Today I want to introduce you to this amazing new young adult book I found. It is by author K.S. Carol, who is not new to writing, but new to this genre. K.S. Carol is a pen name used to keep the authors adult and young adult novels separate. I love this exciting and original novel that will rip you out of your everyday life and toss you in to the fantasy world Carol has created. The Orchard is a great book for all ages and with school just starting what better to do than get this book and read.
I was provided with a sample to share with you today and hope it hooks you as much as it did me. You can purchase K.S. Carol's series most places books are sold on line or follow this link to AMAZON for a quick purchase.
~Prologue~
Prologue
“Do you think I have made the wrong
decision, my lord?” Elizabeth was bowed before him as she asked, but didn’t
miss the look of pain that flickered over his face.
Elizabeth had been putting this
meeting off for days. Now she had no choice but to talk to him. When his lordship
summoned, you went. She’d run across the fields, hardly noticing the green
grass or the moon that shone over her head. She’d hurried, minding only that
she didn’t slip, didn’t fall, her mind a whirlwind of activity.
“That is not a question for me to
answer, Lady Elizabeth,” he said softly. “Only you can know. Does your heart
tell you that you’ve made the wrong choice?”
“It tells me that I am correct. But
my head, my lord, it says that I am making a grave mistake in leaving my
countrymen in peril.” The tears she had been fighting threatened again. She
knew it was stupid to cry, but there was no stopping them.
“Bah! Which do you think will keep
you warmer at night—your heart or your head? You have a child now that you must
concern yourself with. There will be others to care for the kingdom.”
She didn’t think he sounded so sure,
but she made no comment. She felt him shift then, the air around them hot and
heavy. The odors from the room they were in stirred and she thought of flowers
in the spring and burning leaves in the fall. She could almost taste it on her
tongue and opened her mouth wider to bring in more of the calming scent. She
chanced a quick glance and saw his shining green eyes staring at her. Bowing
her head again, she thought of the stories she had heard about him as a young
speck and wondered if any or all of them were true.
“They are not all true, but there
are some that are. I will not take the time to tell you that some things are
better left to their own, including rumors.” His laughter was short and bitter
sounding even to her ears. “Rumors are what brought us all here in the first
place. You should know better than anyone that they usually hold little of what
is the truth.”
She had forgotten that he could
read her mind so easily here in this place of magic. She tried to think of
something mundane and a sudden flare of swimming in the pond nude last night
came to mind.
“That is enough, Lady Elizabeth. You’d
do well to stop that thought. I would prefer that there still be secrets
between us and your body is something that I would include in that list of
things. If you would like, I can stop listening to your thoughts if you would
tell me what has brought you out into the darkness to my home.” He cleared his
throat before continuing. “When I asked you here it was to be when you could come at your earliest convenience
and not before my message had cooled from my mouth. ‘Tis late and you are well
into your pregnancy to be out traversing alone.”
“I come when you need me, my lord. You
know that I belong only to you at times like this. But I worry. I worry about
you, the kingdom, the people. As your champion, I feel as if I’ve failed—”
“Do no finish that or you shall
make me upset with you.” He shifted again. This time she smiled when he huffed.
“All right, tell me. Tell me what worries you so. And do not mention to me that
you have failed me again.”
“My lord, what will happen now? I
wonder of this child. I wonder if this one will follow in our ways to protect
your lands.” Elizabeth had tried to think of a solution to keep the kingdom
safe and she could not think of a thing. Only his lordship could make the final
say.
She hoped for a son, but knew that
if he willed it, the child would be his if it were female. She realized he had
been quiet for a long while and thought that maybe he had not heard her, but at
the same time knew that he could hear a twig snap halfway round the world.
“Not quite that far, my lady.” His
laughter made her smile again. “We must have a champion—one that will protect
and serve the kingdom for all time, one that will keep us safe. The child you
carry is a male. He will be strong and wise beyond his years, handsome of face
and of heart, just as you have been and are even now. He and those thereafter
will sire the female that will carry the link to the champion. They will sire
the next generation of Keepers until she is born. She alone will carry my mark.
I ask that you will train the female child of your line so that she will train
the next and then the next down through the centuries. Will you teach her the
ways of the kingdom, train her to keep it safe? She will have what we want,
what we will need. Do you accept this need, Lady Elizabeth, Princess of the
Fae?”
“Yes, my lord,” she told him
without hesitation. “You may depend upon us. But who will watch over us all, my
lord? If there is no champion for many centuries to come, who will protect
those within from harm?” Her heart pounded in her chest as she thought of those
she was leaving unprotected because she had fallen in love. But she wisely said
nothing. She did not what him to be upset with her again.
“Calm yourself and listen to me.” She
took several deep breaths to do just what he’d commanded her to do. “I have
been the sole protector before and, though you are no longer my champion of
blade, you will continue to protect us with your magic.” He lowered his voice
as he continued. “The one we seek, she will bring back the life. She alone will
finish the quest and she will bring all the magic from her heart to us. It will
be her blood that gives us life.”
“This champion, my lord, how will
we know who she is?” Her fear slipped in her voice and she hated that. “What if
something happens and she is not born? How then would we survive?” She knew as
soon as the words left her mouth that he not only knew the answer, but had
already seen it. His next comment told her that he had.
“She will be born. I have foreseen
it. She will be the greatest of all, even more than you have been.” She heard
his body scrape along the stone of his lair before he spoke again. “Give me
your hand so that I may take a drop of your blood to sustain us.”
Elizabeth did not hesitate this
time either, but gave him her hand. The prick of her skin was small considering
the massiveness of the claw that had nipped her. The small amount of her pure fae
blood did not harm her or the child, but she knew that its purity would help
all of them.
She had been champion for many
years, more than she cared to think about. She had slain many and protected a
score more. Elizabeth didn’t give fear a second glance, but leaving all that
she knew and loved without protection scared her not just a little bit.
His sigh told her that he’d taken
it in his mouth. She knew that her blood was only part of the power that made
them what they were, secluded and secure. It was him and his energy that gave
them whatever they needed when they needed it for all of time.
“Go in peace, my lady,” he told her
after a few minutes. “I have much to do, as do you. And I thank you.”
She left the dwelling of her king
reluctantly, but not without another backward glance. He was there just beyond
the darkness, his bright green eyes shining back to brighten the path she
walked along.
~~~
Envir watched Elizabeth leave with
a heavy heart. He knew that while she was strong in her conviction that she
would keep the kingdom safe, she could not see all that would befall them. He
had seen the child born, seen her become the champion, but he did not see if
she succeeded. And that one thing may be the end of all that he had ever known.
He shifted into a more manageable
form, a human. He knew he needed to go and prepare the kingdom for what was to
come and for the very long road ahead of them. He hoped that he was wrong, it
had happened plenty before, but he knew deep into his heart that this time he
was correct. They were in for a very long and hard time of it. He looked down
at the stone beneath his lair and spoke to the woman lying there so still.
“I love you very much, my dear. I
miss you more with each passing year and wish to join you. But now is not the
time. Sadly, we have come to the point in this venture that we feared would
come.” He looked out over the fields of his home and sent the spell to close it
off. “We are going to be so alone here for a time. A long time, I think. She
will come and when she does, I will lay beside you for all our times.”
His ability to go between worlds
would be the only thing that saved them right now and he hoped that humans
would be more tolerant than they had been in past dealings. He also hoped that
he would be able to hold onto what little magic was left until the champion
could make herself known to them all.
He moved to the streets of the land
he had once called home. He could feel the magic here, the others like him that
needed peace. He could feel the first trickle of the champion too, her family’s
fae blood calling to him. He moved to the offices of his old allies, the ones
who would set things up for him, and entered the office without anyone but them
being the wiser.
“My lord. We did not expect you
today. You said…please, have a seat. Let me go and get my brothers.” The
vampire rushed from the room, the bright light shining behind him. “I’ll only
be a moment.”
He’d approached the vampires just
after he’d stumbled over the way to keep his friends safe. They’d agreed to do
his bidding; in exchange, he’d give them the ability to walk during the day. They’d
been around for nearly as long as the earth had been created.
“My lord.” Envir turned to the men
as they walked in and closed the door. “I hope that things are well. We have
not…you must tell us what you are in need of. You know that we are here only to
serve you.”
Envir smiled. “Yes. I know that. I
have something to tell you. And a task, a large one that will require you to be
on your toes. We have a champion coming. I’m not sure of the year when she will
come. I see many things in my visions of her, many things yet to come, and more
so that will change the very fabric of all our lives.”
They both sat down and began making
notes. He knew that they would do their very best. These men were loyal to a
fault and would die making his wishes come to fruition. When they both looked
up at him he knew that he’d been quiet for too long and smiled. He had a great
deal to tell them and should get on with it.
“She will be born in a time of
great speed. She will be powerful, yet she will be humble. You will need to
protect the world. Protect it now more than ever.” He had a bit of fear. Something
was going to happen before she was born that would change things if not… “You
will watch over the fae of this world. They will need you when things are at
their worst, when things are moving the most in other directions.”
“You can count on us, my lord.” Envir
looked at Paul Wilkins. “But you know better, do you not? It is something that
will…please tell us what we are to do, sire, and I swear to you we will do our
best to protect you.”
“I don’t see what befalls her. She
will be…stubborn and she will be very upset. I’m not sure what has happened,
but she will be hardest to convince. You’ll need to keep an eye on them until a
time when you can approach her. Her name will mean ‘dawn,’ and she will
brighten the paths.”
He flushed when he realized what
he’d said, but neither man seemed to notice. They were too busy taking notes.
He had to smile when he thought of some of the things he’d seen in his visions.
“There will be some things you will
need to invest in. Monetary investments as well as time and energy investments.
Keep with them until the champion arrives. I fear you will need the monies over
the centuries to sustain us.”
He started telling them about the
automobile and then ended with the thing he hadn’t been able to name. He smiled
when they looked at him with a slight frown.
“It will be powered by things we
have no need of in my world. But I have told you what it looks like and I would
like for you to invest.” He stood, his head hurting and his heart heavy. “I
shall not be able to contact you until she comes. You will do as I ask then?”
Both of them nodded before they too
stood. “You can depend on us, my lord. We will not let you down. We will make
sure that everything is as you have requested.”
Envir was moving between the worlds
when he realized he’d forgotten to tell them about the skip in time. There was
something wrong. Something would happen to the line at one point and he…he
didn’t know what it was. But as he could already feel the different areas
closing off as he’d bid them to, he knew he needed to return to his castle or
be locked away from it. But he’d spent too much time in the human world and had
to settle in the lair. He didn’t mind so much. He was close to his Illuminaria,
just where he wanted…needed to be.
As he shifted to his true self,
Envir settled his large, scaled body against the back of the cave. Dragons like
him needed the deepness of the lair to keep warm and he was afraid he’d be here
for a very long time to come.
The Tapestry
The Tapestry
~1~
Aurora looked at the man seated across
from her behind the big desk, then at the man sitting next to her. They had to
be insane because there was no way what they were telling her could be anything
but insanity. Either that or she had to believe that someone was playing a huge
prank on her.
“You say that my mother was
supposed to receive this rug on her twenty-fifth birthday and she was supposed
to take care of it so I can do the same?” She glanced over at the rug in
question before turning back to the men. “My mother could barely finish one
project before she started another. I don’t know why you’d think she could have
watched something else.”
“Tapestry,” Ronan Wilkins said for
the tenth time since she’d entered the office. “It’s something that your family
has been doing for centuries, Ms. Kirkpatrick. You are unfortunately the last
of your line as your mother had no male children. We have a summons from the
company that funds this endeavor and he has yet to return our calls.”
Mr. Wilkins fussed with the papers
on his desk again. She wanted to punch him in the nose. Instead, she took a
deep breath. It would do her little good to lose her temper with him. “And why,
again, didn’t my mother have the rug?” She called it a rug just to irritate him
this time. “You said something about my birth. I don’t understand what you
mean.”
“It’s a tapestry, Ms. Kirkpatrick,
not a rug. The previous Keeper, your grandmother, felt that your mother
was...that is to say, she thought she was...” He looked to his partner for help,
she realized, and so did she.
Aurora smiled when she figured it
out. “You mean she thought my mother was a lazy flake. Ah, well that explains
it then. I never met my grandmother, though I’m sure she knew about my
existence, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“She was aware,” he told her
quickly. “Your mother, she kept you from her for a time. Then when you reached
a time when she could approach you, it was nearly too late. Then she couldn’t
find the two of you.”
Aurora nodded. “When I was six
years old my mother sold every possession we owned in order to join this get
rich quick scheme. This was going to make it so we’d never have to move again
when she couldn’t pay the rent. Three weeks later, when it had fallen through,
we were homeless and broke. When I was ten she decided that she was going to
sell herbal supplements. She sold our car—my only means to get back and forth
to school mind you—to buy her kit. She took two orders and quit. Then several
years ago she ‘borrowed’ money from me to sell something else that was going to
pave the way to better things. That one lasted longer than most, an entire
month before she quit. If my mother is involved in a deal, then I want no part
of it. I really can’t blame my grandmother for staying away. I would have too
had I been able to. My entire life was spent trying to dig us out of whatever
hole she managed to drop us into.”
The Wilkins men both shifted in
their seats. Good, she thought, if you open a box, you can’t be surprised
when the stupid thing is filled with a lot of crap and very little help.
“It pays well—untold riches and
luxuries.” She frowned at the other man; his name escaped her. “You need only
to take it into your keeping and the money and whatever else the estate deems
your needs are, you will have. I’m told it is more than enough to keep you well
compensated for your entire life.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that before too.” Money
was not on her list of priorities. She only wanted enough to pay her bills and
to put some away for a rainy day if she could. “If it paid well then why didn’t
my grandmother give my mother, or at least me, a better life? I don’t think so,
Mr. Wilkins. I would like the money and would love to help out, but I can’t
help but think of all the other things my mother thought would do the same
thing. I’ve been doing fine on my own and I’ll continue to do so.” She stood up
and walked to the door. “I have to get back to work. I’m sure you gentlemen
have other clients to take care of. Have a nice day.”
“Ms. Kirkpatrick, you need to take
this seriously. From what I’ve been told, there are consequences to those who
do not keep it safe. The money isn’t the only thing—”
She turned so quickly that both men
jumped back. She’d not even been aware that they’d moved from their seats,
they’d done it so quietly. And for whatever reasons, that made her madder. “Don’t
threaten me, Mr. Wilkins. You think I give a rat’s bottom about a pretty
picture sewn into a piece of linen? My mother was killed eight days ago and I
didn’t find out until you sent me that stupid letter. We may not have been
close, but she was still my mother.” Her head suddenly swam and she felt dizzy.
“I’ve got to go. Don’t contact me again.”
Aurora stumbled out of the office
door and then outside. Her head was splitting and she thought she might be
sick. When her cell phone started to ring she nearly didn’t answer it. She
sighed heavily when she saw who it was from. She pulled it to her ear, knowing
that if she didn’t answer the caller would simply call until she did.
“So, how did the meeting go? Are
you going to be rich beyond your wildest dreams? I hope you don’t forget the
little guys on your way up,” Aimee Peterson said in way of greeting.
Aimee owned and operated the small
shop on the east end that Aurora sold her handmade jewelry in. They had been
friends since Aurora had wandered in one afternoon, being drawn there for a
reason she had never tried too hard to figure out.
“No, not rich, just another job my
mother left unfinished. I didn’t take it, needless to say—something about a
rug. Can you still meet me for dinner? I want to pick up those pieces that you
ordered for me.”
“Sure. I also have some requests
too. One that is really weird even for my shop. I’ll meet you at the Barn after
work. See ya.”
After Aurora put the phone back in
her pocket and started for the garage she wondered about the request that Aimee
had. There had only been a few over the last several months, mostly people
wanting earrings changed from old fashioned clip-ons to the more traditional
pierced type. Then a few weeks ago, someone had sent a piece of jade that Aimee
had said the customer wanted Aurora to go wild with. The piece had made her
feel odd, but she had made a very beautiful necklace with the unusual design. She
wished now that she had asked if it was the same person.
Aurora got back to her job five
minutes early. She had asked for and received a half day to finish up with the
lawyers and now thought she would have been better off if she had not wasted
her morning. She ground her teeth harder when she thought of the way the firm
had threatened her with consequences—like she didn’t have enough going on right
now. At five o’clock she was very ready to go home.
Her job was not all that hard; she
worked for a nice little insurance firm as their secretary/receptionist. She
had always been very organized in her life, some would say too organized. But
at some point in her childhood she had come to the realization that someone had
to be the adult in her family and it was not going to be her mother. By the
time Aurora was seven, she was getting her mother going every day to get to her
job, herself to school, and making sure that all the bills, including the rent
on their one-bedroom apartment, was paid every month. When Aurora had turned
sixteen, already working a part-time job at the local pizza shop, she could
balance a checkbook, make dinner, and keep the house, what there was of it,
clean. At eighteen she had a permanent full-time job and was making enough
money to move out on her own and buy a decent car. Her mother had moved to
Florida and called Aurora only when she wanted money or was in a bind with some
man, which to Aurora amounted to the same thing.
After she and Aimee had ordered
burgers with fries and a beer each, the women settled down to business. Not the
kind of business that involved any sort of work, but the business of catching
up from last week and everything that had happened. Aimee had a new boyfriend,
there was nothing new in that, but this man was different she had said, also
nothing new, and he made her feel like she was someone special.
“You are someone special. Everyone
should treat you that way. And you shouldn’t let guys walk all over you. It’s
not good for women everywhere.” Aurora smiled when Aimee blushed.
“This from the woman who would
rather sit at home with a good book than try and find someone to spend your
life with. When are you going to start dating again, love? You know that you
have to play the lottery to win the big prize.”
It wasn’t that Aurora didn’t like
men; she just didn’t trust them, anyone for that matter. Her last boyfriend had
freaked out when she had tried to show him what she could do. That was two
years ago and she had not been out since.
Being a person with telekinetic power
made her feel a little freakish herself, but when he had run from the room
screaming, literally, after she had brought a book across the room she figured
she was supposed to be alone. At least for now. She decided it was time to
change the subject.
“Let me see those pieces you’ve
brought. And the strange order, was it the same man as the last time?” Aurora
looked at the small box and shuddered. Evil.
She had no idea where that thought
had come from, but she knew as sure as she was sitting there that something
evil was in the box of beads and wires. She looked up at Aimee and knew that
she had no idea of what she had brought Aurora.
“No, this was a woman actually. That
piece is quite ugly if you ask me. She said that you should make it into a
charm. I think it would make a better charm than a necklace for the simple
reason you could cover it up with your sleeve rather than have anyone look at
it around your neck.” Aimee poured out all the pieces on the table and picked
up one that had been left by a customer only that morning to have made into a
bracelet. She wanted it to wear with a silver chain in any design.
It was quite pretty really, a piece
of lapis that Aurora might have picked out for herself if she wore jewelry. It
was a knotted-looking thick cut of dark blue that looked like it might be a
cross of some sort. The stone itself was very dark, indicating that it was
quite old and there were streaks of red, like blood, throughout it. It was also
not the piece that was giving her the bad vibrations. Aurora did not touch it
nonetheless.
The next few pieces were things
that she had ordered. There was a bright blue piece of glass that had been
shaped into a small robin’s egg and had a loop of glass fashioned at the top to
hang. There was also a small frog that Aurora could see hanging from a chain of
chainmaille from around someone’s neck. She smiled. The last few were bags of
wire to shape into rings and long pens that she would hang other pieces she
already had in her massive collection. The last thing on the table was in a
dark bag made of what looked to be silk and tied at the top with a string of
the same material. Aurora took a deep, calming breath as Aimee poured the gem
out into her palm to show Aurora.
“This is one I was telling you
about. Isn’t it ugly? I almost choked when she showed it to me.”
It was a rectangular shaped piece
of dark material, black with dark green and darker red jagged strips running
through it. There was no visible means of hanging it and for some reason,
Aurora could see silver wrapped around it, crisscrossing back and forth over it
and then looping in and over it several times. The means of wrapping it around
the wearer’s wrist would be a leather strip at about an inch wide and braided. The
braids would have beads of silver in the braid itself. There would be longer,
varying strips of leather hanging from it with a single bead at the tip of each
of them. There was something else about the piece, something that terrified
Aurora enough that she wanted to run from it.
The piece glowed. Not just in the
bright light of the restaurant, but she had seen the glow within the bag before
it had been taken out. When she had been about to ask Aimee about it she heard
a whisper of someone saying to her, “No,
she doesn’t know. Only you see it.” She had bit the inside of her mouth to
keep from screaming.
She’d heard the voice before. Not
in recent years, probably since she’d been a child, but it scared her
nonetheless. Looking at the piece in her friend’s hand, Aurora simply kept her
mouth shut.
“Can you work with these pieces, or
should I just send them back? The one that’s ugly the woman put a deposit down
of a hundred bucks for. No small change if you ask me, especially since I know
that you won’t charge her near that much to make the piece.”
“No, I’ll do it. Just let’s put
them back in the box. I think that’s our food coming now.” Aurora wanted to get
it to her home before she touched it. Touching it in her special room would be
the only time she would allow herself to try it.
When Aurora had been small she
realized she was different than most kids. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She
knew she was different a lot longer than that, but she hadn’t known just how
different until later. Not only because she was smarter, because she was that,
but because she could do things. Things that she was reasonably sure she would
be in trouble for if others found out she could do them.
In addition to the telekinesis, she
could also touch someone and read their thoughts. Not everyone, just most
people. Her mother was one that she could not read. Aurora could also take a
plant near death and blow across it or even touch it and within several hours,
depending on how near death it was, it would come back to its healthy state. She
did not have plants in her house anymore because they would grow so quickly and
so large that people would begin to ask how she did it, and since she did not
know herself, it was just easier to not have them around. But there was one
thing she could do that terrified her more than anything. It was the ability to
heal.
The first time it had happened, she
had been about ten. The neighbor’s child had been shot during a drive-by. Their
neighborhood was not the best and drug dealers were out in a constant parade
every night. One night during a territorial fight, shots were fired.
Aurora had been out on the front
porch with her best friend enjoying the July evening. The shouts and then the
guns going off had made both little girls duck for cover. When Aurora raised
her head, Charity Barr did not. She lay in a pool of her own blood, her
breathing fading along with her heartbeat. Aurora had picked her up, wanting to
pull her to safety, when her hands started to burn where she touched Charity’s
cooling skin. As she watched in horrified fascination, the bullet that had
entered the girl’s chest popped out and the wound closed up. There had been no
scar, nor had there been any bruising. Aurora dropped Charity as soon as she
opened her eyes and stood up. That’s when the pain started. Hard and fast, her
own chest tore open, blood poured out from the opening, and Aurora dropped to
the concrete step beneath her. Just as quickly as it had started, the pain and
the blood disappeared, leaving a mark an inch around. Aurora still carried the
small scar that looked like a bullet wound on her left breast. Neither she nor
Charity had ever told anyone what had happened, nor had they discussed it again
after that night. They vowed that they would never tell anyone, not that they
thought that anyone would believe them. Both girls had remained best friends
ever since.
At eleven o’clock, Aurora was home
and in bed. She finished reading the last few pages of her book then rolled
over and closed her eyes. She counted sheep and when she got to two thousand
and four, she fell asleep. I actually
made it to less than five thousand was her last thought before drifting
off.
No comments:
Post a Comment