He scared them. He knew things. He was Fey…

He had talked to the soldier. They had come from far away, marching across the hill with their sharp swords and short kilts, shiny metal at their breast and sun dark skin.  One was kind, let him share their fire and told him about their home, far beyond Rome. The other soldiers did not seem to see him.

He had learned from the wise woman who muttered to herself about the herbs and the berries she gathered from summer trees when the snow lay on the ground. He had seen the blue-painted faces of the Small Ones as they camped on the hilltop.

The others said there was no-one there. But he knew… he could see them.

The Ostler was afraid… They were all afraid except the Smith.

So they called him mad… Fey… Fool… and threw scraps to him in the Hall. They let him sleep with the horses in the warm, sweet hay.

He was no fool. Just alone in a world the others could not see…

Excerpt from Heart of Albion

“Yeahs, you’re beautiful aren’t you?” says Wen to the llama.

Now llamas don’t understand English, obviously, but as surely as I am sitting here typing this, he does begin to preen when Wen complements him on his beauty. So I am thinking, well he has maybe picked up on the tone in the vibration of Wen’s voice and is responding to that. His keepers probably do that type of thing all the time… when they are about to feed him.

“I bet you know the way to the top of Our Sacred Hill don’t you, beautiful?”

Lammas nods. Without a word of a lie, Lammas the llama nods an affirmative to a direct question. Okay, so Wen was also nodding, and so he could just have been copying her. Llama, see, llama do and all that.

“Which way is it then, gorgeous?”

Lammas turns his head… and looks… and nods to the left.

“…Which way?”

Lammas repeats the look… and the nod… to the left…

Excerpt from Heart of Albion.

HEART OF ALBION

Stuart France & Sue Vincent

Unwittingly drawn into the mysterious and magical landscape of The Initiate, Don and Wen pondered the visual language of symbols, stumbling across revelations and realisations that would alter their perception of the age-old stories they thought they knew… tales that entwine across the tapestry of time.

A hilltop steeped in tragedy, a child whose eyes see too much… a Word-Weaver’s birth into darkness… strange forms shimmering on the edge of vision. They learned to walk the Living Land, listening to the whispers of Earth memory and the ghosts of the most ancient past. And from those tales, another line of communication opens as they explore the folklore, legends and traditional tales handed down, from heart to heart, over the millennia.

As the two friends travel between the sacred sites of Albion, they discover stories that tell how the leys were made, the true origins of the hillforts and the reason why Father Fish had breakfast in Slug Town.

Striding across this landscape of myth are the giants. From Cerne Abbas to the top of the Beanstalk, from Camelot to the Castle of Maidens, how and why is their presence stamped on the Living Lore of the land by their seven-league boots?

Join Don and Wen as the adventure continues, unravelling its mysteries and the magical relationship between Albion and its people.

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Heart of Albion is the second book of the Triad of Albion, also available via Amazon