Channel Island Monsters (eBook)

Erren Michaels (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
The History Press (Verlag)
978-1-80399-473-4 (ISBN)

Infos

The Channel Islands have a rich legacy of interwoven folklore, an antique tapestry full of faery creatures and mythical beasts. Here you will find fantastic adventures and fearsome fairytales, tall tales, horrors and high romance. In this exquisitely illustrated compendium, Channel Island Monsters weaves a web of deliciously dark stories from centuries of fables and their fragments. The werewolves, mermaids, changelings and dragons may seem familiar, but there are also monsters which are strange and unique to the Channel Islands. La Vioge, La Cocangne, Lé Bélengi and L'Êmânue are ancient creatures waiting to be rediscovered, with their eyes still shining and their claws still sharp.

Erren Michaels has a BA (Hons) in Literature and ten years experience of marketing in the Arts. While working in theatre she wrote, and performed in, live sketch shows. When her first two THP books, Jersey Legends and Jersey Ghost Stories, were published she used those skills to perform shows and book talks for both publications. Ghe participated in the inaugural Jersey Festival of Words, did library talks, a number of radio interviews appeared on local TV news for a short reading. She has also worked extensively with Jersey Heritage, did charity events for (Gerald Durrell's) Jersey Zoo. She has done multiple school talks and every year Legends is taught to Year 7s in Jersey's largest secondary school. She has been delighted to see children, island-wide, engage with the subject matter.

Textauszug

LA COCANGNE

Aqueous nymphs, or nixes, yclept Grindylow and Jenny Greenteeth, lurked at the bottom of pits, and with their long sinewy arms dragged in and drowned children venturing too near.

John Higson

Cassie sat against the wall of the little cave and drew her knees up. She hugged them to her chest with a sigh and rested her head on them, looking out into the daylight from the shadows.

It was quiet here in the well-cave, since most of the water drawing happened early in the morning, and she could watch all the people of the castle walk by, since it was located on the main path that ran from the top to the bottom of the vast stone fortress.

It was an odd place for a well, she thought. So high above the ground. This level of the castle was already higher than the rooftops of the fancy town houses where Cassie wished that she and her family lived. Or at least, she had wished that, until she had seen the fletcher’s boy Flynn. After that, she had decided she didn’t mind so much living in a castle, far away from the shops where they sold pretty dresses and sweets and ribbons.

While Cassie enjoyed the sheltered privacy of the cave, she did not much like the well itself. She had leaned over the edge once, when they had first arrived. The gaping darkness had pulled at her, making her feel like she might fall.

‘That’s just your instincts telling you to keep back,’ her father had said, when she told him of the horrible feeling, ‘That’s to keep you safe, my dear.’

He had rubbed his ink-stained fingers thoughtfully and then smiled. ‘I should get back to work. Wait! Pass me that green pigment, but don’t get it on your dress for goodness’ sake.’

So immersed was Cassie in her thoughts of Flynn, that it was a while before she realised that the soft echoes of the well had taken on a sing-song quality, and that the voice on the edge of her hearing was coming from inside, not outside, the cave.

She sat up stiff and put her hands to the cold stone floor.

‘Wishes, riches, power of witches; faery magic, goblin gold, secrets, beauty, joy untold…’

‘Hello?’ Cassie said.

The voice was strange and distracted, like an old woman who had wondered from her room and forgotten what she was saying.

‘La Cocangne in the well. Granting a wish, casting a spell.’

Cassie tilted her head towards the voice as it continued.

‘The price of a coin, the touch of hand, for all the magic in this land…’

She scrambled to her knees and crept closer.

‘A chance that’s granted to a few – reach out your hand, it shall be you.’

‘Hello?’ Cassie called again.

‘Hello, hello, no one we know, no men with buckets who come and go, their days all orders, chores and habit, they don’t deserve a wish or magic…’

‘Are you in the well?’ Cassie asked. ‘Did you fall in? Do you need help down there?’

She shuffled almost to the edge of the well, but was too nervous to peer in. ‘Do you always speak in poetry?’

‘Questions, questions, cheeky whelp! The well’s my home, I don’t need help. And yes, I weave words all the time, the magic lives within the rhyme. Come closer, let me see your face… a pretty thing within this place. A coin, or kiss, shall grant your wish. Speak clear and loud and clasp my hand, the most powerful magic in all-‘

‘I need a coin!’ Cassie jumped to her feet and raced away.

She didn’t have a coin. Why would she? And her father had certainly raised her better than to kiss strange faeries, which had seemed to be the other choice. Besides, girls in true love never kissed anybody except their true love, and she was quite certain that her true love was Flynn the fletcher’s boy.

Grabbing the hem of her dress, she raced up the long flight of stone stairs at a swift, high-kneed trot that made her pigtails bounce and lash around her face. She was out of breath by the time she reached the residential area of the castle, where her steps became noisier on wooden floorboards.

She darted through rooms that had seemed a maze when she had first arrived there. Along passages switching back and forth against the rock, upstairs, downstairs, until she came to the little room she shared with her sister, and out of breath shouted, ‘Isobel! Give me a coin!’

Several minutes later, and no closer to getting a coin, Cassie had stamped her foot twice and was shouting again. Isobel, ever the picture of ladylike calm, was still leaning back against her pillows with her book resting against her raised knees.

‘Cassie, really. Somebody is making fun of you. Waiting to laugh at you throwing your father’s money down a damp hole for a wish that won’t come true. Faeries and wishing wells indeed! Whoever heard of such a thing?’

‘Everybody, Isobel.’ Cassie stamped her foot again enjoying the loud bang. ‘Everybody has heard of faeries and wishing wells and magic. Especially in these islands. The soldiers all say that the Channel Islands are very magical, and that there are doors to another land and – do not snort at me Isobel! I’ve heard them say so! Real, grown-up men!’

‘I did not snort,’ Isobel exclaimed, losing her calm for the first time. ‘I merely sighed with vigour. I am a young lady and I have never snorted in my life.’

‘You did snort. You snorted like a pig! Now give me a coin, you selfish witch. I want to make myself a wish. There, now I’m rhyming too.’

‘You can’t make a wish,’ said Isobel slamming her book shut, ‘because it’s dinnertime.’

Cassie realised the logic of this statement at the precise moment that she realised she was hungry, and suffered herself to be tidied by her older sister and then led to the dining hall.

She had not forgotten the faery, and sweetly asked her father for a coin.

When he asked her, bemused, what she needed money for, she decided honesty was the best policy and told him that she wanted to make a wish in the well. Satisfied with this explanation he counted out two little copper coins and pushed them along the table.

‘There’s one for you too, Isobel,’ their father said with a smile. ‘Wish for something nice.’

‘Look, Cassie,’ Isobel whispered, as she passed the money to her sister. ‘Even his coins have map ink on them. We’ll go down tomorrow.’

As the midnight bell struck Cassie slipped out from under her covers and, as quietly as she could, put her dress back on over her shift. She groped blindly in the dark for her shoes, and carried them with her, wincing when she banged them against the door as she turned the handle and crept out.

She moved away from her room before putting her shoes on. She had carefully left the coin in her right shoe so that she didn’t have to search for it in the dark. She began walking as though she had every right to be up and about at this time, with her head high and a prim expression on her face.

She slipped out of the large, iron-bound door of the keep, and the soldiers stationed on either side looked at her curiously. She recognised the one with freckles – his name was Bry. Neither he nor the older man questioned her, so she scampered swiftly down the stone stairs, the cool night air feeling chill against her flushed cheeks. The coin dug into her palm as she clutched it tight, terrified that she might drop it and hear it ping away into the shadows. She skipped down the last of the steps and hesitated before the mouth of the cave. The flaming torch at the entrance cast light which did not reach as far back as the well. Cassie stepped blinking into the blackness and peered towards where she knew the mouth of the well waited in the dark.

‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘Are you still there, faery person? I have a coin now.’

For a moment there was nothing, then she heard something far and deep. Echoes of whispers. Muttered words blending and merging, slowly getting louder.

Cassie felt suddenly disorientated in the darkness and she moved sideways until her hand touched the wall. She did not move closer to the well.

‘She comes in darkness, comes at night, she stays in shadows out of sight, without a fire without a light, she needs a wish to make things right.’

‘Yes please,’ said Cassie as the voice echoed closer. ‘My father gave me a coin to make a wish.’ She swallowed her fear and added, ‘It’s only a copper coin. I hope that is enough. Do I throw it in? Is it like a wishing well?’

There was the soft pattering of water dripping onto the floor as the whispering voice filled the room, and Cassie shivered to think of the faery living so deep and dark in the water of the well.

‘Take a step, and do not pause, take my hand… your wish is yours!’

Cassie thought of how cold and wet that hand must be. She wondered what manner of faery would live at the bottom of a well.

‘And I can wish for anything at all?' she asked.

‘It’s all your choice, just use your voice, speak your desire… you think me a liar?’

‘Oh no! Of course not,’ Cassie took a slow step forward, eyes...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.10.2023
• Illustrationen: Amelia Wilde
• Zusatzinfo: 20 colour
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: Alderney • ancient tales • belengi • changelings • channel island folk tales • dark monsters • Dragons • fairy creatures • Folklore • guernsey folk tales • guernsey monsters • guernsey stories • Herm • jersey folk tales • jersey monsters • jersey stories • l'emanue • les cocagnes • Mermaids • Mythical beasts • Sark • Storytelling • the vioge • Werewolves
• ISBN-10: 1-80399-473-8 / 1803994738
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80399-473-4 / 9781803994734