"As charming and magical as Celtic legend itself, a truly enjoyable read and wonderful debut!"

Heather Graham
New York Times Bestselling Author


Excerpt:

Scotland, Highlands

“Please, not again,” Adela Mac Aye softly pleaded. On her knees, she leaned against the edge of her lumpy bed, her hands clasped tightly before a miniature statue of Amerissis, the Goddess of Light. “I beg of you, please give me a different vision.”

She rose gingerly from the hard dirt floor, tied her brown hair into a taut braid, and flipped it over her shoulder.

“I know not why I keep praying, Amerissis. My visions never change.”
She wiped her moist, slim hands on her gray kirtle and collapsed into the cushions of a worn, red velvet chair stuffed with feathers.

Looking around her modest cottage she sighed with resignation, her shoulders slumping. How did she find herself to be in such a remote, barren land far away from her mother’s rose garden in England?

“Fear,” she scoffed aloud. Fear had caused her to spend most of her life running. Once the town folk suspected the plain lass on the edge of the village to be a witch, she was forced to leave each provisional home or be burned at the stake.

Adela shivered, recalling her mother’s gruesome death. She was of only twelve winters when a vicious mob dragged Mary Mac Aye out of their home. Accusing her mother of communicating with the devil, they burned her alive in the middle of the village.

It mattered not that Mary, sweet in nature as she was beautiful in face, had helped each villager over the years with their ailments, and her powers had vanished since Adela’s birth. The villagers still feared her mother, and always showed revulsion toward her when passing on the road. However, these same folk would secretly implore Mary for the potions to help ease their suffering.

Foreseeing her mother’s death was not a vision Adela wished for, but it had given them enough warning to be prepared when the angry villagers battered down their door. Mary had pushed her daughter out the back window with supplies and coin before the villagers could take her too. Adela begged her mother to run with her, but she smiled and said, “You cannot escape fate.” Mary kissed Adela’s tear-stained face, and firmly pushed her daughter away.

Adela had hidden in the thick forest and followed from a distance as they dragged her mother away and tied her to a stake around which firewood was piled. Tears blinded Adela’s vision, but she knew there was nothing she could do but watch the flames climb higher. Her mother’s screams echoed in her ears while the smell of burning flesh caused her to vomit the meager contents of her stomach.

After the screams died, the villagers went back to search for the little witch, but she had vanished. Adela knew the safe path led her away from England, with all its ignorance and prejudice against her kind.

Perspiration beaded on Adela’s upper lip as she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. Like the day when she had foreseen her mother’s death, she now had visions of the tortuous events leading up to her own demise.
Perhaps after ten winters her vision would be different and her fate changed.

Slowly her breathing became centered and calm, her muscles relaxed. She went through the ritual of visualizing a white light around her body while asking Amerissis for the gift of sight.

Gently, her spirit eased from her body and traveled up through the thatched roof of her run-down cottage. Her body remained still on the chair, yet Adela could see everything from above, separate yet connected by a silver thread that joined her spirit to her body. Weightless and free, she flew through the cloudless sky.

Forest animals near the lake glanced up at her as she drifted by. In body they would be afraid of her, but in spirit form they accepted her presence as peaceful and loving. She waved at the creatures and sent from her heart a light that would give them protection from predators and mankind.

Adela looked beyond to the home of a young Scottish clan. The parents were busy washing clothes and cutting wood while their children played on the edge of the woods, happy and carefree. Adela shifted her gaze, wishing she had the love and simplicity their lives afforded.

Swiftly her spirit was pulled toward the nightmare she knew was coming. Gliding over the darkened mountains and into an eerie mist, she was guided to a place of great sorrow and pain.
No! Please, not again.

A large castle hunkered on the mountainside, its surrounding battlement walls towering over the small buildings within, while the castle itself stood bold and intimidating to all who looked upon its black stones.
Her vision remained the same, and so too, her fate.

Before she could scream, her spirit reappeared inside the castle’s dungeons. Dark and damp, she floated above the putrid rushes on the stone floor and saw her future self being thrown into the dungeon by grim soldiers. The darkness overwhelmed her senses and rats scattered around her prison. She saw herself sobbing, rocking back and forth, chanting, “I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid.”

She heard noises outside and her focus shifted from her weeping body to the small, barred window. In the bailey below, a stake awaited her with a mounting pile of firewood. Adela moved closer to her future body and reached out to touch her shaking shoulder. The door swung open with a bang and they both looked up.

Unwilling to watch the soldiers drag her away to be burned; Adela’s spirit retreated from the dungeons and their impenetrable walls.

Her spirit flew through the sky and she swiftly arrived back at her safe cottage, where she joined with her present body once again.

Adela’s eyelashes flew open, every muscle in her body shaking with fear and apprehension.

Soon she would be imprisoned and sentenced to death.

She could try to run, leave in the night. But her visions were never wrong. If she was meant to die, she would die, no matter how far or how fast she ran.

But to die a maiden, never having known a man’s touch or to give birth to a child and pass on the Mac Aye blood, a sacred witch’s blood that would end with her death…the thought was unbearable. Resisting the urge to collapse in tears, Adela shot to her feet, her hands fisted at her sides.

“I will have a baby! And my legacy will pass on to another generation. Even if I am not around to watch my child grow, I will honor the past Mac Aye women. Our line will not end with me.”

She lifted her chin and swallowed the knot lodged in her throat, her tone even. “I will not fail you, Mother.”

Determined, Adela blew a stray hair away from her face and rushed to the cupboard. She banged the timber doors open and shoved the cupboard’s meager contents into a coarse bag. It did not amount to much, but the bread and mead would prevent her from starving. Her wooden chest scraped along the ground as she pulled it out from beneath her bed. Opening the lid, she rummaged through the clothes and changed into an old travel gown of blue-green.

Running her fingers through the braid, she loosened the knot and flicked her hair loose over her shoulders. Adela grabbed a cream cloak from the wooden hook by the door, threw it around her back and raised the hood over her head, covering her features.

Determination settled like a rock inside her stomach. “There is not much time, but there is still a chance!” she reassured herself, rubbing her neck.

Opening the old creaky door, Adela stepped boldly into the morning light. She took a deep breath and forced a high pitched whistle through her two front teeth.

From out of the woods a white horse materialized, its mane and tale flowing in the wind. It galloped to her and halted, its hooves sliding on the dewy grass.

“Greetings, my old friend,” she said. “I have need of your sight.”
The mystical creature tossed his head and the comforting smell of horse-pelt filled the air.

Adela raised her voice, “I call upon my heart’s desire. Show me a man who will sire. I need someone gentle, it is my first time, someone who is pleasing and will not … will not …”

Adela struggled to find the ending to her spell.

A giggle escaped her lips and a sparkle entered her eyes when she repeated, “I call upon my heart’s desire. Show me a man who will sire. I need someone gentle, it is my first time, someone who is pleasing and will not whine.”

A rose-pink glow gathered in her hand and she placed the energy over the horse’s forehead. “Take me to this man.”

The horse nodded his head up and down and scraped a hoof in the dirt. Adela kissed his soft velvet nose, grabbed a handful of white mane and vaulted onto his back.

“I am ready to find the father of my child.”