Sweet Vale of Aricia

By Jon Jacks

Alesis can sculpt wood or rock into anything from nature – unless it’s a man or woman, when it lacks sensuousness.
Yet she’s chosen to preserve an aging actress’s fading beauty in stone, finding herself in a valley where deer replace horses, elegant ladies hunt, and animals wander in loving pairs.
It’s all quite wonderful – until the huntress Aricia has to save her from an over-amorous wolf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Sep 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005180119

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Sweet Vale of Aricia

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella’s Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch’s Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare – SpinDell

Swan Moon – The Unicorndoll – Lesser Nefertiti – My Shrieking Skin – Stone in Love

Font of All Lies – The Bared Heart – The Fairy Paintbox – An Angelic Alphabet

Forewarnings and Three Grapes – Death of a Fairytale Princess – The Incurable Caress

The Maid’s Caul – Nu’s Ark – A Disgraced Angel – Wake Me Up When it’s Christmas

God’s Toybox – Aurora Rising – The Veil – Petals: Portals of Desire – Ripppples

The Golden Elk – MatchBox Fairy – The Snow Nymph – The Deep and Secret Yes

Mirror Merror – The WatcHousE – Winter Queen – Interlace

Text copyright© 2021 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

Chapter 1

There are few things worse than a knock at the door as you prepare to delicately chip away a piece of unwanted stone from around the nose of your latest statuette.

Alesis had little choice, however; she could hardly ignore it. It was her customers, rather than her sculptures, who helped her keep bread on the table.

She had to answer it.

She expected, naturally, that it would be a regular caller, someone she knew by name from the small village – along with knowing by heart the clothes requiring laundering, and at what temperatures, and how they should be ironed and starched.

Yet the woman at the door was entirely new to her.

Far better dressed, too, than anyone she knew.

It was the elegant attire Alesis expected of a high-born lady from the city.

‘Alesis?’ the woman asked gaily, adding curiously, in tones of carefully considered pronunciation free of any country accent. ‘A delightful name, I must say: one I might have chosen for myself, granted the unlikely opportunity!’

‘Yes, I’m Alesis,’ the surprised girl replied politely, adding the demure half courtesy she believed befitted someone dressed so finely, so well spoken. ‘In what way can I help you, Madam?’

Even as she asked, Alesis peered over the visitor’s shoulder, seeking out a maid or servant struggling with baskets over brimming with the laundry requiring cleaning: though why a fine lady wouldn’t have a laundry of own, Alesis couldn’t be quite sure.

Perhaps it had broken down?

Even so, why would the lady bother herself with seeking out a lowly laundress?

More puzzling still, there was no sign at all of any overburdened maid, or sour-faced servant, standing behind the woman.

‘I’ve heard, through the grapevine, as it were, of your remarkable work,’ the lady exclaimed brightly, adding even more surprisingly, ‘May I come in – to see it all for myself?’

*

‘Come in?’ Alesis repeated unsurely, wondering if she had heard her visitor right. ‘See it all?’

Why would anyone want to see her doing their laundry?

No one had ever asked before!

‘But…you do realise,’ she warned, even as she stood aside a little to allow the lady to enter, ‘it’s very hot and moist in here?’

She glanced anxiously at the lady’s immaculately coiffured hair, knowing full well that such an elaborate artifice wouldn’t survive for long in the damp heat.

Worse still, clouds of powdered starch somehow managed to continually linger in the air, causing eyes to redden, weep, even sting sharply.

‘Really?’ the lady asked with a frown of surprise as she nevertheless stepped through the doorway. ‘Where is it?’ she added curiously, peering around the small entrance to the laundry, wondering which of the two inner doors she should be taking.

Indicating the door leading off from behind the counter, Alesis asked once again if her visitor was aware