by

The Ferryman and the Sea Witch: Release Day!

It’s a big day, the completion of months of writing and all the tasks that go along with bringing a story to life. The muses are satisfied, the sun is shining with the promise of spring, and the mermaids are singing their enchantments.

To all my blogging and reading friends, thank you from the tips of my toes to the ends of my fingers. Your enthusiasm and spirit of friendship make all the months of toil worthwhile. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.

(On sale for the month of June)

Blurb

The merrow rule the sea. Slender creatures, fair of face, with silver scales and the graceful tails of angelfish. Caught in a Brid Clarion net, the daughter of the sea witch perishes in the sunlit air. Her fingers dangle above the swells.

The queen of the sea bares her sharp teeth and, in a fury of wind and waves, cleanses the brine of ships and men. But she spares a boy for his single act of kindness. Callum becomes the Ferryman, and until Brid Clarion pays its debt with royal blood, only his sails may cross the Deep.

Two warring nations, separated by the merrow’s trench, trade infant hostages in a commitment to peace. Now, the time has come for the heirs to return home. The Ferryman alone can undertake the exchange.

Yet, animosities are far from assuaged. While Brid Clarion’s islands bask in prosperity, Haf Killick, a floating city of derelict ships, rots and rusts and sinks into the reefs. Its ruler has other designs.

And the sea witch crafts dark bargains with all sides.

Callum is caught in the breach, with a long-held bargain of his own which, once discovered, will shatter this life.

Trailer

Prolog

The hemp net hung from the boom above the waves. Within its lattice of pinched knots, the slender merrow baked in the heated air. She had ceased her struggle while the sun tilted up and shadows pooled on the deck. Her graceful tail with its angelfish fins dangled from the end of her confinement. Beyond the reach of her fingers, swells rose and fell. Taunting, seductive. Rhythmic as they sloshed against the hull.

Gulls shrilled in circles above the ship.

Like a storm-torn sail, the tip of the merrow’s tangled hair dipped into the sea with each crest, shed droplets with each trough. The creature wept for her kind, for the sea breathing beneath her, a thin and desolate sound. The mournful plea filled Callum’s young head, overwhelmed the clamor of merriment arising from the Brid Clarion officers who’d captured her in their mesh.

“We should free her.” Callum drew his fish-knife. “She’s dying. They’re killing her.”

 “I spoke my mind, boy.” The brig’s captain laid a firm hold on Callum’s scrawny shoulder. “Put away the blade. It’s not our place to chart the course of another man’s conscience.”

Callum bit off a retort certain to earn him a scolding. The captain had treated him kindly, hired him on as a cabin boy, and freed him from the oily bilges of Haf Killick. By the graybeard’s good grace, Callum earned a wage. At fourteen years, he scoffed down oranges dripping with sticky juice and learned a skill that would save him from ever returning to the bowels of the relic city.

He held tight to a hundred reasons not to endanger the ship or her crew, not to interfere with the amusement of those who served in the king’s war. Well-heeled officers bantered and drank gin at the bow. How could they plug their ears to the keening cries? Pretend her torment didn’t matter?

The merrow’s sorrow twisted Callum’s stomach. The unbearable lament dredged up memories of his mother’s death in a bleak hold and his helplessness to ease her suffering.

He ducked out of the grizzled man’s grip and hauled a bucket of water from the sea. Below him, the merrow’s copper scales baked and bristled into gray flakes. They fluttered to the surface like shed petals. He splashed the water along the length of her body and tossed the bucket into the waves for more. It wouldn’t be enough. Only the sea held the power to save her.

 He drew the bucket up by its line. Movement between the swells snapped him upright, and he shielded his eyes from the sun. “Captain, the merrow are coming.”

The old man fumbled for his spyglass and pressed it to his eye. “The sea witch.” He slapped the device into Callum’s hand. “Watch her.”

“Cut away the net,” Callum pleaded. “It’s not too late.”

“You may get your wish,” the captain said over his shoulder. He strode across the deck to the admiral’s celebration.

Callum focused the spyglass on the witch. Blood drained from his face, and his mouth turned dry as sand. She swam through the wind-scoured waves, the spines of her fins slicing the water. Her tail undulated like a serpent. White-lipped rage hollowed her cheeks and sharpened the angles of her face. Nictating membranes hooded her unnatural black eyes against the sunlight’s shimmer. Three merrow trailed in her wake, their voices weaving into a ghostly dirge.

And with them came the wind. A strange amassing and curving of clouds rose out of nowhere. The sky bloomed with a greenish glow, drenching the brig in the eerie twilight foretelling a storm.

Callum clung to the rigging as the Brid Clarion officers pulled pistols from their belts. With frantic intensity, they shared a powder horn, loaded their lead, and rammed it tight. The captain pleaded his case with wringing hands, but they brushed him aside. The men marched to the gunwale, sighted along their barrels, and fired.

Lightning flashed in reply. The approaching merrow plunged beneath the waves. Callum yelled his warning, “Captain, they’re diving.”

The captain swore. He climbed to the helm and bellowed orders as Callum searched the waves, the spyglass forgotten. The sea witch’s silver tail slashed through the swelling brine like the stroke of a knife. Fins rippled along her body in a feverish dance. She disappeared beneath the hull.

Callum froze with the crew and officers, silent, waiting, the seconds unspooling like a weaver’s thread. A harsh scraping sound cut into the bow. It raked across the keel to the stern, sparing neither the flowery anemones nor sea-greens that clung to the ship’s belly.

Chaos erupted. Jacks shouted in panic as water sprayed into the hold. The captain’s orders to plug the leaks competed with the admiral’s demand for more gunpowder.

The sea witch breached the waves. She grasped the net and sliced it with a coral blade. A hail of shot littered the sea. Iron rounds speared the water. They thudded into the merrow dying in the net.

A fierce scream of grief and fury shrilled from the witch. Callum caught his breath as she slashed at the net. The sky’s whirling cauldron mirrored the turbulence in his belly. Behind her, the waves bloated. A wall of water mounded in the distance and raced toward the ship like a winter gale. Lightning flashed with a sharp crack. The echoing rumble shook the deck.

“I’m cutting her free,” Callum yelled at the storm. Fish-knife in his grip, he climbed the bulwark. Wind battered his body. He hung onto the rigging and leaned over the water. His knife swiped at the net. Once, twice. The monstrous wave curled and crashed. Another slice. Lines frayed and snapped. The net splashed into the sea.

A mountain of white froth roared into him. He crashed to the deck, tumbled, and pounded into a mast. Pain burst in his ankle. His reserve of breath blew from his lungs. The watery world tipped and rolled. Sparks flared in his eyes as something smashed his face. From every direction, the groan and crack of the wreck assaulted his ears. He kicked against the hull, chasing his bubbles. A sail trapped him beneath the surface like an iron lid. Lungs on fire, he grasped a tangle of rigging and, hand over hand, hauled himself to the sail’s frayed hem.

Mouth open, he burst to the surface of the littered sea for a desperate breath. Something gripped his ankle. A male merrow with jet hair streaming behind him drew Callum down like an anchor. Callum pried at the pale fingers grinding his bones.

Shattered wood rained around him with gear and cargo. Air bubbles ascended in pearly strands. Above him, sails wallowed as desperate men grappled for flotsam, and bodies sank like ghosts torn from their white shrouds.

Callum gave up the fight, the merrow’s grip unforgiving. The sea grew muted and green. From the gloom, the sea witch bared her teeth, tail sweeping the water like a silk fan. Behind her, three merrow bore the sun-bleached body of their kin down to rest among the coral for the crabs to pick clean.

Vengeance burned in the witch’s inky eyes. Blood red hair, woven with seaweed, billowed around her head like a dusky cloud. “Drown them all,” she said, her unspoken command bursting in his head.

Merrow swam from the Deep, both male and female, beautiful and deadly. Jacks flailed and kicked, breathed water, and bucked. Coral blades flashed, clouding the water. Sharks ghosted in to feed. As Callum’s vision faded, a hazy shape materialized in the gloom, his ship descending into the fathomless Deep as if riding on a slanted sea.

Drowsiness coiled around him. Consciousness slipped away.

And he inhaled.

Air rushed into his lungs. Someone embraced him, a mouth on his. His eyes snapped open. He jerked away. The merrow clutched his head in her palms and yanked him back into the horrific kiss. He held her by the upper arms, at once pushing her away and craving her breath.

“Breathe,” she said inside his head, her melodious voice a softly curling tide. Without a sound passing between them, he heard her command as clear as a ship’s bell.

He gulped air, pulling it from her body as if his lungs would never draw enough. His thundering heart slowed.

“Why?” he asked, the word unspoken.

She responded with a sense of confusion.

“Why help me?”

She backed away, hair swirling with the blue luminescence of a jellyfish. High cheekbones cast shadows on her pale cheeks. She studied him with eyes like black shells, and her full lips thinned into a stern line as if to hide their softness.

Her ambivalence pulsed into his mind. Gossamer tentacles swirled from the end of her tail like a frilly gown, and her opalescent scales shifted colors in the thin light. Three pink gills on either side of her ribs rippled with the water’s movement. “You aided my sister.”

Her loss swept over him, along with his need for a breath. As though she sensed his desperation, her lips met his in a gentle, open-mouthed kiss. His first true kiss and bound to mark the strangest of his life, if not his last. Her tail pulsed against his legs as they rose. He surrendered to her control, no longer fighting the strange undulation of her body.

When they broke the surface, she pushed him away, flipped her tail, and dove. He threw his head back and inhaled the wind into his lungs. The storm had passed. Clouds peeled back to reveal an empty sea but for the brig’s debris bobbing in the tranquil waves. He swam to a raft of floating dunnage and hung on. “Ahoy!”

No reply.

He hadn’t drowned, but breath didn’t guarantee survival. The ship had anchored at the edge of the Deep, leagues and leagues from either Brid Clarion or Haf Killick, far enough that he’d perish long before he paddled the distance.

The sea stirred as a menacing shape slithered through the scattered flotsam. Callum drew up his legs, the presence of sharks fresh in his memory. The sea witch surfaced. Urchin’s spines fanned from her temples and forehead in a prickly crown. Muscle threaded her arms, her body slim but bold-boned, skin drawn tight across her cheeks and throat. Her hair glimmered with pearls and beads of abalone, bewitching if not for the malevolence in her hooded eyes.

“Naris tells me you are worth saving,” she said, her voice low and full of sea whispers. She swam in a languid circle around him. “What do they call you?”

“Callum, my lady.”

The sea witch twitched a smile, revealing a row of sharp teeth. “You may call me Panmar.” She rolled onto her back with the slipperiness of an eel. Her fins and tail carved the waves, sparkling in the sun’s glare. “You cut my daughter free, but you delayed. You lacked courage. She died for your cowardice.”

The witch’s daughter? Callum’s fingers dug into the makeshift raft. He nodded but held his tongue. No words of remorse could justify or erase the truth, and his face burned with shame.

The sea witch sank beneath the waves and surfaced beside him, so close he tasted life and death on her breath. “I offer you a bargain, mortal. Accept or drown.”

***

Phew! That was a long post. Thanks so much for reading and the kindness of your visit!

232 thoughts on “The Ferryman and the Sea Witch: Release Day!”

  1. Ahoy, Mateys! – Willow Croft says:
    September 19, 2022 at 8:55 am

    […] down the hatches, ye scallywags, else we’ll all end up in Davy Jones’ locker! The sea witch shows no mercy…or does she? Read on to find out: […]

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. Chel Owens says:
    June 17, 2021 at 7:02 pm

    You are my hero. Seriously. I’m very excited for you!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • D. Wallace Peach says:
      June 17, 2021 at 7:48 pm

      Thanks for the cheers, Chelsea. It was so fun writing a stand alone for a change. A lot less pressure and about 7 months from start to finish. I hope you’re doing well. Happy Start to your summer… and try to stay cool!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  3. ParentingIsFunny says:
    June 16, 2021 at 12:14 pm

    Congrats! So exciting!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  4. Miriam Hurdle says:
    June 16, 2021 at 10:41 am

    Congratulations, I’ll visit your blog and the current reviews when I get to Portland, on the plane right now. 😍

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. lisa thomson-author says:
    June 15, 2021 at 5:36 pm

    Congratulations on your new release, Diana. This looks like a wonderfully intriguing story. I can’t wait to read it!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. Book Club Mom says:
    June 13, 2021 at 6:38 pm

    What a terrific book trailer, Diana. An intriguing story and great illustrations. Congratulations!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  7. Baydreamer says:
    June 13, 2021 at 9:03 am

    I’m a little behind on reading blogs, Diana, but I love the trailer, and can’t wait to read this fascinating story! Congrats! 💗🎉

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  8. mydangblog says:
    June 13, 2021 at 6:53 am

    Congrats!! I’m buying it right now!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  9. Cindy Georgakas says:
    June 12, 2021 at 1:55 pm

    Congratulations Diana and love the trailer with the build up of the music. Would love to read the whole book like this honestly💖💖💖💖
    SOOOO good❣️❣️❣️👏

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  10. the incurable dreamer says:
    June 12, 2021 at 10:16 am

    It worked, your book is on its way to me!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  11. the incurable dreamer says:
    June 12, 2021 at 10:09 am

    Diana! I am so excited and happy for you! This is the best news, and I am so looking forward to losing myself in your book. Your stories have taken me places my wildest dreams could never have imagined and brought wonder galore to my world. You write so visually it’s as though I am right there in the story watching it all unfold, with my jaw on the floor. CONGRATULATIONS! You saw it through and did it—no easy feat. I hope you are celebrating your achievement with all the things you love. You deserve it. I’ve been trying to buy it on Amazon, but it’s not letting me check out. I will keep at it, though; I want your book in my hands immediately. 🤗 You are amazing. 🥳🍾❤️

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • D. Wallace Peach says:
      June 12, 2021 at 10:23 am

      Your kindness and enthusiasm always makes me grin, Tanya. This is a dark tale, so be brave when you crack it open. (But it does end with hope, as all my books do). This book is also a standalone, so a nice quick one and done read. I hope you’re doing well and being a creative and finding joy in every day. Thanks so much for your lovely comment. Hugs and Love. ❤ ❤

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  12. markbierman says:
    June 11, 2021 at 6:35 am

    Congratulations, Diana! I know the book will do well!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  13. maritzawrites says:
    June 11, 2021 at 2:27 am

    WOW, is all I can say… Your writing is so rich, I love it xxx

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  14. Silent Hour says:
    June 11, 2021 at 1:43 am

    If the muses are satisfied and not going to barge in any minute now, what more can a writer ask for? Congratulations!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  15. Annika Perry says:
    June 11, 2021 at 1:37 am

    Congratulations, my friend on your latest book release! 😀😀 It was a lovely surprise when ‘The Ferryman and the Sea Witch’ tumbled into my Kindle overnight as pre-ordered and I was informed a new book was awaiting me! A stunning book release post, I love the captivating trailer and the bewitching introduction to the book. Can’t wait to read it! Xx

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  16. roughwighting says:
    June 10, 2021 at 1:56 pm

    What a GORGEOUS trailer. Hate to tell you, though, but I downloaded your book before I even saw it. So much for promotion, but I’m always enthralled with your stories. This one includes a character(s) whom I can’t wait to meet! The trailer did convince me already that your book should be made into a movie. Wouldn’t that be cool???

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  17. Jina Bazzar says:
    June 10, 2021 at 6:49 am

    Congrats on the new release, Diana! Lovely excerpt – very thrilling and captivating!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • D. Wallace Peach says:
      June 10, 2021 at 7:32 am

      Thanks for the visit, Jina. I’m happy to have this one done and to be starting the summer with a clean slate when it comes to writing. I hope you’re doing well and getting some writing in. Have a wonderful day, my friend. 🙂

      Like

      Reply
  18. storytellerscornercom says:
    June 9, 2021 at 9:18 pm

    Congratulations. Will look forward to reading it… I am new in this community..so do drop advices on my future posts

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  19. Teagan Riordain Geneviene says:
    June 9, 2021 at 8:38 am

    Yay! Already got it. 😀 I can’t wait to explore this new world, Diana. Congratulations. Sharing.
    Hugs on the wing.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  20. sjhigbee says:
    June 9, 2021 at 4:04 am

    Stunning trailer! I just love that premise:)). Off to get the book…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  21. Deborah Jay says:
    June 8, 2021 at 2:36 pm

    Oh wow, after reading that prologue I just had to go buy a copy!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • D. Wallace Peach says:
      June 8, 2021 at 7:16 pm

      Well, Yay! I know that it made for a long post, but I was hoping it may snag a couple of readers. The book is a standalone, Deborah, and not terribly long. I hope that when you get to it, you enjoy the read. Thanks so much for stopping by! ❤

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  22. Ka Malana - Fiestaestrellas.com says:
    June 8, 2021 at 1:55 pm

    The book trailer is amazing! So interesting and moving in such a short space. I hope to be able to come back and read the prologue. Huge congratulations to you!!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  23. Steven Baird says:
    June 8, 2021 at 1:10 pm

    Hearty congratulations, Diana! This sounds like another amazing read!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  24. Mary J. McCoy-Dressel says:
    June 8, 2021 at 10:29 am

    When I saw this in my Kindle, I immediately dove into the Glossary and prologue. Can’t wait to sit back and read the rest. Congratulations, Diana. Another keeper!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  25. boundlessblessingsblog says:
    June 8, 2021 at 7:05 am

    Diana, hearty congratulations on your new book. The trailer of the book is captivating. Keep it going.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  26. Natalie Ducey says:
    June 8, 2021 at 6:54 am

    Congratulations, Diana! This is such an achievement to celebrate. I love the trailer, too! So soothing and inviting. Wishing you much success! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • D. Wallace Peach says:
      June 8, 2021 at 7:26 am

      Thanks for the visit and congrats, Natalie. I’m glad you enjoyed the post and the trailer. 😀 It feels great to have this book done. Now I can settle into some relaxed reading for the summer. Have a lovely week, my friend.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  27. acflory says:
    June 8, 2021 at 5:26 am

    Yes! The wait is over. 😀 Tweeted. Congratulations, Diana. -huge hugs-

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  28. Staci Troilo says:
    June 8, 2021 at 3:43 am

    Happy Book Birthday! (Belatedly, as I’m a day late seeing this.) Congratulations and best wishes.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Comments are warmly welcomed. Don't be shy .

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s