The following new novel begins Book 2 of the Shama Series.
Please first read: The Witchling Shama before starting this novel. (The Witchling Shama is also found on this website or can be purchased on Amazon.com)
Prelude:
The man wanted to marry me. What a strange thought. Me, the outcaste, the girl-woman with no name, the one at the bottom of the dregs of society. Less admired than the town drunk.(Plus my former town had never tried to stone the town drunk. But me, I now lived under a death sentence, I think.)
The person who asked me to marry him, Frank, was a respectable man, a sheriff. The town of Tinkle Town loved him. What did he see in me? How could he even suggest marrying me because then everyone would find out my deep, dark secret. In fact, it was inevitable. That secret would come out in the court trial, and then . . .
Okay, step back and start at the beginning. That’s what Old Mother would have said. She’d also been a witch, but everyone had adored her. They’d come to her for herbs for their aches and pains and sometimes just for advice. Old Mother had almost adopted me. She would have given me a name if she could have afforded to do so. I’d lived with her for years until she died. Then I had nothing and no one, well, except my horse, Frey.
Mine was not a pretty history, but I’d escaped the meanness, the miserliness and the revenge of the town and arrived in Tinker Town. Here I’d found love in the heart of two almost orphan boys. Almost because their father had killed their mother and remained in jail for the upcoming trial, but I was told the outcome of that was pretty certain. Murder, like being a witch in some towns, almost always carried a death sentence.
Mrs. Penn had found me a place to live while I took care of the two boys. The house even had a place for my beloved stallion, Frey, and things had been going well until my old life resurrected all the ugliness.
So what was the problem? Multiple problems, actually. Frank wanted to marry me. Mrs. Penn wanted to adopt me even though she already had a grown daughter who lived in a nearby town. The drunkard and his traveling preacher had revealed my secrets and would probably not be content to be quiet about them. Frank wanted to marry me. Oh, I already said that, but it needs repeating because that was the cause of most of my tension headaches, the kind that not even lavender and lemon balm couldn’t remedy.
And as if all those were not enough to send me nightmares, I worried about what Mrs. Penn’s daughter would say about her mother wanting to adopt me? Would Sheila rage with jealousy and bitterness, storming into Tinker Town like a spinning tornado, eager to chase me away? Would her heart be stone, even when she saw the sweetness of the two little boys who called me Mother? And, I must not forget that since Mrs. Penn had witch heritage, Sheila might also have that potential. Nothing was as dangerous as an untrained witch or one who did’t know what she was.
There were so many questions I had about the future, but I couldn’t read tea leaves or routinely dream prophesies of what the Fates would bring. Like all the rest of us, I could only cross my thumbs and murmur the old children’s saying:
Wishing and washing, cat in the tree
Tell of the fortune that belongs to me
May it be good. May it bring smiles
Else I shall run for miles and miles.
Except Mrs. Penn told me sternly that I couldn’t keep running. She’d said I must learn to take the good with the bad. With her eyes crinkled into lines that spoke of love, she’d held my hand and whispered, “A woman who wants to give you a name and to form us into a family, a man who wants to marry you and will cherish you as you deserve, children who already adore you and call you their mother, your good buddy, Frey, and this precious little kitty, Willow: these are the building blocks of your happiness, Shama, if only you will choose to accept what the Fates have brought you.”
She could be right, so I decided not to run away no matter what the Fates brought, mostly because I gave a promise to the little boys, Carlo and Francis, but also because I have given my trust to Tinker Town.
Maybe, as Mrs. Penn said, happiness is worth a little pain. And besides, there’s Frank, who, despite his occasional disbelief, sometimes kisses me, smiles into my eyes with love, encourages me, and now speaks of our future. And if I’m truthful in my heart, although I quiver in fear, a kernel of hope is growing. The potential of what Mrs. Penn saw for me, for all of us, is a carrot too wondrous to ignore.