Well of Fate: a When Ravens Fall Short Story: When Ravens Fall

By Savannah Jezowski

Discontent with his life as a tale-spinner, Ratatosk the squirrel goes searching for the Well of Fate hoping he can change his destiny. But what he finds at Yggdrasil will test the very core of his resolve. When he faces the unexpected dangers beneath the great tree, Tosk will have to choose between saving himself or risking all to do the right thing. Changing his destiny proves harder than he ever imagined.

For fans of When Ravens Fall and Norse mythology, reunite with old friends and meet new ones in this compelling short story about destiny and hard choices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dragonpen Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781536593693

Savannah Jezowski

Savannah Jezowski lives in Amish country with her Knight in Shining Armor and a wee warrior princess. Her debut novella Wither is featured in Five Enchanted Roses, an anthology of Beauty and the Beast, and is a prequel to The Neverway Chronicles, a Christian fantasy series filled with tragic heroes and the living dead. She is also the author of When Ravens Fall, a Norse fairy tale retelling featuring Tosk the squirrel. She is also a featured author in several Fellowship of Fantasy anthologies, including Mythical Doorways, Tales of Ever After, and Paws, Claws, and Magic Tales (Coming October 2018). When she isn’t writing, Savannah likes to read books, watch BBC miniseries, and play with cover designs. All of her books are available on Amazon.   Well of Fate is a short story in the When Ravens Fall series. While it is a stand-alone tale, it does refer to some events that took place in the first book and also hints at tales to come involving Astrid, the raven brothers, and even Loki.

Book preview

Nine worlds hang from Yggdrasil,

Watered by the Well of Fate.

The sisters carve young destinies

On dew-draped branches of the tree.

~

Beneath the tree, evergreen,

The Gatekeeper guards the door—

Beyond the bleak Shore of Corpses

Where only Death may enter there.

~

What was before cannot be changed,

And what is to come must be.

The sisters draw it from the well

And children live the tale.

Well of Fate

Ratatosk wanted to change his fate.

The life of a squirrel was hardly epic. Nut-gathers and tale-spinners, squirrels kept to the trees while others built great halls and mighty longboats and forged paths through the mountains and across the seas. It simply wasn’t fair. If given the opportunity, Tosk was sure he could be a mighty hero.

So he’d gone searching for the one thing in the Niflheim that might give him that opportunity, the fabled Well of Fate. Tosk twitched his fluffy red tail and leapt onto the branch above his head. Distracted by his musings, his claws only just caught the rough bark of the ash tree. He yelped and scrabbled frantically with his back feet until he had wormed his way onto the branch. He sat up, tail twitching in agitation, and glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one had seen his misadventure. It was bad enough he was not destined to be a hero, but he would rather the rest of the world not know it.

The words of the owl who lived above Tosk’s borrow in the Ironwood Forest came back to haunt him. Who? You? A hero? Only good for gossip, he had hooted, probably annoyed with Tosk’s chatter. The ridicule had stuck to him, like burrs in his tail.

Good for nothing, was just as easily what the cranky old bird meant.

Perhaps he wasn’t good for much, but he had to be good for something. Tosk’s lower lip quivered as he stared into the endless tangle of branches of Yggdrasil—the legendary tree that connected the nine worlds and guarded the entrance to the Well. Although, Tosk was beginning to wonder how many of those legends had been exaggerated because he had been up and down the tree twice already, and he had found nothing besides bird nests and a squirrel stash. He had sampled some of the nuts, just to make sure they were still good. He didn’t want the poor squirrel who had hidden them to come back to a stash of rotten nuts.

And he wouldn’t, because they were still quite good. Tosk licked his lips and gave his pronounced stomach a pat. Still good, although perhaps a mite fewer in number.

That was a close call, little rodent. The voice, piercing and sharp like the northern winds that ripped across the Niflheim, sent Tosk tumbling to the branch below. He clawed at the bark with all four paws and barely managed to save himself from a nasty fall.

He righted himself and peered up through the leaves of the tree, brightened by the sunlight streaming down from the sky. A great round eye blinked at him. Then, the foliage shifted, the leaves shivered, and a great brown queen of the sky eased into view. It was an eagle, and a mighty one at that, with a head as white as the winter snows and a beak as sharp as a dragon slayer’s blade.