I think I've finally gotten enough brainstorming and worldbuilding done to launch into an honest-to-goodness overhaul of this thing.
So, today I have for you a mock cover that I made to inspire myself a little while ago, the last version of the opening, and the reworked opening.
The previous version of the opening was drastically different. There was a prologue, told in a more omniscient/fairy-tale style POV (which is why it's in italics), and then the opening chapter was from the POV of the male MC.
The reworked opening jumps straight into the story, shows a bit of the worldbuilding that got me excited about this story in the first place,
and starts from the POV of the female MC!
Enjoy!
Opening 1:
There once was a Wind Child who coveted nearly everything she set her eyes on. From seed to blossom, if it belonged to another, Loredanna wished it for herself.
Her husband Lando had long since learned that absolutely no one could talk her out of something. So it was when she wished for tea made from the leaves of a Witch’s laburnum tree, and refused to give him any peace, that her husband snuck into the Witch’s garden. Carefully, he pinched off the glimmering ocher flowers and placed them in his pocket.
Three nights in a row he did this. Three nights in a row he brewed tea for his lovely Loredana. On the fourth, he came face to face with the resident Witch—Kamille.
The crooked woman glowered at him with her crooked face. She demanded to know what he was doing.
Knowing he had no excuse for the theft other than his own weakness towards his wife, he dropped to his knees and pleaded for mercy.
The Witch agreed, provided he allow her one thing: to be godmother to his child.
Having no child at the time, he confusedly agreed. In time, his wife had a child. She named him Notah, and bestowed many blessings upon him in the hopes that he would be able to ward off any attempts the Witch made to claim him.
The blessings did little to prevent the Witch from taking him. They did, however, give him some degree of power over the Witch. And so, she was unable to use him as she had originally wished: as a source of power to augment her own magic.
In an effort to weaken his blessings, she forced him to use them constantly. If anything, her efforts seemed to embolden him. He accomplished each task she set to him, from planting magic seeds to slaying monstrous, seven-headed Beasts.
Finally, she decided to send him to the abode of another Witch.
“Bring me a casket from my sister in the Valley of Scions,” she told him.
“I shall fetch the sandapile most festinately,” he jauntily replied. “So festinately shall I fetch it, your cebocephalic head will ache.”
With a flurry of angry notes from her flute, Kamille sent him on his way.
Opening 2:
Staccato drumbeats laced through the darkness. They cut through the groan of settling earth, called forth the beasts that slumbered beneath the surface.
In the midst of the music, Corinna ran. The darkness of the Settling was the best time to escape. When the broken earth reformed and healed, when the Witch Aranka busied herself with renewing her stronghold and corralling the monsters that were attracted to her corrupted Taide.
A hideous moan rumbled through the beat of the drums. The first of the monsters clawed upwards.
Corinna couldn’t see it, but she could feel it; close, not even a body’s length away, with dank breath and claws that scraped against the earth like iron against iron.
She kept running. She had to make it, before—
The music that had called up the monster caught her. The curse twined through her.
Swiping away her tears, she pulled against it. Her bones ached. The further she went, the worse it became: a scar wound down her arm; her leg bent; her arm shriveled.
Unable to continue, she collapsed. The curse pulled her back as surely as a chain about her neck.
From the darkness, Aranka’s fingers curled against her cheek. Her voice flat, she said, “How did you expect to leave without a means to fight me?”
A square box that Corinna had come to know well was pressed against her chest. Her kalimba. Her tuneless kalimba, for her rhythmless fingers.
She had thought that leaving it behind would finally give her the opportunity she needed; that leaving it would give Aranka one less thing to tie her curse to.
Corinna settled into the darkness and awaited the dawn, to see what new horrors Aranka would be harboring for the new world.
