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Tale of the Seasons’ Weaver by D. Wallace Peach
Book & Author Details:
Tale of the Seasons’ Weaver by D. Wallace Peach
“Already the animals starve. Soon the bonemen will follow, the Moss Folk and woodlings, the watermaids and humans. Then the charmed will fade. And all who will roam a dead world are dead things. Until they too vanish for lack of remembering. Still, Weaver, it is not too late.”
In the frost-kissed cottage where the changing seasons are spun, Erith wears the Weaver’s mantle, a title that tests her mortal, halfling magic. As the equinox looms, her first tapestry nears completion—a breathtaking ode to spring. She journeys to the charmed isle of Innishold to release the beauty of nature’s awakening across the land.
But human hunters have defiled the enchanted forest and slaughtered winter’s white wolves. Enraged by the trespass, the Winter King seizes Erith’s tapestry and locks her within his ice-bound palace. Here, where comfort and warmth are mere glamours, she may weave only winter until every mortal village succumbs to starvation, ice, and the gray wraiths haunting the snow.
With humanity’s fate on a perilous edge, Erith must break free of the king’s grasp and unravel a legacy of secrets. In a charmed court where illusions hold sway, allies matter, foremost among them, the Autumn Prince. Immortal and beguiling, he offers a tantalizing future she has only imagined, one she will never possess—unless she claims her extraordinary power to weave life from the brink of death.
In the lyrical fantasy tradition of Margaret Rogerson and Holly Black, D. Wallace Peach spins a spellbinding tale of magic, resilience, and the transformative potency of tales—a tapestry woven with peril and hope set against the frigid backdrop of an eternal winter.
Author Bio:
Best-selling author D. Wallace Peach grew up surrounded by her father’s well-loved paperback books. Fantasy was a staple, but it was Tolkien’s The Hobbit that planted the seeds which would grow into a passion for writing.
Peach started writing later in life when years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books. She was instantly hooked.
In addition to fantasy books, Peach’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. She’s an avid supporter of the arts in her local community, organizing and publishing annual anthologies of Oregon prose, poetry, and photography.
Peach lives in a log cabin amongst the tall evergreens and emerald moss of Oregon’s rainforest with her husband, two owls, a horde of bats, and the occasional family of coyotes.
EXCERPTS:
Excerpt #1 – Erith and Nobbin
A wicker basket of colorful spools rested at my feet. I picked through the bewitched thread my mother had hand-spun long before my birth. No matter how many seasons passed, the spools unwound and unwound, and I no longer fretted about reaching their ends. There was no end to magic, no end to the seasons, no end to my place on the cusp of two worlds.
A delicate pink caught my eye, a color crafted from the cherry blossoms bordering my garden. I held it against the tapestry, testing its suitability for flowering plum trees and coral bells I’d stitch into the meadows and along the forest’s edge.
“Should you desire my opinion, Erith,” a small voice piped up, “it requires a touch of carnation and a shimmer of sunshine. On the dogwood blossoms as well.”
“I wondered about those.” My gaze rose to my knee-high hospet. He sat cross-legged on the hearthstone in front of our shrinking fire, cracking walnuts with his sharp teeth. The creature blinked at me with eyes as clear as spring water, his waistcoat buttoned, cheeks rosy, and cinnamon hair parted in the middle like a magistrate. Nobbin kept my wood and moss cottage tidy, expecting little beyond customary respect and an occasional outfit when his garments aged past mending.
He also took it upon himself to offer artistic advice since my mother had chosen to join my father in the underworld.
“I might leave them as they are,” I said. “Dogwoods are white.”
Nobbin’s eyebrows tilted up in an expression of devilish skepticism. “Spring’s princess will agree with me. Give it a brush of magic. I know you dabble when I’m otherwise occupied.”
“You spy on me?”
“I’m observant. And I’m charmed.” He flicked his handcloth at the window. “Snow doesn’t glitter like that without your touch, my girl. You added that sparkle to your mother’s tapestry, and it impressed the Winter King.”
“Do you think so?” A blush heated my cheeks. “From what I’ve gathered, he’s not one to dole out compliments.”
“None of them are.” Nobbin held up a nut as if inspecting a precious gem. “Such is the nature of immortals. Add a layer of royalty on top, and we are lucky they don’t dismember anyone or anything tarnishing their crowns.”
“Dismember?” I cringed at the grisly thought and drew my black shawl around my shoulders. “My mother told me the courtiers are kind and cruel in equal measure. Without good reason for either.”
Not one to speak with his mouth full, Nobbin raised a finger and swallowed a morsel of walnut. “Indeed, they’re notoriously whimsical. But you are their weaver, and every artist must begin somewhere. You will earn your place, Erith, though it is no simple task to prove your power and demand respect. Spring is the first tapestry you may claim as your own creation, and it is a glorious start. I have untold faith in you.”
I smiled gratefully and stifled a shudder at the challenge ahead. Despite Nobbin’s trust in me, my confidence wavered like a weathervane on a gusty day. I’d done my best, and it would have to serve. The seasons’ rulers wouldn’t dismember me on a whim. I hoped.
Excerpt #2 – Brynlan and Erith
I graciously accepted the prince’s invitation, and he whirled me into a dreamlike waltz, his elegance effortless, his every movement a study in grace. Without pause, we transitioned into a brisk twirling sprint that left me warm to my toes. I begged off a third spin around the bonfire, needing a moment to catch my breath, and he accompanied me to the tables where mulled wines and buttery spirits spilled into silver-banded goblets.
“Water please,” I said when he reached for the wine.
“It’s all water.” He filled a goblet. “You will taste wine, smell its flavors, and feel its warmth, but only if you give yourself over to its glamour.” He angled a look at me, awaiting my opinion.
I swirled the ruby liquid rippling in my cup. Perhaps my human half prevented me from seeing the water for what it was. When I braved a sip, I tasted wine, smooth and sweet, infused with hints of winterberry and woodsmoke.
“Wine,” I said with a laugh, my guardedness surrendering at his feet. “You’re not an illusion, are you?”
He studied me through his dark lashes, his amused smile shaded with a melancholy he covered with a quiet chuckle. “Of course. To a degree. Aren’t we all, in some way, illusions?”
“No.”
“Is that so?” His eyebrows rose in challenge. “Tell me, are there times when you hide your feelings? Hold back your words? Pretend you are braver than you feel? Is it truly your nature to dress in black? I suspect those are all illusions.”
“In a sense. But I’m incapable of glamour. I’m half human, part of the mundane world.”
“A coveted mix.” He sipped his wine. “I envy your connection to the human imagination.”
I blinked at the odd confession and turned to the merriment unfolding within the fire’s ring of light. “For most villagers here, it’s the other way around. They envy the magic. They’re dazzled.”
“And those who fear us? Where are they?”
“At home, waiting for spring. They need the change in seasons more than the charmed do. Their lives depend on it.”
“And the charmed depend on them.”
“On humans?” I faced him, smirking at the strange perspective. “I’ve listened to village storytellers who spin tales about the charmed, and it’s usually the other way around. Some accounts are as gentle as a hare, others as fearsome as the wylyali. All wondrously fanciful, and not always true.”
“The difference is imagination.” He tapped his forehead. “Human beings are excellent storytellers. Better than the Mori Duglum. Leagues better than us. You shall see it for yourself.” I gave him a sideways glance, and he chuckled. “You’re skeptical, but I assure you, immortality leads to a numbing level of monotony. Day in and day out, little changes. Thus, it all becomes stale.”
“Unless you account for glamour. You can turn anything and everything beautiful.”
“Beauty without substance.” He raised his goblet to the bonfire. “Unlike in the mortal world where stories create history, shape the present, and write the future. What are we but the sum of our joys and tragedies? Where humans use stories to make meaning of their lives, the charmed rely on the human imagination to exist.”
Excerpt #3 – Erith and the Lochalai
Abandoning all caution, I bolted down a steep slope. My foot snagged, pitching me forward. Head over heels, I tumbled onto a frozen pool and pinwheeled to a stop. I lay flat on the surface, panting, and at the instant I imagined the ice breaking beneath my weight, it shattered. Freezing water rushed up my nose. My skin prickled with a thousand needles. I thrashed up from the murk and sucked in a frantic breath as the pool’s lochalai rose before me, her split irises peeling open like windows in a jade lantern.
With a cry, I splashed toward the ice-slicked bank. The creature dug her claws into the back of my dress and wrenched me under. I twisted in the slimy grip, scratched wildly at her reptilian skin, and when she shoved me away, I lurched up for a gulp of air.
My feet tangled in my skirt as I lunged for the pool’s shore. In a panic, I clutched the rocky rim, only to have my hands scrape from the stones as the monster grasped my ankles and yanked me backward. Water filled my mouth. I kicked with all my strength and, planting a foot, pushed off the muck. She seized my braid, sinking me before I broke the surface.
I couldn’t twist or fight or tear free of my hair, so I went limp and sank into the black depths like a drowned girl. My hand dug into the rocky silt, and I hung there as my lungs threatened to implode. When the beast eased her grip, I rolled and struck her face with a round stone. My boots pounded on the bottom, and I burst into the air, my arms flailing for something to grasp.
The creature crawled on my back. Water rushed over my head, and the last of my breath bubbled from my mouth as her webbed fingers wrapped my neck. I pried at her hands, but her strength defied me. Death ascended from the gloom like a phantom fish that would pick my bones clean once the lochalai had consumed her fill. Overwhelming grief flooded my awareness, and my lungs burst open.
Something yanked me into the winter air. Water convulsed up my throat, and a drowning cough tried to turn me inside out. I rattled a wet, wheezing inhale. Cupping my face, a blue watermaid placed her cold mouth on mine and exhaled, and when my frenzied gasping calmed, she pushed me toward the bank and faced the pool’s monster. “You have lost her. She is the weaver.”
“She is a fool,” the lochalai said and sank to her chin.
“Nevertheless, she is necessary.” The watermaid climbed onto a flat stone at the stream’s edge and wrung sea-blue droplets from her long hair. “You may not eat her.”
I knelt on the shore, healed of my drowning, and drew my dead fire salamander from my pocket, its magical flame extinguished. The little creature seemed to embody the night’s horrors and send them crashing down on my heart. A sob welled in my chest.
“Give it to me,” the lochalai said.
“No.” Shivering, I placed my salamander in the snow between two roots and covered it with a rock.
The lochalai sank until her lizard eyes sat like bubbles on the surface, her algae hair floating in the current. The watermaid forgot me, occupied with collecting snowflakes on her fingertips. She’d saved me from drowning only to see me freeze.
Excerpt #4 – Erith and the Woodling
The forest was moving, shifting, thwarting me—I was certain of it. Shadows expanded and thinned, wavered, and shuffled closer until I could distinguish them from the surrounding oaks. The tall beings’ bark-brown limbs swayed and creaked like branches. They wore headdresses of twigs, vines tangled into nests, and wrinkled leaves that fluttered in autumn’s gentle breath. A gnarled grandfather with craggy jowls and woodpecker holes pocking his face squinted at me with bright jade eyes.
“Who are you?” I held my ground, a scrawny sapling challenging a grove of mighty oaks. “Why won’t you let me pass?”
“He can’t speak to you, Weaver,” a soft voice said from above.
I searched the canopy. A small woodling straddled the crook of a forked tree. Galiwhigs gathered like a halo around her fair hair, and she daintily picked seeds from a pinecone and popped them in her mouth. She resembled a human child, a slender waif with owl-round eyes, adorned in yellow leaves and wearing a crown of goldenrod.
“I seek the Autumn Prince.”
“Are you a princess?”
“No, I’m—”
“Are you a boneman?” She tapped her chin.
I shook my head at the odd question. “No, I’m the weaver. Do you know if he’s healed?”
“If you are.”
“I am,” I said, testing my sore ankle. “Mostly.”
“Then he is, mostly.”
“I wish to speak with him. Will you let me through?”
“He’s in his palace.” The woodling scratched an earth-stained foot with a twig and pointed it in the direction I’d sought to walk before the tree creatures barricaded my way. “But you can’t go there.”
“Why? Why are they blocking me?”
The woodling jumped from the forked branch with the grace of a falling leaf. She scooped up an acorn topped with a perfect cap. “Because the oak witch is perched on his roof, waiting to peck out your eyes.”
“Why?” The gruesome warning stole my breath. “Why is this happening?”
The sprite lifted her shoulders to her ears in a childlike shrug. “Because it can. Such things always happen until they don’t. You must stay on the path, Weaver. The Naggris will show you the way.”
“The Naggris?”
“The Tree Folk. Your mother must have thought you were brighter than you are.”
My lips pinched at the insult. “She taught me to weave,” I said, unwilling to discuss my family’s conflicts with a woodling. “They’ll show me the way where? To the court?”
“To the path.” The dainty being handed me the capped acorn. “For later, should you need it.”
I cradled the brown nut. “What am I to do with it?”
“Keep your word.” The wood sprite grinned and merged into the oak, leaving me bewildered. The Naggris heaved and bent and shuffled apart, revealing a path bordered by speckled mushrooms and lit by fairy lights.
With the acorn in my pocket, I straightened my shoulders and climbed the trail to the island’s crown.
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