The Perilous Crossing by L.R. Patton

Author:L.R. Patton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dragons and danger, magical kings and kingdoms, historical fairy tale adventure and quest, epic fantasy fairy tale retelling, middle grade literature with magical creatures, Arthurian tales and fables, Nursery rhymes with fairies and shapeshifters and wizards and swords and sorcery
Publisher: Batlee Press
Published: 2016-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Traitor

TWO months passed, and Greyson’s father did not return. But Greyson and his mother carried on. They knew these trips could very well take months, for peace was of highest importance in the realm, at least to the king’s men. His father had promised to return before the Year’s Last Day, but the day came and went, with little celebration, since many of the village men were soldiers. And with every day passing, the world grew a bit darker for Greyson and his mother.

Greyson could not even find relief in the friendship of Cora, for she continued to pay him no mind. He was fast becoming a man, but she did not watch him as he watched her. They hardly spoke. He left his mother’s candies at her door, for he could not bear to see them on his family’s table, in the familiar bowl, waiting for his father’s return. Sometimes, he would slip a slice of apple pie to Cora’s windowsill when the sun had gone to sleep.

One day, she stopped him in the streets. “Why are you leaving me sweets?” she said. “I will grow too large for my dresses.”

“Then you can use magic to make them larger,” Greyson said, filling, momentarily, with his old, customary merriment.

“A woman cannot simply make her garments larger,” Cora said. “It is not becoming.”

“You are lovely no matter how large you become,” Greyson said.

Cora’s eyes turned tender, as if she might cry. He had never seen a look such as this one, from a girl such as she. Might she be falling in love with him? But the moment passed, and they carried on in the same silent way as they had done before.

And then there came the day when Cora kissed him on the cheek. There came the day when her eye turned the vivid color of a springtime field, when she said, “Perhaps there is more to you than I thought,” and then she disappeared, her staff tapping the ground in a rhythm that felt right and true to Greyson, who could scarcely move.

That was a day his feet did not even touch the ground, for he was a man in love.

But he would soon forget that feeling of weightlessness, the feeling of warmth, the feeling of hope. For when he returned home, he found his mother on the stone floor.

She had fallen while preparing his dinner, and so smoke gathered in the corners of their cottage. She had burned the soup, for when she fell, she found she could not rise. Greyson lifted his mother and carried her to her bed, opening all the windows in the cottage so the smoke could find escape. He ran as fast as he could to the village apothecary. The apothecary could not move quickly anymore, for he was growing older by the minute, and so it seemed to Greyson that it took hours and hours to reach his mother’s bedside again.

The apothecary, Sir Tomas, who had been knighted in his youth for

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