EXCERPT 1:
The oil lamp flickered and went out, plunging their small farmstead into darkness. He was used to the dingy gray, but then strange balls of light appeared, floating around the room like glowing dust motes. That gnaw in his belly told him something big was about to happen.

Cry me a mercy, what’s goin’ on?

He jerked his arm to dodge a splatter of hot fat but didn’t dare to look. More sizzling drops were likely to follow. He snuck a fist wipe across his nose and scratched an eyelid, then stayed. Nothing.

A smell hit him, like charred meat, harsh and foul. He checked his arms. All clear. Had to be Pa.

Moments like this were rare. A pause in the middle of correction? Unheard of. Meginhardt scrambled to his feet. Pa was frozen, not a single muscle moving. Even the fat slithering down the man’s arm like a snake now seemed to hang in midair. Perfect chance to escape. A good slapping of searing iron like that would do some serious ruin, especially across the noggin, far more than he’d endured before. He barreled for the door, intending to make a run through the turnip rows, then disappear into the wall of cornstalks. A full night of hiding, staying out of sight, always worked to calm the devil in Pa.

But as he reached the threshold, something pulled at him, something unnatural.

Pa still hadn’t moved. Standing there like a statue, locked in a moment of time.

“Pa? Why aren’t ya moving? Ya teaching me someth’n again?” He held tight to the doorframe, eyeing the skillet, still a threat, as curiosity and stubborn loyalty took control.

Silence. Nothing.

Was this some kind of clay-brained trick?

 

EXCERPT 2:
Anger tucked aside, she scurried up without bothering to read the inscriptions on the risers. Needing the strength of both arms, she pulled the door open wide. The haunting drawn-out creak confirmed a renewal of focus on her single priority. Find my lineage, my true father. Then new life is certain to follow.

An entrance hall revealed itself, though dark with looming shadows. Unable to avoid inhaling the displeasing odor, a mixture of lingering day-old incense and strong lye soap, her throat did a gaggle. Nothing like the sweet-pine pews inside her white-stucco church.

Attempting to step quiet-like, she still clicked her shoes against the marble floor, her feet inside all that lavish commenced to swell and pine for attention. Huh, stomping through town in modish spikes, ’tis not wise.

A figure across the room sat up on its knees and twisted a neck to inspect the visitor. Even in the darkness, the woman appeared maturely aged.

Unfolding with a painful slowness, the woman stood and rubbed her hands into her apron. With such a crippling figure, she couldn’t have had an easy go at life. Her head, a weighty slump, her neck, cranked to one side. Had she eaten in a while? So thin. And dressed in all black. Scrubbing a floor that already shone—preparing for a wedding or cleaning after the ceremony of a disposed corpse perhaps?

“State yer business,” the woman gnarled.

The plucky tone surprised. “Guten morgen, I’m, ah, here to examine the registers for births and deaths—if I may.” Politeness best protect her from being turned away. Harmon always said one achieved more with kindness than with harshness.

“Yer a stranger.” The woman’s shaking middle finger accused.

Huh. This woman the epitome of the latter.

“Madam, ’tis that I am. Please be, I intend no harm. I assure you. Just seeking. I shan’t be long.” Should be easy to check births around the time of her own, though this woman need not know that specific detail.

“Seeking? Huh, seeking ye what?”

Was it so wrong to seek? Lexxie sucked in a full breath. Her throat irritated by resins, she stifled a cough. But nay, she hadn’t come all this way to permit some grumpy old spinster to blockade her. Forget the kindness of honey, Harmon. Time for some harsh vinegar.

“Are ye cloaking history? Is that what you are saying, madam?”

The old woman shot an indication to a wooden door hidden beside the nave.

Lexxie jockeyed between pews in the direction the bony finger specified, stifling the clicks of her shoes as much as possible.

Whew. She knocked.

“We don’t lock history.” The old woman’s crusty voice echoed, having the last word.

This door, not nearly the heft nor clangor as the one fronting the church, Lexxie nudged and invited herself in. Larger than one might expect, the narrow room hosted wooden shelving loaded with books up to the ceiling sidelong. A movable ladder rested against the end wall, and an unlit kerosene lamp awaited on the single high table.

Help would be nice, some guidance as to the order of records. Lexxie glanced back where the scowling woman gave her a second glance. Then again, Lexxie could figure it out herself. After lighting the lamp, she shut the door for privacy.

A musty flavor and layers of dust from decades past awoke and scurried about. No window to allow a breeze of any sort. Once her sneezes settled, she walked the length of the room, thankful now for those daylong lessons in reading and writing with Grossmutter. ’Twas the age of enlightenment, Grossmutter would say. She kept at least one lesson ahead of Lexxie, so as to in turn share the blessing.

A thin cotton curtain covered one section of shelving beside a nailed sign—Prohibited Books. She edged closer to shelving with books of various sizes, difficult to distinguish due to caging, each row with its own locked latch. Huh, don’t lock history, say you?

She wandered to a series of consistent volumes laying heavy on their own, their leathery pasteboard covers bound with cord and red edging their pages. Numbers stitched atop.

Years, yes! Those ones were organized by years. They had to be the records she sought.

All she possessed now was her birth year. Harmon wouldn’t have lied about her age, would he?

A shiver ran through her veins. There had to be over seventy books, each covering a year, each varying in thickness.

Here it be: 1671. Energizing another dust cloud with a loud exhale, she heaved the book off the shelf and clutched it tight to her bosom. Her heartbeat thumped against the pasteboard cover. The registry for the year she was born must speak to her, reveal information she was desperate for. Vital to get on with any way of future.

She released her gripping hug, placed the heavy book on the table, and wiped dry her sweaty palms down the skirt of her new frock.

Overwhelm assaulted her. Harmon, the loving father she adored all those years. Grossmutter, the wise, gentle, and kind grandmother, her only female influencer. Was it true they be not her family? Would opening this book mean turning her back on them?

’Course, she’d already done so, hadn’t she?

If only they were cruel or unloving. Made her work like a slave. Cussed and cursed her day in and day out. This then would be so much easier. Her fingers twitched to shove the book back onto its shelf. Her legs urged her to take flight, run all the way back to Avondale, and bury this outlandish nonsense.

But nonsense, it weren’t.

The pounding in her chest begged to keep going, threatening to explode if she stopped now. She almost missed the rubbing of hinges, the only door to this library tomb opening, a male figure entering, the unwelcoming floor-polishing ogre poking her head around him to catch a glimpse.

“Searching, are we?” The man’s monotoned query struck an unexplainable chord.

 

EXCERPT 3:
Even the crooked rows of grave markers held an eerie beauty. This was home to these poor souls whose lives went astray somehow. Harmon taught her to be neither quick nor harsh when it came to the judgment and the damnation of others.

Well, curse him anyway.

An echo of a man’s voice disturbed the scene. A distance away, it spoke calm and continuous as though explaining something complicated.

Removing her shoes provided the advantage of tiptoeing freely. Not that her heels made any noise in the overgrown wet grass. Argh. This frequent ritual of trekking in the dirt was causing the washing up of stockings to be a daily chore.

She crouched to keep her shadow from stretching too long and giving her presence away.

It was, indeed, a man. He sat cross-legged beyond the hilly decline before the pit.

Dormant, it was this morning. No volcanic eruption for him. How busy with visitors could a pit full of witch ashes get?

As best as she could tell, he was talking to a tiny marker sticking out a foot or two behind it, his neck stretching forward to communicate directly. He practically sat within the gray murk.

She crept closer.

The man was pleading, a genuine pouring out of his heart. Between mumbling slurs came only a few words—mah child and never should’ve—and then an accusation flash of sorts with arms waving above his head wild enough to cause crows to adjust their perches.

A cold wetness soaked through to her thighs. The dew saturating her dress mattered not. Her heart warmed. `This man cared for his child. She strained to hear more.

“If’n we kin jus’ . . .”

The madman! Yes, same overalls, same gritty hair and facial scruff. The same flannel shirt, soiled and checkered with black and grays, though the grays may have once been white. He must be alone, no wife nor direct family. Why else would he be so distraught? No family, she could understand that.

He couldn’t be a threat, not if that priest handled him with such gentle mannerisms.

Remaining as silent and hidden as possible, Lexxie arched an ear to catch another single pleading word.

“They say ya kin come back.”

Now, who would be “they” to tell him his child may come back to him? Perhaps other witches? She shuffled to reposition her footing but snapped a twig.

The grieving man stood. His crawling gaze surveyed the graveyard. Then he bolted into the field beyond its edge. Rows of grain corn swallowed his profile.

“No. Wait!”

 

Very short excerpt – 90 words:

The soul inside her smiled. She was going to find it. She’d find her way home.

A warm breeze swirled atop the pit, stirring the cold inside her. Ashes rose and blew in distinct form, circling her and the infant’s grave.

Mercy, nay happenstance. Not twice, ashes rising and swirling like that. She couldn’t move a muscle for fear.

This time, the sad blue eyes were absent. Instead, a beckoning and tender voice whispered from within the blowing ashes.

She trembled. What say you?

The tender voice repeated. “Come near, child.”

 

Excerpt (from the supernatural side of the fence) approx. 414 words:

 

This was about more than he could take. Meginhardt slammed a fist against the earth. It would have been better to have lived with a severe head injury than to go through this.

The truth was cutting. His life was a lie. Everything, so unfair. So confusing. So uncertain.

“Enough!” He glared at Jophiel, who examined his own hands as though his translucent and gleaming fingertips might have a speck of dirt somewhere.

Pushing his fists into the ground, Meginhardt impelled himself to a stand.

The ear-piercing gasping ceased, replaced by Jophiel’s booming voice. “Sit! We go when I say we go.”

Meginhardt collapsed as instructed.

Time lingered. Luring babbles and delightful fragrances wafted.

Meginhardt resisted their wallowing effect. A power-filled rush of a waterfall rumbled somewhere distant, as did an abundance of laughter. Emotional exhaustion prevented him from diverting his attention, yet inner calm was not to be.

Jophiel broke the closemouthed hush. “You should be pleased with yourself.”

Meginhardt’s sarcastic tongue got the better of him. “Cry me a mercy, Giant Birdman, tell me why.”

“You’re a natural.” Seemed Jophiel would ignore the insult. “I speak what I know. You picked up on the energy colors of the Arrivals concise and quick. And you figured out the gist of the living stones in our river.”

Meginhardt did his best to stifle a smile. “Simple, like I said, each reflects a life.”

Jophiel gestured toward the water. “That river—it separates us from them.”

“Them?” Who was he talking about?

“Look yonder.” Jophiel nodded across the waters. A curtain of fog lifted, enabling a glimpse of an army of bodies. “Rebels.”

And there they were. Dozens upon dozens of armed and armored beings, all similar sizing, none with a distinguishable face, mere blurs of eyes and mouths. They stood in neat rows, one behind the other, spread across the river’s edge watching Meginhardt and Jophiel. Waiting, it seemed, for something to happen.

How long had they been there?

“They’re always watching.” Jophiel spoke as though having read Meginhardt’s mind.

“What do they want?” Meginhardt had scrambled to his feet, on guard himself.

Sensing danger, he moved one backward step at a time, till his back met the welcoming embrace and sweet smell of a big old oak. Quite the contrast to the barren, leafless forest on the opposite side, like a fire had rushed through and left nothing but smelly black shadow branches. A pongy stench drifted toward them, assaulting his senses.

“You.”