Read an excerpt from When The Mermaid Sings (A prequel story to The Sea Witch Voyages) by Helen Hollick #HistoricalFantasy #CoffeePotBookClub @HelenHollick @maryanneyarde

 

When The Mermaid Sings
(A prequel story to The Sea Witch Voyages)
By Helen Hollick 

A prequel short read story to the Sea Witch Voyages of Captain Jesamiah Acorne

When the only choice is to run, where do you run to?

When the only sound is the song of the sea, do you listen?

Or do you drown in the embrace of a mermaid?

Throughout childhood, Jesamiah Mereno has suffered the bullying of his elder half-brother. Then, not quite fifteen years old, and on the day they bury their father, Jesamiah hits back. In consequence, he flees his Virginia home, changes his name to Jesamiah Acorne, and joins the crew of his father’s seafaring friend, Captain Malachias Taylor, aboard the privateer, Mermaid.

He makes enemies, sees the ghost of his father, wonders who is the Cornish girl he hears in his mind – and tries to avoid the beguiling lure of a sensuous mermaid...

An early coming-of-age tale of the young Jesamiah Acorne, set in the years before he becomes a pirate and Captain of the Sea Witch.

Publication Date: 21st June 2021

Publisher: Taw River Press

Page Length: 190 Pages

Genre: Historical/Nautical Fantasy

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EXCERPT

Foreword

From the time when Time was young, legends sprang from the people who told the tales of the past. Legends of hope and heroes, of hatred and enmity. Legends of devils and gods, of strength and courage, cruelty and cowardice. Of life and love, bitter jealousy and grieving loss.

One such legend was of Lorelei, a daughter of Tethys, the Spirit of the Sea. When Lorelei fell in love with the King of the Earth, she turned away from her mother and became mortal so that she could be his lover. But jealous, Tethys rose up in a storm and swallowed the land and the palace where the king lived, taking his life and the lives of many others. The people who survived, but who had lost everything, blamed Lorelei and cast her out. With her belly swelling from the child she carried, she wandered the shore, hoping her love would somehow return to her.

 But he did not.

Again the sea came, and again, until the people grew afraid.

“The sea is angry,” cried their priest. “We must offer the Sea Goddess a gift to appease her wrath.” So, when Lorelei gave birth to a son, the priest took him  while his mother slept, laid him in a basket and cast it adrift upon the sea. Lorelei was distraught for her second loss. Bereft of all reason and hope, she hurled herself from the cliffs and became a mermaid once again.

On certain nights, when the moon rises and the stars are at their brightest, Lorelei can be heard singing a lament for her lost lover and son. But not until the white rainbow arcs down to caress the black sea will they return to her embrace, and their loving smiles end her lonely grief…

Virginia, Summer 1708

Smoke drifted into the star-scattered sky, and across the river the acrid stench of burning wood, tar, rope and canvas trailed behind as if reluctant to leave the soot-blackened jetty. Jesamiah, three-quarters of the way between fourteen and fifteen years of age, too young to be a man, too old to be a child, stood silent, stunned and helpless, as tears trailed down his face, leaving white streaks in the smoke-grimed smudges. He had tried to save her, his beloved boat, Acorn, but the fire had taken hold too quickly. All he had of her – of anything now – were bitter memories to torment his mind and twist in tangled knots around his heart.

“Well, tha’ be tha’ then,” Alistair Smallwood, the elected mayor of the nearest town, Urbanna, remarked as he turned away from the window and sipped at his glass of wine. “A vessel goin’ up be allus a spectacle, eh, Mr Mereno?”

Ignoring the inferior burr of the man’s Cornish accent, Phillipe Mereno acknowledged the remark with a polite nod. He was Master here now; the house, the plantation, the tobacco, the slaves. The money. All his, and if his younger half-brother thought he was going to get any of it – and that included that boat – he could think again.

“A great shame,” someone else remarked. “She was a good little vessel, but Charles ain’t got no more use for her, has he? Not now he’s in his grave.”

Again, Phillipe smiled politely. “Indeed not, sir, and neither will I, for I have the two larger ships for the purpose of the tobacco trade. My father looked upon that sloop as a pleasure-thing for fishing and jaunts downriver. As I have no care for such frivolity, it was of no value to me.” He beckoned to a servant to refill glasses, and for another to bring around the silver trays of pastries and sweetmeats.

One of the ladies present remarked, “Would not young Jesamiah have made use of it? I believe he enjoyed sailing?”

Phillipe narrowed his eyes, his nostrils flared slightly. He did not wish to appear churlish, but neither had he any intention of saying anything pleasant about his wretched half-brother.

First published in 1994, Helen became a USA Today Bestseller with her historical novel, The Forever Queen (titled A Hollow Crown in the UK) with the sequel, Harold the King (US: I Am The Chosen King) being novels that explore the events that led to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Her Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy is a fifth-century version of the Arthurian legend, and she writes a nautical adventure/fantasy series, The Sea Witch Voyages. She is now branching out into the quick read novella, 'Cosy Mystery' genre with her new venture, the Jan Christopher Murder Mysteries, set in the 1970s, with the first in the series, A Mirror Murder incorporating her, often hilarious, memories of working as a library assistant.

Her non-fiction books are Pirates: Truth and Tales and Life of A Smuggler. She lives in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in North Devon, runs Discovering Diamonds, a review blog for historical fiction, and occasionally gets time to write... 

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