Kindle Edition
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: E.A. Monroe, Island Grove Press
Type: Fiction
Pages: 710
Copyright: July 8, 2012
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Written in Omen is the first book in the Voice of the Wind: Shadows of Time series.
Set within a world that abounds in superstition, folklore, and the Star Folk of the Objishanda, Written In Omen weaves a story of love, intrigue, and a family curse. Jarutia Fayerfield has three brothers and each brother has his own agenda. Martin, the oldest and heir, plots revenge for his father’s transgressions and control of the family. Keiron chases love wherever he finds love. Jarutia’s twin brother Jantz pursues answers to a mysterious gap in the history of a family that takes pride on loyalty and blood ties — no matter where the truth leads him, including betrayal of his family and beloved sister. Contrary to Martin’s ambitious plans for her future, Jarutia desires the forbidden love of Doriano Drake, a man of the Objishanda, whose family secrets and ancestral memories threaten Jarutia’s happiness and Jantz’s life.
Will Jarutia win the love she craves, or will threat and fear for Jantz’s life force her into a loveless marriage to safeguard the family’s fortunes? Will Jantz discover the truth behind the family curse and seek his own destiny, or will life teach him lessons that will either break or harden his heart? Will Doriano Drake find true friendship and the love his mother promised? Not if Martin has his way!
Excerpt
Lost and Found
A ghost specter stalked the Abeytu. When Jarutia Fayerfield first saw the apparition, she shrank in terror and hid among the drooping branches of a hemlock. Her breath caught, a sharp catch in her chest, and goose bumps prickled her skin.
Against the deepening twilight the creature loomed, an ominous shadow straight from Etta’s horror tales. Ghost eyes narrowed beneath his brows, but the black stream of hair that rippled past his shoulders, framed the paleness of a human face. A Drake! One of the fearsome folk who dwelled within the forests of El Nath!
As she stared out from the hemlock boughs, he stopped, looked around. He lifted his nose, as if scenting twilight’s surrounding gloom. Jarutia dared not scream, but prayed he would pass her by and leave her unharmed.
Why had she tempted fate and run off into the forest that she had been taught to fear and loathe? To see a Drake and test the truthfulness of Etta’s tales? To prove to her brothers that she was not a ’fraidy cat? She should have been home, tucked safe in her bed.
He walked closer, and when he pushed aside the hemlock branch, she leaned deeper into the branches. Stinging black claws pricked and scratched her face. She cringed when he reached toward her and touched her hair.
Peering through her eyelashes, she watched as wonder rippled across features shadowed in purple.
Excitement brightened the silver gleam of his eyes as he wrapped his fingers around her arm and drew her from the hemlock branches that had failed to hide her. She dared not look at him. She dared not meet his strange eyes. She dare not! Fear gripped her thudding heart.
“Have you the Great Ones’ permission to walk within the Abeytu?” His voice was gentler than the scowl that marred features almost obscured in the gathering dusk.
She quaked, her chin quivering, her teeth chattering. She had no voice willing to reply. Instead, her stomach rumbled. Tears stung her eyes. “I… I am lost!” she cried.
“You wander alone?” His gaze probed the surrounding forest. “Folk seldom stray into the Abeytu’s clutches, especially children.”
She nodded, a slow reluctant shake of her head. “You… you will not hurt me? My father is the Master of Rosenhall and he will reward you if I am returned safe to him. Even now he worries and searches for me!” Did he, she wondered?
“Perhaps the Master of Rosenhall does search for you. Have no fear. You will see your family again. I promise.”
He sounded reassuring, although he assessed her cautiously as if not certain how harmless she was, now that he knew she was a Fayerfield.
“If you are cold and hungry―” He peered at her and she offered a timid nod that her stomach acknowledged with another loud grumble. “Come, drink you shall have to ease your hunger and fire to warm yourself. Come with me if you will.”
He tugged her arm, and the curl of his long fingers wrapping around her elbow, urged her to follow him. Still, she hesitated. She glanced at the encroaching darkness. What worse fate could await her than becoming lost in the fearsome forest only for him to find her? A Drake! Apprehension chilled her.
“You are one of them!”
He released his grip upon her arm and stepped back. He towered against trees and a patch of starless sky, in reality more awesome and dreadful than Etta’s stories ever described the folks who inhabited the forest.
“I am Doriano Drake of the Abeytu and if I were half as fearsome as the villagers say, I would leave you here knowing you are a Fayerfield. You have nothing to fear, from my kinsmen or me.”
“You will not enchant me? I’ve been warned that awful things happen to lost children caught wandering in the forest!” Breath held, expectant, she drew the arm he had released closer to her chest.
He laughed. “So all good mothers warn their children! I have no such powers, except those to do good or evil, as all men have.”
She found his words, the sudden smile that creased his cheeks, and his laughter oddly comforting. She feared the night more than this boy, who had materialized from the forest twilight.
She forced her trembling lips into a smile. “You promise?”
“I give you my word, Shaudin. Will you see for yourself and come to my mother and father’s house?”
“So I must pay for the dreadful thing I have done!” she gasped, displaying her flare for the dramatic such as suited her fanciful imagination and for which Etta often scolded her. “I am at your mercy and to your word I hold you. Or by your blood shall you pay if you play me false!”
She tried to sound fierce despite her misgivings, and even as she struggled against her fear to run or to trust a Drake of the Abeytu, she stretched out her hand. She squeezed her eyes closed as he wrapped his cold, wind-nipped fingers around her hand.
Doriano led her, following a mossy trail, and never allowed her to stumble, as if he knew each tree root and stone that lurked along the path. Before too long, the trees thinned and the earth beneath her feet sloped upward. At last, through the bare, crisscrossed tree branches, she glimpsed green and silver lantern twinkling like colorcast stars.
Further beyond, the glow of lights warmed the arched windows of a house. The golden light sent dusk shadows fleeing. A curious fascination overwhelmed her when the path emerged into a clearing where moonlight gleamed on weathered wood and stone buildings. The whickers of horses greeted them.
“A house!” Jarutia yanked her hand from his firm grasp.
“You thought we dwelled in the trees?” Within the shadows of his face, his eyes caught stray glimmers of lantern light.
She nodded and, saying nothing further that might antagonize him, slipped her cold hand again into his hand and let Doriano lead her into the clearing, across a cobblestone yard toward wide turf steps cut into a hillside. They climbed the turf steps and approached the lighted house. Fluent voices drifted into the night, lilting voices filled with mirth and song such as she had never heard. Unable to understand the unfamiliar dialect in which the voices spoke and sang, she moved closer to the youth, fearful of what she dreaded most ― enchantment!
He tightened his long fingers around her hand.
“Welcome to Green Leaf Hall,” he said. Stepping forward, he pushed open the heavy oak door. Yellow light washed over her, blinded her, and silence descended over those gathered within the house.
Doriano laughed, and pushing her into the room before him, announced to everyone present, “Look! Tonight I have found the fairest rose that ever bloomed at Rosenhall. A golden rose! Another Bestowal gift.”
Suddenly, everyone chattered in a rash of excited voices, everyone but a black bearded, grim-faced man who stood near the hearth smoking a long-stemmed pipe.
“Doriano! What have you done?” A woman clasped Jarutia into her arms. The men grumbled and scowled and puffed on their pipes, and the women twittered and gasped, slender hands eager to touch her hair and stroke her face. She was at a loss to understand a single word the women spoke in their lilting rush.
A woman, as beautiful as a starry summer night, gathered her into her arms and held her upon her lap. Jarutia sniffed the pleasant fragrances of winter apples and marjoram that clung to the woman’s clothing and midnight hair. Was she Doriano’s mother? Amazing, how alike the woman and the boy looked.
The formidable man, who stood wrapped in silence, puffing on his pipe and scowling his disapproval at her, could only be Doriano’s father. Lowering his dark eyebrows, the man turned to Doriano and spoke in a commanding tone words she didn’t understand. Doriano stomped back out into the night, leaving his arrow quiver and silver tipped bow in the chimney corner. She snuggled closer to the woman who embraced her.
Another woman, dressed in a white linen gown embroidered from neck to hem with red, yellow and purple flowers, brought a platter of food to the table. Jarutia stared at the wooden plate the woman set upon the table before her. A craftsman’s skill had carved a wreath of vines and leaves around the platter’s edge. A squirrel, carved in such astonishing detail that she expected the creature to flick its tail, peeked over the rim of a wooden bowl that held shelled walnuts.
“You must be hungry, little one?” the woman who held her whispered against the wisps of hair that tickled Jarutia’s cheek.
Jarutia’s stomach rumbled. Laughing, the woman plucked from the platter the biggest strawberry Jarutia had ever seen and offered the red berry to her. Without pausing to wonder where strawberries grew that early in the season, Jarutia crammed the fruit into her mouth. Tartness puckered her lips and juice dribbled down her chin.
The woman laughed and wiped the sticky juice from her chin using a soft napkin woven of green linen and embroidered on the hemmed edges with acorns and oak leaves. The woman continued talking and coaxed her to try all the delicious berries, sprouts, and most amazing — red, yellow and orange flowers.
Jarutia glanced at each curious face. No longer hungry or cold, only a twinge of her uneasiness lingered. What would they do to her now? What became of those who ate and drank from the forest folk’s table or listened to the timbre of their voices? They had fed her well enough and her stomach no longer complained.
Doriano returned in time to remind her of his promise and ease her returning fear. Glancing at his father, Doriano sat down at the round, age-darkened pine table across from her and the woman who held her upon her lap. An older woman, silver threads glinting in her black hair but not a hint of age upon her face, brought another food platter and a mug of goat’s milk and set it upon the table before Doriano. Jarutia studied him as he ate his meal, chewing bread and swallowing milk. He did not appear to mind her intense stare half as much as he did his father’s stern regard.
The man, smoking in silence and leaning against the shoulder-high stone mantle of the kitchen’s yawning hearth, stared hard at the young Drake. “All is well, son?” The man’s voice was gruff and yet pleasant, its lilt deep. He chose his words carefully, as if uncomfortable speaking the common dialect instead of the musical rush of words issuing from the house before Doriano had shoved her through the kitchen door.
“Aye, Father,” Doriano replied, reaching for the earthenware pitcher to refill his wooden mug. The man’s gray eyes followed his son’s movement.
“You are old enough to know what you have done?”
“I am.” Doriano said, answering his father as if every night he brought a Fayerfield home.
“What craziness has overcome you, son?”
Doriano glanced at his father, his gaze unwavering. The other two men seated before the hearth also studied the youth through the spiraling tendrils of smoke puffing from their pipe bowls. They appeared no more amused than Doriano’s father did. Two women cleared the table and washed the dishes and chattered, their laughter chiming over the clatter of earthenware plates, wooden platters, and the splash of water.
Doriano gazed at his mother. Jarutia stared at him, willing him to remember his promise.
“I found her in the forest. I could not leave her and add more grief to what her people already hold against us,” Doriano said.
His father nodded. “You could not have done that. Still, she is a Fayerfield.”
“She is a child!” the woman who held her gasped.
The woman’s arms tighten around Jarutia, holding her close, and the tears that stung Jarutia’s eyes spilled down her cheeks and splashed upon the woman’s white hands.
“Dori did what he thought right. Now, see! The child cries and you stand there discussing what needs doing.” Doriano’s mother rocked Jarutia in her arms, drying her tears and smoothing her hair while crooning a lullaby to coax away the fear.
“She must go home. Tonight!” Doriano’s father managed to keep his voice low although the grimace that contorted his beard-shrouded face betrayed his agitation. “Before the countryside rouses to the alarm. When her people discover their daughter missing, they will turn to the Abeytu. Heed my words! They will lay blame at the edge of the forest. How many years have passed since a Fayerfield last dared the hidden trails? I will not have a Fayerfield stray bring them to our gates.” Doriano’s father muttered a curse, leaned over and rapped the bowl of his pipe against the stone hearth to empty the tobacco ash.
Doriano pushed back his chair and stood. “I found her. I will return the girl to her father’s house.” He pulled his shoulders straight and met his father’s stern gaze.
Jarutia stared at Doriano. He avoided looking at his mother, as if he had not heard the gasp that escaped his mother’s lips.
“Husband! Our son is too young to face those forsaken men. Compassion lies beneath their consideration!”
“Have no fear, Della mine. Doriano will not ride alone. Elathis! Mathias! Fetch the horses! We ride to Rosenhall!”
Redwine stuffed his pipe into his shirt pocket and strode toward the outer door. The two gray bearded men seated before the hearth rose from their comfortable chairs grumbling in the long beards they wore braided and tucked into their broad leather belts. They grabbed their cloaks from a wooden rack and stomped out into the night following Doriano’s father. At the door, Doriano paused, and looking back, offered a brief smile to his mother. Then, taking his cloak, he followed the three men into the spring night.
Jarutia watched him go. What had they decided about her fate? Were they going to take her home as Doriano had promised? Or leave her somewhere deep in the forest or in a roadside ditch for some wandering traveler to find? Terrified, she threw her arms around the woman who hugged her and rocked her in her arms as if she was her own child.
The melody Doriano’s mother sang comforted, as did the surrounding house, snug and warm within its timbered walls. Here, love enveloped her, a rarity within her own home. Here, song and laughter made her heart soar. Wonder and delight thrilled her. No darkness taunted and tormented her, threatening nightmares.
|
