Winter's Burn

By Ren Williams

Zell is a witch, living with her brother and her mother in the Welsh valleys. The village is leaving, a darkness is coming, the druids have foreseen it. Zell and her family won't be going with them, it's too dangerous her mother tells them. It means leaving their home again, leaving her girlfriend or staying to face whatever comes to the valley.

Queer fantasy fiction set in Wales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ren Williams
• Release date: Apr 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463715178

Ren Williams

Ren is a weird and important poet and geek from the edge of nowhere Wales. They also write weird little stories, bits and bobs and creative non-fiction.Ren is a pronoun indifferent bisexual non-binary/genderfluid writer.They blog about parenting, lgbtq issues and cats at Queer Little Family.Published in several LGBTQ lit publications, and with three self-published poetry collections.Ren will, one day, finish a novel.More commonly known as bread, they can be found sleeping or thinking about sleeping.They also dabble in art and photography.

Book preview

Winter’s Burn

a short story

by Ren Williams

Published by R. Williams

Smashwords Edition 2019

Copyright 2019 R Williams

Image by Алина Осипова from Pixabay

For more information visit rwilliamswriter.co.uk

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Winter’s Burn

Rikka throws the eye towards Zell.

She catches it deftly enough, but drops it, the orb slippery in her fingers.

I hate it when they’re fresh, she says and Rikka nods.

They have to be fresh, he reminds her, and he plucks the other eyeball from the wolf. Zell picks the eye back up, catches the second and places both in the little pouch at her hip.

Not sure how fresh they are, she says, looking over the body of the wolf. He’s definitely been dead a few days. Sick and old I think, she squats down to look more closely, opening up the animal's mouth to look at his teeth, trying to ignore the empty eye sockets. Yeah, he was old.

Mum doesn’t need to know, Rikka says. And they’re fresh from the wolf, even if the wolf isn’t fresh.

Zell isn’t going to argue with that, she never wants to kill an animal but it takes a lot longer to find the ingredients their mother needs from those who have already died. Luckily the wolf wasn’t far from their home. Once they walked fourteen miles looking for a dead bird that hadn’t already had its insides eaten by whatever predator had killed it.

They’re both disappointments, she knows, but there’s not much she can do about it.

Not much either of them can do about it.

Is that everything? Rikka asks.

Zell pulls a notebook from the pocket of her cloak, scanning the list.

We still have silverite from the mines right? she asks. Rikka nods, digging his hands into his own pockets.

Then we’re done.

She tucks the notebook away again,