Delivering Yaehala

By Annie Bellet

Exiled from her people, Alila lives alone in a canyon harvesting Frankincense resin with her twin unicorns for company. When a pregnant princess on the run from assassins disrupts her quiet world, Alila chooses to help her reach the coast. Hounded by assassins and torn apart by distrust, Alila’s choice threatens to reveal her dark past and her terrible secret. If she and the princess survive their journey to safety.

“Delivering Yaehala” is a fantasy novelette by Annie Bellet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doomed Muse Press
• Release date: Mar 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476442150

Annie Bellet

Annie Bellet is the author of the Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division, The Twenty-Sided Sorceress, and the Gryphonpike Chronicles series. She holds a BA in English and a BA in Medieval Studies and thus can speak a smattering of useful languages such as Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Welsh.   Her short fiction work is available in multiple collections and anthologies. Her interests besides writing include rock climbing, reading, horse-back riding, video games, comic books, table-top RPGs and many other nerdy pursuits.  She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and a very demanding Bengal cat.

Book preview

Delivering Yaehala

A Fantasy Novelette by Annie Bellet

Copyright 2011, Annie Bellet

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

This story is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [e-mail].

Cover designed by Greg Jensen with image from © Ekaterina Sheredeko | Dreamstime.com

Electronic edition, 2011

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Delivering Yaehala

 Alila hung from the side of the cliff by one leg and one hand, her other leg stretched out and her bare foot braced against the rough trunk of the frankincense tree. The tree’s thick branches grew in gnarled tentacles out into the dry air, seeming to hover over the canyon floor a hundred feet below. Carefully, she chipped away at the frankincense resin that gathered in gashes she’d cut a fortnight before. The silvery, opaque, and fragrant nodules dropped into the sack she’d hung from pegs driven into the bark.

High above, a sand eagle wheeled, casting a narrow shadow and the wind sang a susurrus song through Alila’s hidden canyon. Her twin unicorns, Hezi and Gabi, rested in the shade of a rock outcropping, safe from the high afternoon sun. Alila tried not to look down too often to pick out their dust colored shapes. She was used to heights but that didn’t stop her from growing dizzy if she contemplated how broken her little body would be on the unyielding rocks below.

Alila wiped her forehead with her free hand, letting the chisel dangle on its leather cord. Only a few more trees to