Marlbury Mysteries: Winter Unveils Complete

By Liz Nelms

Holly Ledford, 18, and Kelsie Harland, 17, have been best friends since pre-school. Life is perfect for them and their friends in the idyllic English village of Marlbury.

Neither suspects that Marlbury has magical links and that life is about to change dramatically. Adults in the village are keeping secrets because they have been sworn to silence by the High Priestess of Avalon in return for protection.

Holly is unknowingly on a predestined path to help Avalon maintain an ancient pact between humans and the natural world. She is destined to fall in love with a man who isn’t fully human. Ultimately, Holly’s relationship leads to her best friend, Kelsie, being kidnapped by an angry Goddess. But Kelsie also has a soul mate waiting for her, and he too isn’t entirely human. Both girls have to cope with the consequences of having partners with superhuman abilities and have to come to terms with the realisation that their lives, families and the village is not what they thought it was and deal with the deception of their loved ones.

In Winter Unveils, they embark on adventures that take them through dangerous snowstorms in the Scottish Highlands, across wind-swept Welsh beaches and deep in the green of England, to the mysterious island of Avalon itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Liz Nelms
• Release date: Apr 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370104482

Liz Nelms

Liz Nelms is pleased to release her latest novel, a contemporary romance for adults, Scent of a Rose. The characters of wealthy, attractive rock star Sebastian Drake and timid, downtrodden Samantha have been stewing in her head for far too long. Liz is very happy they are now living their lives in print. An eclectic cast of eccentric English characters join Sebastian and Samantha in this tale of love, lust, faith and deceit, played out in luxury hotels in deepest Cheshire and Kensington, London. Sebastian has enjoyed a colourful past but is now keen to turn over a new leaf and leave all that behind him, he's kicked drugs and cigarettes, but it's not so easy to get rid of glamorous and clingy ex-girlfriend, Perdita. All he wants is Samantha's love and trust, but she has her own problems after having recently escaped from a controlling and manipulative mother. How can Samantha ever trust a man like Sebastian Drake? The cover artwork for Scent of a Rose was designed by the Graphic Designer and hugely talented Diane Elliott. She can be contacted at [e-mail]. Liz published her first novel with Smashwords in 2017, 'Marlbury Mysteries' is aimed at Young Adults. Prior to 2017 Liz had been attempting to write a full length novel for some time. To be truthful, for over thirty years. Needless to say after so many false starts her garage is crammed with boxes of discarded manuscripts, notebooks and at least one broken laptop. She is currently planning her third book.

Book preview

Chapter One

Later That Summer

Weeks later, on the last day of August when the sun was a glaring, gold coin on a cloudless canvas of blue, the 401 from the nearby town of Harwych heaved itself over the brow of the hill and chugged its way towards Marlbury village green, where it stopped with a squeal of unoiled brakes. The doors hissed open and several teenagers spilled out, they flopped down into an untidy sprawl across the green, thankful that they still had a few more days before having to return to book-lugging at Riverside College in September.

‘Why isn’t my hair like Emma Stone’s?’ Holly Ledford whined, throwing an arm over her face to block out the insistent brightness of the sun. They had caught a re-run movie at the neon-bright multiplex in town for about the sixth time that holiday, followed by a Boys V Girls marathon at the ten pin bowl.

‘Your hair is lovely,’ her best friend, Kelsie, replied loyally. Kelsie Harland’s parents, Phil and Brienne ran the White Swan, the only pub in the village of Marlbury, where all of them had grown up. A loud whistle resonated across the green, Kelsie turned to see her Dad standing outside the pub door with a crate of soft drinks, she waved, ‘Hi Dad!’

Cody jogged across the grass to collect the goodies, he was Kelsie’s boyfriend, although they hadn’t been seeing each other all that long. His elder brother, Jack, pulled off his t-shirt, revealing his tanned, muscular chest and shouted, ‘Look! I’ve got Ryan Gosling’s abs, woohoo!’

The others either laughed or groaned, and his sister Eaimy, the youngest of the group at sixteen muttered, ‘God, he’s so embarrassing!’

‘This is the upside to shovelling shit all day in the field.’ Jack grinned, he, Cody and Eaimy Banks lived at Banks’s Farm.

Jack stretched out and rolled closer to Natalie, his fiancé, they had been engaged since they were nineteen and were planning their wedding for next year. Natalie’s parents owned Sherry’s shop, the store which faced the green. Her younger brother, Jake, sat near Eaimy, they were in the same year at Harwych High.

Cody returned with the crate and dumped it down in the middle of the group, everyone scrambled to grab a cold can or bottle, and one of an array of rainbow-coloured bags of crisps. Someone’s parents would usually provide food when they all returned from town, sometimes it was Julie Sherry who would send across a box of fruit from the shop, or Holly’s Gran, Carole, would take out squares of lemon drizzle or chocolate cupcakes.

‘Don’t you wish you could dance across the sky like that.’ Kelsie lay back on the grass, her eyes closed, smiling.

Whilst the girls sighed wistfully, Jack shouted out, ‘No! Man, that film was so gay!’ This prompted a barrage of abuse from the females and Natalie thumped his arm,

Quickly swallowing her mouthful of Diet Coke, Holly squealed in outrage, ‘it was not! It was romantic! Hell, if Dex had behaved like Ryan...’

‘Nah, never going to happen.’ Eaimy interrupted, she hadn’t forgotten what Holly’s ex had said about them all.

‘Maybe if he looked like Ryan Gosling, he might not be dumped!’ Kelsie glanced at Holly.

‘What if he looked like Gosling, but still had Dex’s obvious personality crisis?’ Cody wondered.

They all looked at Holly, expectantly which made her laugh. ‘Seriously, no way!’ Dex had been a big mistake.

‘That guy was a freak.’ Jack confirmed, laying his head back on the grass, satisfied his friend did have some common sense.

Holly had met Dex at Photography Club at Riverside, he was fun initially, and unusually gallant for a seventeen year old, if Holly dropped a book then he always seemed to be there to pick it up or to hold a door open for her. He began to spend more time with Holly and subsequently with the whole group, joining them when they met up to go to the cinema or bowling. Holly had liked having someone to call on at weekends when she had more free time, although she thought she had made it clear to him that during the week she was busy. After the college day ended she liked to have the freedom to go home to Brookhill House. Holly loved her home, not least because it stood in a small, wooded valley at the other end of the village, close to Marlbury Forest. Being so close to nature meant that she could go to sketch or paint in the woods whenever she liked. The double bonus was that in the evenings it was a short walk up the hill to the village and the White Swan where she hung out with Kelsie, Jack, Natalie and the others.

Then one Wednesday night, Dex had turned up at the pub when Holly and her friends were having a pool tournament. His Mother had put him on her insurance for her car and he had driven to Marlbury to tell Holly and to invite her out for a ride. Holly had to explain that she couldn’t just up and leave, as she was hosting the quiz night later with Kelsie, as they always did on a Wednesday.

However, he had become sulky straight away, ‘Surely Kelsie can manage on her own.’ He’d thrown at her, in front of everyone, which was really embarrassing.

‘We have always run the quiz together,’ she said, flatly. Not liking this different side of him at all.

‘Sounds like I’m dumped,’ he huffed. If that wasn’t a ridiculous enough thing to say, he followed it up with a low insult: ‘Not like you’re the best thing around here anyway.’ Then he had lasciviously glanced towards the bar where Lysa Benshaw, a farmer’s daughter who favoured fuschia pink lipstick, was serving.

‘To be honest, it isn’t a serious thing, is it?’ Holly had thrown back, part in anger and part in frustration at his petulance.

‘Fine,’ surprise flickering briefly across his face. ‘Looks like we’re done.’ Dex had turned and stalked to the bar.

Holly hoped he would go home, but she was disappointed. Dex loitered around the bar all evening, ordering one beer after another, joining in with the pool, and tagging onto Jack and Natalie’s quiz team. Later, he ordered shots and began to slur, his voice rising above the low hubbub; he leered at Lysa Benshaw, not noticing that she was stone-faced at his antics. In a relatively quiet place like Marlbury, a drunk soon stood out, especially when that drunk was a stranger. Just after last orders, he made a grab for Lysa across the bar, she screamed and in no time Phil, and Lysa’s Dad, burly Bill Benshaw, who had seen enough anyway, had bundled him out of the door. In his drunken rage, Dex spat and swore at them to let him go and went on to call the entire village a bunch of six-fingered in-breds, amongst other profanities. Holly found out from Kelsie afterwards that PC Brereton had taken Dex back to town with a sound verbal warning ringing in his ears.

After that night, Holly had a pricking feeling that Dex would be difficult to shake off, but he kept his distance at college and he quit the photography club. Whether he had texted her or not, she didn’t know, because as luck would have it the next day her Dad had presented her with a new, shiny smartphone. Although the gift was part guilt as he’d just signed up to tour his book Global Warming: The Truth around the Far East which meant he wouldn’t be home over Christmas, and as usual, Mum would go with him to make sure his shirts were ironed.

* * *

Autumn

Eventually, the summer had to end and college restarted, the weeks rolled into October, and for Holly, all thoughts of boyfriends disappeared as she threw herself into working on her portfolio, a study of local flora and fauna, for the annual Riverside College students’ exhibition in January.

Storms battered England throughout the Autumn months, each weekend, the endless rain prevented Holly from escaping to Marlbury Forest to seek out new trees to paint - copying them from the internet just wasn’t the same.

Eventually, just as Holly despaired of ever having a dry weekend, a balmy breeze picked up from the south and she spent every spare hour she had up in the woods with her canvasses and pencils, making the most of the unseasonal weather. Totally unaware that her life and everything she thought she knew about the world was about to change.

Chapter Two

Samhain

(All Hallows’ Eve)

Under a shelf on the wind-whipped, north face of Ben Cruachan, an oblong boulder rested, its colour was the same bluish-grey as the seals that bathed in the sea in the middle distance. At midnight just as the day of Samhain began, an Arctic wind keened across the mountain, it froze the moisture on the boulder to an icy rime.

Before barely a minute had passed into the new day, the rock swelled into a crouched, hunched shape; a creature, that was vaguely and grotesquely… human.

Its leathery skin, an unnatural blue, stretched across its curved spine like the dried out hide of an animal. Its haggard face was carved with lines as deep as the crevices of the mountain itself and sparse grey hair tufted from its scalp. It grimaced, revealing blackened teeth.

Lifting its head slowly, its eye-slits suddenly opened, sending out two beams of blinding, bright, white light, spilling over the rough-hewn stones, seeking something vital, something the creature needed. Under the sharp, spiked prongs of a gorse bush, it glimpsed a staff of blackthorn, a source of power, only a few, agonising steps away. Groaning with effort, it pulled more air into its gurgling lungs and forced its stiff limbs to shuffle forwards. More than once it fell down against the unforgiving ground, but every time it pushed itself up again, inching ever nearer to what it knew it needed to survive. A reedy, thin arm stretched as far as it could, scraping across the scree, just missing the long spines of the gorse, its blackened finger tips finally making contact with the magical staff.

The air crackled as the staff began to pulsate, it had found its purpose once more, its new owner was reborn. It was about to live again too. The hideous being, taking strength from the staff through the tips of its fingers absorbed enough energy to grasp it and wrench it closer.

An aura of dense blue mist descended around the warped body and with a creak of joints, it rose, unsteadily to its calloused feet with the staff clasped in one bony hand. The dark swathes clung around its shrunken form, gradually moulding and shaping itself into a deep blue-grey robe covered by a shrouded cloak of inkiest purple.

Dawn was yet to break and already she was much changed from the bent and black-toothed crone of midnight. She raised her body to full stretch, lifting her face and her staff to the clouds, beckoning the Arctic winds to blow harder, to frost the peaks with snow. Her robes fell away as the first snowflakes gently swirled down, sticking to her strange blue skin, and as the ice crystals melted, the blue leached from each skin cell, leaving her body as smooth and as white as the snow itself.

Shards of ice landed in her eyes and when she blinked them away with her long, white lashes, her irises sparkled, cobalt blue. With a long, perfectly sculpted arm she twirled her staff and drew down more snowflakes, they coiled along her new, beautiful, young body and formed a silky, shimmering gown of a thousand diamonds, that swept the ground.

This was the rising of the Bringer of Winter, the Creator and the Destroyer. She was a different name to different people; to the Angles she was the Black Annis, to the Celtic Welsh she was Cerridwen and to the Ancient Scots and the Irish she was known as the Cailleach.

In the morning when the Highland villagers woke they would look up to see that the tops of their grey mountains had been dusted prettily with white overnight. And those who were wiser, older and who did not forget, sang to their laughing grandchildren, the Cailleach Bheur is awake, she will bring Winter and we shall have snow.’

* * *

November

The village of Cruillch was one of many that nestled at the skirts of Ben Cruachan, not far from the soft lapping shores of Loch Etive. Even in early Winter, the local pub, the Etive Inn, was full of locals and tourists due to it being the only hostelry and as in many other small communities, it was the centre of village life. In the long low lounge, a log fire spat and crackled in the inglenook and in one corner, unnoticed by most, old Jed nursed a good drop of ale while his black and white sheepdog slept at his feet. The bar was formed from a smooth slab of polished oak, and Frazer, the landlord, was lining up drams upon it, the honeyed glow from each glass shimmering in the soft light.

Around the bar stood a group of young Americans, in thick cream Cashmere and Italian leather shoes, each laughing and cracking jokes. Frazer did little more than attend to them when they hailed for more drinks, his wife, Keeley, was better at the schmoozing; he was as taciturn as his father had been before him, the pub having been in the MacLeod family for generations. However, these men had all the rooms booked out upstairs and were tipping well, his wife had told him before opening time. So, he did his best not to grimace at their loudness.

As the drink flowed and the young men worked their way through the bar’s selection of finest single malts, the conversation turned to the main reason for their visit. They wanted to climb up to the peak of Ben Cruachan.

Tomorrow.

At this Frazer’s head turned towards them, as did the head of every other local at the bar. The tallest American, Renny, with shoulders like an Olympic swimmer, confirmed what they all thought he had said.

‘We’ll go straight after breakfast.’

The others grinned and raised their glasses in agreement and another, Chad, who had thick, brown hair opined, ‘we’ll easily be back down before dark.’

Frazer had to speak. ‘You’ve seen the weather for tomorrow, have you not?’

Renny met his eyes. ‘We checked earlier yeah, a little snow, nothing like we haven’t seen before.’

Frazer nodded once grimly. ‘Aye, it’ll be a little snow here right enough. Up there it’ll be treacherous. I would’nae advise going.’

The Americans smiled and the third, Dan, laughed out loud. ‘Sure landlord, thanks for the concern but we’re very experienced.’

‘We’ve hiked all over Canada, man. Much bigger mountains than that dude out there.’ Renny, confidently remarked in the manner of a man used to relaying his own tales.

Frazer winced inwardly at Ben Cruachan being referred to as a dude. He was saved having to be rude to his guests when Gav, an experienced mountain hiker himself shouted from down the other end of the bar, ‘Mountain rescue wouldn’t be able to rescue you in such a storm. You’d be foolish to go up there!’

‘Guys, really, chill! We know what we’re doing! We’ve got all the best gear,’ Renny grinned, tipping his whisky back in one shot.

‘Yeah, we climbed Logan last year,’ chimed in Dan.

The bar retreated into silence for a few seconds. Then a wheezy, raspy voice spoke up from the fireside, old Jed, who despite his advancing years had heard every word.

‘If the freeze don’t get yuh, she will soon enough,’ from under his musty cap he peered out at them through rheumy eyes.

‘Who will?’ Renny asked half-heartedly, not really interested in anything the old man had to say.

‘She’ll get yuh, the Witch up there, I’ve seen her.’

A howl of laughter broke out amongst the young men. One of them laughed so hard, he began to cough and another slapped him heartily on the back.

‘Well old man, when did you last get yourself up that mountain,’ jeered Renny.

‘Witches, hell man that’s awesome’, Dan exclaimed.

‘Hey bros! This is why we love Scotland,’ Chad slammed his empty