The Magic of the North: The Neverwoods Serial: Neverwoods, #1

By K.D. Ritchie

The Neverwoods rules all… 

Wren never wished to go to Porttown, a place forgotten in the north near a deadly sea. But after an unexpected move, the aspiring alchemist begins to see elements within Porttown long hidden. But forbidden magic, mysterious deaths, and rumors of the malevolent Old Wendy echo something far darker. Can she sift through the superstitions before what lies in the Neverwoods overtakes them all?

The Neverwoods Serial is a young-adult, magical-realism, steampunk-flavored story. Get yours today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.D. Ritchie
• Release date: Jul 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386010968

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The Liar’s Tales

by

KD Ritchie

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either productions of the author's imagination or fictitiously.

Copyright © 2018 KD Ritchie - All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,or otherwise without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by: Twelve O’clock Publishing

ASIN: B07FCCNTBB

Printed in the United States of America

Published in USA

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

DraCat’s Quill

3906 Hamfrill Lane

The Unwelcome Ones

A Map of the Past

What Lies Overhead

Marked Child

Smoke Stirs

The Whos-Who of Hamfrill

The Secret Beneath Them

The Neighbor No One Wanted

Twins of the Townhouse

The Ones in the Woods

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3906 Hamfrill Lane

Wren - Glenbaine, Packing Every Possession She Owns

Wren Gillows lived sixteen years without unraveling the truth of the murders in Porttown. It was a place rarely mentioned besides being that little nowhere up north. The one where alchemy, which no one in the south ever believed in it at all, was forbidden. Perhaps there were others who dabbled, melting down coins in copper pots and getting scolded by their mothers. But Wren never knew anyone who dug for veins of ore in parks. Nor a peer who broke forks to recast them. And she alone relished the chemistry lessons at school as if she’d been given a piece of cake.

You’d never do that in the north, her mother said, and would raise an eyebrow at the books covered in metal shavings. But you’re cast from them, and never forget it.

Wren had never been to where her mother grew up, and where an estranged grandmother lived. Mentioning it turned Hannah Gillows pale as oats to speak upon it. And for most of her life, the Gillows had enough money to keep away from a place so dull no even cared to give it a proper name. But Porttown's name fit like a tailored sleeve, because for a long time nothing about it was noteworthy. It lacked warmth in the people rumored to have gone as cold as their casting molds. No matter who went there, everyone agreed they'd prefer not to go back. Gone was the charm of decades past, all the beauty was peeled, scrapped, and shipped across all of Amberjack. What remained was told to be a carcass of ironworks and goldsmithing, echos of what once stood. A single step onto the only lane drained curiosity out of even the most inquisitive of people.

Save for Wren, who on hearing of Porttown’s desolation wound up more curious than ever of what a land of fallen smithing and alchemy had become.

It’s nothing but broken ports without ships, and people noisier than raccoons in garbage cans, her mother said. And it’s nothing but a miserable drive.

What about the airships? Wren once asked on a drowsy afternoon, watching one pass by their soot-covered window to the city beyond. Can’t we take one to go see it?

The winds tear them apart past Witch’s Peak, her mother said, her tone a little curt. And the trains can’t get through the mountainside from the rock slides on tracks. Besides, they’d find out what you are about and lock you up until you were gray haired.

The fever of curiosity waned in Wren listening to others lament the horrors of the north. But like everywhere else where grass grew, the underbelly of Porttown was seedy as any of the markets past midnight in Glenbain.

And fertile with secrets.

Anything worth uncovering lay in the woods and in the sea in the north. Both were ventured in centuries past and left alone lest you never wanted to return home for a warm meal. Until the last season of each year Porttown slumbered until waking, like a winter flower that blossomed in frost.

For a century, the Midwinter Festival woke on a January evening, where without fail the Hamfrill family held a huge feast. But it wasn't just the jolly time over cakes and mashed potatoes that elated the townsfolk during the dead growing season. It was that this festival marked