Read this exclusive chapter preview of my upcoming fantasy novel, The Great Leap, releasing on 31st of May, 2024.
The ringing in her ears would not stop.
There she stood, unblinking. The chaotic scene in front of her played out in perfect detail on her glassy, deep-set eyes. The inferno blazed, and like a swarm of locusts, the townspeople descended upon it with buckets of water from the well. The marshal screamed orders over the roar of the fire, mothers yelled for their children, water loudly sizzled as it doused small parts of the blaze. She could see nor hear any of it, for her mind and her senses were not under her control.
The darkness of the night was illuminated almost entirely by the flames.
The Sanctuary burned.
The Sanctuary of Inauron was the focal point of their entire lives; it was the centre of their town Penny Grove, their religious centre, trade-centre and school; nary an activity was conducted in the Grove without some part of it being managed within the doors of that circular, domed stone building.
And now the blaze consumed it, and she could do naught but stare in horror as she was wrenched away to a more comfortable place; a calming place, a place of beauty and wonder. She was often brought to these places, whenever hardship bubbled up around her, it was her survival mechanism. Despite her eyes being fixated on the fire, she could still picture the gorgeous rolling hills, long grass swaying in the wind flurries, the sun, cool but bright. The incessant ringing in her ears worked hard to bury the sounds of the desperate rush of the townsfolk. Her body and mind were working in tandem to force her away from their terrifying reality.
Growing up in Penny Grove had not granted Fleta Timber the same experience as that of her peers. Her entire sixteen years of life were filled with pain, anger and torment. She had nothing that was wholly hers; her life decisions were made for her, she had no possessions to speak of, even the clothes on her back were provided for her, by others in the town, as acts of charity. Her family were at the bottom of a long pecking-order within the Grove, so much that they were almost on the verge of destitution. Her parents couldn’t allow her to culture her own life because she was needed to help them support theirs. On top of all this, her bodily autonomy was torn from her regularly, on a whim, by her cruel Uncle, the very person charged with her care whilst her parents worked to provide for them.
The entrancing fires did not furnish her with the same sense of loss that many of the townspeople were feeling. For her, the fires represented change. She could hopefully, finally, emerge from these fires with a new sense of purpose, a new mission, one that she alone could control. As resolute as she felt, there was still a raw terror that gripped her — was the terror just a natural response to change, or something more? Just as a toddler who learned to walk unaided, she knew the path ahead would be fraught with dangers, but she would emerge with a new sense of freedom that only she would oversee.
“Flea!”
Her brother’s pet name for her, screamed in her face, snapped her back to Penny Grove. As the sunlit hills faded, and the thick, orange-tinted, smoke-shrouded night revealed itself once more, she saw her twin, Bronson, in front of her reaching out to shake her from her fantasy.
She held a hand out and recoiled in anticipation of his touch.
“Why are you just standing there?” He paused, “did you get it?”
She nodded.
“Well, where is it?”
“Not there.”
Bronson buried his head in his hands.
“What are we going to do?”
She blinked for the first time in far too long, her eyes stung from the smoke as rivulets of tears drew a path through her soot stained cheeks revealing the paleness of her skin beneath. Fleta shrugged without turning to face her twin, eyes still transfixed by the raging fire.
“Wait,” he noticed, “you changed your clothes?”
“They’re sending us all to die in the Wildlands, Bronson. None of it matters anymore.”
The council had met under an emergency session the moment it was revealed that their group of friends, ten in all, were present in The Sanctuary when the blaze began. The council of elders were not young or fit enough to help with the fire-fighting, so they did what they always do; assign blame, behind the scenes. They were not interested in an investigation nor evidence of culpability; they wanted nothing more than to justify their own existence by enacting punishment and controlling the citizenry’s perception of the evening.
Six of their eight friends that had accompanied Fleta and Bronson into The Sanctuary that evening were tied together, kneeling in the mud alongside the tavern. Their faces were lit by the fire and their eyes danced around with the flames, but they were expressionless.
Lawson’s face was bruised and his lip swollen; he’d put up a fight, but after the guards had subdued him, his closest friends, Wendy, Piper and Stokely came quietly. Kenley had tried to run, but his own father, a renowned hunter, found him and brought him back to the tavern to face justice. Corin, who was in training to become a Devoted at the Sanctuary, prostrated herself in front of her beloved place of worship as it burned and, despite her normally passive demeanour, she had caused the guards quite the struggle in arresting her. Two guards appeared from behind the tavern, bringing with them Addison and Dawn; the betrothed couple had clasped hands with each other and wouldn’t allow the guards to separate them, not wanting a fight, the guards simply tied them together, and pushed them down into the mud. Eight captured, two to go. Fleta knew that her and her brother were next to be captured.
“Let’s go,” Bronson said, panicked, “let’s leave now.”
“What’s the point,” she said.
“They’ll arrest us.”
“Let them.”
Bronson frowned and reached for her hand, but she snatched it away
Fleta knew that banishment was her only recourse in this life. She wanted out of Penny Grove; she wanted out of the life she hated. If she left without being compelled, she would feel responsible for her parent’s eventual fate, and she couldn’t live on-the-run as Bronson seemed to suggest. She would accept this punishment because it offered her the only guilt-free, viable method of leaving for good.
“Fleta please,” he said, using her full name — he rarely did. “I can’t do this.”
“They’re going to catch us. You know that. It’s easier if we just hand ourselves in.”
“They won’t, I swear to you.”
“You can’t swear, ‘cos you can’t know,” she quipped, turning away from him towards the tavern.
His lips tightened, and he exhaled through his nose.
“I’ll take you with me whether or not you want to go,” he spat; yet another person vowing to wrest control of her life away from her. She wouldn’t allow it. Without responding, she simply started walking across the town-centre, towards the tavern.
“Wait,” he cried.
She didn’t wait. Her despondency was in control of her now, and she could not stop her advance, she saw no point, no reason to stay, and no reason to fight.
Her boots made a suckering sound with each step as she crossed the muddy town centre. Too many spilled buckets of water from the fire fighting had turned the ground swamp-like. Each step bore the risk of slippage, but she pushed through fixated on the side of tavern and her captured peers.
Bronson was not so successful; he slid across the mud, clashing with fire-fighting townspeople and wailing spectators as he tried to catch up to her. A man threw him to the ground as they made contact, splattering mud on one half of his face. Without so much of a thought for his own safety, he scrambled back to his feet quickly to chase after her.
As he reached her, he grasped one of her forearms, but it was too late, a guard had already grabbed the other.
“Well that was easy,” the guard said. Fleta saw anger flash momentarily in the guard’s expression. These guards were the same ones that had protected them as they grew up, but these were not the friendly expressive faces she was used to seeing patrolling around the town.
Bronson clenched his teeth, released Fleta’s arm and turned to run, but he was too late, another guard had him by the shoulders.
“Oh, no you don’t,” the second guard said through clenched teeth.
“We had nothing to do with the fire,” he screamed.
“Yep, yep,” the guard said, then feigned a laugh to the other, “looks like another one is innocent.”
Bronson was tied with rope and pushed down into the mud alongside Dawn. The pair shared a sympathetic glance. Bronson placed his head in his lap, hiding from the world as he was wont to do.
Fleta held her clenched fists out, knuckles pointed upwards, and as she did, she noticed something that chilled her to the bone. Before she could consider it, a rope was tied around them and she was pushed to the mud next to her brother.
She felt as though her consciousness was elsewhere, and she acted almost entirely without forethought. She tried to drift to her rolling hills once more to calm her rising panic, but she wasn’t able to remain; what she had noticed whilst being bound by the guards birthed an uncomfortable worry that kept her from retreating, a thought that slowly bubbled up within her and began to dominate her consciousness.
She had noticed her hands.
Hands she had forgotten to clean whilst she changed her clothes.
She hoped and hoped to Inauron that nobody could see the sticky, drying blood that covered them.
As she settled onto the ground, she opened her hands and pressed them into the slick, soft mud, masking what she’d done.
The Great Leap (Children of Inauron: Book 1)
You’ve just read the prologue to The Great Leap, the opening to the Children of Inauron series.
Banished deep into the wilderness for a crime they didn’t commit, four desperate teenagers must discover their true potential to survive… and keep their blossoming supernatural abilities hidden from a cunning, deceptive enemy.
Hunted and alone, this foursome must navigate their worst nightmares if they ever want to escape the mysterious and primaeval Wildlands alive. As they confront the realities of their upbringings, the secrets they harboured from one another, and the hardships they endured, the teens must find a way to band together and galvanize their bonds, else they fall to the dangers that pursue them.
Each of the survivors begin to develop strange and terrifying abilities that they struggle to comprehend hearkening back to an age once past… but will these abilities help or hinder their survival as they clash with the unimaginable horrors of the Wildlands.
★★★★★ “…the depth of characters is amazing, and the story is just…indescribably good…”
★★★★★ “…a truly captivating tale with each chapter ending on a cliffhanger which meant I couldn’t put this book down…”★★★★★ “…it does a great job in introducing the reader to this world and left me wanting to read more in this series…”