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| "Black Headed-Gull with Sky Background (2)" by Wildlife Boy1 is licensed under CC BY 2.0. |
The cover is tentative as is the title, but it represents my thoughts at this point in the writing of this new book! It will be another fantasy and will take place not in the current day or in the future but in the past—120 AD, in ancient Ireland. That time period is referred to as the Irish Dark Ages, which lasted from 100 AD to 400 AD. It is my goal to write this book in a way that gives the reader a sense of that moment in Irish history while still making it a fictional tale, fantastical in nature.
I have already done a tremendous amount of research for the book, and the main character, Ailionn (pronounced AH-lin), could actually have been the name of a female living in Ireland at that time. I am extremely excited about the project, but I am very aware of the amount of work it will take to write such a book in a way that does Ireland, the characters, and the story justice.
Not only have I already done a lot of research for the project, but I have also begun writing it. I will share with you the first few paragraphs of Chapter 1 to provide a small window into Ailionn.
As always, thank you for reading my blog and being interested in my work. And for those of you who have read one or more of my six published novels, I will work as hard as possible to make Ailionn one of my best!
Excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 1 of Ailionn!
Pleased with the hunt, Ailionn stepped into the darkened souterrain—the limestone cave she had inhabited and flourished in over the past several seasons—and placed the two long-eared giorria, dangling lifeless from her hand, on a pelt alongside the fire at the entrance. The fire’s embers were still glowing, providing warmth and minimal light inside her home. She could see that no other creatures had entered while she had been out hunting, so she laid her spear and knife against the wall and removed her hooded mantle and leather shoes.
More comfortable, Ailionn sat down by the fire, sighed, stoked it with fresh wood, and took a drink of sweet mead from the leather flask looped in the sash at her waist. The taste of it made her realize that it had actually been a very long time since she had carried anything in that flask but miodh.
Shortly after arriving at her new home, she recalled becoming severely ill. She could not eat or drink and was alone, suffering terribly. As luck would have it, however, the next morning, a healer named Niamh from the nearby village of Cluain-Dabhail was out collecting herbs. She passed by the souterrain and heard someone moaning. Upon entering, she discovered a young woman sweating and gravely ill. Niamh took pity on her and immediately reached for the herbs she had been collecting, making a tea to help calm and treat the poor girl.
As the days passed, Niamh visited Ailionn many times. She continued her treatments and, because of the danger Ailionn had put herself in, explained that water from streams and lakes could sometimes cause this illness, whereas lionn, a strong drink made from grains, or miodh, made from honey-water, were much safer to drink. Ailionn had come to trust Niamh and take her advice, especially when it came to the deadly sickness she had just endured. She asked whether Niamh could teach her how to make one of the drinks. Niamh said that she could and that miodh would be the better choice because of its healing properties and because it would be much easier for Ailionn to make.
From that time until the present, Ailionn had religiously brewed the miodh, locating and gathering the honey she needed from the abundant honeycombs near her home. She also used her skills as a hunter-gatherer to trade with the people of Niamh’s village for a few clay jars in which to make the miodh. But she did something else as well: drawing on her knowledge of wild herbs, fruits, and plants, she added her own blend of them to the honey-water mixture to create a miodh that better suited her taste and resulted in a much heartier drink. It was so much better, in fact, that Niamh and many others from her village began trading with Ailionn for the miodh she made.
Remembering all this brought a smile to Ailionn’s lips as she continued to sip from her flask and catch her breath after her early-morning hunt. She relaxed just a little more before skinning and preparing the two giorria for cooking and noticed that the fire was burning strongly now—strongly enough to catch her eye. Its multicoloured flames moved and danced to their own rhythm. As they did, Ailionn once again saw something she had noticed several times over the seasons: floating among the flames were what looked like two piercing dark eyes, emerging from the blaze to stare at her intently—almost as if they were attempting to pull her in and capture her there forever.
In the past, before this happened, she had never been warned as to when or why it would occur, and this time was no different. However, she somehow always seemed to know how to make the eyes go away: she would shake her head and blink hard several times until she could no longer see them.
Ailionn understood that seeing the eyes was probably just her imagination playing tricks on her, or possibly the effect of drinking miodh while tired after a long hunt. Either way, it could not be anything mystical or real, since the eyes always eventually faded from sight. Nevertheless, their appearance left her confused and wondering—until the next time…
