Daughter of Earth and Tree
Book II of the Dark Moon Trilogy
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Abstract
As promised in Daughter of Air and Storm, Book I of the Dark Moon Trilogy, the past has come looking for warrior-trained giantess Brauna Brandon. Guardsmen have invaded her small village and kidnapped her daughter. A demon bear stalks her and her family. Her husband is missing and likely dead. And trees seem to be communicating with her.
With the help of Theya, a woman with a fractured soul, Brauna trails the Guardsmen who kidnapped her daughter while also hunting the bear. Along the way, she discovers the peculiar skills of her dark-moon heritage, that the bear is more than he seems, that enemies sometimes wear the guise of allies, and the dead don't always move on.
Excerpt
MOTHS TO THE FLAME
The woman examined the fall of water as it flowed in transparent gown over ancient rocks. She crept forward, legs hobbled by weakness. Her dry throat screamed. Her heartbeat faded. She had waited too long. Just feet from her objective, she stumbled and fell face-forward, landing in a sprawl on a rocky shelf that sloped into the gentle tide at the pool’s edge.
The woman lifted her head to view the crisp waters of the pool only to be blinded by the sun. A moan pitched from her. With a final effort, she dragged herself, hand over hand, across gray granite until she had reached the water’s edge. Her face hovered over the water, giving her a reflective glimpse of cracked skin, dry lips. A mad smile broke over those fissured lips.
“Too long have we been parted.” Hoarse laughter followed then other words—unintelligible, harsh with mania. Then silence, and the woman slumped facedown into the water, into death itself.
The rush of a river flinging itself into gravity’s hold echoed throughout the small valley while the body lay inert, head bobbing within the lap-lap at the pool’s margins, water swoshing by its ears, a cold breeze tugging fretfully at its clothing.
“Waken, daughter. Taste us and waken once more,” strange, childlike voices began to sing within the undercurrents of the pool.
Ears heard. Lips moved. Water soon ran into deflated veins. Tissues moistened and plumped.
“See what we have seen. See it, daughter. See what we have seen,” the voices sang on, wispy and ethereal.
An image—a giant bear traversed the river’s shore, breathing in grunts, blood dripping off the beast’s chest and muzzle, the recent remnants of arrow wounds. The monster stopped and sank its mouth into the river. Blood and intentions mingled with the current, the bear’s thoughts siphoned by the water.
The woman’s body jerked. The head flew upward, mouth sucking at the air. The woman backpedaled away from the pool and pushed up onto her knees. She sank her head between the forearms spread before her, posed much like a stretching feline, body convulsing, as the water susurrated through its childish chorus.
Body calmed to shudders, the woman shortly rose and glared at the water.
“At your service, master,” she snarled.
The voices had dimmed to nothing, but the vision of the bear remained as did the intent the woman had tasted in the river's water.
Pastel-green eyes flashed to the sky. Dusk. She had little time.
Thunder boomed outside. Shutters rattled against their imprisonment. Fine tree branches scratched between slats at window glass, pried at the mortared stones of a wall, whilst rain inseminated wood, glass, and mineral alike in great spatters.
Earth-brown eyes shifted away from the window to peer upward. Four purplish eyespots—encased by papery, pale-green wings—blindly returned the stare of the woman on the bed below, the creature’s form fidgeting in minute motions. All the while, soft firelight played across the room.
“I ran . . . that little beast . . . out of here . . . at least three times today,” the woman on the bed panted, hands kneading sheets.
The elderly midwife followed her patient’s field of view. “Moon moth. Been a while since I saw one of those.”
“Ahhhhhh,” the woman on the bed moaned, the mound of her belly tightening, her forehead glistening with sweat. “How much longer?”
The midwife placed lit candle and holder on the chest at the bed’s foot and checked her patient’s dilation then leaned back.
“You can push now,” the elder announced.
Thunder boomed outside once more, its lightning ghosting through the shutters. Wind howled down the chimney, challenging the fireplace’s flames, causing them to dance out of tune.
The laboring woman huffed and pushed until the babe at last slipped into the world.
“You’ve a fine, fat girl.” The old midwife propped the slippery babe on the mother’s partially deflated abdomen moments later. The mother grasped the blue-tinged babe by the shoulders to hold her in place. The babe squinted little eyes at her mother.
“Another good push’ll bring out the afterbirth,” the midwife said.
The mother clamped her teeth and pushed several times more before expelling the placenta.
“Good,” breathed the midwife.
The crone cut the cord, and the cabin door shuddered in loud bang under the impact of some great force without. The old woman jerked round to stare at the door, slinging birth blood into the flame of her candle. Flames erupted out of the fireplace’s mouth at that moment whilst the moon moth fluttered downward to land on the newborn.
The umbilical cord slipped, forgotten, from her grasp as midwife, along with novice mother, stared from barred door to spirant-spitting fire. The flames collapsed back to their original height in a huff of sparks. No other sound emanated from outside the door. Normalcy had regained its footing.
Nevertheless, the midwife turned to the mother, eyes wide, mouth opening to speak, “They say the moon died with the sun this night, its second death this month.”
A snarl wrinkled the new mother’s nose. “Neither moon nor sun are dead,” she hissed. “Both shall return on the morrow.”
Fear sifted through the elder woman’s eyes. Then animosity narrowed them as the midwife continued to stare down at the quiet babe nested on the mother’s abdomen. The mother bolted upright, folding the child in her arms.
“Tie the damned cord!” she spat through gnashed teeth.
The crone scurried to the task, but first flicked the blood-spattered body of the moth off the babe’s back.
A long dart sliced through the rain and night air. Where the enormous bear lurked before the door of a stone house, the projectile bit into its flesh. Blazing, red eyes flashed through the darkness toward the woman who had launched the missile. She stood but a few paces away. The bear reared back onto hind legs, swiping at she who dared disturb him. The bear then swayed clumsily, red glow fading from its eyes as the woman's poisons took hold. The bear fell to all-fours and launched desperately away from the woman’s wild laughter . . . and the pale, mad eyes revealed in a flash of lightning.
The woman dashed through the cold, insistent downfall after the bear, blowgun reloaded.
Wind shifted around the woman—a sigh, a whisper—more than a suggestion on its diaphanous lips. The woman drew up, peering hungrily after her prey.
“No fun tonight, I see,” she spoke to the spirit in the wind. Tucking her blowgun into its tethers on her side, she traipsed back to the stone house, noting the quiet erosion of the bear’s tracks beneath the slackening rain.
The woman’s odd green eyes then examined the house’s marred door.
“Tsk. Tsk,” her tongue smacked out the chastising sound as she shook her head.
The woman pulled her hooded cape around herself, not that it did much good in this cold wet. She climbed into the tree next to the house, nested there—hearing rain pitter-patter on leaves, on herself—and watched. Watched the terrified midwife’s flight from the house moments later, heard the outraged roar of the new mother, even saw that extraordinarily tall woman slam the door behind the scrambling midwife.
Amongst tree limbs, pastel-green eyes slanted in amusement. “Temper-temper, sister.”
The tree-sitter peered again at the damage the bear had done to the stone house’s door and chuckled. “And what shall be your reaction to that?”