The Mighty Mountain of Theornin

By DeAnna Knippling

Astra knows what she’s good at: thieving, tricking, and hitting people with rocks. Especially the mayor’s bullying son, after he makes fun of her. She also knows what she’s not good at: being a girl. Not the kind of girl that lives in the tiny mountain village of Theornin, anyway.

So logically that means making Wizard Jorphen change her into a boy.

But the mayor’s already pushing Wizard Jorphen around to do something else: stopping a mountain from growing under the village and pushing everyone out. Except the only way to stop a mountain from growing might kill Astra’s only friend.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wonderland Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533760432

DeAnna Knippling

DeAnna Knippling is a freelance writer, editor, and book designer living in Colorado.  She started out as a farm girl in the middle of South Dakota, went to school in Vermillion, SD, then gravitated through Iowa to Colorado, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She now writes science fiction, fantasy, horror, crime, and mystery for adults under her own name; adventurous and weird fiction for middle-grade (8-12 year old) kids under the pseudonym De Kenyon; and various thriller and suspense fiction for her ghostwriting clients under various and non-disclosable names. Her latest book, Alice’s Adventures in Underland:  The Queen of Stilled Hearts, combines two of her favorite topics–zombies and Lewis Carroll. Her short fiction has appeared in Black Static, Penumbra, Crossed Genres, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and more. Her website and blog are at www.WonderlandPress.com.  You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Copyright Information

Copyright © 2012 by De Kenyon

Cover art © by Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

Cover design © DeAnna Knippling

Published by Wonderland Press

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The Mighty Mountain of Theornin

Now, what I want you to do is spell them off. Or just keep them from getting bigger. Astra held her breath. Didn’t matter how good a plan was, if some adult didn’t approve of it.

Sure enough, Wizard Jorphen said, No.

She slammed her fist on the heavy, black-wood table, which made the dishes rattle but didn’t move the table one bit. He was looking up at her all steady and serious. His dirty, dark blue robe sparkled with stars; as she looked, she thought she saw one twinkle and slide over the skinny bone at the top of his shoulder. He had big blue eyes and yellow hair and a fake beard that was coming loose again.

Then make me a boy so I can grow up to be a man, and they can all quit bothering me. I don’t want to learn how to cook or clean up after people. I don’t want to go out in the fields and dig and hoe and pull weeds and get the sun in my eyes and the bugs in my throat. I want to go to Newmarket and steal for a living. Why don’t anybody believe me when I say I’ll send money back?

No, he said.

She hit the table again, but this time the whole house shook around them, and she had to grab the table to stay steady. They’d been having a lot of earthquakes lately, the first ever in