Unravelled: Knit, Purl, Slip, #1

By James Jakins

When Melissa Kane receives a letter from an old friend asking for help, she heads off to the forest nation of Ihlathi for what she expects will be a simple monster hunt. But in the forests she encounters more than just Ravel. Without her family and without her magic scarf, will she be able to survive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robber's Dog Pub
• Release date: Jan 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201258986

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UnravelledFull Page Image

Copyright © 2022 by James Jakins

Edited by Jennifer Duffin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For Trev. Not that much knitting in this one, but there’s a new dog, so that’s something.

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The silence of the forest had never been this complete. And it was this completeness that woke Carmilla.

Then she heard the crooning. A soft, eerie, yet somehow gentle song from a voice that belonged to neither human nor any beast she knew.

Fearful of shattering the moment, the girl slid from her cot as quietly as she could. She pulled her quilt up with her and wrapped it around her shoulders to protect herself from both the chill of the night and the dangers that hid in its darkness.

The step down from the wagon creaked, threatening to overpower the unknown song with its harshness, but she was on the ground and away from the settling wood without interrupting the only other sound in the night.

She made her way through the camp and other sounds crept in, but none loud enough to overshadow the croon. Even the snores of old Povestitor Mandrete sounded subdued as the girl trod through the dirt of the caravan’s camp.

The night was pleasantly cool. Not yet the chill of fall or brutal cold of winter, but late enough in summer to hold no cloying heat. There should have been the chirps of bugs or nightbirds, but the only sounds were the creaking of wood and snores of the sleeping men and women and children in their wagons.

Blue moon light filtered through the leaves overhead and dappled the ground around the camp with shifting motes of light.

She stopped short when the sound pulled her to the edge of the clearing. The braided rope warned her not to pass. A lifetime on the road through the great Ihlathi Forest taught her that to cross this barrier, even in the light of a noon sun, would mean certain death.

But still there was the song.

Carmilla wrapped her quilt tighter around her shoulders, the soft fabric giving a comforting weight. She glanced around the camp and saw no one. Nothing to suggest that even the caravan’s guards were up at this hour.

Anything intending harm to the people of the wagons could not cross this rope. Which was why she needed to stay on this side.

But still there was the song.

She peered up into the darkness of the trees, not a true black, but a shifting of green and blue and brown. Shadows that hid many dangers.

And there, on a branch just inside the tree line, just beyond the rope, was the singer.

Perched on a thick branch, the black form was stark against the other colors of the darkness. It was large as a man and, when it shifted, she saw wings, huge and black and terrifying, open to help it maintain its place on the branch.

She gasped in surprise, and the song ended.

The creature on the branch turned to consider her. Its head was a mask of bleached bone with a wicked beak only meant for tearing flesh. Taloned hands gripped the bark of the branch as the monster leaned over and considered the girl.

The song ended and the spell that had drawn her to this place was broken, but now, frozen in terror, she couldn’t leave.

She had never in her life seen something like this bird-thing. She had been certain that in her sixteen years she had seen all the monsters this forest hid.

She would be safe, she knew. The thing would not cross the line of rope. Could not. The greatest weavers of the nation of Ihlathi had braided it. This rope protected all who walked the roads of the forest, as long as they stayed on this side of the rope.

And even if by some disaster the thing crossed that barrier, she had her quilt. Her own mother had made this quilt for her, had sat for days at the loom with Povestitor Mandrete and imbued all the protections their people knew into its fabric. She would be safe.

It was with this certainty that she watched the thing on the branch.

She did not see the second Magpie as it swooped from above and carried her away into the depths of the forest. Her crumpled quilt and the sound of her screams the only proof she had ever been there at all.

The city of Ekhaya, the capital of Ihlathi, is one of only five cities in the entire nation. Carved out