Snow & Ash: The Curse of Estoria - Book 1
Well, it has taken a while to get there as I was so focused on my Royals of Avalone series and then getting such a high performing day-job that some of my work took a back seat.
However, I’m really happy to announce that the first book in my “The Curse of Estoria” series, Snow and Ash is now written! That doesn’t mean that it’s finished yet. I still need to get it to my editor and get a cover designer (I don’t think I can do this one justice), but I am in a position to get this book series out this year.
FINALLY!
I have been trying to get this finished since 2018 and I am determined that this is the year that this series will be completed and published - I’m already working on Ashen Beauty, the second book in the series.
When the Kingdom of Estoria was shrouded in ash that fell in perpetuity, they rebuilt, they overcame, they conquered… But when centuries pass and power has corrupted those who now led the people, someone has to figure out a way to break the curse and return the land and its people to how it was.
When Star accidentally breaks into the Sealed Castle and discovers how the curse was formed, she is challenged by the Queen of the Fairies to discover what love is through experiencing true love’s first kiss. Only then can the curse be broken and the ash stop falling. When Star travels back in history, replacing the women in the royal lineage and trying to fall in love with their soul mates, she realises that it’s not as easy as it seemed.
Join Star as she experiences the life of Snow of Whitehaven, and find out if she can truly break The Curse of Estoria.
Snow and Ash is the first book in The Curse of Estoria series which is a retelling of Snow White.
To help whet your appetite for The Curse of Estoria series, below is the first (unedited) scene from the first book Snow and Ash.
‘Break!’ a watchman shouted, walking towards the line of women stretching across the width of an ash-root field. Groaning, Star struggled to her feet, stretching her arms high above her head, before swinging them behind her back and pushing her fisted hands against the curve of her spine.
The popping and cracking of her bones punched a rush of relieved breath from her lungs and finally she allowed her arms to hang limply at her sides. She dropped her head back, staring up at the gloomy sky.
Each day the sky was the same as the day before; a never ending, perpetual grey cosmos looming above them. It looked the same yesterday, it would be the same tomorrow. But, Star had no plans on setting her gaze upon it tomorrow. Tomorrow was not just her rest day, it was also the day of her birth and tomorrow she would come of age.
The girls would have her up late tonight, a celebration of reaching adulthood—which was no simple accomplishment in the caverns, and certainly not for the child of the rebellion. Star planned to sleep through the morning until they called her for luncheon, and if she could get away with sleeping until her next work day, she would. For while in the eyes of the council she would officially be an adult, Star already felt as if she were seventy.
She scoffed, as if such an age could be achieved from someone in her position.
Her hands stung from the cuts and scratches she had from scraping through the dirt beneath the soft piles of ash, seeking the twisted and gnarled roots that grew down deep in the darkness. Her knees ached and swelled from kneeling all day and hobbling across the upturned earth as she worked, and her back… How she didn’t have the hunch the other women who worked the fields did, she’d never know. Although, recently she was starting to think she wasn’t standing as straight as she once did.
Similar sighs of relief from the other women as they slowly stood, filled the field as the younger girls helped the older up from their prone positions. As they all stood to their full heights again, they eagerly turned to the watchmen, licking their shrivelled lips as they waited for the water canisters to be passed down the line.
As Star pulled down the scarf she wore around her nose and mouth, her eyes narrowed when she caught sight of the water carriers. At least two men fewer than normal were walking up to the line and their heavy water packs, usually bulging at the seams, appeared emptier than usual.
As the primary team to set out each morning, their workforce was always the first to be visited by their male counterparts to slacken their thirst, so it made no sense for the packs to look as light as they did.
‘Why so few?’ Star’s voice cracked as she spoke, her mouth as dry as the ash around her and her throat ached for the fresh clear water so tantalisingly close—she would be salivating in eager anticipation if she weren’t so parched.
A small squeak to her right had Star turning her gaze to the young girl at her side. Aurora had joined them only three moons ago, another refugee of the orphanage, and Star had taken the petite child under her wing. While Star was generally tall for a woman, a good head above the other girls in their home, she towered over Aurora. The smaller girl trembled in nervous excitement, biting her lip so hard her skin turned white around her mouth. It was the tell-tale sign that she knew something she wasn’t supposed to, and that she certainly shouldn’t repeat whatever it was she was privy too.
Star sighed. ‘Go on, out with it.’
‘The main well—’ Aurora started, her voice high and squeaky, before stopping abruptly, her big brown eyes darting left and right as she nervously licked her own dry, cracked lips. She stepped forwards and leaned closer to Star, lowering her voice when she spoke again. ‘Last night, the water in the main well turned black.’
‘Black?’
‘And thick as sludge.’ Aurora’s voice quivered with the fear her eyes held as she spoke. ‘Ben says it stinks of rotten flesh.’
Star grimaced at the thought, leaning away from her friend as if somehow Aurora herself carried such a scent.
‘But… How?’ Star asked, her brow furrowing while considering what could have happened to cause such an event.
‘I don’t know,’ Aurora admitted with a shrug. A woman behind the younger girl, nudged Star’s friend with a cannister taking her attention for a moment as she thanked the other worker. Aurora took a long drink from the flask, finishing with a satisfied ah before offering it to Star and beginning her tale again.
‘Ben said everything was normal, they were doing the final pull of the day when the trough got stuck. They pulled and pulled, apparently, and when it finally dislodged, the whole pool just began to…’ She trailed off as she searched for the appropriate word. ‘Bubble! All this thick, black slime began to bubble up to the top, stinking out the whole place. Apparently, a number of men lost their suppers!
‘They tried to skim the top, thinking whatever it was it was just something the trough had dislodged and it would eventually stop, but for every bucket and trough they removed, there was just… more!’
If it wasn’t for the thick layer of grey that painted Star’s cheeks and brow, her friend would have seen the colour drain from her face. She hastily put the cannister of water to her lips and downed the remaining few mouthfuls of the cool liquid, wishing it was something stronger, to hide her horror. Passing on the cannister, Star turned away from the other women who gathered around to hear what Aurora had to say, and allowed her friend her moment in the spotlight as they listened with avid interest.
Star stumbled towards the wall that separated their work field from the tumbling wild fields that ran down the mountainside, and tried to catch her breath while the implications of Aurora’s news sunk in.
The main well, their largest, deepest, and cleanest water supply was their lifeline. The other smaller wells throughout the caverns could run low or completely dry, sometimes for months on end, the main well had always remained consistent. And only a few days ago, Albert, one of the well workers she was on friendly terms with, had told her five of those smaller wells were currently bone dry. Without the main well…
There had to be an explanation. The main well had been keeping the people of Estoria alive for centuries. Never running lower than it currently sat, and always as pristine as the day they found it. It was unfathomable that this could just happen.
‘Is it the Rebellion, do you think?’ Star heard one woman murmur to another as they wandered away from Aurora to bask in their short respite from work. ‘D’ya think they finally have enough fighters again to take on the council?’
‘I dunno,’ her companion said, thoughtfully. ‘We had plenty last time and look how that ended.’
Star felt her breath stutter, her whole body freezing at their hushed words. They couldn’t be true, could they? Could there be a rebellious movement again? No, surely not after the last one… Right?
She closed her eyes and ground the palms of her hands against them, trying to block out the painful memories even the word evoked within her.
The last rebellion, when food had been scarce and the people were scared, had upturned her life. She’d been a child, barely seven years old when she’d lost her mother in the skirmishes over the rations.
Gods, the skirmishes.
Star’s whole body shuddered as memories she’d tried to forget, tried to bury deep down, came bubbling to the surface of her mind as much as the black goop probably had in the main well.
Back then the lower hall had been sealed off with great gates made by the blacksmiths, and the women waited, pushing against one another until finally the barrier lifted and the throng spilt through the frames. Women climbing over women, desperate to get to the meagre offerings the council had the audacity to call a banquet.
Star had once overheard her father bragging to another man that the key was not to be at the front or the back. Those at the front usually fell through the gates and ended up on the floor, fighting against the rest of the tide that followed behind them. Those at the back were ready to fight, knowing they’d never make it to the piles of food in time.
It had sounded so exciting to Star’s little ears. As if her mother was some great champion, rather than a desperate woman merely trying to keep her family fed. Star wasn’t supposed to see the skirmishes; she was meant to be with her grandmother whenever they took place, but Star often managed to sneak away with the other children to peek down at the rush for food, watching the women running to the piles of scraps that Star now knew them to be. They’d had no inkling to the reality around them. Their sweet innocence likening it to a game, rather than the fight for life it had truly been.
Star still remembered cheering on the women as they tried to grab what they could and get out of the fray before the piles diminished. She recalled watching her mother time and again, getting in and out swiftly, dodging those around her and making it to the opposite, smaller set of gates to get out in quick time.
Star would charge home afterwards, imagining she was as fast as her mother, and picturing herself in the skirmishes one day. The best of all the racers, bringing home a bounty fit for the sleeping king far away in the ruins of the capital city.
It had all been fun and games, until one random day Star had the misfortune of watching her mother falling to the floor when someone bodily knocked her over. Star had called for her mother to get up and run again as her body lay twitching on the ground. She still dreamt, sometimes, of the red puddle forming around her mother’s small frame.
Afterwards, the fabulous feasts she remembered her mother bringing home—in reality a few slices of meat, a couple chunks of ash-root, and half a loaf of slowly moulding bread—became nothing. Men weren’t allowed in the skirmishes and she recollected her father swearing the council had planned it that way. The caverns were over-populated and they needed their numbers cut. If the woman of a house perished in a skirmish, it meant the family would be left to wither away. Only the fittest would survive so that the people could prosper.
It was why her father had joined them. It was the only way he had to put food on their table. While her parent’s friends had been sympathetic to their loss, there were no offers of assistance when their own food supply was so measly. Children she’d once played with freely were now quickly ushered away by their mothers whenever they saw her with their sons and daughters. Her father had felt helpless and pushed, she remembered him saying, into the waiting arms of the Rebellion.
It was how she’d lost him, just over a year later. He’d been discovered, branded a traitor by the council, and sentenced to death. Star still had nightmares of watching his body burning, the cries and screams he, and those with him, made as their souls were seared from their flesh.
Afterwards, alone and scared, she’d been thrown into the orphanage; surviving on scraps and handouts with the other children of the traitors, and, once she’d turned fifteen, forced to work the ash-fields as penance for her parents’ crimes.
If there was a water shortage, if there was no undoing whatever had happened to the main well quickly, what happened ten years ago would pale in comparison to the anarchy that would descend. And just as her father had felt back then, more would feel the same; pushed into joining the Rebellion’s forces.
Would she join such a cause if water was non-existent? If the council rationed the life-giving substance, cut them off and made them desperate, would Star follow in her father’s footsteps and become a traitor?
She hoped it was a question she never had to answer.
Star rubbed her hands down her face and stared out over the ever grey horizon. It didn’t matter to her that her fingers were dusty from the ash they’d been scrabbling in; her face, clothes, hair, everything about her was covered in a thick layer of ash, turning her and all the women alongside her into the same shade of grey as the world around them.
No one knew exactly when the ash began to fall or when they’d moved from the low lands up into the mountain caves. No one knew why the ashen rain would fall thick and fast for years, then almost non-existent again for the same passage of time. However, the people had quickly learnt that the changes in the ash-fall made no difference to their lives; no matter how hard they worked they could never remove the ash from the ground.
No one could remember when everything didn’t look the same; when pillows of grey didn’t laze across the ground for as far as the eye could see. Star wondered, not for the first time if there had ever been any colour in the world beyond that of grey, or if such shades were only reserved for people; their eyes, their hair, their skin and—for the council—their clothes.
Her eyes wandered, of their own accord, towards the ruins of the old capital, hidden down in the lowlands. Ruins of buildings, homes of their ancestors apparently, peeked out beneath drifts of ash and, not for the first time, Star wondered what was hidden within them.
Probably nothing, her mind told her. Surely their predecessors would have picked them bare, taking everything of worth when they’d headed to their new home?
‘You ever wonder how it stays untouched?’ Aurora interrupted her morose thoughts. Star’s eyes turned their focus to the building in the centre of the ruins; the one thing that the ash had never touched, had never destroyed; the Great Castle. Flakes would fall around the walls, but seemingly melted away the instant they landed on the building, allowing all to see that it still stood proud, majestic…
Not for the first time, Star wondered how it was possible, why it was possible. Whenever her eyes fell upon the magnificent stone building far off down the mountains, she felt a pull towards it, to see it for herself. A desire to reach out and touch the walls, perchance they might insert colour into her life. As if by magic, she could become someone else, be somewhere else, in a place were she wasn’t punished for her parents’ sins.
But she always quickly dismissed the thoughts, shook away the allure, reminded of the rumours and stories—fairy tales, her mother had once called them—about the single building that stood in the centre of Estoria. The most common of them all was the story of the original council, sealing up the castle to stop the wicked King from destroying them all, but they had been too late to stop the full brunt of his fury. Instead of killing them all, the ash fell, slowly suffocating the world until, finally, they had risen up and marched onwards to start a new life up in the mountains against all adversity.
Personally, Star believed that if the ancient, first council was anything like the one of today, the King had probably been a good man and had sealed himself away from them so his purity would never be tainted by their selfishness.
But Star kept that theory to herself, such words from a traitor’s daughter would surely mean her death.
‘Back to work!’ the watchman cried, cracking the whip he held to make them fall back into formation, stealing Star’s chance to answer Aurora’s question.
With her eyes still focused on the building far below, Star pulled her scarf up around her face again, before she turned back to work.
