Lela Markham
May 18, 2016 | Fantasy, 1st pages
Fate took Maryn ap Trevellyn, crown prince of all Celdrya, by surprise. Naught warned him that he’d been marked. Deryk ap Fyrgal camped with him in a wood off the King’s Highway between the coastal city of Llyr and High Celdrya on a pleasant eve following a relaxing day of fishing.
They enjoyed cups of wine with fresh bread, soft cheese and rolls of thinly-sliced spiced meat.
“I do think that second marriages agree with a man,” Deryk commented. He’d already had a bit too much to drink, as was his wont. Soon the tall blonde swordsman would settle back on his cot and sleep, leaving Maryn to contemplate the eve and his own thoughts alone. Twas always the way with them since boyhood.
“How so?” Maryn asked, leaning back in his camp chair, his darker brown hair and beard setting off his merry blue eyes. As heir-apparent to the High Seat of Celdrya, he craved the rare honest moment with a vassal who would speak freely.
“Do you not remember the first marriage, my friend? You were cockled for months before the ceremony. This time, you ducked into Llyr, confirmed the engagement and flitted away for the important things in life.” Deryk demonstrated this by waving his wine cup about this den of manly comfort. Owing to his lighter hair, he had not yet grown a full beard, though his moustache had grown in nicely.
“She’ll be in Dun Celdrya soon enough,” Maryn assured his friend.
“Aye, you are correct about Melynda. I was much in love. I’ll not make that mistake with this one.”
Maryn’s first wife had died at childbed, delivering a stillborn daughter, at midwinter. He still mourned them both, but the kingdom demanded an heir, so his father had arranged a betrothal as soon as the official period of mourning was over. He would not lose his heart to this one, so it would not hurt so much if the gods were cruel again.
“Good for you.” Deryk was on record as one more in favor of lust than love. “This one’s already tried and found fertile, for all that she’s a widow and childless. What more could a prince ask for?”
Gillian of Llyr, one year junior to Maryn’s 23, had been married to a younger son of Galornyn and borne him a healthy son, but both the husband and child had perished in a fever last fall. With King Vanyn in ill health, it became urgent for Maryn to produce an heir and clearly Gillian could provide that. There were worse reasons to marry beyond political expediency.
“I liked her well enough,” Maryn explained. “She’s intelligent and being raised in court at Llyr made her wise. I won’t love her, truly, but we’ll enjoy each other, I think.”
Deryk gave Maryn a searching gaze until the younger man set his cup aside.
“What are you thinking?”
James Halat
Nov 10, 2015 | 1st pages, Contemporary
My father terraces the small yard behind our house in New Jersey. I see him from my bedroom window setting rocks into the wall for the second terrace. I hurry and get dressed.
I pick up his work gloves from the ground. They come up past my elbows. I try to lift a rock from the wheelbarrow, but it is too heavy. “Here, give me that. You’re going to crush your fingers doing that. You never listen to me.” My father says this in a kind but short tempered way. He turns and places the rock in the wall.
I pull off the gloves and throw them on the ground. I climb up to the second terrace, where the weeping willow stands. He is a tall tree. At night he throws shadows around my bedroom. Sometimes they lull me to sleep. Other times they send me diving under the covers. In the summertime, he sighs in the night wind under the moonlight.
My father continues to build the wall, alone. I stand under the tree. I brush my fingers against his bark. He feels rough. His branches fall like water around me. I touch one. My mother yells from the kitchen window, “Leave that tree alone, you’re going to break your neck.” My father looks up and shakes his head, “He never listens.”
***
I play in front of the house with my friends. We play dodge ball against the garage door. I throw the ball and it lands behind the trellis of the rose bush next to the garage. I go to retrieve it. I step behind the trellis and become caught on some thorns. I can’t move. I call out to my friends, but no words leave my mouth. I try again to move, but I can’t. The air becomes like syrup. I find it difficult to breathe. I start falling slowly to the ground. My friends continue to play together, laughing, and calling out and arguing about rules. They have forgotten about me. I awaken underneath the bed. My face is pressed against the cold hardwood floor.
I tell my mother I have the dream again. She tells me to go out front and step behind the bush. “If you’re afraid of things running around inside your head when you’re sleeping, then prepare yourself for a long, unhappy life. And if your friends ever do that to you in real life, you better find yourself some new friends. You don’t take that kind of shit from anybody, you hear me?”
“How come you take shit from dad?”
“What goes on between me and your father is none of your goddamn business. But to tell you the truth he’s a worrier. Try not to become a worrier like him. If you do, you may as well just dig a hole in the ground, get in it, and pull the dirt over yourself.”
“What’s pissing money up the wall, anyway?”
“Look around the living room. We have lawn furniture instead of a sofa and chair like everybody else. What the hell money is he talking about?”
I shrug my shoulders. My mother works in the basement, sewing, and she cooks and she cleans and she makes trips to school and clothes for us and saves enough money to make Christmas nice for us.
***
We travel to Pennsylvania, where my father’s brother lives with my aunt and cousins. We pack up the car and we go. My father drives exactly the speed limit.
“Geez, look at the traffic. We’ll be stuck here for an hour. Louise, do you think the temperature gauge is too close to hot?”
“It’s fine, Al. And please stop tailgating.”
“Look, the gas is already at 3/4. We’ll have to stop soon. We don’t want to run out on those country roads. Not with the bears and other animals.”
“Stop it, Al. You’ll scare the kids.”
“I feel a little shimmy in the wheel. Can you feel it, Louise? I should have never let you talk me into buying this Ford. We should have stayed with a Plymouth.”
“We couldn’t afford the Plymouth. Not on what we make.”
“I don’t know where all our money goes. I spend half my days in that grocery store and we have nothing to show for it.”
“Oh look, kids, we’re almost at the bridge that crosses into Pennsylvania.”
We are on a winding two way road cut into the mountain along the edge of the Delaware River. We pass a sign that says FALLING ROCK AREA. The mountain is steep. A fence at the bottom catches the large boulders and rocks that roll down. I guess some of them get past the fence. That is why the sign is there. I keep my eye on the road until we cross the river and are in Pennsylvania.
We drive for a long time in Pennsylvania. Finally, we come to the little stone bridge that carries us over the creek and onto the narrow mountain road. The woods are thick here. Sometimes the trees form a canopy over the road, and it feels like riding through a tunnel. At the end of the winding road is a small green house, my aunt and uncle’s house.
It takes me awhile to acclimate to the smell of dairy farms and manured fields. And to telephones with party lines. And to the damp stink of the house in the middle of nowhere, standing alongside the creek.
I spend my first few days on my own. I can’t deal with the changes so easily. I hang around the adults. The adults play cards at the kitchen table. They ask me why I don’t play with the other kids. I don’t answer. I stand off to the side and I watch the flies in the kitchen. They buzz around the fly paper that hangs from the ceiling. Every so often one of them lands on the paper and gets stuck. Buzzing turns to a short-lived moan. Then silence.
After a few days, I loosen up, and I start to play with my cousins. The one my age talks a lot and takes off her clothes outside. She wants me to take off my clothes, too, but I run away every time she asks.
My cousins have friends who live on a dairy farm. Their friends talk about doing things to their dogs and to the farm animals. And they talk about tricks they play on each other in the barn. Everyone goes into the barn. I stay on the porch and pet the dogs.
My father and my uncle get into a fight during a card game. They walk through the house and they yell and they slam doors. I don’t know what they fight about. My mother and my aunt stay at the table. They laugh at the men. They ask me why I’m not down at the creek with the others. I don’t answer them. I watch a spider spin a web near the ceiling. Close to the fly paper.
Then it ends. It is time to leave.
James Halat
Nov 6, 2015 | 1st pages, Contemporary
My father terraces the small yard behind our house in New Jersey. I see him from my bedroom window setting rocks into the wall for the second terrace. I hurry and get dressed. I pick up his work gloves from the ground. They come up past my elbows. I try to lift a rock from the wheelbarrow, but it is too heavy. “Here, give me that. You’re going to crush your fingers doing that. You never listen to me.” My father says this in a kind but short tempered way.
He turns and places the rock in the wall. I pull off the gloves and throw them on the ground. I climb up to the second terrace, where the weeping willow stands. He is a tall tree. At night he throws shadows around my bedroom. Sometimes they lull me to sleep. Other times they send me diving under the covers. In the summertime, he sighs in the night wind under the moonlight. My father continues to build the wall, alone. I stand under the tree.
I brush my fingers against his bark. He feels rough. His branches fall like water around me. I touch one. My mother yells from the kitchen window, “Leave that tree alone, you’re going to break your neck.” My father looks up and shakes his head, “He never listens.” I play in front of the house with my friends. We play dodge ball against the garage door. I throw the ball and it lands behind the trellis of the rose bush next to the garage. I go to retrieve it. I step behind the trellis and become caught on some thorns.
I can’t move. I call out to my friends, but no words leave my mouth. I try again to move, but I can’t. The air becomes like syrup. I find it difficult to breathe. I start falling slowly to the ground. My friends continue to play together, laughing, and calling out and arguing about rules. They have forgotten about me. I awaken underneath the bed. My face is pressed against the cold hardwood floor.
I tell my mother I have the dream again. She tells me to go out front and step behind the bush. “If you’re afraid of things running around inside your head when you’re sleeping, then prepare yourself for a long, unhappy life. And if your friends ever do that to you in real life, you better find yourself some new friends. You don’t take that kind of shit from anybody, you hear me?”
“How come you take shit from dad?”
“What goes on between me and your father is none of your goddamn business. But to tell you the truth he’s a worrier. Try not to become a worrier like him. If you do, you may as well just dig a hole in the ground, get in it, and pull the dirt over yourself.”
“What’s pissing money up the wall, anyway?”
“Look around the living room. We have lawn furniture instead of a sofa and chair like everybody else. What the hell money is he talking about?”
I shrug my shoulders. My mother works in the basement, sewing, and she cooks and she cleans and she makes trips to school and clothes for us and saves enough money to make Christmas nice for us. We travel to Pennsylvania, where my father’s brother lives with my aunt and cousins. We pack up the car and we go. My father drives exactly the speed limit.
“Geez, look at the traffic. We’ll be stuck here for an hour. Louise, do you think the temperature gauge is too close to hot?”
“It’s fine, Al. And please stop tailgating.”
“Look, the gas is already at 3/4. We’ll have to stop soon. We don’t want to run out on those country roads. Not with the bears and other animals.”
“Stop it, Al. You’ll scare the kids.”
“I feel a little shimmy in the wheel. Can you feel it, Louise? I should have never let you talk me into buying this Ford. We should have stayed with a Plymouth.”
“We couldn’t afford the Plymouth. Not on what we make.”
“I don’t know where all our money goes. I spend half my days in that grocery store and we have nothing to show for it.”
“Oh look, kids, we’re almost at the bridge that crosses into Pennsylvania.” We are on a winding two way road cut into the mountain along the edge of the Delaware River. We pass a sign that says FALLING ROCK AREA. The mountain is steep. A fence at the bottom catches the large boulders and rocks that roll down. I guess some of them get past the fence. That is why the sign is there. I keep my eye on the road until we cross the river and are in Pennsylvania.
We drive for a long time in Pennsylvania. Finally, we come to the little stone bridge that carries us over the creek and onto the narrow mountain road. The woods are thick here. Sometimes the trees form a canopy over the road, and it feels like riding through a tunnel. At the end of the winding road is a small green house, my aunt and uncle’s house. It takes me awhile to acclimate to the smell of dairy farms and manured fields. And to telephones with party lines. And to the damp stink of the house in the middle of nowhere, standing alongside the creek.
I spend my first few days on my own. I can’t deal with the changes so easily. I hang around the adults. The adults play cards at the kitchen table. They ask me why I don’t play with the other kids. I don’t answer. I stand off to the side and I watch the flies in the kitchen. They buzz around the fly paper that hangs from the ceiling. Every so often one of them lands on the paper and gets stuck. Buzzing turns to a short-lived moan. Then silence.
Sep 10, 2014 | 1st pages, Fantasy
CHAPTER ONE
If prison could be beautiful and, in it, family could be found, Mayven wassure fate had granted her such a boon. This apartment had been her prison, a necessary one perhaps, but prison nonetheless, as long as she could recall. Love had been her keeper and destiny her sentence. Fate—the keeper of the keys—was unlocking the doors at last. However, Mayven found the cost was more horrifying than the thought of a life spent in servitude to a destiny she had never wanted and still didn’t understand.
Today, it felt like heaven and all its contents weighed on her young shoulders. Prophecies, destinies and hopes of a world she had never really seen weighed against the life of the man who represented the only family she had ever known.
Mayven studied the building across the street, admiring the broad branches of the willow tree that were artfully curved around the exterior of the trunk. The smaller leafy branches twisted together to form a living railing, the fluttering leaves dancing softly in the slight summer breeze. Along the path of the broad, leafy walkway, crystal windows—bright round portals of glass—caught the last rays of summer light, making the massive trunk of the tree appear as if it were studded with brilliant gems. Behind the windows, as the light grew dimmer, the warm glow changed the gems into radiant orbs. Between the windows, doors seamlessly opened and closed. Except for the crystal pads marking their locations, one would not recognize the doorways that silently slid open after a series of buttons were pressed on the crystal displays. The doorways had no permanent openings but instead appeared and vanished into the wide expanse of the massive tree upon demand.
AWAKENING on Amazon US
or AWAKENING on Amazon UK
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Jul 29, 2014 | 1st pages, Historical
The coppery disk of a summer sun slid silently into a band of cloud and a night began that would change a small boy’s destiny forever.
In the gathering dusk, a nine-year-old orphan boy and his dog climbed the hill above the Somerset village of Stowey. He was dressed in ragged cast-offs, given him by the villagers and to an outsider, he looked a little like a vagrant, perhaps an outlaw. He was tall for his age, but very thin, he seemed to have a wiry strength, the skin of his face and arms were tanned to a chestnut brown and his mop of dark, almost black hair fell to his shoulders in greasy tails. Near the top of the hill, where it was steepest, the boy stopped and glanced about. There was no one around. Alone, he slid into the familiar protection of a dry, sandy hollow beneath the low branches of an ancient willow.
From his hiding place he had a clear view into the heart of the village that had grown around its small church on the floor of the valley. He saw women gossiping as they took up their water from the spring and he watched the children playing in the shallows of a stream. The boy’s dark, blue-green eyes revealed a sadness, a deep disappointment that was well beyond his years. The damage to his trusting child-innocence had been done two long years before this dusky night, it had come in the shape of a vicious raid by the Norsemen that they called The Vikings.
On that night he had watched as his father was butchered and his gentle mother repeatedly raped by a band of huge men. Then they had killed her with the bright flash of a sweeping sword, before setting fire to the thatch of their simple house, which had once been a happy home.
How those men had howled and laughed. Just like the demons in the nightmares that invaded his head every night since that awful day.
The Reluctant Warrior on Amazon US
or The Reluctant Warrior on Amazon UK
We allow you to read the first page of a book, look at its cover and then buy it, but only if you like it. Nothing beats sampling a novel. Experience the simple pleasure of finding novels that you like, fast, with BooksGoSocial.com.
