The Beast And The God-Woman

By Michael Kingswood

The people live on the island, and the gods protect it.  

The Beast waits on the beach, eager to ensnare the unwary.

When outsiders come and disrupt that balance, Yili must find a way to protect his family, and his village, from the consequences.

But sometimes, the greatest terrors come from within.

The Beast And The God-Woman is a 16,500 word novelette, 62 printed pages in length.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SSN Storytelling
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781513014944

Michael Kingswood

Michael Kingswood has written numerous science fiction and fantasy stories, including The Pericles Conspiracy, The Glimmer Vale Chronicles, and the Dawn of Enlightenment series. His interest in scifi/fantasy came at an early age: he first saw Star Wars in the theater when he was three and grew up on Star Trek in syndication. The Hobbit was among the first books he recalls reading. Recognizing with sadness that the odds of his making it into outer space were relatively slim, after completing his bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University, he did the next best thing - he entered the US Navy as a submarine officer. Almost seventeen years later, he continues to serve on active duty and has earned graduation degrees in Engineering Management and Business Administration. Fitting with his service onboard Fast Attack submarines (SSNs), he does his writing on Saturdays, Sundays, and at Night. He is married to a lovely lady from Maine. They have four children, and live wherever the Navy deems to send them. Sign up to receive email announcements of Michael's new releases and other exclusive deals for newsletter subscribers here: http://eepurl.com/eND22 .

Book preview

The Beast and the God-Woman

The Beast and the God-Woman

Michael Kingswood

SSN Storytelling

Contents

About This Book

The Beast And The God-Woman

Mailing List

About The Author

More Books By Michael Kingswood

About This Book

The people live on the island, and the gods protect it.

---

The Beast waits on the beach, eager to ensnare the unwary.

---

When outsiders come and disrupt that balance, Yili must find a way to protect his family, and his village, from the consequences.

---

But sometimes, the greatest terrors come from within.

Enjoy the book! After you’re done, please come to Michael’s website and sign up for his mailing list. Guaranteed to be spam free, he uses it to announce new releases and special promotions for his fans.

The Beast And The God-Woman

The beach stretched forth as far as the eye could see, a blazing strip of white sand that returned the sun’s touch with a fire of its own as though daring the sun to burn hotter. Small crabs, barely larger than a thumbnail, dug their way up from beneath the scorching sand and poked their claws out, tentatively testing the air before scurrying down to the water’s edge. Many never made it there, instead getting snatched up by seagulls that winged overhead, watching the sand and waves for prey with sharp eyes and making their calls to each other in an avian symphony.

A strong offshore breeze made the palm trees lining the beach sway, their long green leaves rubbing against each other like lovers caught in a passionate embrace. The same breeze drove rolling waves that collapsed over hidden breakers well over a hundred paces from the beach, leaving only small ripples to lap ashore and cool the few grains of sand lucky enough to be within their reach.

In the nearly still water, colorful fish danced around coral beds and through forests of swaying seaweed, content and sheltered from harm in their gentle lagoon. Or so the fish thought, but the breakers that created such peaceful conditions for them also allowed the gulls easy view of their prey in the water. On occasion, one of them would plunge toward the water instead of the sand and emerge with a fish that happened to swim too near the surface held in its talons. Crying out in triumph, it would bring its meal to the sand and consume it there for all to see.

Yili liked it when they did that because gulls were easier to take on the ground than in the air. He would crouch under the palm trees at beach’s end and watch with a stone loaded into the cup of his sling, and when a gull landed unawares within his range he would whip the sling around his head, casting the stone at the bird and taking it before it knew danger was lurking nearby. Then he would dart onto the sand, his bare feet long since calloused against the sand’s fire, grab the bird, and retreat back to the cover of the vegetation.

He often felt the call of the sun in those brief excursions onto the strip of fire, and felt the desire deep in his bones to stay and lay himself down, nude save for his loincloth made from the hide of a boar, on the burning sand and wait for the Sun God to take him away to paradise. But he dared not remain on that beach too long; that way lay danger, a danger that threatened to take him away from the Sun God’s protection and drag him screaming into the darkness, where torments beyond imagination waited for those unwary or unlucky enough to be caught.

He had never seen it happen, but the elders assured him it was so. And Yili had learned long ago the elders were wise, far wiser than he. They knew these things.

Sitting beneath the palms that day, Yili watched the gulls and thought of Jola, dead two years now. He had scoffed at the elders’ teachings, proclaimed that it was the people’s birthright to dance under the sun. Worse, to ride upon the waves, to see what lay beyond the breakers.

Madness. Nothing lay past the breakers. Nothing that could serve the people, in any account. And if it could not be of use, what good was it, even if it was there? No, better to not think about such things. So the elders said. And after what happened to Jola, Yili knew it for truth.

The memory of his brother’s corpse, burnt, twisted, and broken, what was left of his mouth locked open into a soundless howl of agony and his eyes wide from the horror of his final moments, still haunted Yili. Jola had been a good man. A kind brother, a dutiful son to their mother, a loving husband. It grieved Yili that his brother had not lived to see his twin sons born.