A Girl Named Calamity (Alyria 1)

When I ran across a plain wooden building, I was drawn to it and couldn’t stop myself from going in.

A bell dinged as I opened the door and many different scents assailed my nose. They smelled like home. Like Grandmother’s herbs. A sense of melancholy hit me with them.

A young woman stood behind the counter, watching me quizzically before she smiled. “Can I help you find something?” Her smile turned mischievous. “Maybe a potion to help seduce a certain man?”

Did women purchase potions like that? Why not just find a man who wanted them? The woman walked around the counter. “Some women are not as beautiful as you; they could not have a man that you could.”

I grimaced. Oh, perfect. Another mind reader.

She smiled at the thought. “You know another one?”

“Unfortunately,” I grumbled. She laughed melodically, and it brought peace with it. My muscles and mind were too relaxed to be concerned about the sudden change.

“Do you know anything about olian soap?” I asked.

Her lips pursed in thought. “Ah yes, that is a Sylvian wedding tradition, is it not?”

“I believe so, but I’m not certain. An old woman made me wash with it, and afterward men were giving me strange reactions,” I explained.

“Sounds like a bored Sylvian woman,” she mused. “These men . . . some couldn’t leave you alone, and others couldn’t get away faster?”

My eyes lit up. “Exactly!”

“Well, if I remember correctly, the soap smells different to every man. It shouldn’t be detectable by other women besides the one who wears it. The soap shows a man whether he is compatible with you. It will smell rotten to someone not compatible, and will smell tempting to someone who is. The smell varies on the scale of compatibility. In Sylvia, brides wash with the soap before the wedding, and if the scent smells bad to the groom, the wedding is stopped.”

I took all the information in, and was relieved to have some answers. No matter how small they were. Weston and I were clearly on the far side of the incompatibility scale. I remembered his reaction and his disgust. It wasn’t as though I had assumed us to be compatible at all—I was his prisoner.

The woman watched me with interest as I pulled a book off one of her shelves.

Alyria’s History and Prophecies of the Seal.

I blew the dust off the top of the

leather bound book. It was too large to carry around, but I was itching to see what was inside.

“Mind if I look at this?” I asked.

“Be my guest.” She gestured to the corner of the room where a small wooden table and chair sat. I swore they hadn’t been there before, and I looked hesitantly back at her, but she only smiled.

I sat down at the table, and the old book crinkled while I opened it. Goose bumps covered my arms as I read the very first sentence.

The future of Alyria lies in the hands of one woman. The daughter of a king and the daughter of a whore.

A shiver went down my spine at the truth of my mother. But if I were the daughter of a king, surely I wouldn’t have lived in a cottage. I might have been a bastard, but a king’s bastard was still treated better than a common peasant.

Her hair as fair as the wheat in the West, her eyes as dark and expressive as Lake Clare and mind as strong as her body weak.

Another set of shivers went down my spine and I rubbed my arms. That hit home. I read another passage of when they believed ‘the woman’ was to be born, which wasn’t for about another two-hundred years.

But I supposed I wasn’t very patient.

I flipped to the page Supposed Locations. The entire page was blank. If no one had any idea where it was, then how did Weston know? There were hardly any details about what the seal looked like. Some believed it was protected by the Mountain People in the East. They were mute, and it was assumed they lost their voices so they couldn’t tell anyone about the seal, and were cursed so that if it was found, they would all die painful deaths.

What kind of life would you have if you couldn’t talk anyway?

I glanced over at the woman, and my stomach dropped as I forgot she could read my thoughts. I closed the book and carried it over to the shelf, reluctantly sliding it in between the others.

Her smile was wicked at what I asked her next.