Excerpt from Merrow by Ananda Braxton-Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I pointed out that he'd already lost his sight, so it wasn't his to give any longer.

He tightened his old fiddle pegs and said, as if I should know better, "Not that sight."

CHAPTER TWO
Changeling

IN EARLY SUMMER I TOLD Auntie Ushag what Scully had told me at the market, about the merrows and our family, and that was the start of all our bother and quarrels. That first time, she folded her arms across her chest and looked at me for a good while before speaking. Then she sighed.

"Why are we to listen to Scully Slevin?" she asked.

"Because he's a seer," I told her simply and truth-fully.

"Listen to me," she said slowly and clearly, speaking as though I were old or deaf or stupid. "Scully is not a seer. There are no seers. Those days, if they were ever here, are gone. Everybody knows that. And it's a good thing too," she added.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because those days were a mess."

"Why?"

"No one knew where they stood. All those sprites and half-beings and whatnots, they had too many rules. Don't build around the barrows, don't plant in the dancing grounds, don't fall asleep under the alder or pick the columbine from Strangers' Croft. Who could remember all that? Then they had holidays every other day! With presents and special clothes, and feast food. And wine, barrels and barrels of wine. Nobody got any work done. The Little Brothers and their one god are better." She paused. "Slightly."

I could see I had one question left before she would stop answering me, saying that my questions were becoming a conversation and she had no time to converse like a scholar or a lady or any other person with no real purpose.

I asked as quietly as I could, "Why?"

My aunt put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. "Because they're simple, Neen. Ten rules, three holidays, and one god who made everything. Simple." She turned back to the washing. "Anyway, there hasn't been a real sighting of the Others for centuries. Scully is just showing off. There are no seers anymore. No seers, no merrows, no selkies —"

I perked up. "What are selkies?"

"They're nothing." She punched and wrung the wet wool. "I've done talking. I don't have any more time to waste. Take these and spread them and leave me alone."

Up the cove, we were a house of secrets, but all I had to do was find Scully or visit down at the Slevin place to be glutted with all the stories I wanted. All through that winter, Bo and I'd been sneaking down to sit among the whelk shells, fat hens, and wood ash in Ma Slevin's smoky snug and listen as she blathered. In this manner I'd learned of the flooding, trembling, and burials that have rocked the island. In times past, the very earth has opened up and swallowed whole vil-lages. The sun shines for a month and the lake becomes a bog; rain falls for a month and the bog becomes a lake. You never know with earth and water what's going to happen next, Scully says, almost cheerfully. Out in the cove, there's even an island that appears and disappears as it will.

At other times the sea has risen up in waves that drowned the low-lyingest, edge-most parts of the island, with the result that on clear mornings, fishermen out in the calm cove can see those undersea forests of leafless elm and alder still standing. Not only that, but they see the old paths cutting through the old forest's wavering shadows. At night, lights glint and flicker along these deep paths, and Ma Slevin says they're the souls of the poor drowned cottagers searching for one another and for a way back into the sun. The manner of their dying is leeching them of human warmth, she told us, and they are well on their way to becoming cold-blooded water sprites. They live an icy, lonely existence, forever searching for something they dimly recall as "companionship" and for a way back to a fading memory of something called "home." Ma has a way of putting things that makes pictures in my head.

Excerpted from Merrow by Ananda Braxton-Smith. Copyright © 2016 by Ananda Braxton-Smith. Excerpted by permission of Candlewick Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.