CAGI Entry #15

Title: WHITE EYES

Genre: Young Adult

Word Count: 61,000

The Realm is teetering on the edge of war, and there are only two who know. One has blood on his hands, and one knows something the other doesn’t. Murders strike the Realm, and the Severen Spiri—a disgusting ritual that rips a person’s soul in two—is being ruthlessly and illegally performed. Caught in the middle is Meadow Ashby who sees the miscreant’s crimes through her abnormal visions, and is immediately implicated a liar. She must choose who to trust: an old friend whose behavior has become clandestine, or a new one who is fiercely protecting a secret of his own.

White Eyes immerses the reader into Meadow’s magical world of danger, destiny, and loss as she struggles to keep the Realm from being destroyed, and the people she loves from death—or a fate far worse.

While White Eyes could stand alone, it is meant to be in a trilogy. The first draft of book two has been written—very preliminary, of course—and book three is in the planning stages.

I am currently a senior at Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS. Three of my short stories and two poems have been published in their literary journal, Lines From the Middle of Nowhere. “Being Kane” (2009), “Tuesday Nights” (2010), “Irrevocably” (2011), “Nevermore Doll Store” (2012), “Nothing to Me” (2012). My first novel, Toenail Lemonade, was published by PublishAmerica in 2010.

First 250:

Preface

They called them night terrors, products of an overactive imagination, and even a physical malady. The most decent of people thought she was confused, the cruel said she was starved of attention. Even in their magical world, visions were not normal, and to them she was a liar.

But they hadn’t seen what she’d seen.

She watched as the blood ran warm beneath the jagged blade, and the man’s desperate cries swallowed any strength of hope that this truly was a nightmare. Her clenched fists grasped the cool metal as if she were the murderer, all the while her mind shrieked in terror.

When she awoke, her palms burned with the indention of the dagger’s handle.

One

Since his disappearance five years ago, Harkin had been the subject of Meadow Ashby’s dreams. They’d met at the mere age of six when the Cetherwoods had moved to Winchcombe. He shyly hid behind his mother’s legs, but Meadow, being the stubborn tomboy she was, chased him until he cried. Unable to endure the shame, Harkin shoved her until she cried.

But now Meadow dreamt of the day when they sat underneath the white, puffy leaves of the Finneus Tree in her backyard, talking of the Abilities they hoped to inherit when they turned thirteen. Their backs were pressed against the rough green bark, the wind brushed dirt onto their bare legs, and the sun warmed their faces. The grass was so lush and thick that they could run barefoot through the yard without hurting their feet on sticks and rocks, and the yellow, pink, and blue sky was clear enough to see every bird that sailed above them.