WRITING:
Book, teen paranormal romance: Once Upon a Curse complete (I think–I keep messing around with it!) at 66,500 words. I have a cover artist! My friend! Soon to be published! Excerpt below
Book, teen paranormal romance (book two in series): Twice Upon a Wish approximately 10,000 words, brainstorming… Excerpt below
Book, teen steampunk paranormal romance: Goddess in the Mechanica draft, approximately 22,000 words. Excerpt below
A billion other manuscripts in varying states of drafts.
YOUTUBE:
Amy Kennedy The Creative Crone: Here you’ll find writing vlogs, insights into outlining (planning), some mindset tips (everyone needs those—especially me), morning routines, and my thoughts on aging and retirement.
Guess what? We get to have a creative, fulfilling, and magical life at any age. All we need is curiosity and a f*ck ton of courage.
If you’re a writer or a dreamer, or just wondering what the hell happened with your “one beautiful life,” you’re in the right place. Grab your coffee (or tea, if you insist), pull up a comfy chair, and let’s create something magical together. https://www.youtube.com/@amykennedycreativecrone/videos
PODCAST (4 seasons total, no longer recording):
Brightly Podcast! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/brightlypodcast we’re no longer recording, but it was a lovely thing (except the first episode…)
EXCERPT ONCE UPON A CURSE:
“Bree Fairchild, your grandma drives faster than this,” Cassandra said to her daughter Bree, and added, “Driving the speed limit is allowed and even recommended.”
“Ha, ha. I’m working up to it,” Bree laughed in response.
She stepped on the gas and looked at her mom. “There, are you happy now?”
When she looked back in front of her, she felt at first confused by the stag there in the middle of the road and then frightened. “Mom?”
Witchy, witchy amulet setting wrong to right…
Once upon a time, my life sucked. Okay, I guess maybe not sucked, but sure the heck wasn’t grand or anything. And, yes, I had a best friend walking beside me right this minute and a grandma who was cool and loved me and took care of me—and right there’s the problem: a grandma, not a mom.
We were walking home from school, Ella and I, cutting through the cemetery. She walked beside me, her long blonde hair straight and shiny with the prettiest green highlights. Sometimes I wondered how I would feel about her if I had met her for the first time at 16 as opposed to seven. Would I be jealous of her shiny golden (and green) hair, her almond-shaped blue eyes? Compared to my red hair—and not some strawberry-blonde, red hair, no. Mine was deep orange-red and curly, unmanageably so, because of course it was. My eyes were okay, kind of undecided hazely-green. I was only an inch shorter than her, but there were times she seemed much taller. Her countenance brimmed with so much joy I felt no jealousy as her friend, simply comforting knowledge that she had chosen me just as much as I had chosen her. She was a respite from life, as was the cemetery, not the dead people so much as the general lack of living and all their whispers.
I was sick to the bone of whispers. My mom and grandma, before my mom broke and had to be committed, my grandma on phone calls—which suddenly turned cheerful when I entered the room and ended soon after, and now at school. It was only the start of our second week, and already the whispers had started about my mom, about my grandma, and, of course, about me, always said just above an actual whisper, the better to hear it all.
Crows cawed overhead, which always made me think of Cipher, a raven, not a crow, but close enough. When my mom was committed, that was the last time I saw our pet raven, Cipher. Mom would always say he was a companion, not a pet. In any case, he wasn’t around. I hoped he perched outside her window at the asylum. And I wondered if he’d be able to help me the way he had helped Mom—at least for a while—until she refused to see him, to be near him.
And now I had to wonder, is this how it started for my mom? Telling Ella was out of the question. Ella and I walked to school together and home together, but where would I even begin? How would I describe what’s been happening to me? Is anything happening?
I don’t know. I don’t have a name for it.
But it feels like a lurky-ness, not all the time, just every once in a while. It’s usually there and gone in a lizard’s blink. I haven’t even told Grandma, and I tell her everything. But it seems to happen more often now.
Before being tempted to bare my weirdness, Ella said, “Tell me again why we want to walk home through the cemetery,” as she craned her neck to look behind us and around tombstones.
“Ella, we want to walk home through the cemetery because no one else wants to walk through the cemetery. Which means Veronica won’t want to walk home through the cemetery. It’s a brilliant way to avoid her.”
But then again, I am not Veronica Gladstone—what a misnomer, not one thing “glad” about her. Oh, and don’t get me started on why she hated me.
Veronica made it her life’s mission to be my archenemy. My guess was that everyone needs one. I think an archenemy makes you look at your own life and forces you to act in a way that maintains the archenemy status, so, you know, you want to stay true to yourself and not give in to the bully.
As I looked behind us again—no archenemies ready for an attack—only headstones and mausoleums met my gaze. For a smallish town, this cemetery sure had some fancy dead people’s homes, mausoleums, whatever.
I will say this about Veronica. It never felt like she tried to avoid me, and yet I made it my daily mission to avoid her. So, maybe she was not my archenemy, but I was still hers, and that made avoiding her extremely desirable. It also kept my mind off the general crappiness of being new in school.
My mom and I had always spent summers with my grandmother in this town. My mom’s a, well, she was a writer, a technical writer, clearly nothing I would ever read. Anyway, her writing allowed us to travel all over, and for me not to have to be in a school building. That’s right, homeschooled!
But we came back to Grandma’s early this year. After our car accident, I woke up one day with my lurky shadow, and I guess my mom did too, a big one that made her do things to herself and once almost to me. After that she cried and whispered, “I’m not myself.”
We moved here so Grandma could help. My mom didn’t know how to fight it. I know this because I heard her and Grandma talking (whispering) one night. Grandma telling her there were things they hadn’t tried yet, but finally my mom made Grandma commit her. She told us they would give her drugs that would make it so she didn’t have to fight the shadow. The drugs would do it for her.
I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame my grandma. I just miss my mom so much.
So now I am a constant visitor here. Luckily, I made a forever friend in Ella during our summer visits and not only an arch enemy.
Of course, now I had to go to an actual school and, to make matters worse, it’s a Catholic school. Catholic school mean-girls are the worst.
Now I started looking over my shoulder, even though that seemed stupid. I mean, Veronica wasn’t coming, but then another thought bubbled up. What about the Woodsman? Idiotic. I had heard a few things about him, but he was simply the caretaker…
Ella tapped my arm furiously. “What?” I said, looking forward again, and there she was: Veronica and her posse.
“Hey Ella,” Veronica said as she flat-stared at me. “Hey…Bree. Whatcha guys doing walking through the spooky cemetery?” She giggled at that. Totally creepy. I wondered if she was a little off. Not sure if I could judge, though. Because there I was with my lurky-ness. I mean, there might have been a logical reason for her dislike—her hatred for me. But we’d been kids. I was seven and my mom and I were here for the summer. While I was outside one day minding my own business, Veronica bicycled by. As she stuck out her tongue at me, about seven apples fell out of the tree in our yard and hit the ground all around her. She crashed her bike, skinned her knees, and has blamed me ever since, as if I had control over nature. Jeez!
Nothing else has ever happened after that, except for me moving here permanently in May, and now, come the beginning of September, I turned into her “mean” mission in life.
Ella was looking at me, even though she was the one with more Veronica experience.
I answered her back with the international symbol for what? by lifting my eyebrows and widening my eyes.
She answered with, what the hell am I supposed to do? by rolling hers.
We had to do something.
“Hey Veronica, we were hoping to find some living dead,” I said. “And we did!”
Oh. My. Gawd. Maybe not the smartest thing to do. I mentally slapped my forehead.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Fairchild?” one of the other girls said.
Veronica narrowed her eyes.
Ella looked at me as if to say, you are a supreme idiot and now we are going to die, with her mouth gaping.
“Listen, Fairchild,” Veronica said, pointing a dainty yet highly threatening finger at me. “I don’t like you, and one day I’m going to show you how much.” And even though she wasn’t tall and was a curvy kind of petite, I thought she had proved her point really well up to this moment and saw no need for further explanation. Luckily, I thought better of saying that.
But I didn’t drop my gaze. Leaves swirled at her feet even though there was no wind at that moment, and I felt the lurker blink at her. Veronica took a step back.
Breath.
Huh? Was that…was that my lurker?
A howl broke the tension, or, you know, added to it, or something. Whatever! It got Veronica to stop staring at me. She whipped all around like a broken ballerina from a little girl’s jewelry box. To be fair, we all were looking around nervously. And then, and then, the Woodsman showed up.
“What’s going on?” he rumbled.
The screams came from all of us. I am not kidding, even Veronica. Everyone took off in different directions. Ella and I went one way, Veronica and her friends went another. Neither of us went in any kind of graceful way.
How could we? We had all just entered a horror movie, for crap’s sake.
Ella and I ran until we were gasping for breath and holding our sides. I really had to get in better shape if I was now going to be in a horror movie. I thought about my mom and how that pretty much summed up the rest of her life. Then I shut that down because I would not think about her that way. It was easier not to think about her at all.
“Oh. My. god, Bree!” Ella said between gasps. We were both bent over by some ancient, crumbling tombstones, just trying not to die from the stitches in our sides. “Veronica and the Woodsman, how does that kind of thing even happen?”
She had me there. “I don’t know…luck?” I said and smiled.
She didn’t find it amusing.
“You forgot the mysterious howl,” I reminded her.
She shuddered. “Walking home with you is bad for my general well-being. What I suffer for our friendship,” she said with a fake swoony hand to her forehead.
She was joking, but also right. Veronica was always out to torment me, and Ella got caught in the wind of her hate.
“Hey,” she patted me on the back. “Don’t be dumb, come-on.”
We reached the fence surrounding the cemetery, where we could see Grandma’s (and my) house. I helped Ella, giving her a leg up, and then I started climbing, which is not a simple thing to do in a stupid school uniform. I heard something behind me; a twig snapped, and my heart, which was still beating hard from running, started to pound out of my chest. Whatever it might be, it could not be good: the Woodsman, Veronica, or a howling wolf, a roulette wheel of bad-thing chances.
“What was that?” Ella whisper yelled.
“I. Don’t. Know.” I said, between grasping and pulling. Finally, at the top of the fun, stabbitty pointed part.
“I see someone,” Ella said.
This was so not helping me.
All I could do was get a foot on the top bar between the points, balance, and leap.
EXCERPT TWICE UPON A WISH:
Bree and I were not walking in the cemetery for once, ha, ha. Nope, we were strolling down Main Street and enjoying the warm afternoon. An after school no homework afternoon at that. We’d already stopped in Clara’s Sweets for chocolate-covered custard donuts and were now making our way to The Moon and Back, Bree’s grandma’s store.
“Just think, Bree,” I said, grabbing her arm. “Next year we’ll be seniors and after that, we’ll be free and can stroll up and down Main Street whenever we want!”
Bree laughed. “I mean, maybe for the summer, but we’ll either have to be getting ready to go to college or get serious about finding jobs, Ella.”
“Do you have to be such a downer? Maybe I’ll win the lottery and never have to work again.”
“First, you have to be eighteen to play the lottery, and you also have to have a job to never have to work again.”
“I babysit,” I said. “And besides, can’t you just spell us to be millionaires or something?”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Bree said, but it seemed like she was giving it some serious thought.
How I wished I could basically have superpowers like Bree—a literal witch. I feel like she doesn’t use them as much as she could, but she says she has to learn things and do the right thing. It’s not like I would ever want her to do anything bad…it’s just that she could make things so much easier.
A crow cawed, which shook me out of all my wishing, and I noticed Veronica up ahead, sitting on the bench outside Bree’s grandma’s shop. Instinctively, I slowed and Bree naturally did too, but then my nervous system caught up to my brain and I continued on. While Veronica was no longer threatening us every day—well, threatening Bree—she was still Veronica, and I never knew which one she’d show up as on any given day.
She looked up as we got closer and gave us the smallest of nods. Which, of course, was my signal to smile and wave at her. She sighed. I know that I sometimes have that effect on people. The you’re a bit too bubbly effect. I’m not making that up either. People have said those exact words to me. Okay, person, one person. Alright, a boy, if you must know. But now I know the look, and while he was the only one to say it to me, it made me know what to look for on other people’s faces. Maybe I should try wearing black when I’m not in my uniform.
“Hey, Veronica,” Bree said as we neared and slowed.
“Hmm,” Veronica said, not looking at us. Oof. Okay, that Veronica.
“Do you want us to leave you alone?” I loved how Bree just said the things, even to Veronica.
Veronica jerked her head up and glared, “Yes,” but then her glare turned sad. “No…I don’t know,” she said and slumped.
Bree looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I nodded. “Well, come into the shop with us. My grandma has cookies, and we can look at spooky stuff,” Bree said.
Veronica squinted up at us, turned and looked in the shop’s window, looked back at us, sighed, and got up. “I guess,” she said.
We walked into the shop with a bell announcing us. I like being announced by a tinkling bell. I don’t like the door announcers that are more: wee-woo, eww. Bree’s grandma looked over at us and smiled broadly. “Girls!” she exclaimed. She always made me feel special. “Cookies are behind the counter.”
Ella walked behind the counter to grab us some cookies, just as Jericho walked out of the back workroom.
“Bree.” He said her name as a statement and not a question. “Hello.”
“Hello,” she answered back, without emotion. This was bad, I thought they were making up. Granted, Bree hadn’t actually said anything to me, but he still sat at our table for lunch.
“I, um, have something for you,” Jericho said.
The way Bree looked at that you would have thought he said, I bought you a rabbit and then ate it. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but she didn’t look happy about him getting her something.
He went back into the workroom and came out with a smallish rectangular package that he handed to her. She took it and stared at him and then down at the gift.
“Bree, let’s see what it is, darling,” her grandma said. That seemed to shake Bree out of herself.
She carefully removed the ribbon and placed it on the counter, then she flipped it over and without tearing any of the paper she removed the tape. I’d never seen anyone take that long to open a present. She set the paper on the counter next to the ribbon. It was a rectangular box with hinges—bright pink. She opened it and it was…a pen. A fancy pen, shiny and black with gold accents, but still a pen. Nothing I’d get excited about, but Bree pulled it from its box and muttered something about a mountain or a blank thing, but pronounced differently. French, maybe.
She glanced back up at him, “It has pink ink. Sort of seemed appropriate,” he trailed off. Her eyes were glossy with tears trying to escape. Her grandma handed her a piece of paper, and Bree wrote her name—oooooh, that pink is pretty!
“Thank you, Jericho, it’s lovely and thoughtful,” I swore she was going to say something else, but her lips pressed together and stayed that way.
The bell tinkled again, and we all turned toward the sound and watched a girl around our age walk in. An extremely beautiful girl with black hair cut into a wedge bob, short in the back and angled longer in the front. Very New York. Blood-red lipstick and large dark blue eyes—was she wearing fake eyelashes? Also, this might be the most important thing: she had one of those oversized bags with a tiny dog poking out of it, just like Elle Woods (nearly my name!) in Legally Blonde. This girl had the bag, but in black, so not like Elle.
Bree’s grandma welcomed her in while we all continued to stare. Yes, she was gorgeous, but her dog was adorable. And it was begging for some scratches behind its ears. I put on my best Elle Woods welcoming smile and made my move.
EXCERPT GODDESS IN THE MECHANICA:
I was almost alone in the attic bedroom, only the sound of Aurora’s eight copper legs skittering in the eaves to keep me company. My foster sisters were performing in the production tonight, so they would not be along for another few hours.
I shifted my feet on the battered and wobbly sewing stool and fitted my distance goggles over my eyes. I didn’t care for the theatre, I only cared for the corner of the Mississippi River I could spy from my bedroom window.
Movement on the river caught my attention, but it was only a paddled steam ship. Besides, my sight belonged above the river, where an AirPirate ship would fly. One day soon, I would see the Airship captained by the pirate who was responsible for my parents’ deaths.
If only I knew what I would do after I spied the ship. It’s not as if I could call him out for a duel. I might be able to tinker a bomb. No, I wanted to see his face, and he mine.
Except I wanted to pull away from the window, why? Wasn’t that where I’d see something exciting? I looked away from the window anyway, and the room was all wrong. I had a vision, or…maybe I had left my distance goggles on. Idiot! I pushed them up my forehead, still feeling the tug to leave the attic. It wouldn’t be denied.
I huffed out a sigh and yanked open the door, the production was in full swing – I’d stood in the wings enough times to know where they were. Everyone would be busy with something and wouldn’t have the time or observatory powers to question me. Yet, I tip-toed down the stairs just to make sure no one heard me.
They hadn’t. I was pulled to the stage, the side curtain, to be exact. And then I did something—well, you know the saying, “the show must go on?” Sometimes it doesn’t, like when I’ve ruined it. In my own defense, I didn’t mean to ruin it; I was compelled to shout out, “He’s killed them, he’s killed them all!” and then I fainted. I don’t even remember shouting it, well, vaguely. Apparently I did have a vision. And, I know I shouldn’t, but all I can picture is me with my distance goggles pushed up my forehead, my hair a fright, and I’m screaming someone killed someone. I wished I could remember it. Or, maybe, I should be glad I can’t.
I only knew this information because my foster sisters were entirely too happy to share it with me.
“And, then,” Posy said, “You pointed, as if you were death, himself – ”
I interrupted, “I’m a girl, I can’t be a ‘himself.’”
“You know what I mean,” she withered a glance. She was good at it.
“Yes,” added Rosie, they were twins, “I think you recognized someone in the audience.”
“Ah, there is where you’re wrong. I don’t know anyone. Therefore, how could I recognize anyone? Answer that.”
They both stared at me and then looked at each other, communicating without speaking. I loathe that.
Back at me. “Perhaps another life,” Posy stage whispered.
“Yes!” Rosie hissed.
For my part I chose to roll my eyes. And then close them. Never the less, the twins were undaunted, and continued their drama.
“Mother and father are, right this very minute, meeting with a specialist.”
That got my attention.
I glanced at Rosie for confirmation, her head bobbed in agreement.
With all my foster sisterly annoyance I asked, “What kind of specialist?”
“How would we know?” One of them said, I forget which one.
They soon became bored with the invalid and moved on to torture cook. I would rescue Mrs. NAME, our cook, as soon as I could stand. Which, I was sure, was any moment. I rested in an upstairs side parlor in our residence connected to the theatre; no one had wanted to make the long trek back to the attic with an unconscious me. I was quite enjoying myself, the parlor was quiet and nicely warm. A rap on the door ruined my solitude.
“I’m awake,” that seemed sufficient information.
“Goood!” my foster mother emoted. I’m not sure if she emoted everything, so she became an actress, or if because she’s an actress she now emotes everything. “There’s someone we’d like you to meet,” she said.
Good Lord, was it the specialist? What would they do if I fainted again? Perhaps I could be awake but eyes closed. That would do it. I was, after all, an invalid.
A swish of soft material and the scent of lilacs entered the room. “Hello Miss Thomasina,” an angel’s voice murmured.
Now I had to open my eyes, simply to see what an angel looked like.
I hadn’t expected the sleek dark hair, or cherry wood irises, or for that matter, her comely shape. I thought she’d be all wispy and incorporeal, and blonde. Other than that, I was certain of her angelic heritage. For one thing I was completely comfortable with her – I don’t know that I’m comfortable with anyone except cook. And another, she looked at me as if I were me, and not a new plant organism.
“Hello.” I leaned up on my elbows.
“I’m Miss Carmilla,” she said.
“How do you do, Miss Carmilla,” and held out my hand. I thought we would shake as ladies do, yet her grasp was firm as if she meant business.
“Pleased, very pleased,” she said and released my hand.
“Do you mind if I sit?” she asked.
I shook my head, “No, do please sit,” I gestured to the chair kitty corner to the sofa I was on.
She smiled, and then to my parents she said, “Would you mind if I had a little chat with Thomasina, just the two of us?”
They stammered a bit, yet, when someone is that polite while asking you to leave what else could you do, but go? They left.
“My parents never understood me, in fact,” she said frankly, “they had no clue what to do with me.”
It wasn’t said with bitterness; she smiled as she spoke, yet I had the strangest experience – she was speaking, but they were my thoughts.
“I own and run a school,” she saw the look on my face. “A marvelous school,” my look changed a smidgeon. “Only the best and brightest are invited to learn and live there,” this got my full attention. Live there? Best and Brightest? I was neither and told her so.
“I hardly think I qualify in either of those categories.”
“Nonsense, I don’t think you have any idea the magnitude of your talents.” My eyebrow shot up. She must be psychotic, perhaps that explained the angelic look – not a care in the world.
“Your parents have already consented. All I need is your yes.” She looked at me with such expectance; I didn’t want to let her down, even though, invariably, I would. At least I would get a few nights without the twins and my parents.
“I’ll do it, but, no promises on any hidden talents.”
“Brilliant!” she laughed. “I’ll make the rest of the arrangements with your parents, you rest-up, and I’ll see you soon.”
I know as a young woman of questionable, and mostly absent, parentage, I have few choices in life. Which is why I was so surprised that my schooling would be one of them.
Mr. Smyth, my parents’ favorite stage hand, had the job of driving me to my new school and residence. My parents said I should feel lucky, not about Mr. Smyth, with his rickety cart and old horse, but about the “opportunity” to attend this school. I felt anything but lucky at this moment.
We turned off a bustling thoroughfare onto a desolate lane. Mr. Smyth slowed the horse to a stop at the only drive I saw, it was closed off by an enormous wrought iron gate.
I looked at the gate and back at him. He cast my bag to the surprisingly clean curb, and it landed directly in front of the gates.
“Well,” he said. “What are you waiting for, a hand down? Get off.”
“It doesn’t look as if anyone’s expecting me,” I craned my head and looked down the long drive and then back at Mr. Smyth.
He raised an eyebrow in my direction. “Has anyone ever expected the likes of you?”
Oh. I thought not. An examination of my own life never led to good. “Thank you for,” I searched for the right word, “escorting me, Mr. Smyth,” he guffawed. “I’ll be going now.” I hazarded a smile; he did not reciprocate.
Lifting my skirts, I hopped down from the cart. Mr. Smyth did not wait to see if I could get in the gates, he barely looked to see if I landed.
Beyond the gate and down the drive was an imposing stone structure; some might call it a mansion if they didn’t know its purpose. Or name. Not that either was advertised:
Miss Carmella’s School for Exceptional Girls and Above Average Boys
That much I did know. I searched the gate for a bell or small doorway, finding neither, I resigned myself to simply waiting, something that could be considered almost a luxury at the Theatre. Then the rain began.
I’ve never liked sodden clothes, and decided not to change my attitude now. Having been a good and clever climber when I was eight — although a fall from Mrs. SOMEBODY’s apple tree and subsequent spanking for being in the tree dampened my love for it — I thought perhaps, I might still have some talent for it. Does a person lose a skill from disuse? I would find out. The rain might make things interesting, but I thought I could grab hold of the designs built into the gate.
I stood back and threw my ill-used bag over first, and then made a running leap for the higher filigreed branches of my obstacle. Metal stung my hands even as they clung, feet dangling, I needed to find a foothold…and, there! I had it now. Thank goodness for shoddy but highly bendable boots. Oh, it felt good to try something on my own.
My right hand just made it to the top when I realized there were innumerable designs in the iron work – was that a wing? Before I could think too long on the subject I heard the unmistakable sound of a Newhorse carriage coming down the lane. I froze. My heart did not, it beat furiously.
I looked and felt the infiltrator. And what did I think I was doing; I thought I was entering the school grounds, I also thought I was getting wet. Not wanting to get caught in this position, I had to get over the top, which, if I were a boy, could have been done in no time at all. But I am a girl and therefore have to wear seventeen – alright, I exaggerate – four layers of garments and skirts. I pulled myself over the top, the carriage closer all the time. I didn’t have enough time to climb down; all that was left was for me to jump. Which I did. It did not work out as well as I thought it would.
I winced. My right ankle was more than likely twisted; still, I wanted to be well on my way up the drive before the vehicle stopped.
I grabbed my bag and hobbled to the far side of the driveway, closer to the trees, and walked as if I believed I belonged there. This was something my mother, the actress, taught me, one of the few things that have served me well. I glanced over my shoulder, Newhorses frighten me – all that metal and mindlessness unnerves me. I’m not against progress, I just like real horses better, and at a distance, of course. I swerved a little farther into the wooded area, but faltered and stopped, a small building set in the trees caught my attention. Not that having another building was so peculiar, but the way it sat in the woods…when I backed up a few paces, it disappeared. Forward and not looking directly at it – it re-appeared.
The gates creaked open behind me, and I thought this the perfect time to investigate. Pace quickened, I made my way toward the building – a decidedly tricky thing to accomplish. It was almost as if I had to pretend I could care less if I saw it or arrived at it. More of a sideways kind of task.
It appeared a sort of chapel – when I paid it little attention – narrow stained glass windows shown through the branches of leaves. When I was finally close enough to touch it, it stopped disappearing and I found a clear corner of a window. Inside, was a simple wooden altar with a large stained glass angel outlined in black behind it. No cross or statues that I could see. Would we be using this chapel as our Sunday services? Would I ever be leaving the school grounds?
A small movement caught my eye – someone was using it now. He almost blended into the dark wood of the pews. He raised his head, his body now bathed in colored light from the angel behind the altar. Had it stopped raining? Oh, yes it had.
Nut brown hair shadowed most of his face. I could tell by the angles of his jaw he was young, perhaps one or two years older than I was. His jacket seemed well used, more battered than mine and the same brown as the pews and his hair. He turned sharply. Had I made a sound? Something must have given me away – he stared at the window I was looking through.
And I gasped.
His face was stunning in its absence of anything soft or kind – the sharp beauty of it had me gulping for air. I stumbled back. Tried to convince myself he didn’t – couldn’t – see me through the glass. I kept backing up from the sight of him. My heart. I willed my heart to calm as I tried desperately not to run back to the drive. I walked towards the main house with determination and not panic, even as I felt him looking at me. My parents’ profession might do me well yet.
Amy Kennedy The Creative Crone 