Goodness gracious, it's been a long time since I've worked on this chapter. It's probably not very good, as I haven't edited it in a year. I've hit a sort of block on this part, so please bear with me. Or not. Your choice.
The woods seemed to embrace Anwyn as she stood in front of the small rock house. The sun shone through the tree tops, giving the forest a happy appearance, much different than the gloom and darkness that loomed inside the hut ahead. She crouched to get her tall form under the low doorway and kissed her sleeping little girl's forehead, muttering a prayer.
Goose bumps rose on her pale arms as the darkness of the house surrounded them, oily light coming only from small candles and lamps on the walls. Dusty, ancient tomes filled tall bookshelves and a splinter infested table was shoved in a corner. The room had an old mildew smell that made Anwyn crinkle her nose and cough.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she kneeled and called out, "Emrys, holy seer of names, I--I beg thy presence... Please come forth from the shadows and prophesise."
A sunken figure fell from the velvet shadows and stumbled on his crooked legs. He made eye contact, and Anwyn was forced to look into his almost-white irises, so filled with pain and knowing. She swallowed her nausea and forced herself to not look away. Once flaming red hair hung in dirty, snarled knots. His skin was tanned and almost leathery, though it still defied his ancient age. His thin lips stretched themselves into a smile and revealed yellowed teeth. Anwyn felt herself shiver with fear.
Superstitions took over her mind and she repeated prayers over and over in her head, taking pains not mutter them out loud. She remembered the stories her mother would tell her as a child-- how Emrys was the favorite man of Cilero, our Heavenly God, and Rosen, his Heavenly wife. She told of mothers that traveled far across the small country so he could read their child's future and name them. This wasn't done anymore, despite the sacredness of names. Northerners just went to priests, or even named their children themselves. To Anwyn, that seemed like blasphemy.
"Pretty Anwyn, I've wondered when you would decide to grace me with your presence. Tell me, how is your sister? Such a pretty baby she was." He murmured in a cracked voice.
Anwyn stiffened and looked away. "Alis is married and pregnant with her second child. A lady in the court of North Braanagh."
The man laughed and touched the young woman's cheek; she shuddered, but didn't pull away. She had to show respect for the old man no matter how much he repulsed her. "Her name is 'noble sort', is it not? You should have known she would marry a lord. And what about you? It has been a mere sixteen years since I named you as a newborn, and you are already here with a little girl."
She dipped her head and muttered bitterly, "I had many suitors. My father married me off for a few extra coins in his pocket. Money is hard to come by now."
"I'm not surprised, I named you fair, and I am never wrong." He stared at the girl's grey eyes and pale brown hair.
Anwyn clenched her eyes shut for a moment and opened them again; scared Emrys could see the faint sheen of tears on her eyes.
"And who is it to which you've been wed? My memory fails me."
"Fatmir."
"And how long have you been married to Fatmir? I named him...nineteen years ago. A slight age difference in this marriage," Emrys asked as if he hadn't already known.
"Ten months. We've been married for ten months."
The old man laughed a dry, crackling sound. "You became pregnant within one month of marriage?" He paused, considering the blushing girl before him. "Of course, I'm not surprised. With your fair face and long hair, few men would have been able to resist themselves in his situation. He, I see, could not. Does he treat you well?"
His frank stare raised more bumps on Anwyn’s arms and she straightened her back. "Yes, he....He does." Her voice was quiet and she sounded meek even to her own ears.
He laughed and walked circles around the girl and her daughter. "I'm just wondering. I am not in favor of treating women like household animals. I named Fatmir well. He is lucky. That name suits him, a pretty little daughter and a beautiful wife in his bed. 'Tis a shame you have given him no sons, but I'm sure there will be an heir for his fortune at some point."
She blushed even deeper as he took the small child from her arms. He set his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, muttering a prayer. When he pulled back, an almost amused smirk formed on his lips.
"Quite a future laid out for you, little one." He paused for a moment, watching Anwyn squirm with anxiety.
"You will be lady of the roads." He said. "You are Peregrin, a name that means traveler." He gingerly set the child back the woman's hands.
Anwyn took her back and held the child close, bowing her head. "Thank you Emrys, may the stars watch over you."
"Thank you Anwyn, may Rosen give you and your family happiness." Emrys leaned down and place a callused hand on the child's ivory forehead and closed his eyes. "Peregrin, lady of the roads, I give thee my blessing as I blessed thy mother and father. Live as you have been destined." He looked up. "You may take leave, Anwyn."
Anwyn bowed once again and exited the small house. Emrys words echoed through her head as she walked and she felt uneasy. Other village women came back bragging, holding their Briallen's and their Cadell's, but she was holding Peregrin. Traveler. Emrys' prophecy unnerved her. An unmanageable child was not what she needed.
Anwyn bit her lip, trying to ignore the voice in the back of her head, hissing that she wasn't suited as a mother. That she wasn't going to be able to turn this rosy little baby into a polite young woman. She fought a mental battle on her way home, not sure what to do. Memories of her own childhood flooded through her mind...
She walked down the street warily, eyeing everybody that passed her. Giggling came from a group of girls around her age and Anwyn sighed. She walked by fast, knowing they would never try to include her in their conversation. She broke into a run, eager to return to the safety of home. A small dip in the road caught her by surprise and she lost balance, falling onto the dirt.
"Anwyn, you dizzy-eyed fool." She muttered, trying to stand up. A hand grabbed her upper arm and her eyes widened with fear. She tried to break free, but the man was strong and already had an arm tightly wound around her waist.
"Let off me, Alun. Let me go!" She squirmed, but his hold around didn't loosen.
"Not very nice, Anwyn. I just helped you, I believe you owe me." He leaned down and tried to kiss her, the other three boys laughing. She turned her head, but he grabbed her jaw and kissed her anyway.
"Let her go."
Alun glared at speaker with his dark eyes. “Hush up, Fatmir."
"I said let her go! She's a lady, and you will treat her as one."
Alun smirked at her. In Anwyn's eyes, he looked truly evil. "Not for long."
She saw a flash of anger in Fatmir's eyes as he set his jaw and moved closer to her captor. Bryn and Ceffin grabbed his arms and punched him. He fell to the ground and hit his head, eyes closed. Fear stole the breath from her lungs and she struggled against Alun's grasp. Her elbow jabbed him under the ribs, knocking the air out of him. His almost-black eyes clouded with anger and the next thing Anwyn knew, she was on the ground again, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to ignore the pain in the back of her head. Alun stood above her, blocking her way up.
"Do not hit me, maiden. Ever again."
She refused to stand, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her, making her stumble into his chest. Her bonnet had fallen off. She saw one of the other boys grab it out of the corner of her eye. Bryn, she decided. She squirmed again, trying to ignore the pain spreading throughout her body. Alun tightened his grasp and whispered in her ear, "Don't try me, fair one."
He had his arms tightly wound around her body, one around her bodice and the other around her waist. He was strong, and Anwyn knew she would only be released by his grace. At that thought, she stopped moving and went limp, hoping she would be let go once the fun of the chase was over.
He laughed crudely. "See? Now this is how a woman is to behave. Be obedient, fair one. You were a wild child, playing with us boys and not learning to sew and cook like a good lady. Soon though, you will belong to one of us." He gestured towards the three other boys surrounding him.
Fear pitted its self in Anwyn's stomach as she thought of marrying one of them, letting him touch her and see her. She whimpered and Alun laughed.
"I'm scaring her, boys, see that?"
"You boys ought to be asham'd o' yerselves." An old women leaning on a walking stick hobbled over and hit Alun on the back of his knees with her cane. He dropped Anwyn, who collapsed. "All you, shoo, get on, go, leave this poor girl alone." Three of them ran off, leaving Fatmir behind. The old woman helped Anwyn up, being much stronger than she looked. Anwyn wrapped her arms around the woman's neck. "Thank you, Althea, bless you."
"Calm yourself, child, I only did what anyone good would have." She glanced at Fatmir, slumped on the ground. "I'll come back for him. C'mon, Child, you're fine. Those boys can't hurt you."
Anwyn dipped her head. "They--they've become more bold since Father told them one of them can marry me." Fear squeezed her heart, but she knew her father's word was final. He made sure of it.
Althea's pale blue eyes took on a hard edge. She walked Anwyn home faster than she had ever walked before and rapped her cane on the door.
"Cadoc...Cadoc you coward open up!" A moment past and Anwyn's father opened the door, looking down harshly on Althea and Anwyn.
"What do you want, healer?"
"You will not give this girl to one of those boys, Cadoc. Care you not for your daughter?"
"They admire her, and they will pay for her. She is a girl, healer. She was born to be married off. Maybe she'll produce boys with her husband and then she'll be worth the money I paid for her to live here for fifteen years. The deal is done, she is getting married.." He glared one last time at his daughter and slammed the door.
Anwyn collapsed on the ground outside the house that was once her home and cried wracking sobs that shook her body and she found herself unable to stop.
"Shush, child, the time for crying is not now. Come, you will sleep at my house tonight, but I could be hanged for interfering.
For some reason, this felt odd to me. Maybe because she's talking about the hut ahead, and then she's at the hut? For some reason, I feel like she was a lot farther away then she apparently was, which unsettles me a bit. Also, she's kissing her daughter as she entering the hut? I would switch these two actions around, make her kiss Pere first, and then enter the house.
Knelt, dear.
Two 'shadows' really close together.
I would change this too 'the pain of knowing. It's more poetic that way.
I would put this part in quotations, because you're quoting someone. (I am nothing if not the master of the obvious
not 'an' dear, 'a'.
The whole memory needs to be in italics, darling.
I would change this to 'let go of me'
As always, everything I have to add is technical stuff. You're a fantastic writer, and you know how much I love this story. xxxxxx
The first thing I want to say is that I'm confused between the two sections of this story. It seemed in the first part that she was already married with a child, but either I lost myself or the two parts weren't separated, because later she's talking about how she can get married to one of the boys? And she needs to be saved? That's the biggest thing putting me off of this right now. I do like that we're not privvy to Fatmir's weakness until after we know they're married, because then we suddenly realize she got the weak, but not-cruel end of the stick, and feel relief. At least, I assume he's not as cruel as the other boys around.
Now, is she still a girl's age when she has the baby? I'm confused about that because of the running together of the two times, but it's important to know about the marriage conventions of the time. There's a time gap between her and her husband, but that's normal.
I also like the idea that there's some old guy naming everyone and giving them all fates, but that makes me more interested in him than in her, at least at this point. Like, how does HE feel going around to EVERYONE EVER and predicting babies' futures. Has he ever gotten emotionally tangled? Ever regretted one of his choices? And has he really never been wrong?
Next, I want to compliment you on bringing in the emotions of a mother who's been predicted a traveling child, worrying that now she really can't make her baby well behaved 'cause everything's against her, and HINTING that the mother had the same sort of childhood, playing with the boys. I want to hear more about how she feels about that. How she feels that the boys grew up into cruel beats when, presumably, they were okay playmates when they were all young.
I'm definitely not interested in the mom going to the old woman's house, though. I think she did enough by shooing the boys off, and I think it's reasonable for a daughter to hate her father without escaping his roof, so I'd find it more realistic for her to go home with her dad. Unless she usually sleeps in other houses? I don't know.
Now, I also want to know more about how she ended up with Fatmir! I think it sounds like it will be a really good story, especially with the image of him knocked out by the tough boys to go on. We find out whether the mother pitied him, or chose him for his weakness.
I'd like to see more, really.
Keep working, keep pushing.
Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!
Abbi, darlin'! Thanks for posting the link to your work-that was helpful.
I really liked this description. You didn't stretch it too far, but still you gave me a vivid picture.So, here I am. I didn't have any idea that you had posted your novel on YWS, too! Or else, I would have come here earlier. But anyways, it's never too late.
You know, although I always used to write prologues to my novels, I've recently ditched the idea. I can give many arguments against writing prologues but I'm pretty sure you must have had your own reasons when you wrote this.
I found some problems in this prologue, as was my job to find as a reviewer. So I'll list them so it would be easier for you to fix them, think upon them.
1. It was a bit long for a prologue. There's no defined length for a prologue but since it's not considered an integral part of the novels mostly, it's kept crisp and short. So, if you make it too long, people would probably lose interest. That being said, I would like you to consider turning it into a chapter. I would like to read it as a chapter, and not a prologue.
2. Your transition from the present to the past in Anywn's childhood was very confusing and abrupt. I couldn't understand what had exactly happened and I had to re-read it to make some sense. But once I got the gist of it, the writing was nice. The action was good.
3. There were some problems with your sentences here and there. Like, you'd use a wrong word, sometimes the sentence would seem to drag in a weird way. But nothing major: that's why I didn't point them out. It's something you just overlooked. You'll fix them once you're editing.
4. I actually loved the way you brought in the superstitions, the stereotypes against the women. I'm glad you went inside those times and described what all atrocities would happen against the women. I like your theme.
5. Also, this is how the title should be written:
Overall, I enjoyed the story. I would actually love to come back and read what happens next. ^_^ All in all, you were able to catch my interest which is a good thing. But seriously, I would have liked it better had it not been a prologue, somehow.
I hope this helps. ^_^
Hey there! Here as requested to do whatever I can.
Okay. Well, first things first, you're setting up a fascinating plot here. I'm very interested to see where it goes. Your characters are very original, and your description in some places is lovely. However, I did have a problem with it from very early on. You tend to write in short, simple sentences. This is fine or even good in small quantities, but it gets rather tiresome very quickly. It also means you're doing a lot of telling the reader what's going on, but it's very hard to visualise. You had a lot of interesting things to say, but as you can see, they naturally become harder to read and appreciate because the structure feels very repetetive. Using a mixture of short and simple, and long and complex sentences makes a huge difference, helping the reader to understand what's going on and follow the passage without getting fed up with it, so that your description is able to make its fullest impact.
There are a handful of spelling and grammar mistakes, but I won't go through and nitpick. Instead, if your word processor doesn't have a spellchecker, you can use an online one such as this one, but I'd always recommend proofreading it very carefully yourself, and possibly getting a beta-reader for a second pair of eyes.
I'd love to see you build more on the characterisation, too. You present Emrys as the authority figure, highly revered, and Anwyn as the meek and lowly mortal, but you open their interaction with Anwen summoning Emrys with authority, which doesn't sit quite right. There are quite a few places in which Anwen seems too bold or disrespectful for this sort of situation, and I'd like to see the inconsistency a little more thoroughly dealt with.
I hope we're going to see more of Emrys and Anwyn in future! I'm expecting the novel to be focused on Peregrin, but you've given the reader some very interesting characters and it would be a shame to waste the opportunity. I did really enjoy this, and I'm looking forward to reading more of the novel.
Well, I hope I helped! If there's anything more I can do, or anything I've said that could be further explained, please let me know. I'd be glad to help in any way I can.
~ Ruth
Red = Suggestions
Bold = Opinions
Green = Really liked this part
I love this. I really, really love it. You /need/ to write more. The description is superb, it's interesting and exciting, but it's not overkill, which is key. There's only one thing that would make this story better, and that's if you split the paragraphs, one big chunk makes it daunting for the reader, and can put them off reading it at all. Personally I don't have a huge problem with it, but there are a few people I know who would.
Keep writing,
~Crimsona
Hey there!
I want to start out by saying that this is a good starting point for a story in my opinion. It was descriptive without being overly so (which would bore me and I wouldn't be here in the first place, so that's a good start). It was interesting as well, but I would almost have liked to see more about Emrys. He seems to be the most interesting aspect of this entire scene and you can capitalize on that without going too far. Say more about his mannerisms since that could be an interesting look into his character. He is almost otherworldly and that is something that can work in your favour in describing him. Go over the top about how creepy he is and he could capture your audience for the rest of the story.
Another thing that is more of a nitpick or mine. You should space out your paragraphs. Right now it's a block of text and it's a little hard to read. Same with the dialogue, space them out from each other to make it clear that someone else is talking.
All in all, though it was a very good scene and I really did enjoy it. Keep it up!
Ok, first: You need to space your work. I cannot stress this enough. I'm tired now. My eyes can't follow this very well.
What you need to do is start a
new line
at the start of
each new
paragraph.
(Spaces for illustration.)
If you have any questions, pm me or a mod.
Hey Ura. Finally I'm here to review your story. Sorry for the delay, by the way.
Forced should be forcing.Maybe it was just a typo, but that period should be a comma.
Did you mean to type and?
Could you explain who our God is? Maybe it's just me, but I found a little strange that everyone else has a name that means something but their god doesn't even have a name.
The man grabbed a heavy book [b]of the bookshelf closest to him and threw it Anwyn.[/b] Of should be off.
What I liked:
Firstly, I'd like to say the names of your characters are very original. So good job with that. Also, I love the idea of your story of the importance of names. And I loved your descriptions.
Very well- written vivid descriptions, way to set the story.
What Needs Improvement:
Other than a few grammar and punctuation errors, the only thing that needs improvement is the character, Anwyn. Readers get a small sense of what Anwyn is feeling but, overall we don't know much about her thoughts and emotions. Though the story is very well-written, I think it would even better if you elaborated more on Anwyn's thoughts and feelings.
Overall:
You have succeeded in writing an interesting well- written story. The setting is strong, the descriptions are vivid, and the flow is smooth. I can't wait to read more of your work. If you have any questions feel free to pm me. Hope I helped~
Lily.
Harro Saks! Here as requested.
Alright, I say this with all the love in the world, but your spelling HAS to get better! We live in the same house-ask for help or Google it. The grammar mistakes were already pointed out above. My biggest thing with the grammar though is the way you separated the paragraphs. I don't have time to fix them now, but they're driving me nuts. I liked the story a lot- very interesting and creative. I would like to see some more background regarding the Seer... he interested me! Also, give us more on the God that you have in here. I'd like to know more about him and his wife.
Cheers,
Luxe
Okay, this is actually my first real attempt at reviewing someone's work. I usually don't read fantasy stories- ever, but I'm interested in what happens to the baby. Anyways, I'm gonna start now...
edited
my comment
Overall, quite interested and as I said before I want to know what happens to Peregrin. Good job
Hello Sakuragirl1, I'm Masque, and I shall be reviewing your work today. -puts on intelligent looking glasses-
Key:
Blue= Really like this
Purple= This sounds awkward
Red= Edits
Green= My comments
After reading the first paragraph my initial reaction was "oh dear, here we go." The first few sentences were short and not very descriptive. The main problem was the lack of setting. Is the house in a forest? How big is it? What does it look like on the inside? I would weave some setting into the first couple paragraphs.
From that point on the piece got much better. Apart from a few typos and grammatical errors (which I think I got most of them), the story was quite well written. I particularly liked the character of Emrys. He was interesting and creepy and it made me very curious about him and his past. I liked the way he spoke too.
So, I gather that Emrys is some sort of immortal person whose job it is to name people, and people's names are important and tell a lot about their future. What an interesting concept. I'm curious where this story will go and I hope Emrys plays more of a role in the story than naming Peregrin; I'd like to learn more about him.
So, overall, I enjoyed this piece. It was interesting and made me curious about what will happen.
Happy Writing!
Masquerade