Lyra, a human girl, watched the plummeting orb of light land in her field, and within it, a shard of the broken crown that is worth more than any job could pay. In a feat to survive the beasts who hunt it down, she flees through the Thicket which appeared when the Seelie vanished over three hundred years ago. Instead of returning home with the wealth she sought, Lyra is trapped in the wrong realm and her only hope of return is to help a Seelie Lord retrieve the other pieces of the crown and win him the throne.
Chapter 1
The crash came like a star falling from the heavens of the black sky in the depth of the night. I had been curled up on my cot far past my bedtime, whittling away at a piece of wood that was beginning to resemble a dog. The ears were wonky, but it only added to the character of the carving – in my brother's opinion. Henry always preferred turning flaws into something else. Even three years younger than I, there were odd times where his words were wiser than the Thane's. The Thane was a crookedly old man, but he was the only reason our small village was thriving as it was. Even when the harsh winter came and then when the plains flooded in spring, we did not suffer the hardships that other villages nearby had.
"If you polish and paint it, then you can sell it if you would like," I told Henry, carefully twisting the knife down the curve of the hind leg. "You know little Julia will purchase anything you have to sell."
Henry gave me a prudent expression. He had a head of brown curls that hung around his face, gifting him with a youthful presence. "It is not very kind to take advantage of people like that, sister." His expression wavered into something more suitable to his youth. "Though I could put a few more coppers towards getting that new trap." He had a knack for hunting and spent most of his days out in the Kettleburn Forest. He was good enough to not only satisfy our small family, but often there was enough to sell to Thatcher, the butcher as well.
I laughed at his ease of moral dismissal. "You do not have to call for her to do anything," I added to his own argument. "If she comes with coin, it is of her own doing. And her own absolute besotted nature." I dodged his soft kick, curling my feet further under my legs.
My room was modest, but the size was comforting. I could control it. And Henry found himself in it more often than not as well. My room or the abandoned stable. There used to be two horses when I was younger. Two bay mares. We had no saddles since they were used to haul our cart to the markets further in town, but I would ride them without so much as a bridle sometimes. My Mother would endeavour to stop me once Henry was tall enough to climb on himself. He was never a skilled rider and broke three bones in one summer. After watching my mother fret over him for weeks on end, I chose to ride through the nights when Henry's snores filled our cottage.
Our father passed when a plague struck our lands, not five years ago. I remember standing at the threshold of my parents' bedroom, watching a rash cascade over his pale face. The same thick black hair on his head as I had on my own could be pulled away by simply raking your fingers over his scalp and his fingernails became so brittle that they shattered at the touch. I held Henry close to my side, his brown head of hair tucked under my arm. He was barely twelves years old.
He wasn't only my mother's husband and our father, but he was the labour that kept our land productive, and our jar of coin stocked. We were fortunate enough that the debt of the land was paid off two generations ago, but with my brother too young, my mother too frail, I was the only one who would have been able to work the lands without pay. And we all knew too well that I would be unable to handle it alone. So we left the ground to grow as it pleased. The fields were soon covered in grass, dandelions infiltrating every space.
I worked at the bakery with Baristar, a large bald man with three children of his own. He was kind and fair, but the two copper coins a day were barely enough to feed us for the next. Soon we had to sell the horses, and that was enough that Henry could suit himself to hunting gear. Since then, life had been ordinary to us, but my mother's life faded after the death of her husband.
It was a flicker of light that first drew my eyes to the window. It was just a blip, like a star that decided to pulsate. I looked through the glass, captured by only my own reflection until the light appeared again from the east.
"Did you see that?" I hissed. My nose pressed against the cool plate of glass and my knees dug into the depth of my cot's mattress. Henry rose next to me, crossing his arms over the sill. At first, the light still looked like a star that was flickering unnaturally, but then it grew larger and brighter.
Henry lent away from the window but quickly pressed himself back up against it as though the fright was washed away by the curious phenomenon. "What is that?"
I had no answer for him. Our eyes glued to the growing star. It grew to the size of the sun, but it was much closer than the sun had ever been. I tried to detect which way it was travelling, but it only seemed to be growing. Then I realised - "Henry." I gripped his shoulder and pushed him away from the window. "It's coming our way."
Henry's hazel eyes darted between me and the growing light. "Lyra, what is it?!"
I leapt down from the bed and dragged him from the bedroom. "I don't know. Get your shoes on and go outside. I'm getting Mother."
It was reluctant, but he nodded and soon disappeared to the front of the house. I slipped back into my room to grab the half-melted candle in its candlestick. The flame flickered dangerously as I swept through to my mother's room. I shook her fervently.
"Mother. Mother! You must get up."
The candle casted a heavy shadow on the far side of her face. She awoke with a short start, covering her eye from the light of the flame which I placed on her nightstand. I sacrificed a few moments to allow her to gather her bearings then dragged her from the shelter of her bed whilst she bombarded me with questions. I promised that following me would answer them. And probably entice more. I shoved on my field boots, leaving my pants to wrinkle around my calves as I did not spare the time to carefully lay them underneath the leather.
Henry was waiting for us, his neck tilted back, and I saw the white dot of reflection in his eye. Mother's short shriek came once we turned around to watch the glowing phenomenon. I knew it was coming in our direction. I imagined it crashing into our house which would erupt into a ball of flames from the heat that was causing its light.
"What in Ardon's name is that?" Mother wailed.
I gripped both their hands, carefully watching its path. I could see the velocity that it travelled at. It was no longer a strange phenomenon of growing light, but a blazing ball of white fire that was travelling towards our very home. The tingle in the tips of my fingers told me that I was gripping at their hands too tightly, but I did not yield to the sensation.
I looked to my mother. Her eyes were as wide and as frantic as my own, almost the entirety of her dark pupils encapsulated by the reflection of our impending doom. I waited – I waited for her to tell us what to do. I waited for the instruction that mothers are supposed to have when their children look to them. But all she gave me, without even turning her head away from the night sky, was a small shake of her head.
"Henry-"
I prepared to say more but I found myself just as lost as my mother. But I thought and continued to think. The ball of light was now a mere mile away. It illuminated the trees of Kettleburn Forest that lined the edge of our property. They swayed heavily like a river being spilt. I tried to predict its projection – where it would land; if it would plummet right into the earth or create a trench.
"Back. Back," I ordered. Our feet shuffled blindly over the grass of our overgrown front garden. Mother hated gardening and I was too saddled with my work down at the bakery to have any time to do it myself. I forbid Henry from touching it since he seemed to kill whatever plant he did but I may as well should have let him so we were not left with the weeding state that it was in now.
My mother began to wail, covering her mouth with the hand that was not under my vice grip. I wanted to shake her – shake her into some sort of sense so I alone was not responsible for them both. We could hear it now; a soft wind-filled roar.
Then the orb collided with the field.
The ground shook under our feet and the house quaked. I heard the chattering of glass and ceramic. My mother let out another squeal, bending inwards as her knees gave way to fear. Henry staggered backwards, both our arms raising to our faces as a flash of blinding light made the world as light as day.
As quickly as it came, it all disappeared. The light, the tremors. All of it.
My heart hammered against my ribs, and there was a lack of blood in my cheeks. Henry was the first to step forward. I let my grip on his hand slip but kept it extended so I could grasp at him at a moment's notice. He peered closely into the distance. Whatever it was, landed on our property. "I-I think there's a crater," he said. "I can see the dirt."
I saw the glint of adventure grow in him. His shoulders straightened and his eyes began to wander with eagerness. "Henry." I called his name twice more before I had his attention. "Take Mother back into the house." Henry stood still, just three paces in front of me. He wanted to go, I knew that all too well. My voice croaked, but I bellowed, "Do as I say!"
He finally listened.
Mother hunched over, leaning into my brother's shoulder. He gave her the soothing words that I could not. I waited until all four of their feet were inside the building before marching towards the axe lodged into the cutting wood and pulled it free. I was not without fear, but with the axe head swinging by my leg as I walked towards the crater in our backfield, I felt not without some power.
All I could do as I strode through the night, lit only by the full moon, was imagine what I would find inside the crater. I might find nothing at all. I might find rocks or strange formations that live up in the sky. I had never seen anything like it before. Every few months I would be lucky enough to witness a shooting star, but it would fade into the night. Maybe that is what I would find – a star. Would I be the first to ever see one up close? How far would that story travel?
The ideas and fantasies were washed away when I came to the edge of the crater. The ground was carved at least twenty feet deep, with another, smaller crater in the centre where the point of impact came from. I squinted, crouching at the edge of the slope. Even under the full moon of light, I could not see anything inside of it.
But there had to be something.
Something had to have been ablaze and something had to have landed.
I took an audible breath and threw my legs over the side. The dirt was smooth and compounded from the pressure, and I slid right down, leaning back on my hand. The night became darker within the crater. The light from the house and the shrouded colour of the grass thrown from sight. The axe's handle pressed firmly into my palm, the blade hovering next to my shoulder. I crept forward, eyes settled on the centre's shallow valley.
I saw the glint of the moonlight's reflection first. Then the small, black glass shard protruding from the dirt.
I struck the axe head into the ground and fell to my knees beside the shard. It was a spike, like a blade made of obsidian. My fingers delved into the dirt around it, digging the shard loose but it was not stuck and fell forward at the slight shift. Rather than a blade's handle, the same black glass-obsidian came out from either side at the base, like an unfinished cross. I held it up to the moonlight, mesmerised. Was it part of a star? Nobody had seen one so for all I knew, it could be. It shimmered as though it had been dipped in crystal water and then frozen over for eternity. I had never seen a material quite like it.
"Lyra! Lyra!"
Henry appeared over the top of the crater, waving his arms.
"Half the village are by the house!"
Of course. The ball of light would have been seen for miles on end. I didn't have a reason for the choice I made then, but I shoved the shard down my blouse, and it lodged above the belt to my pants. My skin was painted with dirt as I clambered back out of the hole. Henry leant down and pulled me back over the steepest part of the edge.
"What was down there?" he demanded. I panted, brushing off my hands and pants.
"I'm… not sure," I gulped. "It was too dark to see anything."
Formatting is terrible on here but yeah. It's very ACOTAR inspired with touches of other stories like stardust, hunger games and I'm sure other things that I can't remember to name. Basically Fantasy YA that I hope to work up enough to self-publish. Again (reiterating for my own sense of confidence) this is the first (or dumbest, as I call it) draft. I already have editing notes and a few people lined up as Alpha readers.