Silver Hollow

by Jennifer Silverwood

  SILVER HOLLOW

  By

  Jennifer Silverwood

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2012 Jennifer Silverwood

  Edited By RJ Locksley

  Cover Art by

  Najla Qamber

  http://najlaqamberdesigns.blogspot.com/

  License Notes

  All rights reserved including the right to produce this novella and or portions of it without specific permission from the author. This novella is a work of fiction, all names, characters, incidents and places are purely fictitious. As much of this was derived, deep within the mad musings of a young authoress, that should be fairly obvious.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1-Key to Serenity

  Chapter 2-A Letter

  Chapter 3-A Party

  Chapter 4-Odd Tidings

  Chapter 5-Of English Things

  Chapter 6-Blink of an Eye

  Chapter 7-Impossibly Possible

  Chapter 8-Lady Wenderdowne

  Chapter 9-Master of Ceremony

  Chapter 10-Lasting Legacy

  Chapter 11-Possibly Impossible

  Chapter 12-Akin to Joy

  Chapter 13-Poshumicked

  Chapter 14-Awakened Dreamer

  Chapter 15-Feathers and Paper

  Chapter 16-Wight Fright

  Chapter 17-Dinners and Dalliances

  Chapter 18-Midsummer Nightmare

  Chapter 19-Effectively Nixed

  Chapter 20-Dark & Stormy Night

  Chapter 21-Educational Edifices

  Chapter 22-Bane of the Vale

  Chapter 23-Taming the Beast

  Chapter 24-Queens & Enchantments

  Chapter 25-Little Lass Lost

  Chapter 26-Forbidden Friendships

  Chapter 27-Unexpected Returns

  Chapter 28-Dastardly Villainess

  Chapter 29-Feathers & Ink

  Chapter 30-Silver Hollow

  Chapter 31-Faerie Mischief

  Chapter 32 -Xcalibure

  Chapter 33-Creepy Crawlies

  Chapter 34-Flame Wreathed

  Chapter 35-Beneath the Surface

  Chapter 36-Between Light and Darkness

  Chapter 37-Beast & the Beauty

  Chapter 38-Breathing Fire

  Chapter 39-Unveiling the Vale

  Chapter 40-Manifest Dreams

  Chapter 41-All That Glitters

  Chapter 42-Unseelie Strike Back

  Chapter 43-Weaker Apart

  Chapter 44-Point of No Return

  Chapter 45-Shades of Gray

  Chapter 46-Beginning of the End

  Chapter 47-End of the Beginning

  Epilogue

  Glossary of the Vale

  Bridging the Gap

  Chapter 1

  Key to Serenity

  His arms wrapped round her frail, broken form. He trembled even as he gave her of his own life, his strength, and prayed it would be enough to see her eyes flutter open to him once again.

  Cannons firing in the distance provided a symphony to the earth exploding on either side of the empty field. Her dress was tattered.

  Could it have only been three hours since they had last clung to one another’s arms? Since she had declared her unwavering love for him?

  ‘Mary? Mary?’ His voice broke as he lifted her from the war-torn earth. Even now in the near distance, with the battle drawing ever towards them, he could hear the shouts of men, feel the heat of battle, see the smoke from their rifles create a—

  Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep…Amie’s alarm rang with a particularly annoying jar, just enough to draw her mind and cramping fingers out of the War of 1812 and back to reality. Was it time already? She had sat down for another morning stint on her latest manuscript in her makeshift home office only a minute ago. A brief check and slap of her digital alarm proved how quickly a minute could turn into an hour. With a groan she snatched the folder and tripped on her way to the back door.

  The moment shouldn’t have struck her as foreshadowing. After all, it should have been a morning like any other.

  Texas heat fell over her like a wet second skin the moment she set foot outside her flat and onto the top metal step. Cars mixed and splashed the aftermath of summer rain onto the pavement downtown, barely missing her sneakers when she exited the narrow alley to the sidewalk on Main Street. Town center looked relatively the same as it had the last hundred years or so. Shops lined the sleepy square and the old courthouse marked the grassy island in between. The jail above the courthouse had been turned into a museum fifty years before. At the shaded benches nearby old men played dominoes like they did every Saturday. While the purpose of most shops in the historic city square now catered to tourism, the atmosphere of the small East Texan town remained the same.

  She rushed past, sparing a nod to the usual folks, folder wrapped tight in her arms. Humidity and raw heat made her feel like she was breathing in a sauna, or through a snorkel mask underwater.

  It was half past nine and she prayed the post office would be open, but she should have been here an hour ago. Allison was going to skewer her for being late again. Amie Wentworth knew her life was on the line. As in her career being chopped up by the vicious publishing house sharks and fed in scraps to the masses. At this rate she was never going to be done in time.

  She picked up her pace and wished she exercised more than once a week. Being naturally skinny did not make her immune to this kind of heat. She felt every bit of that cinnamon roll she’d scarfed down for breakfast.

  How does Jo handle running in this every day?

  Clouds were gathering overhead, ready to break. The world was silent against the pound of her heart in her ears.

  She should have broken with tradition and woken up at an indecent hour!

  If these pages come in late…

  It was her editor’s fault for wanting her weekly progress faxed to her greedy hands and Amie’s fault for picking someone adverse to electronic devices, A.K.A. free mail. But if she got an aneurysm from this it was definitely Allison’s fault. Procrastination had nothing to do with it. Amie just didn’t do well with deadlines. They were almost finished with this monstrosity and would have been if she were not under so much pressure.

  “Oof!” She collided with a very tall wall that hadn’t been there two seconds before. The folder flew from her hands—and oh yes—the pages fluttered to soak up the rain coating the concrete. Scrambling off her sore bottom, on hands and knees she began to lurch for her most recent life’s work. “Oh no! Oh no, no, no!” Her own grumbling became incoherent and she frowned when a pair of hands joined her fishing.

  “Here.” A very rough masculine voice met her ears. “So sorry, miss.” She couldn’t miss his odd accent, shadows of her dad’s Northern English…

  She kept her head down, snatched the pages from his full hands and said, “Thanks a lot,” though her tone belied anything but gratitude.

  That was the moment it happened, when she saw the silvery gleam of metal in the corner of her eye. One of her papers had half covered it, but there was no mistaking the shape. Excitement distracting her from the Englishman, Amie picked up the key and briefly studied it. She had been collecting keys ever since her father gave her one to her childhood diary. She had adored that old parchment-filled, leather-bound monstrosity, filled it up in only two years. Ever since he died she had taken to collecting keys, old and unique mostly. Each one represented a door or lock lost to the world. She used to fancy finding one of those lost doors one day. As a little girl she used to dream about keys, opening the doorway to heaven.

  This particular piece of metal was different from anything she had found before, terrifying because the symbol engraved at its head was familiar. “Where did this come from?�
�� she said.

  “Pardon me, miss?” the Englishman said. There was something in his tone she decidedly did not like, almost as if he was toying with her. Yet the opportunity to further scrutinize his motives was quickly dashed.

  Another car eased by, spraying her clothes and pages afresh with water. Effectively jerked out of her reverie, she looked up, only to bump foreheads with her new best friend. “Ouch!” she groaned. Pushing a dirty palm to her forehead, Amie grimaced.

  Doesn’t this guy know anything about personal space?

  She was about ready to let him have it when he interrupted.

  “Forgive me my clumsiness.” His tone was amused and drew Amie’s wrath once more.

  She blinked rapidly past a frown to survey the man who had just potentially ruined her life. His eyes were black, or at least so dark the pupil blended well within its iris’ shadow. Yet the longer she stared the more she saw hints and gleams of every color at their center.

  Chapter 2

  A Letter

  “Mary? Mary?” His voice broke as he lifted her from the war-torn earth. Even now in the near distance, with the battle drawing ever towards them, he could hear the shouts of men, feel the heat of battle, see the smoke from their rifles create an eerie veil around them.

  His fingers left bloody streaks upon her perfectly fashioned cheeks, blood yet pouring from the wound in her side. Tears blurred his vision until he could see little, until he could only see flashes of their time together in his mind…Until—

  “Amie?” The knocks upon the side door of her apartment grew more insistent.

  Her fingertips hovered above the keys of her laptop.

  “Amie? Open the door! I know you’re in there!” If Jo pounded any harder the door would break down.

  At the same moment Amie felt like she might possibly break down. She had tried to explain to her editor via phone why her pages were streaked and near impossible to edit an hour ago. After conceding at last to e-mail as replacement, her old friend had verbally sent her to work. She had tried to write more, really tried! But it was difficult to focus on fictional villains when her personal villain kept creeping into mind.

  With a groan she pushed back her chair, wheels whirring upon the hardwood floor, and in a few quick bounds unlocked her door to meet a familiar pair of honest blue eyes.

  Jo’s small arms crossed before her chest along with a fresh bundle of mail and without invitation she stepped inside. “What is it today, adventure on the high seas, the War of 1812, or some of the Tales?” Her eyes sparkled upon mention of the last.

  Amie grinned as she took a seat opposite her old friend upon her well-worn sofa. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through the laced curtains from the nearby window, overlooking her small desk and untouched laptop. Memories immediately floated in of summers spent poring over the magical fantastical adventures of three women warriors, all fashioned after Amie and her two childhood best friends, of course. Jo and Faye were twins and the three girls had grown up in the countryside entertaining themselves with such stories. Amie kept writing them occasionally, for Jo’s sake.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Jo pursed her lips and nodded. “War, is it? Having any luck?”

  Amie cast a cursory glance at her silver Dell. “I’ve rewritten the last chapter so many times…”

  “You’ll have to refresh my memory,” Jo said, after settling Amie’s unanswered bills and occasional fan mail upon the coffee table and gathering her feet upon the couch. Amie could smell the life of the farm on her best friend even now. Along with her love of nature, Jo’s occasional short-term memory loss also had not changed.

  Amie grinned and sighed before replying, “All right…Richard has just returned to Lady Desdemona after facing Lord Rupert in a duel on the battlefield.” She paused, waiting for some kind of recognition, but Jo only stared at her with confusion. Gesturing wildly with her hands, Amie pressed on. “Rupert accused Richard and Desdemona of being French spies, remember?”

  “Oh yeah, and the war finally caught up with them, right?”

  Amie nodded. “Rupert accidentally stabs Desdemona and Richard finds her bleeding to death back at the camp. He’s using his gift to bring her to life…I just can’t decide if I want her to live or not.”

  “He’s supposed to be an angel, right?”

  Amie shrugged and said, “They wanted another paranormal romance…thought I’d try and meld my original idea with their twist.”

  Jo frowned. “Why should they tell you what you can and can’t write?” The smaller woman seemed to grow with her mounting frustration. Jo had always been the first to stand against the world’s injustices.

  “The story? Focus, Joey…”

  Jo nodded, her bobbed blonde hair falling into her face. “Why wouldn’t you want Desdemona to live?”

  Amie frowned. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I mean everyone wants their happy ending, right? No one cares about reading actual literature anymore anyway. All they want is vampires and supernatural mumbo-jumbo. It’s sick, really.”

  Sick because once upon a time Amie had dreamed of writing a truly great novel. She had written her first fantasy novel just to get her name on the market more than anything, not so she too would be swept onto the paranormal romance bandwagon.

  “What’s that?” Jo pointed to the key resting beside Amie’s laptop, her eyebrows rising until her forehead creased.

  “I found it on the street earlier.” Amie subconsciously clutched the ring hidden beneath her T-shirt and repressed a shudder. The tale of the stranger was on the tip of her tongue, but Jo interrupted before she could tell it.

  Jo leaped from her seat almost too gracefully, and landed on the other side of the couch. She stood and skipped to pick up the newly polished metal, then studied it closely, her curiosity replaced by a growing frown.

  Amie sidled up to her and said, “Cool, huh? It was pretty much the only good thing that came out of my morning.”

  Nodding, Jo replied belatedly, “Hmm? Oh, yeah. This isn’t silver, is it?”

  Amie took the key by its bow and noticed the strange luminosity in Jo’s blue eyes. “It cleaned up good. I’ve never seen a silver key this old before though.” Her heart ached as she stared down at the interweaving Celtic knot.

  Jo’s finger intruded into her view as it lightly dabbed the square-cut metal blade. Her words barely more than a whisper, she said, “Did anything else strange happen this morning?” Her blue eyes narrowed in on Amie.

  Sinking into her rolling chair, Amie groaned, “No, Joey, I’m fine. Just dropped my papers in the square and found this underneath.” It was a bald-faced lie, but she wasn’t fond of the twins when their protective streak lit up. Not to mention Jo’s retired military boyfriend, who took protecting the family to the mafia level. If she were to mention the Englishman whose accent happened to sound so close to Father’s, Amie would wind up with a bodyguard before she knew it.

  “Are you sure you’re not forgetting anything?” Jo rested her fists on her hips.

  Keeping solid eye contact throughout, Amie replied, “No! I swear I’m fine. For crying out loud, it’s just a key!” Again another lie, her conscience reminded her. She knew the chances of finding a key with the same obscure symbol as her father’s ring were slim to none.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t researched it after her parents’ deaths. Nothing of his family or family crest came up on the net and no jewelers recognized the symbol. All Amie knew was the ring was old as a rock and made out of an unknown metal. One jeweler had offered a college education’s worth to fork over the heirloom. If she’d thought she could actually get through the insanely tough courses this time Amie might have taken him up on his offer. But her father’s ring was the only thing he had passed on to her from his old life.

  Finally, after a solid minute of their staring contest, Jo nodded to herself, expression relaxing. “Okay, sorry. If you say nothing else happened I trust you. It’s just hard to break old habits.”
She shrugged and Amie grimaced. After the car crash the twins had been especially protective of her until she could stand on her own feet. Even now, not a day went by she didn’t see at least one of them or Jo’s boyfriend.

  “Oh crap, it’s almost six!” Jo rushed to grab her purse and keys before darting to the door and Amie followed.

  “James?” Amie grinned as she mentioned Jo’s cowboy boyfriend and partner on the nearby ranch they were working on. While Amie had dreamed of books, Jo dreamed of horses. James was six foot, blond and more of a dreamboat than Jo could have imagined for herself. Even at the mention of his name a pale blush colored her friend’s perfect features.

  “Yeah…he wants to check out this new tea room that just opened. Sorry to drop in and run like this. I lost track of time. Don’t forget about Friday, okay? Don’t get too lost in the story this time! You know how Faye gets. Oh, here, I forgot to give this to you earlier.”

  Amie’s amusement quickly turned to curiosity as Jo pulled a worn letter from the pile she had set down earlier. Taking it from her friend with her free hand, Amie asked, “Who’s this from?”

  Jo’s eyes were sad as she replied, “Mom forwarded it to me. I gotta go…look, if you want to talk later, call me. See ya, girl!”

  Amie nodded, eyes focused upon the weather-worn paper. She barely heard the door click, reading over the address inked upon its surface as a dozen memories clouded her mind. It had been addressed to her neighbor’s Kansas address, sure enough. Amie’s parents had died in a car accident when she was a junior in high school, and it was her neighbors and best friends who had taken her in. Mail sometimes came through them still, ten years later.

  The parchment was thick in texture, the sort of paper Amie loved to just feel. She had only ever received one such letter before in her life, the day of her parents’ funeral. All was forgotten as her eyes swept over the letter and its contents.