{"id":332,"date":"2014-12-26T08:52:55","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T13:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/?page_id=332"},"modified":"2014-12-26T08:52:55","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T13:52:55","slug":"one-saved-to-the-sea-by-catt-kingsgrave","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/?page_id=332","title":{"rendered":"One Saved To The Sea by Catt Kingsgrave"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>ebook $3.99
\nISBN: 9781613900567
\nPaperback $9.95
\nISBN: 9781613900697
\n29,490 words; 82 pages<\/p>\n

[wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=39]<\/p>\n

The ebook edition is also available at: Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Smashwords<\/a>, Kobo<\/a> & AllRomanceEbooks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Buy the paperback edition<\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drawing on myth and history, Catt Kingsgrave writes a tale of the clash of the modern age with magic, of loss and searching, a tale that will sweep you away to a past that never was, and into a sapphic love story just this side of impossible.<\/p>\n

About the Author:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Catt Kingsgrave has been writing fiction and verse since the early eighties, and despite everything, has not yet seen fit to desist. With works ranging from Urban and Mythic Fantasy through Horror, Erotica, and\u00a0a decided taste for the Gothic and macabre, she takes delight in making all her works as difficult to classify as humanly possible.\u00a0 She lives with her partner, five cats, and two snakes in an upstate New York home that was built a century or so before the state in which she was born was made a part of the Union. When not writing, she has been known to indulge in random bouts of theater, songwriting, dance, painting, home repair, volunteer rape crisis counseling, and folk music. Her interests are zombie outbreak preparedness, criminal profiling, gardening, and full-contact applied mythology. She does not make jam.<\/p>\n

Look under the cut for a hot excerpt!<\/span><\/p>\n

The oar sliced the air with a whirring noise, and clipped the side of Durn Helzie\u2019s skull neatly. Not a killing blow, but it was enough to spin the man like a top and sling the gray pelt from his fingers as he measured his length on the mossy stones of the holm. Mairead put herself between him and his prize, kicking the skin well behind her just to be sure.<\/p>\n

Around the seaward edge of the holm, seals were diving from every stone, speckled gray and honking in alarm at the sudden intrusion in their basking night. In only a few seconds, the tiny islet was empty of all but herself and Helzie, who was curled up tight as a limpet, clutching his head and cursing her soundly.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mind your tongue, Durn Helzie,\u201d she snarled at him in the very voice that had always reminded his sort at school that she\u2019d three older brothers and a very protective Da waiting on her displeasure. \u201cYou\u2019ve no business out here but for thieving, and we both know it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cow, you bloody cow!\u201d he spat, making as if to rise until she brandished the oar again. \u201cThis were no business of yours\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd isn\u2019t it my business when you come poaching on Meur lands then?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPoaching!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAye,\u201d she said, choking short her grip on the oar so she could stoop to catch up the sealskin one-handed. \u201cThere\u2019s other names for it too, but as I\u2019m a lady, I\u2019ll refrain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou, a lady?\u201d He spat and grimaced. \u201cIt\u2019s you\u2019re a\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s I\u2019m well prepared to soften that skull of yours again if you come at me, and I\u2019ll thank you to remember that,\u201d she called over the crash as the sea battered the holm, filling the air with salt spray and the promise of a turning tide. \u201cYou\u2019re drunk, you\u2019re poaching, and you\u2019re trespassing. I won\u2019t have you insulting me into the bargain. Now up you get. Back to the trink and off our land before the tide comes in, or see if my Da and his gun don\u2019t have something to say about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He snickered, then yelped as she sliced the air just above his head, so close the oar snagged in his fair curls. \u201cAugh, you\u2019re as mad as he is, you wretched cow!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFurious,\u201d she agreed. \u201cNow march!\u201d<\/p>\n

He did stand, and carefully, holding one hand against his head while the other crept toward the pocket of his mac. Mairead hefted the oar again, and he thought better of it, though bitterly. \u201cAye, I\u2019ll go,\u201d he said, \u201cbut not without what\u2019s rightful mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mairead shook her head, clutched oar and pelt tight in her fists. \u201cYou\u2019re taking away only what you brought, Helzie. Nothing else here belongs to you by any right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat skin\u2019s mine,\u201d he said, taking a single, wobbly step. \u201cI won it square\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wasn\u2019t born wearing it,\u201d Mairead replied, \u201cand her that was will be wanting it back again.\u201d He took another step, teetered again, and clutched his head, but even in the moonlight Mairead did not miss that canny look in his eye. She was not surprised when he sprang at her, arms wide to tackle her down.<\/p>\n

Her second swing at his head was not quite so polite as the first had been. This time when Helzie spun and dropped, he lay crumpled where he\u2019d fallen, panting and moaning as the spite leaked out of him along with his ale. \u201cBeen robbed\u2026\u201d he mumbled against the lichens as his eyes rolled closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat, I\u2019ll allow,\u201d she answered, \u201cthough you\u2019ve had it coming for years.\u201d Then she turned and left him there.<\/p>\n

The moon was full and high, fat and silver in a sky dark and clear of cloud\u2013a rare night indeed in the Orkneys, which saw cloudless skies a bare handful of times in any given year. The moon offered light aplenty for Mairead to search the holm for the seal girl, and return her skin.<\/p>\n

She knew which it had been\u2013the freckled hide had one hind fin slightly ragged, as though torn in some fight, and one of the seal girls always danced with the ghost of a limp when they all came ashore on the holm. It was easy to pick her out among the whirl of flashing limbs by the way her moves did not quite match, and so it was she whom Mairead usually watched, hid in a crevice of rock above the steep path from the trink.<\/p>\n

The moonlight revealed no soft curve of white skin on the river-mouth island; no trembling whorl of wood-dark hair in the shadows of sea-carved stone. Mairead quickly crossed the holm, peering into every crack of stone she could find, knowing there could never have been an extra skin among the seal folk, knowing that her limping girl must surely be hiding somewhere close by.
\nBut soon she had to admit defeat. There were not many places to truly hide on the narrow spit of stone. The sea was relentless, and polished all it could not swallow down to smooth humps of rock where only weed and lichens could cling. Even the sandy beach on the lee side, where she dug cockles in the summer, was empty and white as a shell beneath the moon, marred only with the beached rowboat that must have brought Helzie down from the fisheries upstream. She climbed back to the top of the holm one last time, soft-footed as she could go, just in case the girl might have crept out of hiding while she\u2019d been below.<\/p>\n

And there she was, perched on the seaward edge of the holm, looking beautiful and forlorn with her dark hair carving waves down the soft curve of her shoulders. She made no sound, did not shiver or moan, but Mairead felt sure her lovely girl was weeping. And before she thought better of it, she found herself drawing the silky pelt from beneath her coat, and calling soft, \u201cIt\u2019s all right, I\u2019ve got it right here\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

In a flash of white skin and dark, startled eyes, the selkie girl was gone, over the side and into the thrashing sea below without so much as a squeak of alarm. Mairead rushed to the edge, stared down the thrust of stone, twenty feet or more into the water, but the moonlight helped her pick out no human shape against the foam.
\n\u201cCome back,\u201d Mairead called to the restless wind, knowing it useless. \u201cYou can have it back, I don\u2019t want it, I promise\u2026\u201d
\nShe was disappointed to get no reply, but she couldn\u2019t say she was surprised.<\/p>\n

To read the rest, buy the ebook today!<\/em><\/p>\n

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ebook $3.99 ISBN: 9781613900567 Paperback $9.95 ISBN: 9781613900697 29,490 words; 82 pages [wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=39] The ebook edition is also available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo & AllRomanceEbooks. Buy the paperback edition! Drawing on myth and history, Catt Kingsgrave writes a tale of the clash of the modern age with magic, of loss and … Continue reading One Saved To The Sea by Catt Kingsgrave<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":873,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-332","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/332\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}