Release date: 31st July 2019
Sub-genre: Fantasy, Coming of Age
About The Girl from the Sea:
Exiled from her castle home in the far north, Aude is a Doxan, follower of the Mother Goddess, Megalmayar; Yuste and Yuda are Wanderers, a race the Goddess cursed to live without a homeland until the return of her Son.
But the twins are also shamans, destined to wield remarkable powers when they come of age, a time that is drawing near.
Together, the children face a terrible enemy that rises from a lost city under the sea. Will they survive the perils of adolescence in their world, and defeat the threat from beneath the waves?
Excerpt:
Aude leaned closer to them, beginning to feel
afraid. She could smell the change in the air, the coldness, like the scent of
rain. The storm was coming inland.
Yuda looked from Yuste to her. Aude had never
met anyone with such dark irises; from close to, they looked truly black. And
she saw that he was scared; angry and frightened.
‘Run,’ he said. He caught Yuste by one hand,
Aude by the other, and dragged them away from the edge of the water, heading
inland. He moved so fast Aude was almost dragged off her feet; she had to twist
and stagger round to keep up with him and his sister.
A sound was growing behind her; not the noise of
a storm, but howling, as if all the winds in the world were rushing towards
them, stirring up the sea and driving it after them. They ran headlong, and Aude,
out of breath and disoriented, did not see how they could escape; the shorter
cliff made a barrier between them and the land, and she could not remember how
she had found her way down to the beach in the first place.
Between them, Yuste and Yuda dragged her to the
foot of the cliff, and there were handholds, gaps in the rock, that she had to
climb.
Yuste went first, holding out her hand for Aude
to follow, and Yuda came last, scrambling after her like a monkey or a sailor
boy climbing the mainmast. Aude had learnt how to climb trees at home, but the
cliff frightened her; only fear of what was rising from the deep kept her
moving, finding handholds, until she fell face forwards onto a ledge, and found
herself in a sea cave, a hollow amongst the rocks carpeted with sand and dry
grass. She dragged herself into the centre, and the three of them crouched
there, clinging to each other.
Aude imagined that if she listened carefully she
might be able to hear the twins thinking. Yuda was panting fast, like a dog,
and Yuste was trembling; Aude could not see what they saw, but she knew they were
afraid, and that what frightened them must be fearsome.
The dark cloud was driving in from the sea,
bringing long streamers of rain. The noise of the wind was deafening; Aude
could see waves beating against the smooth shore where they had been standing,
and engulfing it, until all that remained was a grey sackcloth of churning
water. If they had lingered on the sand, they would have been swept away,
dragged under by the incoming tide, and pounded to pieces against the rocks.
Yuda gripped one of her hands so hard it hurt,
and Yuste held her other hand. Aude tried to yell against the noise of the wind
and the sea, but she could not hear her own voice.
‘Look down there,’ said Yuda, pointing with his
free hand.
They crawled on their hands and knees and lay
face down, peeping over the edge of the cave. Out there on the waters,
something glistened; Aude thought she glimpsed the shape of a boat, clear as glass,
and someone standing up in the prow…
She shrank back.
‘What is that? Who is that in the boat?’
The twins stared at her like owls.
‘Yuste did it. She woke them from their sleep,’
said Yuda.
‘It’s not my fault…’ said Yuste.
The Girl from the Sea is available to read for free through Kindle Unlimited, and will also be free to download on August 16th.
About Jessica Rydill:
Her first novel, Children of the Shaman, was published by Orbit in 2001, and short-listed for the Locus magazine best first novel in 2002. A sequel, The Glass Mountain, appeared in October 2002. Both books have been reissued by small press Kristell Ink Publishing, together with sequels Malarat and Winterbloom.
Jessica lives near Bath with her husband and her collection of Ball-jointed dolls or BJD, which really aren’t creepy. Though they can be badly behaved…
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