Sneak-A-Peek: “The Sorceress” Chapter 1
It appears that fall is finally upon us! Unfortunately, I can’t tell because it’s still hot as fish grease in SoCal (Southern California)! I am praying that it just gives us some breathing room soon because I can’t keep living my life this way!
That aside, I have been lovingly laboring over the third installment to my Makaela Williams series, “The Sorceress”, and it is definitely a loving labor! I am taking my sweet, sweet time creating this world, fleshing out my dear Makaela and friends, and putting work into making the story flow. The last thing I want is to write a third book and rush it. It wouldn’t be fair to myself, to the story, to the characters (because they matter, too), or to my readers.
I was mentally wrestling with myself about when to start sharing chapters from “The Sorceress” because I don’t want to give away too much. Yet now that I am quite a bit chapters into the book, I think it’s safe to give y’all a taste of what’s to come.
Essentially, “The Sorceress” will have to deal with possibly wrapping up the world of Makaela, her two closest companions, as well as her somewhat love interest, D (he has a full name, read the first and second book for it *snickers*). It’s going to be…I don’t want to say, I’ll just give you the first chapter of “The Sorceress”…
*note: a very rough draft, so please ignore any errors you may find.
Chapter 1
Cosmina sat silently in the prickly dirt of the forest, concentrating. She heard the chirping of birds, the passing of dead leaves rolling on the ground, and the cawing of ravens just in the distance. Her hands laid on her knees as she sat cross-legged, her bottom becoming numb with each minute that faded into the next. She did not complain. She kept her eyes closed, and her mouth mute. Her ears were the only thing that remained opened—hearing—her heart beating deep within her. She was so still, she wanted to believe that she’d be able to hear her womb quicken. Yet, she knew her sisters did not truly mean it when she was told this. She nearly consulted with Mother Magatha about this when Ursula smiled and assured her it was not so. “Those are only tales we tell one another to give the illusion that our meditation is so serene, that we can hear our own body’s functions as they happen, but that is not true, my sweet sister,” she told Cosmina. “Do not listen to them when they tell you such things. But, should you reach a point in your meditation that you do hear your womb, please do share that with me.”
Ursula was always so comforting to Cosmina, from the start when Cosmina stumbled upon her while shambling through the forest. Ursula was walking through, collecting flowers in a basket that floated in the air just behind her with her every step. When she caught Cosmina looking, she smiled, her blue eyes shiny and crystalline. Cosmina tried to hide behind a thick tree trunk, but Ursula had already seen her.
“Come, child, I will not harm you,” Ursula’s sweet words floated to Cosmina. She stayed behind that trunk, her little heart almost giving out when Ursula stood in front of her out of thin air.
Ursula’s honeyed laugh warmed Cosmina. She kneeled down in front of the young Cosmina, pulling out an apple from her brown cloak. “You must be famished.”
Cosmina, still untrusting of adults, tried to make her way away from the trunk and as far from Ursula, shaking her head.
“What is your name, child?”
Cosmina kept moving away from Ursula until she was finally a foot away that then turned into a yard away, never taking her eyes off of Ursula as she dragged her feet deeper into the forest. She finally turned away from Ursula who stayed kneeling near that tree, her smile still as sweet as it started when she found Cosmina.
She rushed to push that thought out of her mind, to put all thoughts that didn’t serve her purpose at the moment to the side. “Think of putting it into a box,” she heard Ursula say before putting that, too, into that box she suggested to Cosmina. She focused once more on the nature that surrounded her, on honing into those sounds and the creatures that made them. She reached out to the birds that flew between the trees and bounced back and forth from branch to branch, to the beetles that rolled through the dirt and leaves on the forest floor, and took all of that inside of herself. All that was good and natural, she took into herself to hold. To fight against the darkness that kept sneaking up on her. It waited behind locked doors in their compound, in shadows of her quarters, in the cracks of the halls she walked. It called to her every day and every night. Whispered to her promises of power beyond measure, power enough to avenge her family. Power that would come to her quicker should she seek to put those to rest who wronged her and the ones she loved. It lurked everywhere since the day she found the hidden book of Lolit that Mother Magatha had tried so hard to conceal. Unfortunately for Mother, Cosmina caught onto their ways too quickly, and grew curious. Curiosity made way for Cosmina to get her hands on the book while Mother left it on her desk, unwatched.
At first Cosmina thought it was a test, that Mother had left it there just to see what Cosmina would do, what direction she’d take. All of the sisters knew that to read from that book would hold grave consequences for the reader if not approved by the Mother. Cosmina had thought better of it, but a strange force pulled her closer to it, or the book closer to her. She couldn’t remember anymore how it came to be in her hands, how the book was opened to the illustration of the taking of Lolit. The elder before them all, the one whom they all derived from, had been all things a mother should be. The mother, Lilith, had a daughter, Lolit. They had lived along side humans for many moons in joyous harmony before devious and cruel hearted humans took Lolit from Lilith, stealing the light and sun from their sky. When the mother went in search of her sweet Lolit, there was nothing left but a charred husk of what used to be her child. Lolit was alive but no longer the sweet child. Lolit stretched out her hands, condemning the ones who took her from her mother, reigning terror and death over their lands, the babes dying in their sleep, the children dying where they stood, crops never reaching their full growth, and beasts that roamed over their lands in the twilight hours; the very hours that Lolit was taken from Lilith.
From then, little Lolit healed, but her mind was never again whole. She made a new family, and a new pact that only death and misery should grow from that cursed village. Lilith tried to bring her child back to what they knew, to the side of good, but Lolit was too far gone, taking blood and flesh from humans to grow in power, dark power. She took for herself a lover from the dark side, and their union only made the madness in the land worsen. Lilith feared the worst, knowing what she had to do. She reached out to the natural beings of the world, begging them to come together to bring her daughter to heel. It took for her to give up true immortality to get these beings to agree, beings that ruled the skies, the seas, the land, and the beneath. Once the pact was made, and Lilith no longer at her full power to build trust with her new comrades, they battled against her own blood, her daughter. They fought shadow beings, demons, hell bound creatures the size of great hounds with teeth that gnashed and tore through humans without impunity. The shadow beings curled around her comrades, nearly taking them to the deep, dark place that laid even further than the great beneath. Lilith pulled to her the remainder of her light that she had within, and burst into a great shining flame that obliterated the evil, including her own child. What was left of Lolit was a great stone of red, cracks over the surface of it as Lilith held it in her hand. The comrades she called to join her all kneeled at her feet, declaring her the great mother, and restoring the power she had agreed to let go of for the sake of their help.
Although Lolit was no longer in the flesh, the stone was what was left of her. The mother tried to keep it contained by giving it to the ruler of the beneath, but he betrayed them after the calling of the stone overtook him. He took the stone, and in doing so, found it a new host for the spirit of Lolit that laid in the red and angry stone, and took her to be his bride as they shut out the rest of the world and the leaders of it. They ruled there, Lolit weaving her dark magic over the beneath so much that she no longer saw fit for the king of that land. She used her dark ways to be rid of him, spreading his ashes over the village and setting a spell that it would never be truly free of her, and what they had done to her. The red stone now replaced what was once her heart. She laid an incantation over the entrance of the beneath that no one, not even Lilith could penetrate. And there Lolit dwelled, but every so often, she’d call to an unsuspecting young maiden that was not taken by the good of the world, but one that had even a speck of darkness within. The ashes of her former lover and king seeped into the land of the village, and helped bring to her young girls who were curious and lost. Girls who were hurt, wronged by the world. Girls who were just like Cosmina.
Cosmina read from the book every night since, but only when she was caught did she try desperately to be rid of the thoughts that invaded her since taking in the words of Lolit; the spells, the creatures she could call, the power she could receive should she only recite those last words in the book. She was indeed curious, but she was always pulled away as Mother Magatha would always have a way of coming back just before Cosmina could get to the end of the book. Cosmina had already spent so much time reading from it that she knew it from the very beginning without the need to even so much as glance at the front pages of it.
“I know what you’re doing, child, and if you are wise, you will stop. Now,” Mother Magatha had told her in passing once in the long corridor that was just outside of Mother Magatha’s chambers. Cosmina tried to deny it, but she knew Mother knew better. Her grayish white eyes bore through her, knowing her inside and out. “If you proceed, there will be great despair for you.”
And with that, Mother Magatha walked away, her loc’ed hair trailing behind her as Cosmina watched. Once Cosmina made it back to her quarters, she squeezed her hands, trying to forget all that she had read and learned from the book that held the dark promises. She even prayed to the gods her family had prayed to when she was a little girl, before they were taken to be beaten and murdered. The images of the soldiers taking her mother from her, raping her, killing her, invaded Cosmina’s mind, enraging her. She paced her room, but the prayers did nothing to quell the rising burning hatred inside of her that she had kept deep down for the years she was with her sisters, thanks to Ursula. Ursula had found her in those woods after her family was killed. Cosmina barely survived what they had done to her, her young body desecrated, mutilated. What men will do to other men, women, and children in time of war was an abhorrence, one that stuck in Cosmina’s young mind. Ursula, when she found Cosmina, chanted loving spells over her, easing her pain as Ursula’s tears rained down on Cosmina. Each tear that dropped onto Cosmina put her at rest, softening the pain she felt. She slipped into a sleep, and when she woke, she was on the compound in what was to be her quarters. She was healed on the outside but the inside, the feelings, were never truly the same.
Those humans are barely humans for what they did, and what they’ve always done to others, the whispering would call to her. They will do it more and again until they rape the land itself. They care nothing for life, why should we care for theirs? Look at what they did to you. To your family. Your little sister. Your mother. Your brother. Your father. Remember what they did? They must pay with their lives. They must suffer, and their suffering should lead to their dying breath. But first…
Then in the corner of her room, in the stillness of a shadow, a red glow. It was small then grew and grew until it was the size of a large orange that hung in the corner, waiting for her to take hold of it, or so it seemed. It felt like it was waiting for her, wanting her.
Join me, my sweet, and we can set things right, make things better, and make those who meant to kill you…make them join their comrades in death where they will be with me and know true pain for all eternity. Join me, and I shall give you powers undreamt of. Join me, and you shall know what it means to have the world lay at your feet.
Cosmina saw in her mind the image of her family’s bodies, crumbled and lifeless. She cried, trying to shake the imagery loose from her, but it only grew more vivid. She fought against the seduction, praying and crying. She attempted to swat the red stone away, but it dodged her, staying out of her reach, but in the dimness of her room and making sure to stay out of whatever light there was. Her sight was caught into the ruby redness of that stone, her vision turning red, everything red. She heard her heart beating furiously in her chest, her breathing quickened as the world became one large red glow. Words from the book repeated in her mind over and over until it came to the end and a pause. A pause and then the voice finished the words for her, the incantation of Lolit. And when the spell was complete, Cosmina’s vision darkened, and she was lost.
In that forest, she tried to meditate what happened away, tried to go back to what was right and what was good, but a part of her that now knew the dark arts took over. The book of Lolit had swallowed what good was left of her bit by bit. The meditation was the only thing that kept the remainder of it at bay, but she knew she was losing, especially when she took the blood of a crow into her mouth and drank it down, binding her closer to that voice that she knew was the queen of the beneath and beyond herself, Lolit. She never revealed herself, but she was there in shadows, in whispers, in Cosmina’s mind. Meditating had kept her off but not for long.
“Something bothers me, sister,” she confided to Ursula. “Someone is compelling me to do what I know I mustn’t but it calls to me. It gives me no satisfaction to admit this, but I know it is the dark mother.”
Ursula whipped her head at Cosmina for this. “There is no dark mother, only Mother Magatha. I won’t hear of you speaking that name ever again.”
“All the same! She is clutching at my very soul, and I don’t know how much longer I can fight her.”
Ursula suggested meditation every chance Cosmina had after every lesson. Cosmina did as she was told until the day she stood in the forest, and the shadow of a woman, large and smokey, came to her with a crow, an offering. The crow, however, was not the true offering. When Cosmina took the blood of the winged creature, she took in the life of a babe, the life that was the offering was her own. And the blood was the pact that sealed her fate.
That was Chapter 1 in “The Sorceress” coming late Fall/Winter of this year! I cannot wait to share this third book in the Makaela Williams series! Please give me your thoughts, and let me know if you’re looking forward to reading this as much as I am looking forward to giving it to you guys!
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