Danger in the shadows? Snippet from new #Fantasy Romance for #WeWriWa

 

Welcome to another Sunday with Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday. Reading is a safe pastime during the pandemic. Sample the work of a new author. Read snippets of stories in different genres.

I’m posting snippets from my new fantasy about a witch and an elf. The book is up for preorder. The main character, Bridget Bramble, flees her home when a troop of armed men plunder the village and kill her brother. She decides to seek the fabled land of Oakenwald where men and elves live in harmony. Her Granny had traveled from Oakenwald when she was a child. She told Bridget about the elves. “Their long hair gleamed like silver when they danced in the moonlight at festivals.” So, Bridget knows the elves were friendly to their human neighbors or at least they were friendly sixty or seventy years ago.

So far, Bridget has trodden a well-known trail, familiar from trips with her father up to five years earlier when he died. It has changed and malicious creatures now threaten travelers. After walking for six days, she has reached a cliff at the foot of the mountains and is looking for the place her father called ‘the stairway into the mountains.’

You can read last week’s snippet at https://auroraspringer.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-end-of-familiar-trail-snippet-from.html

We continue, although I’ve skipped some sentences with spoilers.

Before she had counted seventy paces, the trail ended at an enormous pile of boulders. Sometime during the last five years, a massive landslide had obliterated the original path and blasted rocks over a large swath of the mountainside. She imagined the thunderous roar as the top of the cliff cracked into an avalanche. Huge boulders had crashed downhill, flattening the pines on the lower slopes.

Panic stabbed her. How could she reach Oakenwald if she couldn’t even ascend into the mountains? Her spirits plummeted into despondency. Was she trapped in the wilderness? She felt like screaming in frustration or pounding her fists against the unyielding rock. But, she dared not risk making a noise and attracting predators.

And a little more:

Leaning her hands against the vertical rockface, she stared up at the jagged peaks that towered beyond the first cliff. She bit her lip uncertainly. How could she cross over the mountain range? Where was the stairway?

Alerted by a prickling at the back of her scalp, she swung around to confront the danger.

A hooded figure stood in the shadows under the trees. 

I’m sure you can guess who is watching her. If all goes well, you’ll meet him next week. 

Fantasy romance. A young witch escapes the destruction of her home and embarks on a perilous quest for the fabled land where elves and humans live in peace.

In a land threatened by cruel invaders from the east, Bridget Bramble lives in a small village where she barters herbs and carved buttons. When marauders target her village and murder her family, she flees into the woods. Armed with her Granny’s advice and a bag of magic buttons, she sets out on the perilous journey to Oakenwald, the fabled land where elves and men live in harmony. As she travels farther from home, she encounters malicious creatures from the worst kind of folktale.

Lost in the foothills of the mountains, Bridget meets the elf, Windswift the Wanderer. He offers to guide her across the mountain range. But what is the elf doing in human lands? Can an ordinary, or almost ordinary, human girl trust a cold hearted elf to lead her to safety? 

Epic fantasy adventure and romance with darker overtones. This story weaves elements of folklore and a quest for a safe haven in a land where magic is real.  

Pre-order at: AMAZON   iBooks   B&N   Kobo  GooglePlay   Other

[Releases on February 3rd.]

 

I’ll be happy to reply to your comments. 

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