I haven’t done a Fiction Friday in a while, and since I’ve been chattering on about my upcoming novel release, The Wanderers, it seemed only appropriate to share an excerpt, no?

This scene is towards the middle of the novel.  Julie, Jasper and talking cat Tom have just made a deal with a Sea Queen, which involves rescuing her sea serpent from Prince Randolph.  Jasper and Tom met Randolph on a previous adventure, and were not impressed.  Not every sentence here will make sense out of context, but I think enough is comprehensible…

Julie, Jasper and Tom exited the water abruptly.  One moment they were skimming along just above the sea floor under the power of the Sea Queen’s magic.  The next, they fell out of a wall of water to land in a heap on wet but not at all submerged sand.  Julie’s hair fell in tangles around her shoulders, and Tom shrank to a third of his former apparent size.

Julie got to her feet, wet skirt clinging to her legs, and looked around.  They were on bare sea floor, in a trench formed by walls of water rising dozens of feet above their heads on either side.  The trench was maybe a hundred feet across, and several times that long, the floor covered in mounds of sand and wilted seaweed.  At the far end, she could see the serpent coiled like an enormous snake, while Randolph stood before it with sword drawn, his back to them.

“Damn,” Jasper remarked.  “He must have a useful enchanted sword.”

“You think he used it to part the ocean?” Julie said.

“Can’t explain it any other way.  Randolph just isn’t that talented on his own.”

If Jasper was right, the sword was giving him a considerable advantage.  Julie didn’t know much about judging the health of giant sea monsters, but she thought it looked ill.  It was snapping at Randolph, but its movements were sluggish.  “It’s probably sick outside the water,” she said.  “So to rescue it, we’ll have to move it back into the sea.”

“You want to move a giant serpent?” Jasper said.  “I’ve seen buildings that were smaller.”

Tom unhelpfully added, “I’ve seen entire towns that were smaller.”

“All right, so maybe we don’t move it,” Julie said, keeping her chin in the air and a positive tone in her voice.  Someone had to be the optimist.  “We’ll move the water back around it.”

Jasper caught the idea and the optimism.  “We get the sword from Randolph, and if he can part water, why can’t we put it back?”

Tom groaned.  “We’re going to get wet again.”

“You can’t get any wetter,” Julie said.  “Come on, let’s go steal a sword.”  Continue reading “Fiction Friday: A Sea Serpent and a Prince” →