Shay the Brave

By Riley Kilmore

Feisty Shay longs to wear britches and cut her hair short. Even more, she'd love for all who live in Oldenshire, her fortress home, to stop eating meat.

When hunters capture a pouncer for the Harvest Revel's "mane course," Shay decides to act. With the h

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wild Ink Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jan 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781958531433

Book preview

Shay the Brave

Riley Kilmore

Wild Ink Publishing

Copyright © 2024 Riley Kilmore

Edited by Laura Wackwitz

Design and Layout by Abigail Wild

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-958531-42-6

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

This work is dedicated to you.

Yes, you.

May your every attempt to escape your fortress walls be met with success.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Roar​

Plan

Free

Whew

Whoa

Ouch

Out

Away

Ailouros

Gulp

Punished

Da

Seige

Cease Fire

Through the Hole

Bellwether

Trick or Treaty

Truce and Consequences

The End of One Thing is Always the Beginning of Another

Acknowledgements

Roar​

Scissors

Shay jumped. Ouch, she cried. You stuck me!

​For all the trees in the forest, child, hold still. The row of pins pressed between Nurse’s lips made her words sound funny.

​Shay studied those pins and decided maybe it wasn’t a good time to argue. Instead, she watched silently until Nurse had pulled the last pin from her mouth and threaded it into the fabric at Shay’s waistline.

​Nurse sat back and sighed. I wouldn’t have to adjust your seams so often if you had less of an appetite for desserts. She spun Shay in an about-face, then back again, examining her handiwork. There, now. That will do. Slip it off and I’ll sew it fast. She rose from the embroidered stool, groaning as she always did when she moved from one position to another.

​Shay began squirming out of the dress, trying not to stick herself with all the pins, but nevertheless did get stuck—that is, wedged in a dress halfway on and halfway off.

​Nurse growled like one of Da’s hunting dogs. Rot and rabbits’ feet, child!

​Shay was bent over and couldn’t see anything but the inside of her dress and a small circle of carpet at her feet. She felt like a half-peeled piece of fruit. Worst of all, her long hair had caught in all the pins. Ouch, ouch, ouch! I hate dresses!

​Nurse grabbed her. Stop writhing, child. For all the stars in the heavens, it would be easier to dress a lizard. Why must you wiggle so?

​Shay held her breath and stood still as a tree stump until Nurse worked all the pins free.

​Now I’ll have to tidy that mop of hair before you can be seen running about the fortress. Nurse slipped a new dress over Shay’s head and picked up a comb, reeling Shay back when she tried to escape.

​My sisters never have to stop in the middle of their day to be fussed over!

​Indeed, was all Nurse said, then attacked Shay’s knotted curls without mercy.

​Ouch! Sour tarts and apples! Why can’t it just be cut off so you’d never have to comb it again and torture me so?

​Well, that should be a pretty sight, Nurse scoffed. A Lady lurking about Oldenshire as bald as a bandypip.

​"I am not a bandypip!"

​You would be if you hadn’t any hair.

​I’d keep some of it! It just wouldn’t be so bothersome and long. Shay’s throat ached the way it did whenever tears threatened to flow, but she didn’t want to cry, so she swallowed hard against the tightness. It wouldn’t do to cry in front of a nurse when she wanted to prove less needy of one. Please? Just to here. She swung her fingers at her shoulder to show how short she wanted her hair to be instead of falling all the way to her waist like it did now.

​To there? Like a boy? Oh, sweet child. Nurse groaned as she sat back down on the embroidered stool, leaned over, and began buttoning Shay’s shoes. Your da has four lovely daughters and I’m sure he doesn’t want there to be any mistake about that. Had he wanted a little Lord Shay instead of another Lady Shay, he’d have had one. Your da does everything he means to do and won’t be put from it, come waldenbeasts or whistleblats. Nurse finished plying the buttonhook but seemed to have buttoned her mouth along with Shay’s shoes, for there she sat, bent over and silent as if the beauty of the carpet had hypnotized her.

​Shay sprung to help, bending Nurse upright as if she were a chest lid with rusted hinges.

​Nurse drew a breath, then laughed. Oh, thank you, child. Her cheer filled the chamber. I suppose it shouldn’t harm your old nurse to spare a dessert or two herself.

​Shay smiled, the tightness in her throat relaxing.

​Turn about, now, and let me finish teaching that mophead of yours a lesson.

​When Nurse took up the comb once more, Shay braced for all the pulling and tugging Nurse’s words promised. She bit the inside of her cheeks and drew her fingers into fists. What if she simply borrowed the scissors from the sewing basket when no one was looking and—

​But it was Shay’s thought suddenly cut short, not her hair, when all manner of popping and banging erupted outside the chamber window. Midday sounded like it had cracked wide open and broken in two. Shay tore from Nurse and ran to the window, the comb stuck in her hair.

​Thunder, child! You act as if you’ve never seen a hunting party return.

​People in the courtyard below mixed merriment and mischief, cheering for the return of the hunters, while at the same time banging on pots and popping off noisemakers to ward off unwelcome spirits that might have followed the hunters back from the forest.

​I do so hope they caught nothing, Shay said.

​Nothing will make a mighty poor meal for feast day tomorrow.

​Shoulders slumped, Shay shuffled back to the stool and turned so Nurse could finish combing her hair. Eating creatures is a horrid habit.

​It’s a habit what keeps us alive, said Nurse, working the comb.

​Ouch!

​Those of us who don’t live on bread and desserts alone.

​I eat plate loads of vegetables! Shay didn’t mean to sound cross, but little girls often do when tangles are combed from their hair.

​Nurse snorted like an ox. Next you’ll be wanting dry oats and haybales set before you.

​Shay lifted her chin. Maybe I shall—if I’m given boysalberry syrup to top it with!

​The noise in the courtyard softened as the celebrants moved deeper into Oldenshire. In their wake, a new sound reached Shay’s chamber, a mournful sound, as though the wind itself were a motherless child. Wails filled with fear and fury rose from below, tearing at Shay’s heart and sending goosebumps racing up her arms.

​What’s that? She was unable to still the trembling in her voice.

​Sounds to me like a pouncer’s been caught.

​Shay lurched for the window again, but Nurse held her fast. Snapjacks and snorpleskins, let me go see!

​I’m nearly through, child. Let me have done with it, and then you can go make trouble for someone else. Besides, that creature’s been caged beyond the palisade. You’ll not see past the fortress from your chamber window.

​The tightness in Shay’s throat returned. She had to swallow against it again to keep tears from coming. Oh, but listen. It’s crying!

​Don’t worry. It won’t be crying come morning when it’s turning on your da’s spit.

Plan

Laddle

Shay knew exactly where to go for a view over the palisade: the tower.

What’s more, she knew how to get there without being seen. She didn’t need to climb all the way to the top, either. The fourth-floor window served up a delicious view of Da’s lands.

Fields surrounding the fortress filled the valley with a patchwork of gardens and vineyards from the palisade to the forest’s edge. A distant wall of dark green marked where the forest began. Like a shadow, it spread across the rest of the valley before charging up the mountainside that hemmed in her homeland. The sweeping vista fed Shay’s soul, a picnic for the eyes calling her heart to the table. She couldn’t wait to be old enough to explore everything she saw. Once she was done with that, once she knew every toag and gilypad, every blossom and byway and bower, she’d go see what lay beyond those mountains that hid the rest of the world from view.

There was that forest, though. One would have to pass through it to mount the hills and peer over. But forests weren’t frightening things. Not really. Just in folk tunes and prairietales.                Though, of course, she’d never actually been to the forest to see if that were true.

A whimpering mewl rose from the foreyard, an expanse of trim grasses and flowerbeds fronting the fortress. Shay had to force herself to look on the poor caged creature the hunters had captured that morning, a storied species she’d only read of in books: a pouncer.

Pouncers called the forestlands home. They populated many of the prairietales and folk tunes that painted the forest as a frightening place. Did they all look like this one?

This pouncer, caged below, was the color of wheat stubble four weeks past harvest. It