posted. I still wanted to post, so have chosen my own! The word will be ‘wizard’ because I’m refilling my creative well and visiting The Wizarding World of Harry Potter with family.
I’ve run short on time, so no image for the quote. Since the cover of Keepers of the Sea Cliffs has been released, here’s one of the images the fabulous Deranged Doctor Designs did for my series.
This teaser is from chapter 4 of Keepers of the Sea Cliffs. The word ‘wizard’ does appear in the first chapter, but that chapter is available to read on the book page linked below.
Here’s a new excerpt:
Beyond the last business on the southern edge of town, the ramp and beach were deserted, thank the Golden Orb. Tern Bay’s rules prohibited flying only in town, but Luna often walked to the next cove if folks were about. Tonight, she didn’t want to tarry. Stopping past Fintail’s tavern, she put away her sunhat, unzipped her coveralls and shook her arms from the sleeves. Those she tied around her waist and then flipped her tool bag’s leather harness over her shoulders and clipped it to hang at her middle.
Strolling onto the beach below the looming headland, Luna loosened her silver energy. It swirled over her back and formed white-feathered wings nearly her height. Spreading them, she checked the breeze off the water to prepare for flight.
A burst of conversation sounded on the tavern decking behind her.
“Wow,” called the high voice of an awestruck kid, followed by a second, younger child’s high-pitched calling of, “Mum! Mum! Mum!”
Curses. Another minute and she’d have been airborne and not as noticeable.
“Shh,” the mother hushed them. “She’s a wizard, the same as you.”
Aye, but pure-white feathers were rare among Windborne and always attracted attention. Luna’s magic spread throughout her channels to buoy her body for flight, and she flapped hard, drawing additional squeals of delight, and rose with the wind. She circled with a warm thermal, letting it lift her alongside the headland known as Kittiwake Point. The family on Fintail’s deck continued to watch, their eyes shaded against light reflected off the whitewashed cliff—a natural whitewash from the colonies of seabirds nesting here: guillemots, razorbills and the point’s namesake, kittiwakes.
As she rose, their evening calls became distinguishable from the surf pounding the rocks below. Hundreds of birds swirled into the air, flying out and back again. Spotting her, they spun to circle her, wings everywhere, bills open in cries that merged into one piercing shriek. She flew straight through, letting them worry about missing her larger body and wings. Though she shouldn’t really take the time, Luna reached out with spread fingers.
It was their game.
Their cries growing frenzied, the birds dove, racing each other for a dip below her hand and a pet of their head feathers. Still she rose, moving the target, always amazed at their skill in making contact, her heart swelling with each brush of feathered silk.
At the cliff top, the rocks greened with clinging grasses and shrubs. The land flattened out, topped by the gray stone tower of Kittiwake Point Lighthouse. The wide promontory was half again taller than the headland on Tern Bay’s northern end, and the lighthouse raised its warning beacon another hundred feet. Since 1789, the light shone eighteen miles across the Irish Sea—strictly within their Windborne enclave—warning of the rocky shoals extending from the cliff’s base.
Luna looked seaward once more. The Peaceful Seas was near enough that they’d begun lowering the sheets. She’d asked Salm to wait until midnight to come calling at the lighthouse. By then, the routine of her family’s night would be underway, and Papa would be settled after several mugs of tea. She glided over the undulating shadows of the moorland brush and landed within the stone-fenced yard surrounding the lighthouse and its attached keeper’s quarters, her family home. Kitchen gardens lay to one side, a chicken coop and other stone sheds in the back, while the lighthouse sat squarely on the seaward side, a mere hundred feet from the edge of the three-hundred-foot bluff.
***
Read more Salm’s and Luna’s lives along the Scottish coast in Keepers of the Seas Cliffs, on its book page, including the first chapters.
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