It’s #BookQW and in many cases, one never ‘questions’ help!
This is the ‘cute meet’ of Fern and Beri from The Witch of the Meadows. More of the scene:
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.
“Raven!” he shouted, fingers digging into her flesh as he struggled to hold her. “Help.”
Leaves crushed right beside them. Someone invisible grunted. “Watch out,” groaned her rescuer, just before a knee popped into sight between two trees and a body stumbled after it.
The ground tilted toward the bushes. Gasping, Fern lost her footing and thumped onto her belly, sliding—
“Ohmigod, no!”
The rescuer heaved backward and dug in his boot heels. She jerked to a stop, muscles straining. Above them, the new guy—Raven?—swayed off-balance, his hair swinging in a long, black braid. He flailed his arms—and wings. Huge, black wings.
Impossible.
The first guy yelled, “Rip energy’s got her,” at the same time Raven swore and threw himself right at her.
She flinched, expecting him to fall on her, to halt her slide. But she continued to lose ground while he—is this really happening?—hung suspended, half over her, wings sweeping up and down, feathers whacking her, the bush, the ground, sending sticks and leaves flying everywhere.
Blood roaring in her ears, Fern ducked her head, and when she dared to look up again, her rescuer was also sporting a pair of wings, rusty-colored like his hair. Of course, that makes sense, said a ridiculous voice in her head.
“Ready?” Raven grunted.
For what? Fern wanted to ask,
but she couldn’t catch her breath. Numbness was spreading up her right leg, her body was stretched to its limit, and her rescuers had wings. Asking stupid questions was low on her list of needs.
***
Solstice Gifts releases November 29, 2019. Preorder it now!
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