The Village Secrets: Book 1

By Xlibris US

During the medieval age, Maria was taken from her parents. Shortly after Maria was gone, her parents had Ashlyn. Maria grew up thinking she was replaced. When Maria was old enough, she planned revenge. Now Ashlyn and her best friend Tamisha have to stop her before all is lost.
The Village Secrets shows that you need to be happy with what you have and dont envy others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499042580

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by A.M. Friedmann.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014911515

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-4259-7

                Softcover        978-1-4990-4260-3

                eBook             978-1-4990-4258-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/01/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

633941

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One Life

Chapter Two The Ball

Chapter Three The Town

Chapter Four The Palace

Chapter Five Who Is She?

Chapter Six Investigation

Chapter Seven The Battle

Chapter Eight Maria

Chapter Nine The Recovery

Chapter Ten The Plots

Chapter Eleven The Caves

Chapter Twelve The Royals

Chapter Thirteen The Relationship

This book is dedicated to

my uncle, Samuel Friedmann, and my aunt, Tami Ervin,

my little sister, Dakota Lynn King-Nylander,

my father, Joseph Anthony Friedmann the 3rd

INTRODUCTION

S NOWFLAKES GENTLY FELL FROM the sky and sparkled on the ground. Throwing snowballs everywhere was Maria Istanian and her new puppy. She had long jet black hair and pretty blue eyes with beautiful tanned skin. She was only seven and a half years old and the only daughter of the greatest knight in the whole kingdom, Sir Jonathon Istanian. Her mother was head lady in the palace, Lady Mary Ista nian.

Fetch Bella she grunted as she threw the snowball close to the edge of the dark woods. The puppy chased it but came to a sudden stop. Then abruptly turned and ran back yelping but Maria could not move for she was stunned by fear. Coming towards her was the devil!

He was huge and ugly with jagged teeth and monstrous claws. His eyes glowed like fire on a starry night. As he came closer, Maria started screaming, turned and tried to run away but he snatched her up just as Mary and Jonathon came charging out of the cottage.

Help me, please Maria begged and cried but could not break free.

The devil knocked her parents down with the back of his hand and demanded It is time to pay your debt Jonathon.

He took Maria’s soul away and replaced it with a demon’s soul.

Mary was devastated, helplessly watching her daughter being taken and hearing her final painful screams. Maria’s eyes closed. When she opened them again, they were blood red. Within the blink of an eye, the devil vanished with their beloved Maria in his grasp.

Mary turned to her husband with tears flowing from her eyes What debt did you owe him?

With tears of great sadness, Jonathon looked out towards the abandoned mountains and gently said during the war I made a deal with him that if he let me live, I would give him our first born.

Five years later they were blessed with another baby girl named Ashlyn Istanian. Around the same time, Sir Elliot and Lady Diane Skullshian were also blessed with a baby girl they named Tamisha Skullshian. Since the families were closely bonded the girls were raised together forming a close lifetime friendship.

CHAPTER ONE

Life

I T WAS SEVENTEEN YEARS since the girls were born and snow blanketed the ground. A black raven flew above the tree tops and swooped down into the trees. It landed next to two girls. Skulliah, your home Tamisha said excit edly.

Ashlyn looked up from her book and smiled, then put the book down next to her. It’s getting chilly Ashlyn said. Maybe we should head back.

Yes, we should Tamisha agreed.

They gathered their books and walked over to their Clydesdales. Ashlyn mounted her white stallion, Blizzard, and Tamisha mounted her black mare, Midnight. Tamisha set Skulliah on top of Midnight’s head.

Blizzard and Midnight

Reviews for The Village Secrets

[willszal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“Secrets of the Talking Jaguar: A Mayan Shaman’s Journey to the Heart of the Indigenous Soul,” is Martin Prechtel's first book, released in 1998. It's a book about his journey from childhood in New Mexico as an outcast part-Native American to his true life and home in the then-Mayan city of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala. A shaman named Chiv summoned him there, and became his teacher. It's a book about the contrast between the culture of the alien US and the indigenous culture of the Maya.

That’s a good starting point - the question of what it means not to be indigenous. To be indigenous means to truly have a home, to belong. But so then what are we in the US? What is most of the modern world? We’re aliens. We’re homeless, lost, and unstable.

Martin paints a beautiful picture of a culture that no longer exists. Military started coming in and breaking up the community in the ’80s. Although a high percentage of the individuals serviced, their village was a culture dependent on many roles. Even with less than half being killed, running a way, or converting, the culture wasn’t able to survive.

Notable Fragments

Political leaders had to be married. This gave leadership a 50:50 male:female split. This wasn’t done in the interest of these individual, but for the sake of the community. When leaders move up a rank, they throw a giant party and give away all of their wealth.

Don’t trust a skinny shaman. Shamans are partially paid in food, and in a culture where food is scarce, fat is idolized.

All Mayan houses are only one room. Their entrance is their mouth. The concept of a door is outside of their paradigm.

We are each the House of the World, just as the outside is also the House of the World. Together these two form a mirror, for everything that can be found in the exterior can also be found in the interior.

The concept of existence isn’t a part of Mayan culture. Everything “is” only in it’s relationship to everything else. The names for relatives in Tz’utujil are subjective. There is no word for aunt - you describe the relationship to the person we call aunt, depending on the specifies of where you are. You can’t as the question, “who am I?” There is no being, or doing - only relationship.

[mendoza_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is such a pleasure to read and reread.... lots of food for thought about modern culture and alternative ways of living, about aging, about wisdom, about Mayan culture, and about seeing the challenges of life in humorous ways!