The Wave Maiden
The Wave Maiden’s Story will be sent out with the kits. Read an excerpt below.
Excerpt from “The Wave Maiden”
Something crashed through the woods above him. Emrys didn’t care. He’d spent eighteen birthdays alone on this beach, waiting to see her again. A fin broke the water and moved quickly toward him. He heard a second crash on the ridge, as if something massive was crushing the wood with its passing. He glanced up but the angle of the sun had turned the forest into a dark undefined mass. The fin was moving in a straight line. It must be a shark. He’d never seen a whale swim like that. She didn’t have fins.
Emrys turned back inland and headed to his truck. The day after his birthday was always another day off work and included a lot of Single Malt and wallowing, but he’d come to accept it as a healthy way to deal. Even after two decades he couldn’t let go.
She’d kissed him. He hadn’t told his mother, would never have thought to mention it to his father.
Her lips had been hot against his, her hands ice where they’d held his shoulders. He’d smelt the sea on her breath as she blew gently to cool his burning skin. Sometimes he wondered if he’d been ill with a fever that night. It had felt like that, a high delirium-inducing heat that had started in his belly and radiated to his fingers and toes. But he still remembered her smell and the way her cold fingers had numbed his skin. And he’d never forgotten her kiss.
A tail, split like a whale’s, broke the surface, shimmered and disappeared as he looked back to the sea. Iridescent. She can camouflage herself, he heard his mother telling him, as if she’d known a Wave Maiden too.
Excerpt from “The Wave Maiden”
Something crashed through the woods above him. Emrys didn’t care. He’d spent eighteen birthdays alone on this beach, waiting to see her again. A fin broke the water and moved quickly toward him. He heard a second crash on the ridge, as if something massive was crushing the wood with its passing. He glanced up but the angle of the sun had turned the forest into a dark undefined mass. The fin was moving in a straight line. It must be a shark. He’d never seen a whale swim like that. She didn’t have fins.
Emrys turned back inland and headed to his truck. The day after his birthday was always another day off work and included a lot of Single Malt and wallowing, but he’d come to accept it as a healthy way to deal. Even after two decades he couldn’t let go.
She’d kissed him. He hadn’t told his mother, would never have thought to mention it to his father.
Her lips had been hot against his, her hands ice where they’d held his shoulders. He’d smelt the sea on her breath as she blew gently to cool his burning skin. Sometimes he wondered if he’d been ill with a fever that night. It had felt like that, a high delirium-inducing heat that had started in his belly and radiated to his fingers and toes. But he still remembered her smell and the way her cold fingers had numbed his skin. And he’d never forgotten her kiss.
A tail, split like a whale’s, broke the surface, shimmered and disappeared as he looked back to the sea. Iridescent. She can camouflage herself, he heard his mother telling him, as if she’d known a Wave Maiden too.
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