F.T. McKinstry's Blog - Posts Tagged "fairy-tale"
There's a venerable piece of advice to writers that says, "Write what you know." If you know what you're talking about, it's easier to bring the reader there. But how does it go when it's not familiar to anyone because you made it up out of thin air and broke the rules of known earthly experience in the process?
Enter the fairy tale. A good one drops in enough familiar things to lure the reader in. We all know what a forest is. A constellation. A frog, or a cat. But then things get weird, the familiar becomes suspect and you can go anywhere. When I started writing these stories years ago, I had all kinds of dark and fanciful ideas. I wrote them down and wasn't thinking about writing what I know. But I was.
Fairy tales create landscapes from metaphors, patterns and emotional impressions. This process isn't conscious or linear. It rises from the inner realms of the mind—not when the writer wants it to, or thinks it should, but when it's time—and what looks like a story about, say, some nefarious creature lurking in an enchanted forest is, beneath the surface, a story about something else entirely. Something we all know and are familiar with.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of eight tales that journey through the darker side of the psyche in the guise of imaginary beings, tree and animal lore, romance, dreams, visions and verse.
The Trouble with Tansy - An orphaned girl on the threshold of womanhood inherits a splendid, mysterious garden from three generations of wisewomen. When a roguish wizard attempts to impress her by disrupting the seasons, she must turn to the old powers for help.
The War God Sleeps - When a lush, fertile land is seized by drought, a lonely hermit's son ventures deep into the hills in search of water and there awakes a beautiful, yet terrible god whom the world has learned to live without.
The Bridge - A visionary who spent her life preparing for a planetary alignment that will materialize a beautiful nature spirit only she can perceive, descends into her blackest fears when she is abandoned to a war for which she is indirectly responsible.
The Fifth Verse - An ancient immortal entity defies the rules of her kind by falling in love with a mortal warrior, an indiscretion that leaves her grieving, pregnant and dependent on the help of a wizard whose army was responsible for the death of her beloved.
Deathseer - Under the influence of a mysterious observatory, the commander of a fearsome army is trapped in a conflict that eventually costs him his honor and the life of his brother, and drives him to accept an inborn magical ability that changes his destiny.
Eating Crow - A masterful, wayward shapeshiftress angers a wizard who curses her by summoning a diabolical immortal hunter that puts her near death and forces her to seek the wizard's cat, a gentle, mystical creature that alone can heal her wounds.
Marked - The mother of a fey child learns the pitfalls of mingling with immortals when her boy is taken by a ferocious winged monster at the request of the god who fathered him.
The Origin - A woodsman discovers that he is a god who created everything around him to know the love of a woman whose mortality drives him to the brink of annihilation.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
See Story Illustrations
Read an Excerpt
Watch the Trailer
Customer review of Wizards, Woods and Gods:
"If you enjoy a book for sake of an interesting story, this book is for you. If you enjoy a story for sake of how well it's written, this book is even more so for you. F.T. McKinstry writes in a way that involves all the senses. It's not something I read line by line, but sensation by sensation. Highly recommended."
Enter the fairy tale. A good one drops in enough familiar things to lure the reader in. We all know what a forest is. A constellation. A frog, or a cat. But then things get weird, the familiar becomes suspect and you can go anywhere. When I started writing these stories years ago, I had all kinds of dark and fanciful ideas. I wrote them down and wasn't thinking about writing what I know. But I was.
Fairy tales create landscapes from metaphors, patterns and emotional impressions. This process isn't conscious or linear. It rises from the inner realms of the mind—not when the writer wants it to, or thinks it should, but when it's time—and what looks like a story about, say, some nefarious creature lurking in an enchanted forest is, beneath the surface, a story about something else entirely. Something we all know and are familiar with.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of eight tales that journey through the darker side of the psyche in the guise of imaginary beings, tree and animal lore, romance, dreams, visions and verse.
The Trouble with Tansy - An orphaned girl on the threshold of womanhood inherits a splendid, mysterious garden from three generations of wisewomen. When a roguish wizard attempts to impress her by disrupting the seasons, she must turn to the old powers for help.
The War God Sleeps - When a lush, fertile land is seized by drought, a lonely hermit's son ventures deep into the hills in search of water and there awakes a beautiful, yet terrible god whom the world has learned to live without.
The Bridge - A visionary who spent her life preparing for a planetary alignment that will materialize a beautiful nature spirit only she can perceive, descends into her blackest fears when she is abandoned to a war for which she is indirectly responsible.
The Fifth Verse - An ancient immortal entity defies the rules of her kind by falling in love with a mortal warrior, an indiscretion that leaves her grieving, pregnant and dependent on the help of a wizard whose army was responsible for the death of her beloved.
Deathseer - Under the influence of a mysterious observatory, the commander of a fearsome army is trapped in a conflict that eventually costs him his honor and the life of his brother, and drives him to accept an inborn magical ability that changes his destiny.
Eating Crow - A masterful, wayward shapeshiftress angers a wizard who curses her by summoning a diabolical immortal hunter that puts her near death and forces her to seek the wizard's cat, a gentle, mystical creature that alone can heal her wounds.
Marked - The mother of a fey child learns the pitfalls of mingling with immortals when her boy is taken by a ferocious winged monster at the request of the god who fathered him.
The Origin - A woodsman discovers that he is a god who created everything around him to know the love of a woman whose mortality drives him to the brink of annihilation.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).See Story Illustrations
Read an Excerpt
Watch the Trailer
Customer review of Wizards, Woods and Gods:
"If you enjoy a book for sake of an interesting story, this book is for you. If you enjoy a story for sake of how well it's written, this book is even more so for you. F.T. McKinstry writes in a way that involves all the senses. It's not something I read line by line, but sensation by sensation. Highly recommended."
When I was a child, my grandparents lived on a golf course. It was a beautiful place, mysterious and sprawling with woods, lakes and paths. A good place to go fishing, only mind the snakes and snapping turtles. Not far from my grandparents' house, a path went through a dense patch of woods with a stream running through it. We called it the Spooky Forest. It was generally agreed upon that straying from the path was a bad idea.
In honor of my childhood haunt and the release of Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration, here is the first in a four-part series in which I'll talk about the stories in the book, two at a time, including excerpts and illustrations.
Part One: The Power of Creation
The forces of creation exist in all things, flora and fauna, seasons, worlds, every act of the heart, every loss and turn of a mind. Light comes from the Void and surprises its creators with something new and heretofore unknown. In "The Trouble with Tansy" and "The Fifth Verse," two women, a mortal and an immortal, discover the power of creation through the inexorable forces of death.
The Trouble with Tansy
Gardens keep secrets...especially old ones. Orphaned and wary of magic, a young woman knows little of her ancestral garden's mysteries until she discovers her own power in the darkness of winter, the words of a witch and the loss of her innocence.
In a huge willow tree, perched the shadowy form of a cat, oddly cloaked and sitting with one leg hanging down. It shifted like rolling water into a mink, a salamander, a frog.
Tansel lowered herself into a clumsy curtsy. "Aunt," she said carefully, "I need your help."
"What will you pay for it?"
Tansel hung her head. "I have nothing." It was true. Nothing but tansy.
"You are still innocent. You must give me that."
Tansel blinked. What did that mean? She recalled what the crone had told her years ago, about knowing the darkness. But it did not matter now. She nodded quickly.
The watery thing in the willow tree swirled down around the trunk like a snake and coiled on the ground, where it became a hovering shadow. In a voice like wind over a grave, it chanted:
"These things three, your garden needs
"To make the dark and light the same.
"Slis, a frog,
"Gea, the spring and
"Retch, the oldest wizard's name."
The Fifth Verse
Born of stars and witness to the rise and fall of civilizations, an immortal entity takes for granted the vastness of her knowledge—until she falls in love with an ordinary mortal warrior. But the price she pays for this indiscretion involves knowledge of something much greater and more powerful than war, wizards or even the gods themselves.
The wizard lived north in the foothills of the Spectral Mountains, in the ancient castle of Altaeros. A god of that name had built it; he lived in the sinews of the castle through a towering opal spire that focused his mind in the world. But the Shade cared nothing for that. As a terrible storm, she raced over the sky wailing in a legion of shadows, a maiden's grief, a mother's wrath. She struck the towering moss-cloaked stones of Altaeros, shattering panes of crystals and glass, uprooting generations of herbs and flowers and shaking the earth beneath the foundation stones. She rained and split the sky with thunder, she howled like wolves and screamed like owls, and blew the trees and brush into tangled, cracking hands until at last, when she had become too heavy and empty to rage anymore, she fell.
The castle shuddered when she hit the floor.
Time slowed, spun around for a moment, and stopped. An overcast sky gazed down dispassionately as the immortal rolled over in her woman's form, pale as a broken shell.
"Are you finished?" said a voice above her.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
In Part Two, we'll be looking at what happens when you wake a god from his peaceful sleep. Until then, stay on the path....
In honor of my childhood haunt and the release of Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration, here is the first in a four-part series in which I'll talk about the stories in the book, two at a time, including excerpts and illustrations.
Part One: The Power of Creation
The forces of creation exist in all things, flora and fauna, seasons, worlds, every act of the heart, every loss and turn of a mind. Light comes from the Void and surprises its creators with something new and heretofore unknown. In "The Trouble with Tansy" and "The Fifth Verse," two women, a mortal and an immortal, discover the power of creation through the inexorable forces of death.
The Trouble with Tansy
Gardens keep secrets...especially old ones. Orphaned and wary of magic, a young woman knows little of her ancestral garden's mysteries until she discovers her own power in the darkness of winter, the words of a witch and the loss of her innocence.
In a huge willow tree, perched the shadowy form of a cat, oddly cloaked and sitting with one leg hanging down. It shifted like rolling water into a mink, a salamander, a frog.Tansel lowered herself into a clumsy curtsy. "Aunt," she said carefully, "I need your help."
"What will you pay for it?"
Tansel hung her head. "I have nothing." It was true. Nothing but tansy.
"You are still innocent. You must give me that."
Tansel blinked. What did that mean? She recalled what the crone had told her years ago, about knowing the darkness. But it did not matter now. She nodded quickly.
The watery thing in the willow tree swirled down around the trunk like a snake and coiled on the ground, where it became a hovering shadow. In a voice like wind over a grave, it chanted:
"These things three, your garden needs
"To make the dark and light the same.
"Slis, a frog,
"Gea, the spring and
"Retch, the oldest wizard's name."
The Fifth Verse
Born of stars and witness to the rise and fall of civilizations, an immortal entity takes for granted the vastness of her knowledge—until she falls in love with an ordinary mortal warrior. But the price she pays for this indiscretion involves knowledge of something much greater and more powerful than war, wizards or even the gods themselves.
The wizard lived north in the foothills of the Spectral Mountains, in the ancient castle of Altaeros. A god of that name had built it; he lived in the sinews of the castle through a towering opal spire that focused his mind in the world. But the Shade cared nothing for that. As a terrible storm, she raced over the sky wailing in a legion of shadows, a maiden's grief, a mother's wrath. She struck the towering moss-cloaked stones of Altaeros, shattering panes of crystals and glass, uprooting generations of herbs and flowers and shaking the earth beneath the foundation stones. She rained and split the sky with thunder, she howled like wolves and screamed like owls, and blew the trees and brush into tangled, cracking hands until at last, when she had become too heavy and empty to rage anymore, she fell.The castle shuddered when she hit the floor.
Time slowed, spun around for a moment, and stopped. An overcast sky gazed down dispassionately as the immortal rolled over in her woman's form, pale as a broken shell.
"Are you finished?" said a voice above her.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).In Part Two, we'll be looking at what happens when you wake a god from his peaceful sleep. Until then, stay on the path....
Welcome to Part Two of The Spooky Forest, a series dedicated to the stories in Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration.
Part Two: Awakening Gods
Some say that everything we know is the dream of a god. I am fascinated by the idea of a sleeping god, a being who comes from and must occasionally return to the quiescence of the womb, as all things do, for healing, renewal and rebirth. In "The War God Sleeps" and "The Origin," one god is awakened by a mortal; the other, by his own creation.
The War God Sleeps
Loneliness and a quest for knowledge will drive a person to many things. Combine this with the vision of a shaman, and an age of ignorance ends on the edge of a sword.
Loneliness remained one mystery that defied Sethren's mind, despite his understanding of structure and formlessness. The space between the lines had become a wellspring of loneliness, an opaque impression only water seemed to penetrate. He often wondered if his father, a hermit whom the folk in the villages thought mad, living as he did on the wild edges of their simple existences, felt lonely. But then, his father lived half of his conscious life elsewhere. Perhaps the ones he spoke to there, the ones who told him things, kept him company.
According to him, loneliness had driven the War God to abandon the world. An entity who caused death by reaching through the lines into the darkness that created them knew the solitude of the Mother; and after so many turns of a world from life to death to life, so many spirals in so many eons, he could no longer bear it. So the War God grew sad and went to sleep.
The hermit spoke of a temple in the north, at the base of Math's Eye, the mountain range that protected the realm. He said the War God slept there, beneath five points, five lines and a raven's eye. So said the old tales. So said the mad. No one else spoke of such things.
The Origin
Things aren't always what they seem. Perception creates reality. But there are rules, such as the linear progression of seasons or the natural and unquestioned confidence one has in the solidity of things. One woodsman falls in love...and the rules change.
He had built this path to the top of the hill where he had first seen her. She had appeared over the grass like a sunrise, walking slowly, her eyes as dark as the night with a tawny star in the depths, her skin the color of the earth and her hair a tangle of moss and roots, reddish and wild, like her. Together they had planted a grove, when the meadow rippled in the wind and birds fluttered and chirruped among the brush and flowers. They had dug the holes for the trees with their bare hands and gently placed the seedlings in. They had smoothed the path by walking to the stream with a fat clay jug, returning to the grove and watering each tree with a jugful, one at a time.
She sang to the trees, the dark-skinned girl. He remembered her voice, rich and full of subtleties, as she stood in the sun with her brown breasts bared and her arms and fingers splayed like the branches of an ash, her voice spiraling into the sky. Underneath the warm green moss, silence loves the water, she would sing. High above the cool blue wind, sunlight loves the air.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
Part Three, "War and Transformation," will venture into two tales of love, honor and destiny.
Part Two: Awakening Gods
Some say that everything we know is the dream of a god. I am fascinated by the idea of a sleeping god, a being who comes from and must occasionally return to the quiescence of the womb, as all things do, for healing, renewal and rebirth. In "The War God Sleeps" and "The Origin," one god is awakened by a mortal; the other, by his own creation.
The War God Sleeps
Loneliness and a quest for knowledge will drive a person to many things. Combine this with the vision of a shaman, and an age of ignorance ends on the edge of a sword.
Loneliness remained one mystery that defied Sethren's mind, despite his understanding of structure and formlessness. The space between the lines had become a wellspring of loneliness, an opaque impression only water seemed to penetrate. He often wondered if his father, a hermit whom the folk in the villages thought mad, living as he did on the wild edges of their simple existences, felt lonely. But then, his father lived half of his conscious life elsewhere. Perhaps the ones he spoke to there, the ones who told him things, kept him company.According to him, loneliness had driven the War God to abandon the world. An entity who caused death by reaching through the lines into the darkness that created them knew the solitude of the Mother; and after so many turns of a world from life to death to life, so many spirals in so many eons, he could no longer bear it. So the War God grew sad and went to sleep.
The hermit spoke of a temple in the north, at the base of Math's Eye, the mountain range that protected the realm. He said the War God slept there, beneath five points, five lines and a raven's eye. So said the old tales. So said the mad. No one else spoke of such things.
The Origin
Things aren't always what they seem. Perception creates reality. But there are rules, such as the linear progression of seasons or the natural and unquestioned confidence one has in the solidity of things. One woodsman falls in love...and the rules change.
He had built this path to the top of the hill where he had first seen her. She had appeared over the grass like a sunrise, walking slowly, her eyes as dark as the night with a tawny star in the depths, her skin the color of the earth and her hair a tangle of moss and roots, reddish and wild, like her. Together they had planted a grove, when the meadow rippled in the wind and birds fluttered and chirruped among the brush and flowers. They had dug the holes for the trees with their bare hands and gently placed the seedlings in. They had smoothed the path by walking to the stream with a fat clay jug, returning to the grove and watering each tree with a jugful, one at a time.She sang to the trees, the dark-skinned girl. He remembered her voice, rich and full of subtleties, as she stood in the sun with her brown breasts bared and her arms and fingers splayed like the branches of an ash, her voice spiraling into the sky. Underneath the warm green moss, silence loves the water, she would sing. High above the cool blue wind, sunlight loves the air.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).Part Three, "War and Transformation," will venture into two tales of love, honor and destiny.
Welcome to Part Three of The Spooky Forest, a series dedicated to the stories in Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration.
Part Three: War and Transformation
War destroys the fortresses of ignorance with the awesome indifference of a natural force such as an earthquake or a hurricane. Whatever its causes or intentions, it changes things. Permanently. But while it can drive us to the depths of human depravity, sometimes, as with any traumatic event, it can also awaken us to our potential. In "The Bridge" and "DeathSeer," a priestess and a warrior find themselves caught in wars that strip the veils from their eyes to reveal their true natures.
The Bridge
Gods appear to wizards as one thing; to warriors, another. A priestess in search of love in the otherworld is led by her god to the truth of her birthright...but only war can show it to her.
The autumn sun cast long beams across the mauve, green and gold tapestry of the brushy field. A woman emerged from the shadows, breathing deeply as a cool breeze drew her cloak around her bare thighs and stirred the rose-violet oil on her skin. She spoke an ancient word from the pit of her womb and passed through the towering gate of Sol Keep, poised like a forbidding hand on the edge of the plain.
The High Master would know she had gone. But he would not know where. Or why.
A chill swept over her flesh as the naidrin's voice caressed her mind in a whisper of branches, leaves and flowing water. Efae, he said in his gentle way. Where do you fly?
"You should know that," Efae said aloud, addressing the tree line in the distance. "You told me in a dream last night. Now is the time. Tonight I will cross the Bridge, and we shall be together."
The naidrin said nothing.
Deathseer
Keeping a personal secret in the darkness of war is perilous, as secrets know the path to the light. A high commander with the ability to see the hand of Death keeps this secret under the cloak of dreams and visions until he realizes, at great cost, that Death doesn't take sides.
Liros awoke in the clutches of a recurring nightmare. As a white wolf, he saw through the eyes of a child. Drop the candle and run, run on bare feet, so quietly. The dream hovered in his body, his visceral identity and sense of self, an experience as vivid as waking life. Not quietly enough.
Surrounded. Warm tears fall into the open arms of the eternal Void.
As his consciousness returned, the feeling in his heart stood in anguished contrast to the well-built outpost where he lay, in the pre-dawn, surrounded by the watchful eyes of warriors. They called it Fentalon, named after a war god of the North with the head of a wolf. To Liros it felt like a prison.
A candle flickers out against the cold, damp earth.
He closed his eyes and exhaled as the miasma of his circumstance gathered around him. His fading dream darkened it like a bright light casting the long shadow of a crag.
The roar of the river hides the cries, the truth, even as it weeps.
He made a decision.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
In Part Four, "The Immortal Hunter," we'll come face to face with a beautiful yet terrible otherworld creature some believe is just a legend. It isn't.
Part Three: War and Transformation
War destroys the fortresses of ignorance with the awesome indifference of a natural force such as an earthquake or a hurricane. Whatever its causes or intentions, it changes things. Permanently. But while it can drive us to the depths of human depravity, sometimes, as with any traumatic event, it can also awaken us to our potential. In "The Bridge" and "DeathSeer," a priestess and a warrior find themselves caught in wars that strip the veils from their eyes to reveal their true natures.
The Bridge
Gods appear to wizards as one thing; to warriors, another. A priestess in search of love in the otherworld is led by her god to the truth of her birthright...but only war can show it to her.
The autumn sun cast long beams across the mauve, green and gold tapestry of the brushy field. A woman emerged from the shadows, breathing deeply as a cool breeze drew her cloak around her bare thighs and stirred the rose-violet oil on her skin. She spoke an ancient word from the pit of her womb and passed through the towering gate of Sol Keep, poised like a forbidding hand on the edge of the plain.The High Master would know she had gone. But he would not know where. Or why.
A chill swept over her flesh as the naidrin's voice caressed her mind in a whisper of branches, leaves and flowing water. Efae, he said in his gentle way. Where do you fly?
"You should know that," Efae said aloud, addressing the tree line in the distance. "You told me in a dream last night. Now is the time. Tonight I will cross the Bridge, and we shall be together."
The naidrin said nothing.
Deathseer
Keeping a personal secret in the darkness of war is perilous, as secrets know the path to the light. A high commander with the ability to see the hand of Death keeps this secret under the cloak of dreams and visions until he realizes, at great cost, that Death doesn't take sides.
Liros awoke in the clutches of a recurring nightmare. As a white wolf, he saw through the eyes of a child. Drop the candle and run, run on bare feet, so quietly. The dream hovered in his body, his visceral identity and sense of self, an experience as vivid as waking life. Not quietly enough.Surrounded. Warm tears fall into the open arms of the eternal Void.
As his consciousness returned, the feeling in his heart stood in anguished contrast to the well-built outpost where he lay, in the pre-dawn, surrounded by the watchful eyes of warriors. They called it Fentalon, named after a war god of the North with the head of a wolf. To Liros it felt like a prison.
A candle flickers out against the cold, damp earth.
He closed his eyes and exhaled as the miasma of his circumstance gathered around him. His fading dream darkened it like a bright light casting the long shadow of a crag.
The roar of the river hides the cries, the truth, even as it weeps.
He made a decision.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).In Part Four, "The Immortal Hunter," we'll come face to face with a beautiful yet terrible otherworld creature some believe is just a legend. It isn't.
Welcome to Part Four, the final post of The Spooky Forest, a series dedicated to the stories in Wizards Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration.
Part Four: The Immortal Hunter
Wizards call him sioros, an immortal predator with the body of a male god, towering black wings and the claws and fangs of a mountain cat. To lay eyes on him means either heartbreak or death depending on how the winds blow that day. In "Eating Crow" and "Marked," one woman attempts to elude the hunter and pays with her heart; the other tries to bargain with him and pays with her life.
Eating Crow
It is never a good idea to anger a wizard. One witch causes enough strife to provoke a powerful mage to summon a sioros after her. But when she plumbs the utter reaches of her skills as a shapeshiftress to elude the hunter, she discovers the value of her own humanity.
Shapeshifting was Oona's life, a fluid existence she preferred to humanity. As a human, she would have avoided anything to do with the Master of Straif. A wizard of the deep flowing waters, the hollows of the earth and the implacable forces of blood and transformation, he had one black boot in the shadows.
And he loved his crow.
Oona, on the other hand, found the raucous creature too tempting. Tawny, lithe and driven by the lust of spring, she slipped around the eastern wall of the castle and climbed the spiky old hawthorn tree that grew there.
Most humans knew better than to cross a wizard. A cat did not care.
She landed with a soft thump in a bed of periwinkle. The crow called to the dawn. Nice of him to give her something to head for, though she would have smelled him easily enough without the noise. She crept on her belly through the shadows of lupine spires, tulips and daffodils until she spotted the bird on his perch above the crabapple tree. Fluid as sound, she changed.
She landed with a graceful flutter in the tree, a beautiful female crow with glistening black wings and a song for the male on his perch. He knew enough to be wary of her instant appearance in his domain, but curiosity distracted him. In that instant of miscalculation, Oona drew close and returned to her wildcat shape to finish her wicked deed. It ended quickly.
Marked
Falling in love with a god puts one woman outside her own kind. Losing her child to a sioros brings her to the stars with a plea that only a mother could make.
The constellation of Sioros, the Winged Hunter, sparkled on the twilit sky to the north. The towering cluster gazed down from a large star called the Hunter's Eye, which shone with steady, soothing light that Lorelei felt before she opened her eyes with a violent shudder. A fisherman's wife from Othurin, she had a simple mind. But in the light of the Hunter's Eye, her mind became a tapestry, silvery and glinting in divine patterns of arcs, lines and colors from which her thoughts fell most strangely.
She knew the name of the star, for one thing. Alberon. Yes, that was his name.
This elusive memory brought up another, crushingly accessible one. A mother's grief drew her up from the dead-cold ground. "My baby," she gasped, rustling in the breeze between day and night as a raging river flooding over a millwheel, splintering it. She staggered across the bloody path before the cottage, its hearth cold and windows dark.
Away in the distance, a woman screamed.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).
Customer review:
"If you enjoy a book for sake of an interesting story, this book is for you. If you enjoy a story for sake of how well it's written, this book is even more so for you. F.T. McKinstry writes in a way that involves all the senses. It's not something I read line by line, but sensation by sensation. Highly recommended."
Part Four: The Immortal Hunter
Wizards call him sioros, an immortal predator with the body of a male god, towering black wings and the claws and fangs of a mountain cat. To lay eyes on him means either heartbreak or death depending on how the winds blow that day. In "Eating Crow" and "Marked," one woman attempts to elude the hunter and pays with her heart; the other tries to bargain with him and pays with her life.
Eating Crow
It is never a good idea to anger a wizard. One witch causes enough strife to provoke a powerful mage to summon a sioros after her. But when she plumbs the utter reaches of her skills as a shapeshiftress to elude the hunter, she discovers the value of her own humanity.
Shapeshifting was Oona's life, a fluid existence she preferred to humanity. As a human, she would have avoided anything to do with the Master of Straif. A wizard of the deep flowing waters, the hollows of the earth and the implacable forces of blood and transformation, he had one black boot in the shadows.And he loved his crow.
Oona, on the other hand, found the raucous creature too tempting. Tawny, lithe and driven by the lust of spring, she slipped around the eastern wall of the castle and climbed the spiky old hawthorn tree that grew there.
Most humans knew better than to cross a wizard. A cat did not care.
She landed with a soft thump in a bed of periwinkle. The crow called to the dawn. Nice of him to give her something to head for, though she would have smelled him easily enough without the noise. She crept on her belly through the shadows of lupine spires, tulips and daffodils until she spotted the bird on his perch above the crabapple tree. Fluid as sound, she changed.
She landed with a graceful flutter in the tree, a beautiful female crow with glistening black wings and a song for the male on his perch. He knew enough to be wary of her instant appearance in his domain, but curiosity distracted him. In that instant of miscalculation, Oona drew close and returned to her wildcat shape to finish her wicked deed. It ended quickly.
Marked
Falling in love with a god puts one woman outside her own kind. Losing her child to a sioros brings her to the stars with a plea that only a mother could make.
The constellation of Sioros, the Winged Hunter, sparkled on the twilit sky to the north. The towering cluster gazed down from a large star called the Hunter's Eye, which shone with steady, soothing light that Lorelei felt before she opened her eyes with a violent shudder. A fisherman's wife from Othurin, she had a simple mind. But in the light of the Hunter's Eye, her mind became a tapestry, silvery and glinting in divine patterns of arcs, lines and colors from which her thoughts fell most strangely.She knew the name of the star, for one thing. Alberon. Yes, that was his name.
This elusive memory brought up another, crushingly accessible one. A mother's grief drew her up from the dead-cold ground. "My baby," she gasped, rustling in the breeze between day and night as a raging river flooding over a millwheel, splintering it. She staggered across the bloody path before the cottage, its hearth cold and windows dark.
Away in the distance, a woman screamed.
Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is available as an ebook from Wild Child Publishing (PDF, HTML, ePub, Mobi, Lit and PRC), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook).Customer review:
"If you enjoy a book for sake of an interesting story, this book is for you. If you enjoy a story for sake of how well it's written, this book is even more so for you. F.T. McKinstry writes in a way that involves all the senses. It's not something I read line by line, but sensation by sensation. Highly recommended."
