The Taking Year: The Giving Year Cycle, #1

By Alexandra Brandt

On Gull Island in the cold North, Eithni awaits Winter Solstice with pride, resentment, and fear. All signs point to a Taking year. And Eithni, chosen to enter the chamber of the gods, prepares to leave her human community forever.

 

On the other side of the Stone Door, Sable stands guard in anticipation of a successful solstice, when the veil between worlds will lift...and when her liege, a lightlord of the fey, will claim the human woman who willingly steps across into the Summer realm.

 

But everything changes when Eithni breaks the rules.

Everything changes when Sable hears a voice from the stone.

 

A fantasy love story set among the Picts in Early Medieval Scotland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tangled Sky Press
• Release date: Dec 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386114758

Book preview

The Taking Year

THE TAKING YEAR

THE GIVING YEAR CYCLE

BOOK 1

ALEXANDRA BRANDT

Tangled Sky Press

CONTENTS

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Sable

Eithni

Hindkin and Huntress

Also by Alexandra Brandt

About the Author

EITHNI

This would be a Taking year.

It had been a long time—decades—since the last one. But this year, there had been signs. The timing was right. The wise women and the Head of the Gull Clan—and, most importantly, the clan gossips—all agreed on this.

The whispers followed Eithni everywhere she walked.

Especially now, as the days reached their darkest, as the frost daily made glittering shards of the brown grass along the paths. Already the long, deep nights had told Eithni she didn’t have long.

Because, as much as she wanted to shut them out, she believed the whispers.

This would be a Taking year, and Eithni would be the one Taken.

She walked now in the dark, placing one foot in front of the other on the path she refused to fear. It was slow and careful going, hindered as she was by the thick layers of wool and fur-lined hide wrapped around her feet and body. All she could hear was the crunch of the grass beneath her and the sound of her own breathing inside the cloth around her face. The air was sharp, prickling the inside of her exposed nose.

The horizon before Eithni slowly began to lighten as she walked, black to dark blue to green, but overhead the brightest of the stars still burned, cold and clear. Too cold for snow.

The wise women predicted equally clear skies seven mornings from now, when the Light would come.

Perfect conditions. A perfect candidate. All signs pointed to success.

And a successful Taking, when the gods would welcome the human supplicant into their realm, would be followed by a year of Giving. Such things were long overdue on Gull Island. As the old hens had been saying for half a year now, hardly caring whether Eithni was in earshot or not. Even knowing this was her year to welcome the Light. Her year to step into the chamber of the gods…and offer herself up to them.

Did the old hens think that Eithni, too, would long for a Taking year? That she would welcome it with open arms?

Inside the wrapped hide and furs, Eithni’s fists clenched. It was a long, cold walk from her home, from the clan settlement. Alone in the semidarkness, she had no distractions from her own troubled mind. Nothing outside of careful footing and tumultuous thoughts.

Anyone in her situation would view the Solstice with some fear. It was to be expected. Even other years, when signs of the gods’ attention were nonexistent, the young woman or man chosen to bring in the Light of the coming year would still feel a tremble of anxiety the night before.

In those other years, the chosen youths returned, a little disappointed that they had not found favor with the gods, yes—but even more relieved. Eithni knew, because she had aided and observed the last three, knowing that it was likely she would be chosen for the ceremony soon.

But in those days, she hadn’t thought her year would be any different from any other.

She wasn’t even sure if this year was different because she had been chosen...

Or if she had been chosen after the Wise Women knew it was a Taking year. If she had been chosen because it was different.

No one would tell her which was true.

But oh, it mattered.

Yes, that was the hard, cold point at the heart of the storm inside her head. The one thought Eithni couldn’t shake loose. Even more powerful than the fear of the Solstice and the dawn of the new year.

Did her own people want her gone?

Tradition dictated, of course, that the Solstice Ceremony would always be performed by the clan’s best and brightest of youths, in hopes that they would please the gods.

Common wisdom knew the gods favored supplicants talented in the arts, or skilled in craft, or simply the most beautiful to behold.

Eithni could not argue against her suitability on those counts. Gull Clan men and women were frequently blessed with fair faces and forms, with glossy dark hair and fine, fair skin, and eyes of blue or green or gray—or all three colors together, as in Eithni’s own case. And in anticipation of pleasing the gods, all Gull children were trained early on in music and storytelling, crafting and artistry.

Eithni’s own talent, stone carving, was unusual enough to be notable. And, perhaps, unusual enough to be the reason she was singled out this year.

Or one of several reasons.

The gods favored the unique, the different. So the wise women might argue, if she ever dared to ask them. But beneath that question would be another: am I too different to ever comfortably belong to the clan? Is that why you chose me for a Taking year?

Did Eithni really want to know the answer?

She shivered and pulled the furs tighter around herself. Ultimately, the answer didn’t matter.

What mattered was this: