It’s #bookqw and my heroine soon will have ‘words’ in two books!
Fern plays a big role in book 2 of The Windborne series. Today’s quote comes from chapter 2 of that story, Guardian of the Pines:
Beri lightly touched her elbow.
It wasn’t a random bump and when he looked questioningly at her, Fern nodded. He slid his hand down and laced his fingers with hers.
It felt so right that she sighed. Then she immediately looked around. Still no sign of her parents. Beri pulled her off the path—okaaay, they prooobably had a few minutes—and around a tree trunk. They bumped together, and she wanted to put her arms around him, but the tingling had started, and it was all she could do to hold her magic in its storage core. Still, Beri bent his head to hers, so Fern began closing her eyes—and caught a movement behind him. As she swung to look, her chin smashed into Beri’s ear.
“Youch,” he snapped.
And she spat, “Mom!” because it was Mom coming around the tree, wearing her ragged work jeans, her brown hair braided and falling past her hips. Her petite mother might be only five feet tall, but she certainly hadn’t been on the path seconds ago. “Uh, hi,” Fern stammered.
In answer, Mom tilted her head and narrowed a disapproving look at their clasped hands.
“What—crap.” Something green trickled over her finger. It could be candy, gum, anything—but it wasn’t. Fern balled her hand, sucking in her magic. It withdrew into her cores, and the tingling stopped, just as her dad poked his head around the tree, too.
“Brilliant,” he said cheerily. “No one about. Let’s go.” He gestured them closer with a short, reddish-brown glass rod fastened on a leather loop that he wore around his neck. The peregrinator for magical travel could pass for a new-age pendant. If Mom ever let him go into Boulder, he’d blend right in—long black hair and beard, leather trousers and a homespun shirt, the collar cream against olive skin a little darker than Fern’s.
“Dad could have warned you they were here,” she muttered to Beri and pulled him with her, not letting go of his hand despite Mom’s frown. No point now.
Dad put his hand on her shoulder so both she and Beri connected to his magic, and Mom clasped his arm. The glass peregrinator in Dad’s hand glowed. Magic flushed from it into a globe around them, and the pereport started. Leaves and branches, then buildings, buses and cars whirled outside their protective barrier—they could see out as Dad directed the teleport, but no one could see them.
As they lifted above the Flatirons of Boulder, Fern closed her eyes to block the blur of mountains and canyons—the ups and downs of Colorado’s Front Range were way too high for her stomach. In a minute, the scent of pine replaced the city, and a soft branch brushed her cheek. She opened her eyes in a grove of ponderosa pines that hid them from the neighbors’ prying eyes.
Giving a huff, Mom hurried off, along a zigzag of lichen-covered granite. The path led from the trees at the back of their property to the modern log cabin she and her mom had lived in since Fern was three years old.
“What?” Fern asked as they descended the slope. “She can’t be that mad I had one little slip. Is it because she caught Beri and me together? Or because of having to pick us up by…” Magic? They didn’t say certain words outside the closed doors of their cabin. “She knew you might need to someday.”
“’Twas the parade of elders coming through her house,” Dad said. “Looking for Beri.”
“Through the…” Portal? No way. The magical passageway that only Fern had been able to operate for the past year was now reconfigured to open with a spark of magic when Beri came over from his home on the Isle of Giuthas for school. Dad had set that up for just them…or so she’d thought. It must work with any spark of magic.
Beri grimaced, but Merlin raised a hand. “Not your fault. Problems along that rip escalated today. Once they started, the council discovered its breach is tied to the Pines. They need you to…help because of your work with those trees.”
* * *
Fern & Beri have only one half (one-third?) of the story. Meet Cor here.
I’m starting the countdowns for Guardian of the Pines: In two weeks my gorgeous cover will be revealed, and a month after that on Arbor Day, April 26, 2019, it releases.
Take advantage of the .99 preorder sale.
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