My Heart is The Tempest

By Sacha Rosel

In a land of oppression where light is stone cold blindness and snow and ice claw all form of resistance to pieces, darkness is waiting to arise, rage bubbling from the embers of the earth to meet its fire embrace.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and including direct citations from the play, My heart is The Tempest is a dark reimagining of witch Sycorax, here portrayed as a 12-year old olive-skinned, black-haired human girl trapped in a land of cruel insect-like creatures who worship light and snow loathing everything deviating from their personal truth  ̶  including her, deemed to be a threat to their infallible world. After unconsciously awakening her grandmother Miranda to life, Sycorax slowly comes to realize that the land she has always yearned for actually existed in the past, before being erased from everybody’s memory. Now, thanks to Miranda’s help, Sycorax can make that land erupt again, but she will have to learn how to welcome darkness first.

With an accessible but richly visual and lyrical style, My heart is The Tempest is a dark tale of self-discovery focusing on an anti-heroine figure learning how to face a world of light made of terror and violence and embracing her hidden powers thus becoming a conscious instrument of darkness. The novella is also meant to be the first of a dark fantasy trilogy, each volume representing a different stage of life, from teenage years (Volume One) to adulthood (Volume Two) and old age (Volume Three), focusing on the themes of rage, vengeance, forgiveness and reconciliation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vraeyda Literary
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781988034232

Book preview

My Heart is The Tempest

The Tempest Trilogy Book 1

Sacha Rosel

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Vraeyda Literary

Copyright© 2021 Sacha Rosel

Vraeyda Literary

Port Coquitlam, BC

www.vraeydamedia.ca/literary

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

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Edited by Lis Goryniuk-Ratajczak

Cover by Sapha Burnell

Printed in the USA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 

ISBN 978-1-988034-24-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-988034-22-5 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-988034-23-2 (eBook)

Vraeyda Literary sends authors to events, virtual events, Book Clubs & interviews. For promotional consideration, large-volume orders, please contact Lorie at [e-mail].

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: My heart is the tempest / Sacha Rosel.

Names: Rosel, Sacha, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210382562 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210382597 | ISBN 9781988034225 

   (hardcover) | ISBN 9781988034249 (softcover) | ISBN 9781988034232 (PDF)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PR9120.9.R67 M9 2021 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

Map of Niveal

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Dramatis Personae

Sycorax   [sikor’æks]: a raven-haired, olive-skinned girl

Ariel  [‘æri:əl]: a transparent boy

Eysteinn [‘æsten]: supreme ruler of Niveal and leader of the Council of the Bright

Rakō   [r’ɑ ko:]: druid of Niveal and counsellor to Niveal’s rulers

Miranda [mir’ændɑ:]: a mysterious spirit

Tliyel [tl’i:əl]: Eysteinn’s son and future leader of Niveal

Kheba [x’i:bɑ]: Sycorax’s mother

Amazigh [‘ɑ mazig]: Sycorax’s father

Astrila [‘ɑ strilɑ:]: member of the Council of the Bright, mother of Tliyel and wife of Eysteinn

Klin  [kl’in]: twin of Naklin and faithful assistant to Tliyel

Naklin [‘nɑklin]: twin of Klin and faithful assistant to Tliyel

Hyrila [hirilɑ:]: a school teacher

Hagolstan [‘hɑgol’stæŋ]: father of Klin and Naklin

Kayi [‘kɑ:i]: first maid of Lady Astrila

Tagur [‘tɑ:gʊr]: second maid of Lady Astrila

Amarok [‘ɑ:mɑrok]: assistant to Lord Eysteinn

Tallikut [‘t ɑ:likʊt]: assistant to Lord Eysteinn

Aurora [əʊ’roʊrɑ]: a mighty tree

Eriskegal [er’iskegæl]: a voice from another world

Neve [‘ni:ve]: a goddess 

Niveal  [‘ni:væəl]: a land of cold 

Nivelian [nai’vi:liæn]: inhabitant of Niveal

Note: The sound x in the noun Kheba is pronounced as in the Spanish words joven and Quixote. All the r sounds mentioned above (apart from the ones in the names Miranda and Aurora) are meant to be dental, not alveolar ones, as they are normally pronounced in English.

Each chapter title, as well as occasional words or lines in the story itself, is a direct citation from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest , taken from Stephen Orgel (1987, ed.), The Oxford’s Shakespeare. The Tempest, Oxford, Oxford University Press. 

Sycorax, Ariel and Miranda are also inspired by characters originally created by Shakespeare.

The line Be bloody, bold, and resolute is taken from Muir Kenneth (1999, ed.), The Arden Shakespeare. Macbeth, Walton-on-Thames, Thomas Nelson & Sons.

The expression snow piece is taken from Coil (2000), Batwings (A limnal hymn), in Coil, Musick to Play in the Dark Volume 2, Chalice, lyrics by John Balance.

The line A darkness opening and closing, to keep the whiteness sealed within is a tribute to the following line contained in the aforementioned song: A wideness opening and closing to keep the darkness sealed within.

To those who dream of a different world, and make it happen.

Contents

1. Prologue

2. Into Something Rich and Strange

3. Had I Been Any God of Power

4. Space Enough Have I In Such A Prison

5. Invisible to Every Eyeball Else

6. Poor Worm, Thou Are Infected

7. Riches Ready to Drop Upon Me

8. My Charms Crack Not

9. My Heart Bleeds

10. This Music Crept By Me Upon The Waters

11. Twelve Years Since

12. In the Veins of the Earth

13. Now I Arise

14. In The Dead of Darkness

15. Red Plague

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About Author

Also By Vraeyda Literary

1

Prologue

The valiant population comes crawling in the hall, beating about its crystal surface like moths meeting light, swarming with excitement. Death by execution is so rare an event everybody must witness its glory. 

All will be tidy and neat: I am the weed of malice will be pulled out of the land with punctilious efficiency. I am the weed they come to eradicate. Like the visions evoked by my whispers condensing from tea leaves floating in the water, I too will soon melt and dissolve, crumpled by blindness. 

Utter obliteration. How ravenous their eyes and ears must grow at the sound of these words spoken by the vile druid, the whole parade of ministers and Council members in full display behind him nodding their shining approval, and the towering oracle tree sending its shards spinning. 

My mysterious gift, born of flowers, ink and leaves, my magic helping me find answers to their craves and needs, is no longer required.

As the air bursts into a frosty gauze covering all corners of the hall, I feel the druid’s scanning eyes pecking at my brain, the dancing shards of the sacred tree curiously halting, almost gasping, at the amorphous falling of my body on the immaculate floor. 

Suddenly, memories start flourishing intermittent in my inarticulate mind, as if to echo the oracle’s reanimating force. Striving to chase this growing lethargy away, my murmuring fingers stir into a broken dance, tracing imaginary signs dipped in ink as they so often used to, guiding their way towards intuition: 

I see traces of you, oh sour mask of regret, daughter turned mother, embracing nothing but bitterness and betrayal, over and over again. Have you come to see me die, or are you hiding in ignorant bliss? 

A howling noise pierces through my skin and all vision, all movement stops. I do not know where it came from, this sanguine, tumefied flash changing everything into a bloated cloud, but though I can’t see anything neither before nor behind me, I can feel something biting at my flesh, like a million insects starving for plants. It climbs and clambers, until I find my throat immobilized by invisible trellises, snapping at my breath with ice cold mandibles.

Try as I might to loosen its frozen grip, the seething cloud of frost rushes on, biting into me and absorbing my will with dissecting voracity. A mass of suffocated images briefly flutter by as I bleed, spattering my weakening sight in remnants of hope  ̶  green waters gleaming, red feathers rising, a creature of dark battling against terror  ̶  before fading like dust. 

Sinking, my bones crusted with frigid blood turned ice, methinks the whole world has vanished  ̶  the hall, the tree, the people. Only I, drowning in shakiness, my thoughts undeveloping in embryo-like spaces a prison quadrangular dead shell about to disintegrate... 

pulsing rainbow fragments of what I saw radiating from shards still flapping round my eyes… 

small flecks of fire and night aligned with one single purpose outliving death contorting creasing druid’s deafening shears snipping my thread my 

2

Into Something Rich and Strange

She was a furious rage walking. Wherever Sycorax went, a flaring wind moved along with her, some obscure energy steaming off her whole body. Not the jolly frozen wind Niveal inhabitants were accustomed to, but different and disturbing, something which surely was malignant. It had to be, for it was as hot as the strange airs and fires mentioned in tales of imaginary places, fabrications of the mind where alien shades spelled crimson and coal haunted people with their scourge and snow and ice didn’t exist. 

Pearlescent clarity was all to see in the real world. One never found anything but ice, snow and rocks layer upon layer, in a mirror-like truth. Since the beginning of time, when the Lady of Snow, Neve, was impregnated with white flakes by strikes of thunder and lightning, giving birth to the first immaculate beings, life was pure whiteness shining endlessly. 

Their appearance proved it: white crystal pupils, snow icy hair, alabaster skin, proudly boasting translucent butterfly wings once pupated into adulthood, all the rightful children of Niveal were born of snow and ice and relished in cold. No anomaly could live and prosper in their frozen truth.

Yet there she was, this odd Valley of Moss girl boiling all over, forcing an evil hot wind of weird tales into their lives. She had to be sick, she was sick. Sick without remedy. Sycko, they called her, spitting the word out with utter precision as if to wipe clean the shadow she cast on their path while walking. 

Outsiders, those dark-haired Valley of Moss descendants were unmistakably barbarians, intruders creeping their way through the snowy crevices of the mountains, engulfing the sacred land in their steps made of tar. One day they would certainly be forced to leave and disappear in the black chasms of the unknown. 

As supreme rulers of Niveal, the Council of the Bright eventually accepted their presence among the children of Neve, alas, because servants were needed to keep the land spotless. Naturally, those Valley of Moss frauds were the perfect candidates for such a heavy task, looking as strange as they did. 

Their olive-skinned figures might spoil the view while crossing gates and bridges or walking through the Temple of Perennial Peace and Pristine Pool, but it was a small price to pay to make sure all corners of Niveal looked perfectly immaculate at all times.

Though no Nivealian would treat those oddities as equals, everyone kindly embraced the Council’s order and accepted the inferior beings as their guests, for the newcomers’ fate could one day be changed into banishment and, more importantly, none of them would show any sign of rebellion.

So, this Sycko girl could walk as furiously as she thought fit. She was not yet thirteen and still ignorant of the world; they could tolerate her strange ways, for they knew perfectly well she wouldn’t last much longer behaving in an erratic and untamed way. 

Soon, she would bow down and accept the supremacy of Niveal laws, there was no other way to survive. Soon, all the words spitting from their mouths would cause her to break, spilling that ghastly wind out of her body and out of their precious land. Her steam would evaporate and vanish like a dying breath, replaced by the safe and solid sound of snow. 

Or so Tliyel hoped. He saw her entering the main hall of the Temple of Bright Ice, long hair as wild as swarms of flaming creatures, her eyes as cursed as dark stars. Everything about her was wrong: her looks and voice too rough, skin too dark, cloak too coarse, for it was made of wool, the fabric used by the Valley of Moss barbarians as they could not endure the purity of cold. 

And that warfare walk of hers was wrong and outrageous, surrounded by a mysterious coal-like aura. 

Even as the moment of humiliation approached  ̶  as it happened every day in that same classroom  ̶  she showed no sign of reaction to the violence  to come. Of course, she could not venture to respond in any way, for retribution would be merciless. Making an example of those who questioned Niveal’s rulers was the main pillar of civilization. Silence was the only choice available to anyone who contradicted the Council’s law. 

Yet the girl’s indifference troubled him, his wavy short hair as restless with doubt as his mind. The more he invented new schemes to torment her, the more her orbit would drift farther, like a planet clad in a halo of black mist. 

Didn’t she know he was the son of Eysteinn, the most powerful lord of Niveal, thus the future ruler of the land? Wasn’t his word the only legitimate echo of Neve’s will in the classroom, the only voice young pupae acknowledged as their own, like adults followed his father’s? The Temple of Bright Ice was his to command. No alien creature could escape that truth. 

As soon as she entered the classroom, Tliyel summoned his most faithful assistants, twins Klin and Naklin, to put an end to her savage walk. Rising from their desks with tyrannous frivolity, for they loved games more than any riches their master could possibly own, the brothers advanced towards the insignificant outsider in poised, arrogant steps. Their long, flamboyant snow icy hair danced in the air like daggers, ferocity growing wilder in their eyes as the other children cringed in awe and fear of their coming. 

Despite Tliyel being responsible for imposing the right penance on each underage transgressor of Niveal laws, no retribution could take place without the twins, for their faith in the sanctity of cold was universally recognized to be the most authentic illustration of what a typical creature of bright had to be: pristine towards fellow citizens who respected Neve’s way and unforgiving towards those who did not. 

Certainly, such an oddity as that raven-haired Valley of Moss girl deserved all the punishment she received, for there was no other way to instil truth in rebels. 

Once again, as it happened every day, the children lowered their heads in silence and dread as the two hounds of violence walked in perfect harmony. Eager to please their master, they immediately grabbed the savage girl by her wrists, relishing in the promise of brutality Tliyel’s unusual order would surely bring. Spitting on the Sycko girl or lacerating her skin with daggers was their customary way to deal with her evil presence. Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy a diversion for once? 

She didn’t seem to react nor move in any way, yet that steam she was made of grew louder infuriating in the air, like a dark corona devouring everything around her, including her jailers’ exuberant disposition. Despite their merry thirst for blood, both Klin and Naklin looked genuinely repelled by the direct contact with the girl. Touching her obviously felt like contamination, as it left them exposed to her revolting coal-like force. 

Who would want their diaphanous clarity to be sullied by that vile creature, even if it was Lord Eysteinn’s son to say so? 

All their ascetic-like dedication to torture seemed to vanish. Disappointment deepening in his soul, Tliyel felt his mind slit open, delirious with impatience. The twins would get the punishment they deserved later. Now he had to stop the outsider himself to show he would repel her fury at all costs.

 Moving closer, he raised his slender face until his eyes met hers: they looked like two unpolished black obsidians, dense with the colour of night, crude and impossible in all that purity of light Niveal was made of. Such eyes were too fierce to be acceptable, too intense to be stopped, but stop them he would. 

He was horrified at how Neve could allow such reversal of beauty to exist: dark hair, black pupils, thick dark eyebrows, and olive skin too. She was far too different to be trusted.  

All descendants from the Valley of Moss, destroyed by the mighty wind of Niveal many centuries before, were not to be trusted. 

She was nothing but a stain in the perfect holiness of Niveal, and stains had to be wiped