The Gates of Paradise (Dark Spiral Book 2)

by Segoy Sands

She stepped onto the bridge and walked toward the two white dogs that were keeping vigil over the small body. Loyalty flowed from them. They were loyal to that boy, and were his guardians, because he had been good to them and they knew no better than to reward copper with gold. Nothing could stop them, not the night and all the things in it, not the stars, not the intrusion of one like her, a crosser. Yet at her approach, they flattened their shaggy ears, lowered their chins to their paws, and whimpered, as if to ask even her to help the boy.

  She had seen many things, and had thought she understood the secrets of animals. Crouching, she stroked them and then slowly moved to cradle the boy who had helped her in her crossing. He was cold. Though she had come to him because it was inevitable, she felt an accidental affection. Tenderness, yes, the children of the earth needed tenderness or they died. Beneath his alabaster coldness, she felt a new warmth. He had been a cold boy all along, aloof from human things, but now he would not be so. He had quickened the flame imperishable, and would have need of it, for the Lords of Verulam were returning and there was little time.

  On that bridge, in those woods, there was time enough. All was holy. All was reverence. A dance of particles appeared and faded around them, appeared and faded, like a flickering of fireflies, as the trees worshipped the purple before dawn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prior to earning a doctor of philosophy with a dissertation on William Blake and ecophilosophy, Segoy Sands became versed in comparative literature and philosophy at Columbia University, where he won creative writing prizes amid a pool of exceptional writers who have gone on to create critically praised series for television. He draws inspiration for the Dark Spiral series from the British mythopoeic tradition: from Spenser's Faerie Queene to Milton's Paradise Lost to Blake's Jerusalem and Tolkien's Silmarillion. He is also inspired by fantasists, from Vance to Rothfuss and Le Guin to Clarke.

  Growing up near New York City, attending Columbia (to drop out twice but finish with the encouragement of the late brother of Ursula K. Le Guin), and graduating in close running for valedictorian, Sands gave up his worldly possessions, and embarked on peregrinations from islands in the Pacific Northwest to hills stations in Northern India.

  http://www.darkspiralseries.com