Tara Maya
Author Archives: Tara Maya
Tara Maya
- by Tara Maya
The Unicorn Girl by M.L. LeGette
A Fairy Tale, Coming of Age Fantasy
Leah Vindral is suffocating—trapped in her own skin.
In a land where magic is feared, magic saved her from death … but it came with a terrible price. Marked forever, she is shunned and isolated by those she loves most.
Brimming with bitter rage at those who abandoned her, Leah flees from her childhood home only to be swept into an impending war: Mora, a wicked witch, has been imprisoned for years, waiting like a spider in the folds of her web for the chance to regain the powers once stripped from her. It is there, while she waits, that she learns of a strange young girl … a girl who can speak to unicorns.
Now Leah must save the country that shuns her, for if Mora returns to power, all will be lost. But can Leah, who is so frightened and confused herself, find the strength to save them all?
Buy The Unicorn Girl on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Excerpt
Ten minutes later Ian opened the door to his room, on the second floor of a decrepit looking inn, and I sank onto a squeaky bed with a slight shiver.
“So,” Ian persisted. “Why were some bloody knights chasin’ you?”
I stared at my feet in response.
“Oh no,” said Ian, as he shut the door with a snap. “We’re not playin’ that game again.” He walked over to a chair, dragged it in front of me and turned it around backwards. He leaned on it for a minute and said abruptly, “I’ll make tea.”
I sat numbly on the bed and watched him boil water. My mind was horribly blank.
“There,” he pushed a mug of tea into my hands and sat down, wrapping his arms around the back of the chair and staring at me expectantly. “So?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I got time.”
I glared at him. I could lie, but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had been running for so long, and suddenly, I couldn’t take another step. Before I had even tried to consider what might happen if I told him the truth, words spilled from my mouth.
He sat in silence, nodding occasionally as I told him everything. Flashes of the ball, Lavena, Father, King Rowan’s plan, the sickness, the recovery, the elves, the monsters with red eyes, and Mora all sped through my brain and out of my mouth. His eyes darkened at the mention of Mora and his mouth tightened, but he didn’t stop my narrative.
“And I just saw Sir William Shanklin tell King Rowan what he learned from Mora and now he’s looking for me. He’ll use me to find them, I’m sure of it—that is if Mora doesn’t get to me first. But I don’t know where the unicorns are and I’m tired of running!”
Ian rose from his chair and walked to a grimy window with his back to me.
“We’ll just have to find them then, won’t we,” he said finally.
“What?”
He turned to me, his face set.
“The unicorns. We’ve got to find them. You’re the only one who can talk to them, so you’re the only one who can warn them. We’ll have to leave now though. I’m sure King Rowan will have the whole city searched by mornin’.”
“Yes, but what’s with all this we business?”
“What? Didn’t you know? I’m coming with you.” Ian grabbed a sack, walked to the door, opened it and headed down the hall as I followed him.
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
I glared at him.
“My dear Leah, I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my stubborn side,” he said with a smile as he started down the stairs.
“But—but what about your future and all that?” I asked desperately as I hurried to catch up with him.
“My mother gave me one piece of advice as I left our humble home,” Ian said conversationally, “She said, ‘Don’t you follow anything mysterious!’ And you, Leah, are the most mysterious thing I’ve ever met.”“But your mother told you not to!”
We were outside once again and mounting our horses.
“Yes, and you might also need to know that I always do the exact opposite of what my mother wants,” Ian said, and with that he started off at a gallop, with Iris and I following in his wake.
Find more from M.L. LeGette on her blog, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads and Pinterest.
- by Tara Maya
TORCH (a Take It Off novel) by Cambria Hebert
If you can’t take the heat… stay away from the flame.
Katie Parks has been on her own since the age of fifteen. All she’s ever wanted is a place to call her own—a life that is wholly hers that no one can take away. She thought she finally had it, but with the strike of a single match, everything she worked so hard for is reduced to a pile of smoking ash. And she almost is too.
Now she’s being stalked by someone who’s decided it’s her time to die. The only thing standing in the path of her blazing death is sexy firefighter Holt Arkain.
Katie’s body might be safe with Holt… but her heart is another story.
As the danger heats up, sparks fly and the only thing Katie knows for sure is that her whole life is about to go up in flames.
***This is a new adult contemporary novel and contains sexual content and graphic language. It is not intended for young adult readers.***
Download Torch on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
- by Tara Maya
9. The Casting of Stones
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| “Hunk” by Carnivora88 |
… secret societies. From the squeeze of costumed bodies, it looked as though every dancer in the Labyrinth was in attendance. All were masked. Many of the masks sprouted huge fans of woven cane, feather tufts, or carved wooden animal faces. Others sported horns, manes, or false beards. Still others displayed abstract shapes, ovals or diamonds, or a cascade of beaded fringes. It wasn’t easy for so many masked dancers to fit in the tiers. Feathered and beaded shoulder blankets, necklaces coiled as thick as snakes, and full corn- husk skirts took up space.
Only his mother, indifferent as ever to convention, wore no mask, just a simple white beaded dress. She sat stiffly on the lowest tier, face-to-face with Kavio. Even at her age, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. She was also the only one in the tiers who had no closely-pressed neighbors. No one quite dared sit next to her.
Opposite her, behind Kavio, rose an adobe platform taller than any of the tiered seats. He had to twist his head to look up the seven steps to the top of the platform to see the man who stood there in full regalia, holding a rain stick. Paint divided the man’s already severe features into an interlocked pattern of sharp edges and boxes. Colorful matching mazes were woven into his shoulder blanket and outlined in beads of obsidian and pearl. His massive headdress con- sisted of numerous coiled cords, horned and feathered and shelled. Beaded hoops rested around his neck, as did a gold coiled torque. The pin that held his shoulder blanket in place had also been beaten from gold, into the shape of a stylized wild horse.
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| “Chief” by Chris Rosewarne |
The man pounded his rain stick on the platform. He had a voice of gravel and stone.
“Let it be remembered on the Memory Stick, that in This Year, yet to be named, I, the War Chief of the Rainbow Labyrinth and head of the Society of Societies in the absence of a Vaedi, have called all of the secret dancing societies together to sit in judgment at the trial of Kavio . . .”
He paused to make the ponderous trip down the seven steps to the floor of the assembly room. Even so, because Kavio had been forced to his knees, the other man had to look down to glower at him.
“. . . Kavio, my own son.” Even though he’d expected it, his father’s contempt stung. “Who will cast the first stone?” asked Father.
The men and women in the tiers shuffled, whispered. Most of them removed their masks from their sweat-drenched heads, and a few went so far as to fan themselves.
A woman in amber necklaces removed an orange eagle-feathered mask before she rose to her feet. She was an elder from Father’s gen- eration, his brother’s wife and Father’s bitterest political rival. As a child, Kavio had nicknamed her “Auntie Ugly.”
“I will cast the first stone…
TO BE CONTINUED
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- by Tara Maya
7. “You never have to go back”
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| “My Secret Garden” by AlleyCatz |
Dindi
…see her play with the fae.
The swarm of whirling faery dancers moved up the mountain, without ever missing a step. Dindi moved with them, keeping up easily with their improvised patterns of skips, turns, kicks and leaps. Soon they emerged onto a patch of flat heath with a view of the whole valley below. The sky seemed to pull back to give them more room.
She spread her arms and drew in a drought of the fresh air. Then she closed her eyes and envisioned again the shinning swirls of light patterns created by the Taevaedis on Barter Day. In her mind, she recreated the role of every single dancer. What steps had each player in the pattern made? One by one, she danced each person’s role as best she could remember it. First, she played the ‘human’ parts. Then, saving and savoring them for the end, she played the Aelfae parts.But when she came to the finale, when the last Aelfae in the dance was to fall and die, she decided to change the ending. Instead, she leaped up again, spread her imaginary wings behind her and vaulted across the field in a full twisting double back leap.
The fae laughed in glee. They much preferred her new dance to the dance of the Tavaedies. Satisfied now that she had run through all the steps of all the dancers in yesterday’s dance, Dindi finally abandoned herself to free-form dancing. That delighted the fae even more.
The low hum of faerie voices, the sparkle of pixie wings and her own pounding blood wrapped Dindi in a trance of pure feeling. Movement inside her itched to spill out.
A pixie curled a small hand around Dindi’s ear, whispering, “You never have to go back, Dindi. You could dance with us forever and ever…”
Their voices hummed hypnotically, enticing her forward step by step. The lullaby lure of the faery ring shimmered all around her, a mixture of light and song. The fae clasped hands together, closing the circle about her. A chain of pixies undulated in the air, the sprites linked up, and then, in the last gap in the circle, a heron-winged kinnara soared toward the dancers to close the circle.
“Come dance with us, Dindi. Come dance with us forever…”
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“Without you” by brandrificus
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“Nice try, but I’m not yours yet!” Regret tinged her amusement, but her resolve was firm, as it always was when the fae played this game with her. Dindi somersaulted through the air with an aerobic leap that catapulted her right out of the gap. She rolled away on the moss, laughing.
“You can’t catch me in a faery ring that easily,” she teased them. The fae responded in delight.
“Again, again!” they urged her.
“My family needs me. Oh, mercy!” She clapped her hands over her face. “Soaproot and blueberries! I haven’t had time…”
A pixie waved his little scarlet arms in an expansive gesture. “Fear not, friend Dindi! We have taken care of all that…
- by Tara Maya
6. Faery Ring
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
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| “Fine tunes of magic” by Maria van Bruggen |
Dindi
… giggled. “She just can can’t express herself because she’s so overwhelmed with joy that with her chores out of the way she is now free to dance with us.”
Dindi frowned. “Are you sick, Dindi?” asked the orange. “We won’t do your chores for you anymore if you stop dancing with us,” blustered the yellow sprite.
“Soon, I might not be dancing with you anymore at all. If I fail the test to become a Tavaedi, I must stop dancing.”
The fae were stunned silent for a moment. Then they all began to shout at Dindi at once.
“Enough!” cried Dindi, making the Dispel hand-sign in earnest this time. The clouds of willawisps scattered, the pixies were flung away as if by gusts of heavy wind, and the sprites all went rolling like tumbling stones. Corn stalks were flattened around Dindi in a perfect circle three yards out.
From the perimeter of the circle of dispellation, the fae peered at her with hurt expressions.
“I’m sorry,” Dindi said. “You know I don’t want to abandon you.”
The fae crept back towards her until at last they huddled as close as before, murmuring her name.
“Uhm.” She was abashed. “Could you help me fix the corn?”
“Hurrah! She will dance with us!” squealed the purple pixie.
What harm would it do to share one more teensy weensy dance with her friends? After all, who knew when Initiation might come? She might never have another chance. She would sip one last taste of wild faerie magic. She shrugged away the basket and let Puddlepaws down in the grass. Dindi let the fae lead her into their circle.
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| “Dancing in the circle” by Maria van Bruggen |
The pixies began to fly in circles over the ruined crops. The cob- sized corn sprites whose stalks she’d knocked over joined in next. Willawisps were drawn to all the activity. They all began to twirl and shuffle and skip and jump in a ring around and around, Dindi dancing right along with them. As the corn stalks began to right themselves, the dancers changed the pattern and started to weave in and out of the stalks. Wild swirls of color trailed in the wake of all the fae dancers, strange and marvelous.
Dindi laughed with exhilaration despite herself, abandoning herself to whatever moves her body wanted to make. The corn was upright again. If anything, it was greener and more fragrant than before. Dindi slowed down, signaling the fae to stop too. They refused to take the hint. They kept whirling.
She danced alongside them, but she knew it was their magic at work. If she didn’t stop them from getting carried away, they would continue dancing and possibly start to do more damage than good. She had seen them summon storms, uproot trees, start geysers from bare rocks. It was one reason she normally only danced with them out on the heath, far past the cultivated fields. Mama had warned her never to let other humans…
TO BE CONTINUED
Author’s Notes
The artwork — isn’t it adorable? — was kindly provided by Maria van Bruggen. Do visit her deviant-Art site and say hello!
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| “Autumn cat-tackle” by Maria van Bruggen |