Diana Groe - Romance Author

	Maidensong~About the story

			Welcome to the World of MAIDENSONG A book that needs a map signals a world of adventure. *Maidensong* begins in the Norse fjords, winds down the rivers of Europe, and spills into the Black Sea. Rika and Bjorn journey to Miklagard, the great city in the south, better known as Constantinople. The journey is hazardous enough, but the risk to their hearts is greater still.

	Book Info: Leisure Books, ISBN:978-0-8439-5710-5 BUY THE BOOK! Barnes & Nobles Borders Books Amazon Books-a-Million

	Prologue

	The babe wailed again. “There, lamb,” Helge whispered as she sponged the last of the cheesy substance off the enraged little body. Flickering light from the central meal fire kissed the newborn and danced across the smoke-blackened beams of the longhouse. The old midwife sighed. However difficult the babe’s entry into the world had been, she was at least a healthy child, perfectly formed with all her fingers and toes, and a crest of coppery hair plastered to her damp head. “Hush you, now,” Helge coaxed. The wrinkled little face puckered and the newborn shrieked as if Loki, the trickster godling, had just pinched her bottom. Helge wrapped the child snugly in a catskin blanket, crooning urgent endearments. “Shut the brat up,” Torvald said, his voice a broken shadow of its usual booming timbre. All the souls sheltering in the longhouse went expectantly silent. As if she sensed menace in the air, the child subsided into moist hiccups. “Will you not hold your daughter?” Helge offered the small bundle to Torvald. “She’s a fine child, fair and lusty.” “No, I’ll not.” Torvald swabbed his eyes. “She’s killed my Gudrid. I’ll have naught to do with her.” When he looked at the mewling babe, his face was a mask of loathing. “Put her out.” Helge flinched. “But my lord—” “Don’t argue with me, woman. Am I not chief over my own house?” Torvald’s grey eyes blazed with a potent mix of fury and grief. “I said, put her out.” Helge’s shoulders sagged. She couldn’t remember the last time a healthy child like this one had been exposed. But Torvald was master, so there was nothing for it but to do his bidding. Still, it didn’t seem right to consign the babe to Hel empty-handed. It was bad enough that she’d go unloved and unmourned to that shadowy, icy place. Even worse, she’d arrive there as a pauper. Helge laid her little charge on the bedding next to her dead mother. The body was still warm, but Helge untied the thin strip of leather from the woman’s inert neck. The pendant was a simple little amber hammer, its only distinctive mark a tiny purplish orchid trapped forever in the glowing stone. Perhaps Thor would mark the child for his protection if she met her death wearing his talisman. It wasn’t much, but it was all Helge could do for the mite. She bundled herself against the cold and left the warmth of the longhouse bearing her whimpering burden. The stiff hairs in her nostrils froze with each breath. The thought of leaving the child for the wolves made Helge’s chest constrict smartly. She decided to let the sea take her. It would be clean and quick. There’d be less chance of hearing the child’s keening death wail on the wind. And the unhappy little soul would find it harder to trouble those who’d disowned her with malicious tricks later, as some malevolent ghosts were known to do. Snow crunched under foot as Helge trudged down to the shore where the fjord was choked with ice. Armed with an ax she picked up as she passed the woodpile, Helge carried the babe as close to the edge of the floe as she dared. “Goodbye, little elf,” Helge said as she placed the newborn on the smooth, cold surface. “Thor keep you, for I can not.” She brought the sharp ax down with a thwack. The brittle ice shattered in a jagged line and separated from the main body of the floe. Helge gave it a nudge with the ax handle. She watched with a gathering heaviness in her chest as, bobbing and dipping, the tiny bundle on the ice sheet floated out with the tide. * * * * *

Reviewers say . . .

		Praise for MAIDENSONG! "Diana Groe's great writing and research skills, as well as her ability to weave a good old-fashioned love story with heft, make her an author to watch." - Michelle Buonfiglio, LIfetimeTV BUY NOW!

Musings

In the opening scene of Chapter One, Magnus Silver-Throat, the celebrated Nordic skald, lies dead. I've always regretted killing him. He's a character I truly love and, despite being dead, Magnus plays a large role in Maidensong's story.

I wonder about Magnus. What kind of man was he that near the end of his life, he should make it a habit to rescue unwanted children? If caring for those weaker than one's self is a definition of masculine, then Magnus was a man in truth. Sometime in his long life, he learned what love really was

and I yearn to discover that story.

Maybe someday, I'll write it.

You can read Magnus' deleted scene below.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The keel of a coracle sliced through the grey water, the waves dividing like the wings of an eagle on either side of the small craft. It rode lightly on the sea, as though at any moment it might lift from the water and take flight.

“You’re sure of the place?” Magnus asked from the steering oar. The boy seated in the middle of the boat, next to the mast and billowing sail, didn’t turn his head. Magnus didn’t like the look of the sky. Storm clouds gathered over the island of the Angles far to the west. Magnus knew they could boil across the narrow sea in no time, threatening to chase the little coracle onto the reefs if they didn’t find shelter before the winds arrived. “Ketil, did you hear me? Is this the right place?”

“Ja.” The boy nodded somberly. “I dreamed that dead thing there.” He lifted a stubby finger at the listing tree, limbs black and twisted, surrounded by vibrant live pines clad in deep green. They had reached the point where the fjord emptied into the North Sea, spilling a myriad of little rocky islands around the mouth of the waterway. Magnus saw that the tree was indeed there, perched on a stony promontory, just as Ketil’s dreyma had predicted.

Magnus Silver-Throat, lately court poet to the King of the Danes, pushed back the wiry strand of white hair that drifted across his weathered face. He didn’t really believe in Ketil’s dreams, he told himself. And yet last month when the boy had vehemently insisted they not put to sea on a cloudless day, he’d indulged his son’s fancy. A violent squall had come up that afternoon that surely would’ve swamped their small craft had Magnus kept to his original plan. Ketil’s current dreyma wasn’t nearly so specific. Only that they had to be in this precise spot.

Magnus squinted against the glare of the cold northern sun on the water, not quite believing what he thought he saw. “Ketil, look you starboard and tell me what’s there.”

The nine-year-old twisted on his sea trunk and gazed in the direction his foster-father pointed. His simple face screwed into a frown. “Something on the ice.”

A thin wail floated over the water to his ear.

“It cries,” Ketil said.

Magnus’ mouth tightened as he adjusted the steering oar to swing toward the bobbing mound of fur. “See if you can fetch it out, son. Be careful.”

The boy moved clumsily to the prow of the small boat and leaned over the edge. As they neared the bundle, Ketil grabbed it and hauled it aboard. He weaved back to Magnus.

The man peeled away the soggy wrappings, his mouth fixed in a grim line. The babe was blue with cold, but she stopped whimpering long enough to fasten her pale green eyes on him. His old heart was forever lost in that instant.

“It looks like we’ve fished up a Pictish princess,” he said to the boy. “I don’t think she could be any bluer if we dipped her headfirst in woad.”

“Can we keep it?” Ketil asked, his mouth hanging open. His soft heart always wanted to keep and care for little lost creatures.

“It’s difficult to return a gift from the gods,” Magnus said. “They tend to resent it when you try. Especially since they apparently went to a lot of trouble to send us to find this one.”

As he said it, he eyed the coastline, wondering what calamity could lead someone to abandon such a goodly child. Magnus removed the catskin blanket and tucked the babe into the folds of his own warm cloak. Then he reefed the coracle around smartly.

“Winter is harder here than I expected, son.” He searched the shoreline for a clue as to which settlement in the deep fjord had expelled this tiniest of its members. “Hard winters can lead to hard hearts. I believe we’ll fare better going south.”

“But we had to come here, Father,” Ketil said insistently. “I dreamed it.”

“So you did, son,” Magnus said, pondering the gods’ wisdom in giving the boy this unusual gift when they had denied him normal intelligence. He glanced down at the tiny girl, whose skin was already regaining a healthy pink color, sheltering peacefully in the capacious folds of his multi-hued cloak. “And it appears we’ve already found the reason why.”

Book Info: Leisure Books,

ISBN:978-0-8439-5710-5

BUY THE BOOK!

Barnes & Nobles

Borders Books

Amazon

Books-a-Million

Please stop by DIANA'S BLOG!
Copyright © 2007 «Diana Groe». All rights reserved.