Young Writers Society

M O O N C H I L D

Six years ago, a witch and a witch hunter fell in love.

When young, upstart preacher Kit Hawkie dragged himself into Bryony Tallant’s cottage, he did not expect a hedge witch. After he reluctantly lets her treat his injuries, saving life and limb, Kit has no choice but to recuperate in her cottage. As weeks turn into months, and they share the only bed in the witch’s home, alliance turns into trust, and into something more.

These days, Bryony and her daughter Rowan rattle around an empty townhouse in the city, Bryony selling small spells to society ladies. Kit is away, a guest lecturer in theology at the esteemed Drakehollow University. When Kit’s letters abruptly stop, and he doesn’t come home for half term, Bryony and Rowan head north to find him.

There are no friends for Bryony in Drakehollow, and no one will shed light on her missing husband. She believes a group of students known as the Shadowfounds know more than they are letting on. Their leader is Perseverance Taylor, a girl who is friendly on the surface, but whose father is a rebel general who would see Kit, famously loyal to the throne, dead. Neither Bryony the witch nor Bryony the wife fit well here in Drakehollow. In her dreams, she can hear Kit screaming in pain. Time is running out. Bryony must adapt to Drakehollow, or she will lose him forever.

Told in dual timeline, telling the story of a young and hopeful marriage, and how they came to flee the forest, alongside the tale of a witch determined to keep her family together, this novel weaves together the notion of a cottage witch, and a university where knowledge is revered above all. Can Bryony bring Kit home, or was theirs a marriage doomed from the very start?