A delightfully haunting dark fairy tale just in time for Hallowe’en!
Here’s a sneak peek at the first chapter.
Chapter One: To Begin
It’s the light that bothers me: the lack of it. It’s wrong. No colours get through it. Nor does it make proper shadows. Only the intangible sort.
I hate that.
Hate not seeing what ought to be seen. I suppose HE did that on purpose. More would have been too much for you, would have blinded and eviscerated you to your very bones. I, however, much prefer our sort of light: multi-coloured, multifaceted, disclosing, uncloaking, penetrating. The light in your world only bounces off things, off of people—it never properly attaches to them. It never becomes a part of them.
Do you see what I mean?
That was my undoing in the end.
I didn’t see things very clearly until it was too late.
None of this should have become my problem at all. I should never have come here—sent into this lightless, dust-coloured void that smells of disarray and erosion. Irrevocable and irreconcilable.
I do not belong here.
I am something other.
You believe I am cruel or vicious or diabolical or merciless or….
I am not.
Specifically, I am not unfeeling—that is not my colour at all. You would know that if you had ever once seen me in the light of my world—a world in which my virtues shone. But here, in your plastic-coated light my image conjures to mind words like mean, foul, vile, terrifying, sadistic. If you were particularly erudite at the moment you saw me—assuming you could collect a thought in your head at all in my presence—you might come up with words like deplorable, pernicious, heinous, malevolent. Some have thought me irascible. I am not any of these things.
I am simply pragmatic.
Your world cannot run itself, after all.
You need me.
You need someone like me whose job it is to do those things that others would never do. Those things others are not strong enough to do. What would you be if I were not present to do my work—if there were no hardships or difficulties or harsh realities to strive against? If I were not here, you would become weak. You would collapse into yourselves and lose yourselves to the dark that is your world. The virtues of your feeble race—bravery, sacrifice, honour, and all those other words you humans sling about so recklessly—would never come to light again. Your existence necessitates my work.
You need me.
I do not need you.
That is the reality of the situation.
You will find the book and where to order here: The Key to Caerwyn
Happy Nightmares!
-Sarina
