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Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN-10: 1482794136
Type: Fiction
Pages: 174
Copyright: Mar 17, 2013
ISBN-13: 9781482794137
Heleen takes a job but finds out she is working for pirates on an island she can't leave.
Heleen’s parents died when a fire burned their home, but Merko, a handsome stranger, pulled her from the burning building. Heleen accepts Merko’s offer of a job, giving her the chance to see more of the world, only to discover he is really offering a kind of captivity and the risk of losing her ability to enhance.
In the course of her adventures, Heleen meets people who worship other gods and have magical abilities and restrictions she hasn’t encountered before. She learns that when every choice is bad, she still has to choose, and when others depend on the choices she makes, it can be impossible to avoid risk and sacrifice. Most importantly, she learns just how far someone will go to protect those they love.
Excerpt
I awoke to someone picking me up. I’d wrapped myself in my quilt as the best defense against the cold night, and I was picked up, quilt and all. I screamed, and he ignored me. I struggled, but imprisoned by the quilt, I couldn’t escape. Then I smelled smoke.
He brought me outside, carrying me unnecessarily far from the Pelican Tavern, which was my home. “Put me down!” I screamed, but he paid no attention. He finally lowered me to the ground, and I struggled to free myself from the quilt.
“I can’t let you go back, Heleen,” he said. His tone suggested he would enforce his words.
“I won’t go back,” I promised. Not until I get help, I silently added. In my nightgown and bare feet, I ran for help, ignoring the bite of stray rocks that it was too dark to avoid in my rush.
The man who rescued me didn’t follow. I hoped he was going back for my parents.
“Roddy,” I screamed at my father’s friend and former first mate. “Fire! You have to stop it.”
Roddy said, “What’cha doing, coming in here, girl? You joining me in bed?”
“Fire!” I repeated.
Suddenly serious, Roddy asked, “Where?”
“The Pelican.”
For an old man, he moved quickly. He slid his feet into slippers by his bed. He wore a nightshirt, but only stopped to throw on a cape. He wasted a second, taking in my bare feet and nightgown, but I couldn’t complain about his speed. I followed him to near the Pelican and watched as he brought water down on it. Rain magic, he called it, but he could focus it so it was a torrent and he used it selectively. He concentrated on my parents’ bedroom, which was made of wood and badly burnt. Smoke was coming out of a hole in the roof, and the water poured through it. The wooden section was next to the main room of the brick tavern, which hadn’t yet caught.
One of my neighbors climbed on the roof that wasn’t burnt and cut holes in it with a pick. Roddy poured the water he pulled out of the air through those holes. The sizzling stopped and we went inside. Buckets of water were thrown on embers that escaped the torrent, but there was little need. I barely felt the heat from the remaining embers and the rubble on the floor as I rushed as fast as I could to my parent’s bedroom, where the fire started. They were both dead. They hadn’t even arisen from their bed.
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