Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.
So I’m copyediting Tell the Wind and Fire, and I asked people on twitter if they wanted a snippet, and it seemed like yes they could be about the snippet life!
For all those who do not know, Tell the Wind and Fire is my new book, out spring 2016, and the potted summary for it currently goes like this:
Tell the Wind & Fire is about a young girl called Lucie who lives in a New York very different from the New York we know: the city is torn between two very different kinds of magic, and Lucie’s own family was torn apart years ago by that conflict. Lucie wears magic rings and carries a burden of guilt she can’t share with anyone.
The light in her life is her sweetheart boyfriend Ethan, but it turns out Ethan has a secret too: a soulless doppelganger created by dark magic, who has to conceal the face identical to Ethan’s with a hood fastened by a collar nobody but a Light magician with magical rings can take off… and who introduces himself to both of them by, for reasons nobody can understand, saving Ethan’s life…
So this snippet happens a short time after the life-saving…
I was furious, but there was something I had to do before questioning either one of them.
“Come here,” I said, and advanced on the doppelganger. He took a step back and wound up sitting on the bunk, looking surprised and mildly irritated.
I held up my hands as if in surrender, though it was anything but. I held them so the doppelganger could see the Light magic rings glittering on all my fingers.
“I’m a trained Light medic,” I told him. “Now let me see your wrist.”
He gave me an unfriendly look, but he let me kneel down and snatch his hand again. I pushed back the worn fabric of his sleeve. The material tried to adhere to the burn, but I pulled it off despite the hiss of pain that slipped through the doppelganger’s teeth. I had to loop my fingers around his wrist, over the burn, thumb and middle finger touching. I concentrated, coaxing to life the light hidden in every sparkling stone, letting it form a bright bracelet over his skin and mine. When I let go, I knew the light would wash the burn marks away. I was able to help, because he was not too badly hurt. My mother had been able to save people on the brink of death, but I was not a tenth as brilliant a magician as my mother. I could only do this.
I opened my eyes, blinked away the remnants of Light in my vision, like dissolving stars, until all that was left was his intent gaze.
“There,” I told him.
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
“No,” I said. “I’m supposed to thank you. You saved his life and I love him, so I owe you more than I know how to repay. Thank you …. what’s your name?”
He hesitated. “Carwyn.”
“Carwyn,” I said, still kneeling, staring up into a familiar face with a strange name on my tongue. “Thank you.”