Excerpt from Chapter 8
Music called Leon up from the deep. A series of queer notes, cycling in repetition. A harp? A lute? But the growing awareness in his body told him this could not be so. He was lying flat on his back, numb with cold.
Light seeped beneath his lashes and every half-drawn breath brought stabbing pain beneath his left arm. A bright, searing pain that eclipsed the many other pains in his aching body. His skull felt as though it had been removed from his neck. The straps for his breastplate dug chain mail into his spine. Breathing was hard, a sawing labor, rasping as he tried to fill his lungs. His jaw felt like it had been struck with a flail. His entire body felt like it had been struck with a flail.
He groaned and opened his eyes. The pale sky spun slowly overhead. The strange music kept trilling and movement in his peripheral vision dragged him fully awake. Through the fog of his breath, he saw the girl.
She was splayed six feet up the slope, her tiny blue breeches bunched tight around her buttocks, her thighs trembling with the effort to climb. Her skin was grazed and bleeding and she was reaching with all her might for a small rectangular object. A box?
Impossibly thin and dully gleaming, it was lodged at the root of a bramble bush. His foggy brain struggled to comprehend how such a thing could produce such a sound or how it might come to be here on the slope. Had the girl been holding it when she fell?
“You need a stick,” he croaked.
She yelped, losing her footing, and skidded back to the grass with a strangled cry. She grabbed his sword and whirled toward him, struggling to bear the weight of the blade.
He blinked at her bizarre clothes and winced at the blood and dirt staining the shreds of her flimsy overshirt. Nothing about her fit inside his head.
“I seem to have one,” he gestured, flapping his hand at the horrible branch stuck in his side. “It might do the job.”
Her eyes darted to the wound. “I should drive it all the way in and this sword too.”
He screwed his eyes shut and grimaced. “It feels quite … painful … as it is.” When he opened his eyes again, she had cast his sword aside, well out of his reach, and was unlacing one of her unusual white boots. He tensed, fearing she might intend to beat him about the ears with it.
“You understand me?”
He frowned, at a loss as to how to respond.
“My words!” She waved the shoe at him and he flinched. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“I … yes?”
“My lips match the sounds?”
“Ah … yes?”
Her brow crumpled. “What language is this?”
“What … language?” He blinked at her. “We … we speak the common tongue of Allemannic.”
“Like old-school German?” She brought trembling fingers to her lips, her eyes welling as she stared at the ground, nodding and muttering, “Right … why not medieval German? If we’re losing our shit, we may as well go the whole way.”
Leon eyed her warily. Was she mad? It would explain her near nakedness.
She turned away and threw the boot at the bramble bush. Remarkably, it landed right in the middle, lodging in the branches above the musical box. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieked. Leon jolted.
Still the box trilled on, its melody growing irritating as it looped. “How does it play without a crank?”
She shot him a scathing look. “A crank?”
“Your musical box. It is some manner of hurdy-gurdy? A symphonia?” He rotated his wrist, to demonstrate the turning of a crank. He’d seen a minstrel play such an instrument at a festival in Modeh, though it had been a much larger contraption.
“Are you for real?” she spat.
“I have never heard such a hurdy-gurdy as this, nor seen one so small. It is surely a marvel.”
She tipped her face into her hands, indulging a brief hysterical sob. “A hurdy-gurdy.”
“Have I … misspoken?”
“Misspoken?”
“I seem to have offended—”
“Offended? You beat the shit out of my friends and ran me off a fucking cliff!” She took a step toward him, spittle flying from her lips. “You murdered innocent schoolkids—you shot them with arrows!”
Leon’s lips parted as he absorbed the girl’s response and reconsidered his next words. She was staring at the stick wedged in the soft skin of his underarm. He feared she might, indeed, kick it deeper if his diplomacy failed. It also triggered a deeper fear, one he had been ducking even as consciousness returned to his body. Where were his men? It struck him as ominous that not one of them had come searching for him and the girl.
A dark possibility swept in. Had Oleg’s scouts been on their heels? Perhaps his men were all dead. He pushed the horrible thought down. “I swear, that was not our men.”
Tears sparkled in her pale green eyes, pressure building in her face.
He held her gaze. “We would never kill innocents.”
“But sneaking up on them in the dark, assaulting them, tying them up and dragging them away—that gets the green light?”
“What is … the green light?”
She fixed him with a poisonous glare. “Green means go.”
“Go … where?”
“Listen to me, Sir Jerks-a-lot,” she snarled, gesticulating at the musical box. “I’m getting my phone and my shoe and I’m going…” She straightened up, her eyes widening. “I’m going and I’m not staying here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t even know where here is. I don’t know when this is. Or how this is. But I can’t be here. I can’t be here with a—” A bout of soft, unhinged laughter rocked her shoulders. “A medieval knight in shining armor.”
Copyright © 2025 by Rachael Craw
An action-packed time travel romance perfect for young fans of Outlander and historical romantasy like Powerless.
Ana should be enjoying her last summer before college; instead, she's stuck with her ex on a pre-paid trip in Germany. She's determined to make the best of it, visiting castles outside Hamburg and drinking in the local myths of medieval saints and miracles.
On the night of the summer solstice, as a meteor streaks across the sky, Ana and her friends decide to attend a party in the sacred caves of Eadin forest. Suddenly, an earthquake strikes and scatters the partygoers. They stumble outside, straight into a snowy landscape where a furious battle rages.
In the chaos, Ana is separated from the group and comes face-to-face with Leon, a wounded holy warrior. She soon realizes she's been transported to the 14th century. Ana and Leon must set aside their mistrust of each other to search for safe passage away from the vicious Northmen who are pursuing both of their groups. As sparks begin to fly between them, Ana faces more dangers in the form of scheming lords, suspicious townsfolk, miracles she appears to be causing, and even Leon, who begins to wonder if this beautiful girl might be a saint or something far more sinister. Nothing is as it seems, and Ana finds herself caught in a power struggle between the church, the men of the North, and a magnetic young lord who is determined to use her as a bargaining chip.
With home looking ever more unreachable, Ana must determine who she is, whom she loves, and what she's willing to sacrifice to return to the present.
Young Adult Historical | Science Fiction Alternate History | Romance [8th Note Press, On Sale: April 29, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781961795297 / eISBN: 9781961795280]
Rachael Craw is an award-winning author of speculative fiction for young adults, including the Spark trilogy, The Rift and upcoming release, The Lost Saint.
She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies and Drama at the University of Canterbury and a Diploma of Teaching at Christchurch College of Education. She teaches English and Drama, mentors young writers, assesses manuscripts, leads writing workshops and speaks at festivals and conferences throughout New Zealand and Australia. In her spare time she walks her dogs, hoards books and reviews fiction on social media. She lives in the South Island of New Zealand with her husband and 3 daughters where she teaches part time while working on her latest novel.
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