by Donna Hosie
The Ring of Morgana
Book One in The Children of Camelot Series
Donna Hosie
Acknowledgments
For the friends and readers who asked for more.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt on my publishing journey, it’s that nothing helps more than word of mouth. So, my first thank you goes to the readers of Searching for Arthur, The Fire of Merlin and The Spirit of Nimue, who took the time to spread the word, write reviews, and wax lyrical about their love for Sir Bedivere! (Get in line, ladies – he’s mine!)
Next up, Kelly Bohrer Zemaitis, who was the first to suggest a new Camelot book from Mila’s perspective. Thank you, Kelly, for increasing my insane workload in the best possible way!
I have the greatest friends and champions. My love and thanks to the following, who continue to spread the word at every available opportunity: Rae Joyce, Athena Stewart, Steve Whitcher, Donna J. Magrum, Julie Elizabeth Seay, Denise Dowd, Donna K. Weaver, Suzie Forbes, Cathy Liesner, Valerie Owens Holstein, Sue Norreys, Connie House, Erna Brodocz, Kristin Weiss Devoe and Donna Chipping. You’re all amazing and I am blessed – (and I know an awful lot of women called Donna!)
Much gratitude – as always – to Peggy Russell, for having the patience to dissect every sentence.
Finally, much love to my ever-supportive family: Steve, Em, Dan and Josh. I love you.
Chapters
Mila
Secret in the Attic
Hanging Out
Magic Mirror on the Wall
The Longest Night
Ghost Stories
Cadaver
Talan and Talons
One Thousand Years
Through the Tor
The Disobedient Daughter
Spitting Image
Sparks and Strangers
Melehan
Conduit of Flame
Child of the Gorians
Ortum Morgana, Regina Druidum
Ghosts of the Forest
Hide Us
Jalaya
Think. Control. Believe
A Declaration of War
The Artisan Revealed
Mila’s Final Spell
Loss and Love
The Heir and the Spare
My Sister
Saying Goodbye
Rustin’s Fate
Epilogue
Chapter One
Mila
The walk home is always my favourite part of the day. My friends hate it. It’s either too hot, or too cold, or they’ve run out of smokes...
But I love it. The sound of my school shoes crunching on the gravel; the scent of the honeysuckle invading every static surface; but most of all, I love listening to the whispers in the trees.
It isn’t the wind. I know what wind sounds like. These are real whispers. And I know they’re there because my dad hears them too, and they make him smile.
Avalon Cottage is haunted, or so people in the village say. Nana Roth won’t come near the place because she says it holds too many bad memories. Dad says it’s just because a rabbit was mutilated and killed there, seventeen years ago, but I think it’s just Nana Roth being a bit strange. She’s good at that.
I’m not scared of ghosts, although I’ve never seen one. Not at Avalon Cottage - where I live with my mum and dad and my sister Lilly - or anywhere else for that matter. My best friend, Katie, she reckons she’s seen one, but then she was smoking some of Michael Kent’s “special” smokes at the time, and as she also claimed a worm spoke to her in French I think you can forgive my non-believer status for that one.
No, I’ve never seen a ghost, but I’ve heard them. Avalon Cottage is surrounded by woods and that’s where they hide. I often wonder why they don’t show themselves. Aren’t ghosts supposed to actually haunt? It’s strange. It’s as if they’re scared of me, not the other way round.
My dad hears me crunching up the long gravel drive that leads to the house. The sun is starting to set, and long shadows are creeping up over the front garden, like tall black soldiers.
“You’re late,” he calls.
“And you’re a murderer,” I shout back.
Dad looks at the trailing green roots in his hand.
“I’m weeding.”
“Those are the bulbs that Grandad Morgan planted last year, dad,” I reply, reaching the gate that is precariously held in place by one rusting hinge. “I don’t know why you insist on gardening. You kill everything.”
That makes him smile too, but then dad smiles at everything.
Dad’s a math teacher. Not a math teacher in a school; he tutors privately. He’s really highly regarded. The first week of every month he has to travel down to Somerset, where some rich family pays him to tutor their kids. Unfortunately, it means he’s not here for half of every month. Lilly hates it more than me. Now I’m sixteen, I don’t need him and mum that much anymore - unless it’s for lifts in the car or money - but Lilly gets really upset. She’s ten years old and still a super-limpet girl. Total pain in the ass.
But dad makes up for his absence in other ways, like with the whispers in the trees. We don’t talk about it, but I see him smiling. It’s a silent back-up.
And it makes me feel secure. Normal.
I have a routine when I get home from school, regardless of the time. First stop is the kitchen, which is always cold, even though the ancient Aga is always on. Crisps and a can of soda and I feel detoxed from a poisonous day at school.
I hate school. I’m in my final year before college. For the last three years the teachers have asked the same question: what do you want to do when you grow up? And then they make you feel stupid when you say you don’t know. There are few of us who do, with the exception of Rustin, my boy BFF, but then he’s known since he was five what he wants to do. He says school has held him back, although the detentions are what actually hold him back most days.
Once I’m detoxed on crisps and soda, I head up into my bedroom. It’s tiny, cold and damp, but it looks out over the wild back garden and the woods so I don’t mind too much because the view is really pretty. I throw off the most hideous school uniform the world has ever created: a brown A-lined skirt and navy blouse, and get changed into my own personal uniform: stonewashed jeans and a black t-shirt. I’m not a Goth, but I like black because it makes me look slim. My mum is always telling me I need to watch my weight. And so I do.
Too much at times.
As of today we’re on school holidays. Easter for the religious types. Two weeks off for the rest of us. Mum is going to Tenerife with Grandma Scholes and Lilly.
But I’m stuck here because I’ve got exams and I need to revise. God forbid that I should become distracted by sand, sea and something else my mother mentioned on the phone to Grandma Scholes.
Boys.
Because there aren’t any boys in North Wales, of course. Actually, there aren’t. Not many decent ones, and certainly not at my Comprehensive School. The only decent guys are Rustin and his other best friend, Aidan Gorman. Aidan’s going out with my girl BFF, Katie. They got engaged on her sixteenth birthday, which I think is mental.
Rustin’s cute, but he’s always mucking about in class and I don’t think dad approves of him that much. That’s the worst thing about being the kid of a teacher. I have to be studious. Definitely no misbehaving in class. My dad isn’t even at the school, but he always finds out. He has spies everywhere.
So I always do sixty minutes of revision when I get home. At least that’s what dad thinks I’m doing when he knocks on my bedroom door and pops his head in. My eyes may be moving, but my head isn’t working. Not this day. I had another weird dream last night a
nd it’s remained a shadow all day. It wasn’t a nightmare. Lilly gets night terrors and she can raise the dead with her screaming. No, my dreams are just...unsettling. I’m always in a cave or tunnel. And there’s always something, or someone, watching me as I walk through the passageways. Then I hear music, followed by an explosion, and just as the dirt starts falling down on top of me, I wake up.
I’m not scared of ghosts, but I’m scared of enclosed spaces. I get really claustrophobic and start freaking out. Grandad Morgan and Grandma Scholes took me and Lilly on a submarine once on a visit to London to see Nana Roth – (Grandad Roth is dead) – and I started screaming and puking the moment I couldn’t see the sky anymore. Two sailors had to carry me out, which was seriously embarrassing. It actually upset mum more than anything. I heard her and dad arguing about it afterwards. Mum is paranoid about anything that isn’t her definition of normal. She actually thinks Katie getting engaged is great. She even offered to host an engagement party.
Get married, have kids, and go to Tenerife on holiday. That’s my mum’s definition of normal. And it works for her. She’s happy. And she and dad are happy, which is more than the parents of most of my friends are. Rustin’s parents are total dicks and barely notice his existence, while Katie’s parents would kill each other if they thought they could get away with it. No wonder my best friend got engaged the second she was old enough. Katie thinks her happily ever after will come with a ring and a new council house.
Not me. I may not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I definitely know what I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be stuck here, that’s what. I wanted to travel and see the world.
And one day, I will.
Knock knock.
“Are you decent?”
“No,” I call out. “I’m in here with James McNeil from school.”
“Then you had better remind James McNeil from school that I’m a fifth degree black belt, an expert swordsman, and I know where he lives.”
“Come in, dad,” I drawl, rolling my eyes. Get James McNeil in my bedroom? It’s so small I can barely get me in my bedroom.
Dad opens the door and sticks his head around the pine frame.
“Revising?”
“Yes.”
“Lying?”
“Maybe.”
“Your mother called. She has to run a few errands in town. She has Lilly with her, just in case you were wondering why your little sister wasn’t on the school bus this afternoon.”
Dad has snark perfected. But I had wondered, actually. Lilly may be a total pain in the ass, but she’s still my sister, and I still look out for her – as Natalie Waite found out a couple of years ago. Lilly was only eight, and Natalie was two years above her at school. Natalie thought it would be fun to bully my sister and steal her lunch money. This went on for a month until Lilly’s friend, Josie, told me about it.
Well, Natalie may have been two years older than Lilly, but she’s four years younger than me, and dad isn’t the only black belt living in Avalon Cottage. I slam-dunked Natalie Waite’s fat ass from here to Caerleon. It may have earned me a week’s worth of school detention, but no one has messed with Lilly since.
Look after family: the family motto. My dad should get his favourite mantra tattooed on his forehead because he’s always reminding us.
“I wondered why the bus was so quiet,” I reply nonchalantly. “No whining.”
“Mila,” says dad, and there’s a deeper warning tone in his voice.
“Joke.”
“Rule number one in this house is...”
“We don’t joke about family,” I reply monotonously.
“Speaking of which,” says dad, “your Auntie...”
Then dad stops talking. I feel my ears twitch as the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise. A cold shudder – that has nothing to do with the setting sun – spasms through my spine.
Whispers are coming from the woods again. I can hear them, but they’re louder than usual. Dad can hear them too, but for once, he isn’t smiling.
“Can you hear that?” I ask, crawling over my bed to the lead-lined window.
The glass is grimy and in dire need of a wash. The panes are latticed and sectioned into small diamond-shaped segments. Even in the summer, with the sun high in the sky, I usually have to have a lamp on for reading. But now my room is getting darker by the second. The light and temperature are plummeting, as if something is sucking the elements out of the house.
The whispers pick up in volume once more. It sounds like distant chanting in a foreign language.
“Get away from the window, Mila.”
Dad hardly ever raises his voice, and so on the rare occasions he does, Lilly and I will acquiesce immediately because we know he means it. He has the authority of a school teacher who knows how to command a room.
I scramble back into the corner and pull my plump pillow up in front of me, like a shield.
Dad walks slowly across the carpet and pulls back the curtain, just a fraction.
The second he looks out, the ghosts stop their whispering.
“Must have been the wind,” he says. “The forecast was for showers and gales.”
He runs his fingers through his hair. Dad is blonde, although his hair is starting to thin on top. He has brilliant blue eyes too, although they are often framed with dark shadows. Lilly is the spitting image of him. I, on the other hand, take after mum. My hair is so dark it’s almost black – which hopefully makes my face look slimmer. I have the same green eyes as her too. Rustin says they’re pretty. The only real difference is our nails. Mum’s are long and beautifully manicured; mine are ragged and bitten down to the quick.
My nails are in my mouth now. Why is dad lying? This is our thing, our secret. We’ve never spoke about the ghosts, but we know they’re there.
With a heavy tug, dad checks the latch on the window. It’s locked. The windows always are.
“You aren’t planning on going out later, are you?” he asks.
“No.”
The lie comes easily. If he can play false with me, then he’s getting it back. I’m meeting Katie tonight by the pavilion. Other kids call it the hang-out, which just goes to show how desperate we are around here for somewhere to actually hang out.
And the adults wonder why there’s such a problem with drinking and underage sex. Give us something to do – somewhere to go. But we live in the middle of nowhere and even the ghosts are too bored to come out and play.
Dad pulls the bedroom door to, but doesn’t shut it. As I hear the stairs creaking, I kick the door with my foot and it slams with a solid thump. My room is so small I don’t even have to leave my bed to do it. I’m pissed off. Why did he pretend like that? My dad isn’t the kind of father to make his kids feel stupid. Katie’s dad is a total wanker and is always trying to humiliate her and her mum out in public, but my dad has my back. Family is everything to him.
Well, screw it. He can start denying the existence of our ghosts, but I’m not. I heard them.
There’s no way I can revise now. I head back into the kitchen and stand by the Aga for a while, trying to warm myself up. One of my mum’s sweaters is hanging on a hook by the back door and I give in to temptation and slip it on. My mother has an awesome wardrobe full of clothes, and a figure to fit them. Most of my teachers think she’s my older sister at parent/teacher night. She loves that, and secretly, so do I. It’s cool having young parents. Phillippa Streerson’s parents are so old most people think they’re her grandparents.
The sound of crunching gravel echoes through the wooden eaves of Avalon Cottage. Mum and Lilly must be back. Dad is at the front door before the car has stopped. I slip into the shadows so I can hear him, but as I do, I hear the whispers again. They’re not even trying to hide from us. It’s definitely melodic chanting, the kind you hear in church, or on the television when the Pope is doing something ceremonial.
A gust of wind sweeps through the kitchen. I can even see it. It’s like grey wispy vapour.
It makes the curtains flap and turns the pages of a cookbook that’s lying open on the table.
Then I hear my mother’s voice, Lilly’s whining, and the whispers stop singing.
When did I start sweating? I can feel dampness under my arms and on my forehead. I wipe it with the back of my hand; my skin is clammy. My head is throbbing and it has nothing to do with the four cans of soda I’ve already drunk today. It’s like that feeling you get when you’ve not done your homework and you know you’re in trouble before a word is said.
“Did you have a good day at school, sweetheart?” asks my dad, but he doesn’t wait for an answer, because almost immediately he adds, “Can you go upstairs, Lilly, and start on your math.”
“I want a drink,” replies my ten-year-old-pain-in-the-ass.
“I’ll bring one up to you.”
There’s a pause of a few seconds. I can hear the clip-clop of my mother’s metallic heels on the paving slabs outside.
“Did you get it?” asks my dad.
“Yes.” My mother’s voice, usually very Welsh and very harsh, has a quietness to it that is very unnatural. Usually she can break glass, especially when she’s yelling.
“Where is it?”
“In the glove box in the car. I don’t want that thing in the house, Arthur.”
“We can’t leave it out here.”
“If I had my way, we would have flushed it down the toilet sixteen years ago. Let it be someone else’s problem.”
“It’s my problem, Sam. Our problem. You know it is.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be. I think it’s disgusting that the bank has shut its doors with no notice and we’ve had to clear the deposit box, again,” replies my mother. The harsh voice is back. “So, where are we going to put it?”
“I’ll lock it in my desk, or perhaps we’ll put it upstairs in the spare room. It’ll only be for a couple of days. Just until we get the new deposit box sorted.”
