Excerpt

I've been reading through last year's nanowrimo novel today, it actually isn't as bad as I remembered! In parts at least. Here's the very beginning.


When I was little, I used to think that faeries visited the woods across the street. Not all the time, but once or twice a year I would wake up to music seeping in from somewhere outside-- a wild music full of high voiced flutes and screaming laughter and the drumbeat of dancing feet. I would listen until the sounds moved away, and I’d always be sad to hear it go even though I’d dream cavorting dreams of shadows and monsters after.
Some nights I’d be brave enough to slide out of bed, trailing blankets after me, and press my face to the window glass. The trees across the street were just a mass of darkness that were impossible to see through. I was never brave enough to go out and find them, and I don’t think the thought even occurred to me. The woods were off bounds at night and sitting there frozen, my head pounding with their music against the coolness of the glass, I didn’t really want to get any closer.
I told Elle fantastical stories about the music and the faeries who roamed the woods as soon as I could attach a name to what I thought they were, but she slept like a rock and never really believed me. Once I woke crying from a whirlwind nightmare of dancing with faceless creatures and my dad was there, stroking my hair and murmuring to me.
“What was it, Valerie?” he whispered when I opened  my eyes. I blinked up at his shadowy head and desperately searched for eyes, nose, mouth-- and sighed when he shifted into a patch of moonlight.
“It was the music,” I told him groggily. “It gives me bad dreams.” He was motionless for a long moment, his eyes looking past me and out the window.
“So don’t listen,” he said at last, smiling back down at me softly. “You don’t have to listen.”
“I don’t know how not to,” I said, balling up the sheets in my fists. I stared up at him hopefully, waiting for words of wisdom, or even a reprimand, but he just laid down next to me and let me nestle into him.
“Neither do I,” he said into my hair, so softly that I might have dreamt it.


Kelia