Queen of Diamonds: The Tale of El'Anret, #1

By Melody Klink

There are some days in life that change the way you are, forever. That One Day Where All Things Are Undone. For Hazel Leigh Mac Tíre, that day was the day she found the mound in her backyard. It began as small as a mole’s hill, growing and growing as the hours ticked by, until a hole that spanned three feet wide sat against an open mouth of dirt. 

The stories always warned to stay away from Faerie mounds. Leigh did not always listen. 

What waited inside? A sadistic, renegade Queen with a stolen crown. A tortured Prince. An entire Faerie world in need of saving. And, thanks to the Fae fires that marked her, Leigh was their new and rightful Queen. She must separate fact and fairy tale in order to survive the realm of El'Anret. Can she save a world she wasn't made for?

QUEEN OF DIAMONDS is the first novella in the TALES OF EL'ANRET trilogy, the newest series by Young Adult author Melody Klink.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bard Girl Press
• Release date: Sep 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536571868

Melody Klink

While pretending to be a human, Melody Klink likes to write down words. Lots and lots of them. All to gain the admiration and trust of the human masses. Wait. I mean… Melody Klink is a lovable little scamp with a sweet tooth for all things coffee. When she's not collecting superstitions about the American South, she can be found scribbling out stories on just about anything, which explains her odd assortment of used napkins, pictures of skin, and copious number of notebooks. While her first foray into publishing was Bad Mood Boogaloo, a picture book for toddlers, she also enjoys writing novels, and has several titles in the works. Her debut novel, Godeater: The Second World, released on February 29th, 2016. She currently resides in the Mid-South with her husband, daughters, and one annoying cat.

Book preview

There’s a long dark road

With a deep dark hole

That the hazel-eyed girl crawled in

It twisted and turned

And the flames bright burned

That singed right to her skin

One

THE SUNLIGHT SHONE between black oak boughs, sprinkling nodes of light onto Hazel Leigh Mac Tíre’s stark white paper, illuminating the words that described last night’s dream.

Glittering eyes. Lavender. Darkness.

She never knew why dreams didn’t come to her. Ever since she was a little girl, she had been envious of her friends, who dreamed with such fervor that they thought their visions would come true. As far as Leigh knew, none of them had; they lived in a small Mississippi town, and it wasn’t exactly the City of Dreams. Most people who were born here, died here, mulling away at their father’s profession, who also worked for his father, just like his father before him.

And Leigh was just fine with that. She spent her weekends working on her father’s farm, knowing that someday, she would take over. With her high school graduation just months away, it wouldn’t be long before the farm life became her full-time life. 

She shaded in a simple drawing of herself in the margins: shoulder-length chestnut brown hair, a wide nose that still came to a sloping point, smiling lips, and hazel eyes, all drawn about a heart-shaped face. Beside that, she drew a stray line, then another, straining to remember the beast in the darkness.

Frustrated, she whipped up a massive question mark.

Leigh! A tiny voice called in singsong from across the backyard, breaking her daze, come play Monsters and Kings with me!

A little boy toddled up to where she was perched on the two-seater rocking chair, and in his chubby fingers he held a crown and paper mask. The mask had green skin, big, yellow eyes, and a roaring mouth full of crooked teeth with two long tusks at either side. The crown was silver, with large plastic sapphires adorning each of three points.

A smile chased away her furrowed brows and frown. Sure, Ade, but this time, I get to be the Queen!

Leigh donned the crown and chased her masked brother into the setting sun. Around and around they went, the Queen barely keeping up with the monster. As she closed in on him, snatching him high into the air, a rumble shook the earth so fiercely that they both toppled to the ground.

The doors to their shed clattered open. Each window along the back of their house wobbled, threatening to break under the pressure. Doors all about the house creaked and sighed, forced from their locks. Leigh held her brother close, pressing him against her chest as the world shuddered.

And in another moment, it was done, leaving everything ajar and askew but nothing changed.

Ade clung to his sister as she strove to stand. His mask fell to the ground, warped and torn. Leigh’s crown stayed atop her head, untouched.

It’s okay, bub, she cooed to him, wiping away stray tears that ran through dirt tracks along his face, it’s all right now. She couldn’t explain to her little brother what had just happened when he looked to her with searching blue eyes.

But she had a hunch.

THE NEWSCAST HAD INTERRUPTED the twangy voice of Randy Travis to recount the strangest story of the morning: And he simply disappeared, the newscaster repeated incredulously.

That’s right, Tina, and no one has seen Jonathan Hines since yesterday evening. Police are still searching the area of the supposed cave-in, where two eye-witnesses— female classmates of his, Jennifer Weiss and Courtney Jones— say the ground just opened up and swallowed him, before closing again. Officers on the case doubt these claims—

Leigh flipped the radio off, focusing on navigating the narrow road that led to her high school. Jonathan. She had known him since the sixth grade, when he and his family moved into town and started a farm that rivaled Mac Tíre’s. Over market meetings and deliveries, their dads became friends, her father eventually becoming business partners with Mr. Hines. Now, they worked in tandem, and Leigh had spent many Saturdays prepping eggs for sale and milking cows with the boy.

The news reporters apparently hadn’t believed in the folklore of the Sidhe, or the creatures that lived within. Every person in the South was superstitious, though. Even if they vehemently denied it in conversation, they’d still sneak black eyed peas, greens and ham on New Year’s Day, knock on wood, and avoid splitting poles with people they loved. They’d whisper rhymes about Faeries and rain and lucky pennies under their breath. They didn’t have to believe it out loud to be wary of it.

And cave-ins were not unheard of. Then again, they never closed on their own. History was speckled with tales of open mounds, luring curious victims to the land of the Faerie—to their deaths.

The Fair Folk aren’t always fair, Leigh thought idly. She knew that truth from the stories that had followed her ancestors across the ocean. Rhymes and bedtime stories relied on the truth behind fairytales.

Not all mounds are Fae barrows, like not all crows are ravens.

But all ravens are crows, and sometimes, things don’t belie their natures.

Leigh pulled into the student parking lot, letting the engine idle as glittering eyes ran through her consciousness once again, chasing away thoughts of Jonathan and the mound.

It was going to be a long day.

LEIGH HAD JUST PULLED into the long driveway leading to her house when it began. The earth shook under her tires, rattling everything not firmly rooted to the ground. Grabbing her backpack, she raced for the backyard, where the loudest noises originated.

That’s when she saw it.

It began as small as a mole’s hill, growing and growing as the seconds ticked by, until a hole that spanned three feet wide sat against an open mouth of dirt.

She had heard the rhyme all her life: If a mole’s hill grows, stay away; for it is a gateway to the land of Fae. Magic and revelry may beckon, but fire awaits without resurrection.

Fire. She had seen no flames—just the mound, its cavernous maw dark and silent. One peek in. For safety’s sake, she told herself. For Ade’s sake, in case it was something else entirely.

Something more dangerous.

On her knees, she crawled forth, peering into the darkness below the lip of earth. The setting sun did not reach the bottom of the hole, its hazy beams of light only streaking across part of the far wall, losing itself to darkness a few feet down.

One breath, then another. Suddenly, the smell of sweet and exotic spices assaulted her, lingering all about her as though she were in the kitchen of royalty. Music crept up the walls of the hole— flutes and bagpipes, drums upon drums upon drums, layers of music so beautiful that newly-sprung tears fell to their deaths at the mercy of the mound. Alarms sounded in her ears—every warning she had ever heard about the Fae and other creatures of the magical persuasion.

Run! She yelled aloud to herself, once and again. Before she could pull back, it was too late. Down, down, down she fell. 

Darkness on Earth knew nothing of its cousin here. The pitch black about her seemed to move, writhing along with her flailing movements, filling the spaces between her body and the dirt walls. Her screams did nothing to interrupt the music that played, its volume steadily raising as she plummeted.

Orange light raced towards her, flickering and moving as if it were fire.

Leigh’s eyes widened. Fire.

Beneath her, massive rings of fire surged, the flames licking over every inch of the hole’s width. Each of the rings spun around, hooping about one another as they covered the opening, waiting to swallow anyone—or anything—foolhardy enough to tempt them.

This is it, she thought to herself, this is the end of the poem...

This is where mortals die.

As the flames met her body, the pain was like nothing she had ever felt before. Each ring of fire claimed her skin for its own. She could feel lines of seared skin welt up along her arms, the skin itching and burning and blistering. She screamed, her breath making the flames rise even higher. Waiting for her hair to catch fire, waiting for the inevitable, she pinched her eyes shut against the smoke that wafted from her body.

And then it was over.

The pain that had overthrown her senses was dying down. Her hair and clothing were intact—not even singed, though they were covered in soot and ash. She ran her fingers along her entire body the best she could while tumbling, feeling only welted, scarred skin on the back of each arm. Four lines met together on each tricep, creating two square shapes.

She was alive. Alive. Mortals weren’t supposed to live through the fire. What did it mean? 

The music continued through her thoughts, her questions, her panic. But as she got closer to the source of the sound, it changed.

A steady thump thump kept time as a smooth, electronic buzz came through, like music made on a Tesla coil. Another faint line of notes overlapped the two, creating a melody that was so enchanting, Leigh couldn’t resist. Her head dipped, bobbing in time to the trance music, her eyes closed and heart racing. As her descent slowed, lights began to shine upwards through the dirt tunnel, and the murmurs of a hundred voices followed.

She landed on her feet, delicately as a petal on the wind, and opening her eyes, she took in her surroundings.

Without a pause, the music blaring from an unknown source changed, a quick House beat erasing the memories of anything before her arrival. The music of the soiree throbbed in her veins, ethereal beats layered like techno magic. Throngs of bodies bounced to the beat—boys with horns, girls covered in pearls and glittering scales, buffalo men and winged pixies that hid sharpened fangs behind gorgeously painted lips, surprising Hazel when they grinned at her from across the dirt dance floor.

Ahead sat a massive crystalline throne. Red, green, blue—all colors pulsed through the quartz, the sharpened edges refracting the lights like a disco ball. A girl draped across the seat, her shoulders on one arm, her legs dangling over the other. Clad all in black against pale skin, she was striking: a Triquetra was buzzed into one side of shaved hair while a long tuft of lavender hair hung down her face on the opposite side. Rings ran the length of her slender, pointed ears,