Tonight or Else

By M. King

Every Cornishman comes into the world with the soul-deep knowledge that his land straddles the narrow shallows between the solid rocks of English practicality and the ocean of myth that lies beyond. Jamie Tregellis has no time for old men’s tales; working at The Lamb Inn keeps him too busy even to pine for his lost love, Will Andrewartha, who’d split Jamie’s heart in two when he left to become a sailor. Will promised to come back for him, but Jamie had long since given up hope – until one night he hears a noise in the stableyard….

A Bittersweet Dreams title: It's an unfortunate truth: love doesn't always conquer all. Regardless of its strength, sometimes fate intervenes, tragedy strikes, or forces conspire against it. These stories of romance do not offer a traditional happy ending, but the strong and enduring love will still touch your heart and maybe move you to tears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Aug 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781613720738

Book preview

Tonight or Else

STORIES are important. All things have a natural balance, a weight and a counterweight, and the expectation of an ending once something has been begun.

Jamie Tregellis believed that, right down in the pit of his soul.

Working at The Lamb Inn, as he’d done since a boy, he knew all the stories. Every night, the local banter washed over him and taught him more of the old words that bound the land together. There wasn’t a song, a joke, or tale across the whole of the Lizard Peninsula he’d not heard, from the story of Cruel Coppinger the Wrecker to the plight of Madgy Figgy, the witch of St. Levan. Some nights they even had men in who swore blind they’d seen the fabled Mermaid of Zennor, and for all Jamie knew, they might well have done. Every Cornishman came into the world with the soul-deep knowledge that this land straddled a narrow stretch of shallows between the solid rocks of English practicality and the ocean of myth that lay beyond it.

The old men who sat at the bar until the last minute when the landlord called time still spoke of the little people of Cornish legend; of the knockers—the spirits of the mines who brought rocks down on the heads of those who displeased them, of the water wraiths who lay waiting in streams and pools—and of the bucca dhu, the black imps who played changeling tricks with hearts and souls.

Of course, those same men were the ones who clung to their beer like babies to teats rather than go home to face their wives, and Jamie heard plenty of those tales as well. He knew when a man had caught trouble from his missus, or had his boss breathing fire down his neck. Gossip, prattle, scandal, and fable all came clear over a jug of ale, and all reached Jamie’s ear as he cleaned the floor, stoked the fire, pulled the pints, and generally kept good the house ’til his master gave him leave to