by Lady Ellen
The Persephane Pendrake Chronicles-One-The Cimaruta
Lady Ellen
Dedication
Dedicated To My Wonderful Children, Jamie & Taylor
And My Dad..Who Believed I Could..
Contents
Preface
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1. It Begins…
2. The Secret
3. Orsina
4. The Time-Linx
5. Fawna’s Plea
6. Angelica Fills In The Blanks
7. Dark Attack
8. Time To Time-Linx
9. 1669
10. The Key
11. Bodesnoir Castle
12. Back To Laurel
13. Fairy Freedom
14. The Book of Black Dominance
15. Rose Arbour
16. The Hand of Glory
17. Of Course You Know…This Means War!
18. Benson’s Bit
19. Rockmanor Again
20. Must Be The Gypsy In Me
21. With Friends Like This
22. Krak Ling In The Ming
23. Krak Ling In Beijing
24. A Peek Is worth A Thousand Finesses
25. Meeting Of Magicals
26. Battle At Bodesnoir
27. Home
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Book Two-The Cauldron of Ceridwen
Book Three - Lapis Draconis
The Boxset Of The First Trilogy
About The Author - Lady Ellen
Copyright
Preface
Persy’s Site Here
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Three books times three will lead you through their journey. Three distinctively different magical times provide an elegant backdrop for the ultimate battle between good and evil. The first trilogy is set primarily in Britain in the 1670’s, when witches were hunted and the manipulation of magic required a cloak.
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The next two trilogies occur in entirely different magical times, with entirely different obstacles and some new...some old villains to encounter.
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Follow Persy and Thaddeus as they tango with gypsies, vampires, and the darkest of Chinese sorcery, creatures ancient...and ones whose stories are new...
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Welcome to Book One of The Persephane Pendrake Chronicles. May you enjoy this adventure and the eight books which will follow.
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At the back of this book are links to Book 2 - The Cauldron of Ceridwen and Book 3 - Lapis Draconis. Book 4 - The Fallen Star will be out Fall 2018.
In Dreams & Magic…
Lady Ellen & Persy.
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It Begins…
It just figured that things would go wrong today. It was Tuesday—the Day of Fire.
Persy entered her backyard through the garden gate and plunked herself down into a chair on the deck. She tossed her backpack down and scrubbed her face with her palms. Another pain-in-the-butt day. Stupid pranks.
It was always the same.
“Aggrrrrrhhhhh!” she growled, nostrils flaring, and smacked her hands down on the arm rests.
“Great...just great,” she hissed.
Persy had kept her secret well for all of her twelve years and nine months. But today—today she lost control and it peeked out of its box.
She was an exceptionally talented young witch. Each week, as she grew closer to her thirteenth birthday, her powers were becoming stronger and more plentiful. But that was just it. These powers. This was her secret.
This secret, according to her parents, was the one thing about her no one could ever know. If it was exposed, she’d risk turning her and her family’s lives into a carnival act, resulting in them being examined like lab rats, and probably imprisoned in a well hidden location. In this case, it wasn’t the Hunters, but Munz scientists who would want to study and keep them.
Today, however, Persy lost her cool...big time. Everyone had their limits, right? Kyle Dunsmore was the instigator of this fiasco and the fact that he was two years younger than Persy made it particularly galling that he got one over on her. Her school life was already less than brilliant with being a science nerd and having to keep the magic thing under rein. She was so tired of the bullying and pranks.
Kyle was well known for being a practical joker, but Persy was skilled at ignoring him. Persy had to admit now that this particular incident probably didn’t warrant her extreme reaction, but his taunting was accumulative and relentlessly he kept pouring it on.
It happened after soccer practice.
Persy finished on the field, and hurried to jump into a quick shower. It was getting late, about 4:45 pm and her over-protective Mom always wanted her home by 5:00. She scampered half-dried to her locker; flung the door open, grabbed her hair de-frizzer, puddled some into her hand and smeared it through her long, very thick, dark hair. And a light went on...she froze. She widened her chestnut-coloured eyes to double their normally large size.
“What IS this stuff?” she hissed. She looked in horror at her palms which were very rapidly stiffening up and turning white. Someone had replaced her hair product with white glue! And she was pretty sure who that someone was.
Persy slammed her locker shut, grabbed her backpack and ran outside to the schoolyard to see if anyone was still around who may have seen anything. What a surprise, there was Kyle surrounded by a bunch of his friends laughing to the point of tears. She heard the words “glue” and “hair” bandied about and knew instantaneously that she was right about the identity of the culprit.
“Well! You’ll not be laughing for long. You are so overdue...” She charged down the steps at warp speed, definitely bent on doing some nasty.
Kyle glanced in her direction and seemed to know that ‘glue in the hair’ could end up in bodily damage.
“Feet...don’t fail me now!” he yelped and scampered down the street.
By the time Persy hit the street outside the schoolyard, Kyle was a full block ahead of her. No problem. Years of soccer trained her into a lean, mean running machine.
Sure enough, in short order she was breathing down his neck. Then Kyle took a quick turn off to the left and hid behind a massive old oak tree. Of course, this meant they were into “you go one way - I go the other” around the tree; it was too thick for Persy to reach him by standing in one spot. So annoying.
Off to the right side of the tree she spotted Mr. Hornby’s cranky bulldog, Gruesome. He was sitting there, staring, with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, slobbering on the sidewalk.
Persy jumped to the right and as she expected, her target veered to the left. And THAT’S when it happened.
Sparkles sprinkled through the air. “Grues, ol’ boy,” she asked without sound. “I don’t suppose you could somehow nail this ninny in one spot, while I show him a thing or two about messing with me?”
Unfortunately, just as the conversation started, Kyle leaned to his left and looked directly between Persy and Gruesome. “What are those spark-..?” Persy’s heart raced. She’d forgotten to consider the visual effects of talking to animals.
He didn’t finish because in a heartbeat, Gruesome sprung at Kyle taking a wh
acking great mouthful of Kyle’s jeans, shorts and little of what’s underneath.
“O-w-w-w-w-w-w,” yelled Kyle, turning his head to check out his bottom end.
Persy whipped around the tree, grabbed Kyle by the scruff of the neck with her left hand and from behind her back, shot her right one out; holding a baseball-sized, nauseating, smelly wad of rotten egg and pine resin mixture. Persy smunched the mess down on Kyle’s head.
“There!” she screamed. “Style that...you moron.”
She let him go and he took off in a small cloud of dust.
“Thanks, Grues,” she tossed back at the dog, and ran home.
“Anytime,” the dog muttered. “Only excitement I get.” And he waddled off.
So here she sat, mulling over her options. Persy knew Kyle had seen the sparkles; how was she going to explain that away?
Persy sighed deeply. ”Cripes! What a muddle,” she groaned.
BUZZZZZZZZZ-BUZZZZZZZZ...Persy glanced up. “Hi Benson,” she said, turning her eyes down again.
“I say, Perse,” Benson said. “You telling me ‘the hedgehog look’ is in for hair styles this season?”
Persy reached her hand up and touched her hair. To her horror, it was sticking out in pointed clumps where the wind caught it and the glue dried as she ran.
“Oh, great, on top of everything else I probably look like I’m auditioning for the role of Medusa in some pathetic Greek play,” she cried.
“Not such a good day, sweet’ums?” Benson being sympathetic, was highly suspicious.
“Not one of the best,” she mumbled.
Familiars were life time sidekicks and protectors. They show up at birth and attach to you for the duration. Benson had always claimed he was actually a dragon. Some fool bunged on the “fly” bit when he wasn’t looking. How true that was Persy didn’t know, but he certainly did have the attitude and arrogance of a dragon.
He was a gorgeous little fellow although Persy never let him know that; all glittering deep greens, turquoise and silver. The last thing Benson needed was something else to be swell-headed about. He could fly faster than the speed of light, which made him a very handy, invisible spy when needed. He was also a veritable fount of information on just about anything. He’d lived for centuries, being a familiar to countless witches and wizards before Persy, which she supposed accounted for the flying database that he was.
“So why so glum, chum?” asked Benson.
Persy gave him a summation of the end of her day, post-soccer practice.
“Great Scott, Perse! Whatever were you thinking?” His voice was creeping higher by the moment--something Persy hated. She cringed, anticipating the lecture about to come.
“There’ll be phone calls, my dear--many, many prying calls. Mark my words.”
Here we go. She listened to his voice climb.
“How do expect your parents to explain this one? You know people feel you are a tad odd. Now, that Kyle kid can actually say he saw something weird and ah, that would be another adjective frequently aligned with you.” Benson was now shrieking.
“I know, I know,” sighed Persy. “I really messed up this time.”
“AND!” Benson was on a roll now. Persy knew stopping it would be like trying to stop a tidal wave with a slotted spoon. “Where did the gob of rotten egg and pine resin come from?”
“A silent Appearance spell.”
They both knew that silent spells are very tricky. This was the first Benson knew she could cast one. She was maturing very quickly, much faster than he suspected—a bit of a shock to him. Not to mention—NO Magic was to be done in this realm.
“And WHERE did you learn to do that?”
“Well, I found it in Mom’s Book of Shadows and kind of, um, read up on them. As they are silent, I thought they could be darn handy without getting me into too much trouble--no one can hear me, right?”
“Blimey, Perse,” Benson sighed, his British background rising to the surface. “Ah, well, I don’t think the egg and resin thing is the hot tamale; it’s the visual fireworks that you’re going to have to explain.” He was calming down now, voice at level plus one octave.
They sat quietly together, Benson lit on Persy’s left wrist, both deep in thought.
“PER-SEPH-AN-EEEEEEE PEN-DRAKE!” the bellow came. Uh-oh! When you got all nine yards of your name from Angelica...you’re in deep doo-doo.
Persy jumped up from the step, launching Benson off into the ethers, and ran into the house.
“Yes, Mom?” said Persy, trying, but undoubtedly not succeeding, to impart an air of innocence.
“Persy, I just got off the phone with Mrs. Dunsmore. I don’t think I have to tell you the details of that conversation - do I?” Angelica sputtered.
“No, Mom....But.....”
“No buts. You know how critical it is that we hide what we are. Didn’t our family suffer enough in the Witch Trials in England? You know that as soon as anyone here suspects we are of the Magical Folk that we’ll be turned into a paparazzi feeding frenzy? We’ll be hounded for the rest of our days...Persy...honestly!”
“I’m so sorry Mom--but Kyle put glue in my hair product container. I guess I just lost it and Gruesome was right there.” Persy grinned a little. “He likes when I talk to him, and was glad to help. Also Kyle is pretty mean to him, so it all kind of fell together. What about a Memory Erase?”
“My problem with that is...who has Kyle and even more critically, his mother, told? It’s really hard to trace that, but I believe if I check the Book...there is a “Threading Charm” which will link all the conversations, and then I can do the Memory Erase. I want your help to collect the magical objects I’ll need,” Angelica stated.
Persy, Angelica climbed up to the secret attic, where all this type of work was done. Benson flew up behind them. They knew it was best to get this done before Dad came home.
The Secret
Angelica and Robert met just after she, Persy and Benson Time-Linxed from Britain, 1666. They arrived in Muskoka twelve years ago (but some six centuries later), on the river bank, after finding their way through a Time-Linx portal under a pristine waterfall from Bellarya, their Magical realm.
Robert was fishing, and astounded when they popped out from behind the falls on the opposite bank from where he was frustratingly floating fish bait around, only to see it swiped with nary a fish caught. He was about to throw in the towel on fishing. Hamburgers really didn’t sound that bad, after all.
“What in the blazes?” His chin dropped and speech was a forgotten skill. A gorgeous woman just walked through the falls with a baby in her arms. Holy Crow!
Angelica was afraid they may meet someone right away, so was mentally prepared with a story. “Hello, my daughter and I were camping and somehow completely lost our way, winding up by the falls. I’m wondering if you could direct us to the closest town?” she quickly queried.
Robert sputtered, “Well, of course...I mean, sure...the town is not far...well, goodness,...town, yes,...u-m-m-m-m...I’d be happy to take you.” He fumbled with his fishing rod, or rather his not-so-fishing rod. Robert pulled it out of the water, took it apart, and packed it into its case. He threw it in the back of his SUV after he opened the front passenger door to let Angelica in, holding baby Persy. Robert stared at the dragonfly as it flew in the door and rested on the woman’s shoulder.
Robert drove them to Rockmanor, where he knew there was a restaurant that stayed open late, figuring they were likely hungry. One critical problem was there was no hotel in Rockmanor and it was more than obvious that Robert had no idea where their campsite might have been so Angelica and her babe had nowhere to go.
After a home-cooked meal, although Robert wasn’t sure Angelica enjoyed it; Robert brought up the subject of her camper’s location.
“No, I’m not sure what direction it’s in and it really isn’t in good shape, anyway. I was hoping to rent something in town. Is that possible?”
“Well sure, rooms can be rented in the daytim
e but right now, everything is closed. What do you plan to do for tonight?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t plan on getting lost so my first concern is getting ‘un-lost’ and then going from there. Any thoughts?”
Persy was out cold in Angelica’s arms. The little strange dragonfly sat on Angelica’s shoulder, his wings slowly fluttered up and down, obviously asleep as well.
Robert scratched his temple.
Angelica continued, knowing a lot of explanations were in order. ‘I, um, I saw someone earlier today who had mentioned a bed and breakfast for me to check. But obviously, that would be closed now. I just need to find somewhere for the night for my daughter and I,” Angelica looked out the window. A voice popped into her head. Luckily, Robert was looking the other way and so the sparkles went unnoticed.
There was a bear outside whose name was Orsina and she would be watching over her and Persy as long as they lived in the Munz world. Angelica sighed with relief, but her lodging situation was still not resolved.
“Well,” said Robert. “If it’s okay with you, I have a guest house on my property. It’s not far from here and I’d be happy to let you stay there until you find what you need.” He was so afraid of offending her but she gladly accepted. Unbeknownst to her new friend, Angelica had scanned his energetics and detected not one iota of harmfulness in this man. She was satisfied that he was offering shelter strictly as a Good Samaritan.
