Magus of Stonewylde Book One Read Online Free

demurely sipping lemonade at her mother’s side. Instead she was creeping off into thewoods with a tall stranger, tipsy on a glass of forbidden punch and not caring what happened next .
    In a clearing amongst the trees, the man with the pale hair and feathered bird mask stopped. He gazed up through the branches at the red moon in the sky, enormous and unreal. Then he gently pulled her down onto the carpet of fallen leaves and damp grass, her wings crushed beneath her. He spread her long red hair about her head, creating a fiery halo on the earth. She started to protest as his hands touched her and he murmured deeply, hushing her first with his voice and then with a hand over her mouth. His masked eyes bored into hers, but as he entered her, he flung back his head and stared long and hard at the blood-red moon. The sound that escaped his lips was as primitive as a wolf’s howl .

2
     
    Y ul climbed to the very peak of the bonfire in the Stone Circle and looked around. Groups of people were preparing for the imminent celebrations and today the huge arena felt busy. The great standing stones had been scrubbed of the faded Imbolc decorations left from the beginning of February, and a group of artists now painted the Spring Equinox symbols onto the freshly cleaned stones using beautiful colours prepared from natural pigments and dyes. A pattern of spring flowers decorated the tops of the ancient stones: celandine and violet, wood anemone and primrose. The spring fertility goddess Eostre was represented holding an egg in each hand and wearing a great headdress of flowers and stars.
    But the dominant image was that of the hare. All around the Circle, hares were painted onto the stones in every possible stance – boxing, crouching, washing and leaping. Amber eyes and long black-tipped ears formed a great carousel of hares. The hare was the symbol of the festival, totem animal of the ancient spring goddess. The artists were now finishing the finer details, hoping the sudden showers would hold off until the paint and glaze were dry.
    Yul was watching one girl in particular. Her pale Hallfolk hair was cut in a bob and she had a pretty cat-like face. Holly was a Winter Solstice child like him, and he wondered, as he had before, if they’d be partners at their Rite of Adulthood later in the year. She’d seemed keen on him at the Imbolccelebrations. They’d known each other for years as all Hallfolk children attended the Village school until they were eight. Since then the segregation had deepened and although in the same community, they were now worlds apart. But differences were forgotten at the festivals and the Rite in particular was a great leveller.
    Today, however, Holly ignored him. She hung around the artists offering cloths and paint pots, ostensibly helping but in fact just getting in the way. Merewen, in charge of the decorations, growled at her a couple of times. But Holly was cheeky and a law unto herself, which was one of the reasons Yul liked her. He wondered how to attract her attention without getting into trouble. He was supposed to be packing the gaps in the huge bonfire with smaller branches, carried in a bag on his back, and stuffing in different mosses and lichens to burn with strange colours and effects.
    The woodsmen were all around, constructing the great pyramid of wood. They always built the bonfires and took pride in the job; as an apprentice, Yul was learning from experts. The Spring Equinox was one of the four fire festivals of the year, the time when the community celebrated the balance of light and darkness, the returning warmth of the sun and the start of the growing season. The customs dated back far beyond any recorded memory, passed on through the centuries by tradition and folklore. Yul particularly liked this festival because of the hares, and looking around the Stone Circle, it gladdened his heart to see the way Merewen and her group of artists had captured the spirit of the hare so